21. Nora

21

NORA

S ilas holds up a single finger, stopping me from following Wrath out of the library.

"Stay right there," he says.

He points to Wrath's vacated seat and disappears into the maze of shelves. I slide into the seat with a sigh, tilting my head up at the rainbow skylight. It doesn't take long, but Silas returns hugging a stack of ancient tomes. He lets go unceremoniously, and they slam onto the table.

A plume of dust puffs out from the books.

Silas huffs, waving away the dust, and leans on the stack with one hand propped on his hip.

"Now that we're all briefed, I have more important things to do than to spoon-feed you a millennia's worth of Unseelie history." He flicks the cover of the first book in the stack. "I suggest you start with this one."

"I'm sorry?"

"In two days, we'll begin practical training, but before that, I think it's important that you know more about other soul-stealers. May help quicken the process?—"

Practical training? Does he have a bunch of criminals to line up for me to kill?

"—this one is a riveting compilation of biographies of documented Unseelie with your power. Their lives all pretty much end in pitchforks and fires though, so maybe skip over those parts."

Silas shivers at the last part, nose scrunching up, as if reliving a horrible memory.

"You want me to study," I deadpan.

"Exactly." He taps his nose.

"Will there be an exam?"

"Ha. No." Silas's laugh is a quick, hearty burst that echoes in the cavern. "I've already read all of these and think it might help you figure out how to manipulate your magic in such a way."

He pulls away from the table, plastering on that cheeky smile again. Silas's mood and expressions shift with the wind, easily flowing into one another in a way that's impossible to predict.

"Have fun!" he chirps.

He's whisked away by shadows before I can get another word of protest in. Resigned to my fate, I heave a sigh and shuck off my gloves. If I'm going to be forced to read history books, then I want the parchment between my bare fingertips.

I'm loath to admit it, but it's a smart strategy. Had I known about these resources earlier, been able to learn about how others harnessed this magic…

I shake the thought away. It's no use fantasizing about an idyllic childhood. Pride had forged his own training methods for me; they were unorthodox, but they worked.

How many times had he brought me into a barren room, the concrete floor forever stained with red-brown splotches, and shoved me towards a "traitor" restrained at its center? How many times had he told me my magic was a mercy compared to what he would do to them? How many times had he slit a man's gut open, made me watch their entrails spill onto the floor, and told me that their deaths didn't have to be gruesome?

Guilt was how Pride convinced me to use my magic as a child. Because my touch didn't have to hurt. I didn't want it to hurt. That is, until I became desensitized to the violence.

Cruelty is learned, and I took to it quickly.

I scrub my hands over my face.

I don't have time for guilt. It does nothing for me now.

Relaxing into the chair, I slide the first book from the stack over to me and flip open the cover. And then, I read.

Hours pass before my eyes burn, much like the funeral pyres of the late soul-stealers I've come to learn about. It seems that even thousands of years ago, the Unseelie Court was still wary of those who wield death so freely.

My migraine had faded to the background with the distraction, but it's back with full force, an incessant pounding of a pickax through the left side of my skull.

I may be driven, but I know when I've reached my limit.

It reminds me of grade school, when studying for a test; after a certain point, the information doesn't stick, and it's better to sleep and start again in the morning.

After I say my goodnights to the fae researchers still studying away at the other tables, I don't rush back to my room. Instead, I explore, letting all the information I learned tonight sink into my being.

Not one of the ancient fae in the books I'd read had the ability to control the methods or times of death. It was always touch-and-die. Poof . A quick lightning strike.

With each word, my gut sank deeper upon the confirmation that I am what I thought long before Pride took me in: an anomaly.

"You're special, Nora. That's all."

My mother's words hadn't comforted me the stormy night my magic revealed itself, and they don't comfort me now.

I stroll through each of the circular levels in the complex, mapping out the rooms and exit points, the latter of which are few. Every exit corridor leads back to the main entrance Silas had walked me through earlier.

A bit of an operational security issue, if you ask me.

I stop by the kitchen and snag some bread and dried meats from the cupboard to hold me over until the morning. When I finally get back to my room, I barely strip off my clothes before I fall into plush bedsheets and drift into a fitful sleep.

The next day isn't much different, with not one Silas or Wrath sighting as I stay holed up in the library. Though, after I snag a late dinner, the cook whips up a special tea for the pain thrumming in my skull.

I startle awake on the third morning to someone pounding on my door.

Sucking in a ragged breath, I take stock of my surroundings: the fresh but soft linens under my fingertips, the natural stone walls draped in tapestries, and the blessed absence of my migraine. Sunlight peaks around the curtains of my window overlooking the mountainside.

The knocks continue, followed by Silas calling my name in a sing-song voice.

" Nor-ra! "

"Gods, give me the strength to deal with this man all day," I whisper.

