Wump, wump, wump.
With the occasionalwump-ppp.
But that’s not the vibration that captures my attention right now.
It’s a different, frail light thing. The kind of thread that could be woven into a butterfly wing, if I were a tiny weaver with a tiny loom.
I close my eyes and breathe in the note—it’s like a guttering candle, flicker-flicker-gone- not gone.
Fooled you.
Those wily candles.
The wolf is in the larder,
The snake is in the hall,
The kitten’s in the briar patch, waiting for the fall.
The owl is in the belfry,
The sparrow’s in the mud,
The king is in the iron room,
Dreaming of the flood.
I start to hum again, a low, buzzing frequency that matches the Null-wards.
I’m waiting.
I don’t know what for, but I’ll be ready.
29. FRANCOIS
It’s been twenty-four hours since I had to watch the wolf’s dirty hands on her body. Watch him desecrate her lips with a kiss. It still burns. Burns. Venom pours from salivary glands at the memory.
In the gray morning light, I sprint across the uneven gravel of the yard, the cold air biting at my lungs, but it does nothing to cool the fire under my skin. That first taste of her should have been mine. I would have made it refined, elegant, a slow unraveling of her defenses.
Instead, she gave it to a man who smells of wet earth and industrial grease just to spite me.
My creature is coiling round and around as I push my pace, my feet slamming into the dirt. He demands I turn the air into a toxic poison that destroys them both. No. I am not my father. Though I did renew the toxin in Bevan’s blood so he wouldn’t be so…sprightly.
I finally break my stride, dropping to a walk as I pass through the heavy steel threshold of the back entrance, leaving the bleak yard behind. My uniform shirt is damp, clinging to my chest, my skin steaming in the milder air of the corridors.
Even out here, my mind stays locked on her. She is fragile, but also filled with strength. Able to be broken, while amazingly resilient.
Une dichotomie.A dichotomy.
And magnificent.
I want to be the one who kindles the fire in her eyes with passion, not pain. I want to feel her heart fumbling its rhythm against my own. But I want her to choose my darkness. I want her to look into my shadows and find it more inviting than the simple, mud-filled world of the wolf. Thomas would have dragged her out by her hair. He would have broken her spirit with a violence. No.
Leaning back against the concrete wall, my breathing finally slowing, I stare blankly down toward the corridors of endless cells. I came to this wretched place because I knew that here, in the dark, she’d need me to keep her safe from the scavengers.
I did not expect her to have already found a guardian.
But if the danger truly gets too much? I have the power to walk her through the front gates—lawfully or otherwise—not him.
