“Scratch will show you to your quarters.”
Then he's gone, ducking through a doorway that seems too small for his frame.
“Forty-nine years, seventy-one days, five hours and sixteen minutes.”
I jump. A demon materializes from nowhere. Why should I be surprised at anything now?
Six eyes blink in sequence. He was an insectoid creature, his body long and segmented like a centipede's, but held upright. Multiple spindly limbs were folded neatly against his torso. His six eyes, arranged in a tight cluster, gave him an unnervingly wide field of vision, and when he spoke, his voice was a dry, rasping chitter. “And now I have to escort a human. A damaged human. Or mostly human, if my nose works. Wonderful.”
I follow him through passages that don't maintain consistent geometry. Sometimes the ceiling is twenty feethigh. Sometimes I have to duck. The cold gets worse with each step until my breath fogs.
“This is considered the guest wing,” Scratch says, opening a door. “Though 'guest' implies you might leave.”
The room is sized for something the lord's height. The bed is four feet off the ground. The bathtub could hold three of me. Everything is polished obsidian that seems to drink the light, with silver fixtures that look designed for claws, not fingers.
“Food arrives when it arrives,” Scratch says. “Don't touch anything that glows. Don't open doors that weren't there before. Don't follow voices that sound familiar. And the guards know better than to patrol the upper floors during feeding times. A courtesy you'll come to appreciate.”
“What about?—”
“Forty-nine years, seventy-one days, five hours and thirteen minutes until my service ends.” He's already leaving. “Try not to die before morning. The paperwork is tedious.”
The door closes.
Silence. Complete. No sound from outside, no wind, nothing. Like the room exists separate from everything else.
I sit on the floor. The bed is too high, too much effort. The stone is cold through my dress but solid. Real. I digmy nails into my forearm. New spots. Fresh pain. The blood wells dark in the strange light that comes from nowhere specific.
It's not enough. It's never enough.
But maybe here, in this wrong place with this wrong creature, I'll find what is.
BRAITH
One moment the air had crackled with the Vethani’s presence—the hunger in his eyes, a silent promise of the pain that could finally fill the void inside me. The next, I was utterly alone. The old emptiness rushed back in, colder and more hollow than before now that I'd had a taste of its absence.
The blood under my nails has dried to rust-brown crescents. I dig them into my forearm again, finding a fresh spot. The pain sends warmth spreading through my body, a response I've never fully understood but have learned to crave.
Movement in the corner.
Something crawls from beneath the bed. Salamander-shaped but wrong—too many joints, skin that glows ember-orange, pulsing in rhythm. It's the size of my palm, moving in stops and starts toward me.
I should be afraid. Scratch warned me about touching things that glow.
He didn’t know I haven’t been afraid of anything in years.
The creature stops three feet away. The glow under its skin pulses, slower than a heartbeat. Watching me. No—watching my arm. The fresh blood welling where I've reopened old crescents.
“You like that?” I hold out my bleeding arm. “Here. Have a taste.”
It creeps closer. The glow intensifies, shifting from ember-orange to something warmer. Not quite gold. When it's a foot away, I feel heat radiating from its skin. Warmth. The first since arriving in this cold place.
It doesn't touch me. Just sits there, pulsing brighter with each drop of blood that wells up.
“You feed on pain.” Pain draws them all here. “Well, I've got plenty. Being a medic for four tours will do that to you.”
The salamander-thing makes a sound—not quite a chirp, not quite a whistle. It turns toward the door, takes a few steps, then looks back.
“You want me to follow you?”
