6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

R aif had offered to heal her but gave up after a while and left, leaving Zylah to wonder if he’d done it for her benefit. To give her space. It didn’t matter. Whoever she thought he’d been once, he’d played her for a fool.

She studied her hands, thinking about the tether between her and Holt. Considered whether he was in a vanquicite cell somewhere, kept alive only by the connection between them, her magic anchoring him to this life; willing it to be true.

Holt could do many things, but Zylah knew which of his capabilities Ranon needed. The same ability that had taken Marcus’s life. Holt could create a wave of power, like a blast. It was the only explanation for keeping him alive, keeping him in one of their cells. She only hoped he’d share some of her tolerance to it, but the surge of pain she’d felt before Raif had brought her back to her room told her otherwise. Holt was suffering.

The memory of the vanquicite sword slamming into his chest was so sharp in her mind it didn’t matter if she scrunched her eyes shut or opened them, it was all she could see. Had Raif known not to kill him? Had it all been part of Aurelia’s plan, to keep Holt alive and use his magic? Zylah hated that she needed it to be true.

She unwound the filthy scrap of fabric from her hand, inspecting the wound. Only a small scrape, clotted over now, mercifully. She recalled how Raif had licked her blood, holding back a shiver that was part fear and part disgust.

Holt had told her once about Raif’s abilities, said he’d never tried to do what Raif could because that kind of magic took its toll. “It’s like a drug,” he’d said. “You want to feel the rush the more you use it.” Then he’d admitted his power made him understand how Raif had felt.

Zylah pressed a hand to her chest. What if Aurelia had pushed Raif to channel such dark magic? To corrupt him somehow? A bitter laugh escaped her. Even now, she was trying to find some reasoning for his behaviour, because it was easier to believe he’d been made into a monster than the alternative; that this was just who he was. But more than that, if it were true, if she was right in thinking Raif’s magic had been encouraged by Aurelia as part of her scheming to get her father back, it meant they needed Holt alive.

Trapped in a vanquicite cell, but alive. And she was going to free him. Somehow, she was going to get to him. Zylah knew she should have been afraid, but all she had left was anger. Her mate was trapped, tortured… how long had it been? She hated that she had no idea how many days had passed, and she considered the Seraphim, trapped alone for so long, her thoughts cut short by Raif’s approaching footsteps at the edge of the wards.

He wore fresh clothes: a dark blue shirt and black trousers, his short hair wet. It was still strange to see; coupled with his black eyes, it marked him as something totally foreign to her. A stranger.

Raif lowered the bag from his shoulder onto her bed. “A change of clothes for you. And some food.”

The other vampire, Zylah presumed. Aurelia didn’t strike her as the type to lend out clothes. But a vampire that had taught Raif their blood could heal? If only it could regrow wings, so that Arioch might feel the joy of flight after so long without them. She didn’t know for certain vampire blood couldn’t do such things, but she wasn’t about to risk revealing Arioch to Raif if he didn’t already know of the Seraphim’s existence.

Zylah didn’t thank Raif for the food, even as she tore apart the bread he’d brought her. Her thoughts lingered on the Seraphim as Raif righted the chairs Zylah had left where they’d fallen, watched as he pushed them all back against the far wall before taking a seat.

Arioch had all but admitted he’d tried to take his own life. How many times had he tried and failed? How many different ways? How many years had passed before the desperation set in? All Zylah knew was that she’d do anything— anything to get to Holt. To free him.

But what grand attempts could Arioch have made in this maze? From what Zylah had seen, it was half cave network, half root system, somewhere underground, perhaps. Out there, in the world beyond, people died every day. And often of small, irrelevant things.

She froze, a piece of stale bread halfway to her mouth.

“Zylah?” Raif asked, already on his feet, but he paused before he came any closer. “Are you in pain?”

Small, irrelevant things . She shook her head, forced herself to take another mouthful as Raif watched her. The Seraphim’s fate had sparked an idea. Zylah had been trying to use her magic to evanesce, to call objects to her, but it was too large a feat. She needed to think smaller. Smaller than a weapon, even.

Plants had served her as a weapon many times before. They could serve her again. Baylock made the vampires recoil… but she had no way of administering it to the vampire sat before her.

She slowed her eating. Thumped at her chest as if the bread were difficult to swallow. Placed what remained on the edge of her bed.

“If I am to remain here,” she began, raising her eyes to meet Raif’s. “At least let me cook. Let me have something to keep myself occupied.”

He’d retreated to his chair, empty black eyes watching her, his expression giving nothing away as his chest rose and fell steadily. She was certain he was going to refuse. Going to spout some bullshit about her being his prey, about feeding her whatever he wanted. But then he surprised her by nodding his head.

