AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Because outside, the wyvern roars, and I hear it when Evander hits the ground. I feel it in the rumbling of stone when the wyvern approaches him, rearing back for the kill.
I don’t know what the antidote for shame is when I burst from the safety of the shadows.
I don’t know what the antidote for shame is when I unfasten the latch of the adamant box at my belt.
I don’t know it until I cry out to Evander, and he turns his head to me. And in the moment before my friend is convinced he’s about to die, I witness not an enemy, not the disgust I anticipate, but the warmth of a friend.
Evander’s eyes welcome me, the same as the day Clarissa dropped me off at the castle years ago.
It’s at that moment I understand the answer. I understand the antidote to shame.
I mouth something to him, and for a moment, I think there’s no way he’ll see it, but he swallows and nods all the same.
The parasite lets out a wicked laugh.
And then, for the first time in a long, long while, I step into the light.
CHAPTER 106
THE PARASITE
The parasite curls herself around the dark crevices of Blaise’s mind, swimming through the current of this pitiful girl’s soul.
The parasite has had a difficult time admitting it to herself, but now that she’s regained Blaise’s body, she can finally accept she’s missed Blaise.
She’s missed that intoxicating desperation, that pungent shame that consumes Blaise’s inner being. As much as the parasite detested being bound by the curse of the full moon, she had savored the moments she’d been allowed control over Blaise’s body.
The girl is just so…easy.
So easy, the girl doesn’t even realize it about herself. It’s been a pattern in the girl’s life, starting with how she let her stepsister convince her that her menstruation was simply a prank, a curse purchased from Madame LeFleur’s shop. Then there had been Derek, who (the parasite judges from rifling through Blaise’s memories) hadn’t needed very many folds on his brain to coax the stupid child into the pantry with him. Then there was Madame LeFleur, and even that dreadful Azrael character. The parasite has been forced to gather information on him from eavesdropping on Blaise’s memories of conversations with the other infested girl; the one-eyed queen infested with the parasite’s most naïve of siblings.
Blaise has spent her whole life under the impression that she is obstinate, stubborn, a force to be reckoned with. The parasite chuckles at the very idea, when all a person has to do is tug on the shame that seeps from Blaise’s very being. It’s like a bit in the foolish girl’s mouth.
It’s the same shame Derek used to keep her from voicing her fears—shame over the pain she’d caused her dying father in spoon-feeding him food his body could not handle. The same shame Clarissa reinforced when she locked Blaise away for the better half of the year to conceal her pregnancy. The parasite assumes Azrael used a similar technique, planting doubt in Blaise’s mind about whether she could trust her friends with her secrets, her needs.
Oh, how the parasite is looking forward to taking ahold of that shame, to bending Blaise’s body to her will.
Perhaps she’ll use it to transform into a glorious female warrior. Use it to slay the wyvern and save the prince, then settle into her preferred form.
It won’t take her long to steal the prince’s heart. Before she’d been limited by the time constraint of the full moon, the only reason Ellie Payne had an advantage in stealing the prince’s attentions.
Oh, yes. The parasite is looking forward to the rest of eternity.
The parasite reaches for Blaise’s shame, looking forward to its familiar, dark caress.
The parasite’s claws slip through thin air.
She flits around, wondering if perhaps she’s misremembering where Blaise keeps her shame. She knows it was here. It was rolling off Blaise in intoxicating swells only moments ago.
But as the parasite rifles through the crevices of Blaise’s mind, there is no shame, no desperation to be found.
Which is unfortunate for the parasite, as it leaves her without a handhold to grab onto when Blaise wrestles for control of her own mind.
The parasite doesn’t understand, can’t understand.
No, no, no. This isn’t supposed to happen. The shame, the desperation—they have to be around here somewhere.
And then the parasite finds it—the desperation. At least that has been left behind, even if the shame somehow vanished. But as the parasite tries to clasp hold of it, she finds her grasp slips. Because while the shame has vanished, the desperation has transformed from something rough and prickly and easy to grasp, to something hot and slick as an iron brand.
