Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23

Thunder rolls across the twin cities. When Calla arrives on Big Well Street, the rain has just started, and she barely misses the downpour, ducking into Snowfall before the pavement is splattered. She stomps up the stairs and around the stairwell corner. Outside Anton’s apartment, she doesn’t bother knocking to be let in. Just like the other times, the handle turns easily under her hand, and she shoulders through the door.

She pauses at the threshold. Waits. Her blood is simmering beneath her skin.

“You’re here.”

Calla swivels, turning to face the kitchen. There in the doorway, Anton stands with a bowl in his hand, which he sets down upon sighting her. He wears a new body, this one tall and lean: a fighter’s build. He’s dressed in black, like she caught him just as he was about to head out and increase his kills for the day. Red-hot intensity rushes from her throat to her stomach as she takes him in. She’s unsteady. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought she downed ten shots in a row right before she barged through.

“Why?” Calla asks. “Why did you do it? You couldn’t come and make the strike yourself?”

Anton frowns. “What are you talking about?”

Calla yanks her sleeves up and shows him the blood on her hands. She doesn’t intend to yell, but when she speaks, it comes tearing out at earsplitting volume. “The hitmen, Anton! The fucking killers you sent to attack me. Eno’s dead . Dead!”

“What are—” A clap of lightning flashes across the kitchen window. A rare burst of illumination in an otherwise dark city. Every corner of the apartment seems to come aglow, cast in blue and lined with white. When the light fades, Anton is squinting, like he is still bracing against the brightness. “Eno’s dead?”

Calla cannot stand this performance. Is he intent on feigning ignorance? Was Eno not his friend too?

“Stop it,” she hisses. “Stop lying to me.” Another clap of lightning; an accompanying roll of thunder. Now the rain is coming down hard enough that it can be heard colliding with the side of the building, water pelting the rattling windows.

“I don’t know what I’m lying about!” Anton exclaims. The confusion in his brow holds fast, but when he lifts his arms, Calla catches a glimpse of ink under his wristband. A single crescent moon.

Calla hisses in through her teeth. This body was taken from the Crescent Societies, which means Anton was just there. Doing what? Arranging her murder? Even if the hitman claimed not to be a Crescent, she knows there are dots to connect here, and she makes the quickest link.

“You traitor ,” she spits. Then she pulls the cleaned dagger from her pocket and lunges at him.

Anton reacts fast, sidestepping as his eyes grow wide. With the next swipe that Calla makes at him, he seems to figure quickly that this is not a fight she is holding back from. She throws her elbow hard, landing a hit to his face; he kicks out, striking her middle and putting distance between them when Calla slams into the wall, her head colliding with a picture frame. The frame pitches to the floor, glass shattering in tandem with another strike of thunder outside. Though Calla recovers fast, her grip tightening on the dagger, every inch of her hands prickles with discomfort. Her fingers feel stiff and her joints ache. They tell her to stop, but she cannot. There is already a charge that runs like static through her system, responding to the betrayal that she knew was coming. An overwhelming grief buzzes in her bones, strikes liquid rage into the lines between her ribs.

“I don’t know what idea you’re stuck on,” Anton heaves. He wipes at the corner of his mouth. There’s a spot of blood, the skin swelling slightly from her hit. “But you’ve got it wrong.”

Calla draws a breath. She flips the dagger, adjusts her grip on the handle.

“Regardless,” she says, “I think we’ve reached the end of our alliance.”

She closes the distance and swings. Just before the blade can make contact with the side of his neck, Anton catches her wrist, his eyes snapping a quick motion from the blade to Calla. He still looks taken aback, surprise marring the wide shape of his eyes.

“So easily?” he asks. He twists her wrist; against Calla’s will, the pain triggers a nerve that forces her to release. The dagger clatters to the floor. Just as she raises her other fist to get a hit in, Anton ducks, and the hit is deflected. The metal zip of his jacket scratches Calla’s arm as her fist rushes past, but before she can gear up again, Anton twists his hold on her other wrist until her arm is arched behind her own back. In a blink, he’s slammed her up against the wall, pressed against her to keep her still. The plaster trembles. There’s a nail jutting out from it, probably where the picture frame had been hanging, and as Calla’s head spins, she wonders if she hit her head too hard before and that’s why she can’t get a single thought in order.