“I’ll see to it,” he said, with an air of finality. And then, “The maze is dangerous, Zylah. There are far too many dangers out there for you to try to leave.”

He was right to suspect her. But Zylah wasn’t about to concede. “You and Rose used to come here as children.”

“Because we… We came with someone who could evanesce us in and out every time. We bypassed all the danger—”

“And your grandfather has my magic now.” Not a question, because she didn’t need to ask.

Raif barely agreed. He wasn’t going to give her answers. Why would he? This was all a game to him. And she would play it, if it got her what she wanted. The vampire ran a hand through his short hair; gripped the back of his neck. “I’ll bring what I can. But it’s going to be a limited spread, Zylah.”

“I lived in Kerthen after…” After she thought he’d died. “After I left Virian. Everything feels like a luxury to me after that.”

“You lived there?”

Zylah wasn’t interested in indulging him. But she needed him to bring her what she’d asked for, so she told him about Kerthen. About the nights she’d spent alone. About the way she’d ground down plant roots for stews, then moved on to swamp crabs when she’d taken a bow and quiver full of arrows from a corpse. She left out the part about her bargain with a stranger.

Raif listened to all of it, watching her intently, and Zylah followed the shaft of sunlight as it moved across her room, knowing another day had been lost, another day where her mate suffered. She’d long since finished the story of her time in Kerthen when Raif stood.

“I’ll do my best with the supplies,” was all he said before he turned and left.

For the first time, Zylah wondered how he’d been coming and going, whether someone had been evanescing him each time the same way they had when he was a child. Were they out there now, somewhere in the maze, waiting? She watched the vampire disappear around the corner, listened until his footsteps had long since quietened.

A plan had already formed, and she would need to be ready. Zylah bathed quickly and changed her clothes, washing the old ones and hanging them around the bathtub. They were a tattered mess, but fabric was useful: to strain poultices, to filter water, to wrap bandages. She wouldn’t waste a scrap. Between every movement, she pictured the baylock leaves in the Aquaris Court, tried and tried to command her magic, to coax the leaves to her, but nothing happened. She was working through the physical exercises Holt had taught her back in Virian when Raif returned.

“Feeling stronger?” he asked when she continued without acknowledging his arrival, a hint of suspicion in his tone that might have been concern for her magic returning.

Let him worry, Zylah thought. “Sitting all day in this room and withering away is doing me no favours. I need this.” A reasonable excuse. Anyone would lose their mind if trapped for long enough; it was no wonder Arioch had tried to take his own life.

Hands behind her head, her feet facing Raif, Zylah continued her exercises, silently calling on her magic with each rise and fall of her body, hoping to feel even a single leaf in her hand where it pressed against the back of her head, but nothing came. She finished her workout slowly, feigning disinterest in whatever Raif had brought until she was finished.

The room would need ventilation, and there was very little of that. But the roots… Zylah moved the chairs, inspected the wall behind them. “Can you break the chairs up? And break this apart a little for better air flow?” Her hands trailed up the wall of roots before her, inspecting the places they weaved in and out of each other.

A snap of wood told her he’d started on the chairs without protest. One, at first, but it would be enough. She didn’t let herself dwell on his strength, how easily he might crush her bones. Instead, she directed him to pull apart the roots where the sunlight filtered through, hoping it would be enough to not have the whole room fill with smoke.

Raif sat back after that, a chair placed on the opposite side of the room to watch, silently. Zylah ignored him. He’d brought her a small, lidded pot, a little knife, a spoon. Potatoes and carrots, a small tin of dried herbs that had gone stale some time ago. But it was enough. She set to work building a small fire, preparing her meal with the painfully small blade. When it was all ready, she sat back on her heels and looked at him expectantly.

“Did you remember matches?” A small scrap of dry fabric for tinder lay in her palm, ready and waiting.

Raif rose slowly, his attention fixed on her face as he knelt before her. Zylah forced herself not to baulk, not to blink at his proximity, not to gag at the mint and lemongrass scent that had once been a comfort to her.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of matches, striking one and bringing it to the fabric in her waiting palms. Zylah blew gently on the embers, keeping her eyes on Raif until a small flame appeared, then turned away to place it into her fire. With a breath of relief, she watched as the smoke streamed towards the break in the wall Raif had created.

Neither of them spoke as the water boiled, as the room filled with the aroma of spices and the food cooked, as Zylah removed it from the heat to let it cool. She ate the meagre stew, thinking of ways she could harm him with the tiny knife. The blade was barely longer than the tip of her thumb. Enough to cut an artery, but she’d need to be fast, and Zylah knew she wasn’t. Not against his preternatural ability.