I murmur curses under my breath as I rub the crust from my eyes with my palm. Yawning, I throw a dressing gown on over my underwear and head to the door. I crack it open, but only as much as I need to wedge my face between it and the doorframe.

"What?"

Silas lifts a golden apple to his mouth and bites, the crunch of his teeth piercing the crisp flesh loud in the empty hall. Juice gathers at the corner of his lips; he catches the budding droplet with a swipe of his tongue.

"You slept through breakfast," he says.

"Okay."

"So, I brought you an apple."

" Okay ."

He holds a second apple out with his other hand, this one bright red. I don't reach for it. I don't have gloves on and neither does he.

"I could have gotten something myself on the way down."

"Yes, well, I can't have you training on an empty stomach. It's no good for either of us if you're hungry and stoking thoughts of murder." Silas shakes the hand that holds the spare apple as if to say Hurry up and take it. I'm waiting. "We want this experiment to be successful, no?"

With a huff, I stick out my hand, palm open and facing up. Silas's eyes narrow on my outstretched hand, puzzled brows knitting above them. Then, the confusion drops from his face. A smug smile creeps onto his lips, like he knows I don't want our hands to touch.

He does realize I could kill him, right?

Silas drops the apple into my hand and backs away. He twists and saunters down the hall, waving his mangled apple core in the air over his shoulder.

"See you in half an hour."

I close the door without replying, tossing the lock into place. I rub the ruby-red apple on my dressing gown, polishing the skin until it shines.

I imagine I'll see a lot of red today, whether it be in person or in my memories.

Lifting the fruit to my lips, I bite.

Turns out, Silas did, in fact, have a bunch of criminals lined up for me to kill.

He leads me past a red door on the first level of the complex, which opens to a large training room. Half of the space is crowded with mats and weights that have been pushed to the side. In the far corner, there's an elevated mat for sparring, roped off like a boxer's ring.

The other half of the room is cleared of all equipment; instead, a row of fae sit chained to chairs, iron shackles wrapped around their hands and ankles. Their clothes are in varying states of distress, stained and ripped in several places, and their hair is unkempt and greasy.

"Don't worry," Silas says. "They were all pulled from the Royal prisons by Wrath and were execution bound within the year. Rapists, mostly, and a sprinkle of those who killed a Royal and didn't clean up the mess. So if you're worried about post-murder guilt, you shouldn't be."

"Do I look like someone who'd feel guilty?" I ask.

My jaw ticks, and I study the chained fae with a new light. Their mouths are gagged so they can't do more than growl in our direction, but their eyes flare with the hatred burning in their souls. I'm confident that if any of them were given the opportunity, they'd slaughter both of us in a second.

"You don't have to convince me," I say, rolling the sleeves of my black blouse to my elbows. My movements are methodical and quick. I'd dressed for efficiency today, a simple shirt and slacks. "My conscience was stained black years ago."

I pace along the line of criminals; the clack clack clack of my boots, a metronome cutting through their snarls. The skin at their wrists and ankles is rubbed raw and blistered from friction with the iron.

Stopping at the end of the line, I pivot on my heel, turning to Silas.

"How does this work?"

He stands a ways back from me with his arms crossed. Not bothering with a suit jacket for this, he's dressed in a similar fashion to me, with simple pin-striped slacks and a white button-down. In their crossed position, his arms bulge against the golden sleeve garter that circles each bicep.

"Well, what did you learn during your studies?"

My lips downturn at the corners. "Didn't you explicitly say no when I asked if you were going to quiz me?"

"Do you always need to answer questions with more questions?" he says. And though a dimpled smirk dusts over his cheeks, I can hear the threat in his tone.

He wants me to take this seriously.

I am.

"A soul-stealer by the name of Emmet B. Mara used the Black Death as a cover for his experiments with magic on humans. He kept detailed journals of his methods, which included attempts at manipulating the circumstances of death."

I recite the facts monotonously. It's another one of Silas's tests; everything seems to be a test to him.

"And?" He motions for me to continue.

"And while he was unable to produce his desired results, he did find that his magic reacted poorly to forced commands." I take a breath and a step forward. "Meaning that soul-stealer or not, he hypothesized that the relationship between magic and the fae who wields it is an equal partnership rather than that of a master and servant."

"So, how do you figure you're managing it when he and many others before him could not?"

"I ask it nicely?" I shrug, the half-truth slipping out easily. "I told you as much when we made our deal. My magic knows what it wants. It wants to kill. To pull the breath from someone's lungs. To hold a heart in a tight grip and squeeze. To separate flesh from bone. All I've done is convince it to savor the process."

Silas's dark eyes search my face, scanning over it like he's seeing me for the first time. Then he nods.

"Start on the right, going left," he says, pointing to the criminal chained beside me. "Aim for one minute and we'll work our way up to the two-week delay needed to avoid any kind of suspicion from the Seelie."

I swallow the lump that forms in my throat and nod.

And then we get to work.