When she’d had her fill, she offered him what was left—a full portion, still, because she’d planned it that way. He raised an eyebrow, but said only a quiet “thank you” before taking the pot and sitting in his spot again on the far side of the room.

Zylah watched him all the while, wondering if she could get to the matches in his pocket, if she could set him on fire instead of using the knife.

“I didn’t want this to happen, Zylah,” he said, as if he could read the malicious thoughts from her expression alone.

She studied his face, trying to see some hint of truth in the depths of his black eyes, but found only a stranger staring back at her. “But you let it.”

He didn’t reply.

“You and Rose used to play here,” Zylah said as he finished the last of the stew. “Your mother was still alive then?”

Raif stood slowly, took the pot and utensils into the bathroom, and began to wash them. “We used to come here to escape her punishments,” he explained, the space so small she could hear him just fine from where she sat, but at that, Zylah pushed to her feet to watch him.

“She used her magic on you?”

“Don’t act like you care, Zylah,” he told her, parroting her words. “She wanted us to have destruction magic like hers. Pushed us and pushed us to work on it. The first time I realised what I could do, I was with Holt.”

A sprite. Holt had told her the story.

“We were boys, playing in the forest. Those damned sprites followed Holt everywhere, and I tried to push one away, but it turned to ash at my touch,” Raif said, staring at his palms. “And I knew I had to hide it from my mother for as long as I could.”

Zylah swallowed. He didn’t deserve her pity, for all that he’d done. But he’d been made this way, moulded and shaped by his mother from the beginning, and she could at least acknowledge the unfairness of that.

“Get some rest,” he told her when she didn’t reply, leaving without another word.

But Zylah couldn’t. Instead, she sat on her bed, legs crossed, trying and trying to draw a piece of baylock to her open palm. Then she paced her room, hands at her sides, fingers twitching as if the movement might help the flow of her magic. But nothing came.

There were no other hints of Holt, no other flickers of feeling in her chest. But she refused to believe he was gone. She’d felt him. Even when Raif had carried her away from Ranon’s tomb, she’d felt him. The scent of acani berries clinging to Aurelia—it had to be him. It had to be.

She curled up in her bed, pulling and pulling and pulling on her magic, willing a piece of baylock to appear until sleep claimed her. She woke once, the rough scrape of something against her fingers rousing her. A single tear rolled down Zylah’s cheek as she shoved the leaf into her pocket and fell back to sleep.

When she awoke, Raif still wasn’t there, but breakfast had been delivered: a stale pastry wrapped in cloth. Zylah summoned more baylock, a single leaf at a time, shoving it into her clothing to hide it from Raif.

She kept looking for a reason why he was the way he was. His mother’s abuse. Her ‘death’. His father. His dark magic. A reason he might still be good inside. But she knew what she had to do. She only hoped she’d have enough baylock to do it. Even if it just knocked him out, gave her a head start, enough time to run far away from him, she would take it.

The sunlight passed across the room in a thick band as she worked through her exercises, summoning baylock leaves until her head thumped and her chest felt tight. She’d just slipped another into the hem of her tunic when she heard Raif’s footsteps in the passage beyond.

He raised a little sack in greeting, placing it in the makeshift workspace Zylah had made the day before. She didn’t greet him back. If she seemed to have warmed to him too quickly, it would only rouse suspicion.

With her back to him, she prepared the food he’d brought. More potatoes. Some leeks. A small block of cheese, a tin of salt. A brin fruit, for later, she presumed. Adding the baylock leaves discreetly wasn’t easy, but on her knees, her back to him, she managed it, almost exclaiming aloud in relief when she realised they wilted down in a similar fashion to the dried herbs, herbs she feigned spilling too many into the pot.

She’d added far more baylock than when she’d made the drinks for the army outside the vanquicite mine, far more than the paste she’d applied to the weapons prior to the attack. There was no way of knowing if it was enough to kill a vampire, if it even could. There was, of course, the possibility that so much of it might make her sick too, but she would cross that bridge when she came to it.

When she’d eaten her fill, Zylah left her discarded, half-eaten bowl of food and curled up in bed without offering Raif any of what was left. She turned away from him, fingers curled around Holt’s bracelet at her wrist and waited. Waited for so long she wasn’t sure if the vampire was still there, her breathing slowing as sleep tugged at her.

The soft scrape of a chair had her holding her breath, the sound of the spoon gently grazing the side of the pot. She forced her breaths to stay even, her heart to remain slow and steady. When the spoon clattered, Zylah still didn’t move.

The pot fell to the floor, and she was on her feet, taking a tentative step towards Raif where he’d slumped in his chair. There was no time to waste. Zylah pocketed the small knife, the brin fruit, reached for the orblight, and ran.