“Calla,” he tries, his breath warm against her neck. “Stop this.”

“Why?” she hisses. “It’s only postponing the inevitable.” She kicks out from behind, her boot making enough contact with his leg to buckle him away. The moment there is the slightest give, she whirls around with a backhanded hit, striking his jaw. Before he can recover, she kicks at him again and follows him down—making sure he goes down—braced atop him when he lands flat on his back. The floor beneath them is cold. The linoleum tiles of his living room are cluttered with papers and boxes, all of which have skittered in every direction during the fight. As the two of them grow still, the disturbed objects settle to a stop too.

Anton Makusa is vulnerable. Throat exposed, heart facing out.

Now he is hers to take.

Calla heaves for breath. One of her hands is braced on his chest, the other reacquainting with the blade that has landed on the floor. As soon as she has secured the handle, she raises the dagger high, imagining how its arc will come down. She can feel his heart thudding beneath her touch: fear and something else.

“Calla,” Anton says again, desperation creeping into his voice, and Calla wants to tear him apart. Because she has him completely under her mercy, pinned like prey, but all he can do is look up at her like that.

“Don’t even try it,” Calla spits.

“What?” Anton asks. His eyes trace along her face. His pupils have blown so large that Calla can’t see the usual purple that rings his black irises. In an effort to keep him down, she presses upon his hips harshly, and then she can feel him, can gauge exactly why his pulse throbs at his throat. “What am I trying?”

Hesitation creeps in, her breath caught in her throat, her pulse hammering an equally overwhelming war song. Then, she swipes everything away with a vicious thought. If she gets rid of him, then she can get rid of her own troubling desire too.

Her hand comes down fast, the blade slicing through the air. The dagger plunges in an inch, threatening toward his heart, before Anton catches her arm, stopping the blade from doing any real damage. With a muttered curse, Anton tears her hand away. She barely has time to wince with pain; he sits up with startling speed, knocking his head against hers and tugging the dagger out from his chest in the same motion. Her world spins, her skull rattling from the hit. That pause is enough for Anton to turn the tables, her blade now in his hand and his knee pinning her down. He’s heaving for breath when he braces his arm beside her. She’s struggling to fill her lungs when he presses the dagger to her throat.

“Is this really what you want, Calla?” he whispers. There’s a hot, steady trickle of blood coming from the wound on his chest. It lands, drop by drop, onto Calla while he hovers over her, marking her skin and staining a pattern onto her clothes. He’s not looking in her eyes anymore. As the window shakes and the whole building shudders from the increasing roar of wind, he’s looking at her mouth. “Do you want to fight me?”

She doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. But when has that ever mattered?

Anton leans closer, the blade digging in. He’s drawing this out, letting the threat whisper against her neck, letting fate decide when her skin will split open. Is he waiting for a plea? For her to beg for her life? She won’t. If she dies here, she dies proud.

Yet he’s still not making the kill. The room flashes with another strike of lightning. Perhaps the blood loss has stalled his attack. He looks drunk. His hand, solid before, suddenly turns unsteady.

Calla shifts toward the blade, just to test how firm his grip is. It stays pressed to her neck, but Anton flinches.

It’s not the blood loss swaying his hand. It’s her.

“Yes,” she breathes. “I want you dead.”

And she moves again—not to the side, not away from the dagger. She lifts her chin, bringing her head nearer, and kisses him.

The walls around them are roaring with sound, with the staccato of rain. At first, Anton tastes of blood. Then his lips part, and the hint of something sweet hits Calla’s tongue, passing between them in that second that he relaxes. The blade slips away from her throat.

As soon as the blade is gone, Calla pushes him hard. They part abruptly, the dagger clattering to the floor. Anton darts back with a sudden inhale; Calla is fast to rise. In her jacket pocket, she still has a set of chains.

She’s got it around his neck in a flash. The metal crisscrosses in front of him, both her hands gripping each end of the chain, ready to pull. All it will take is one fast motion. Then Anton is no longer her problem, eliminated from the games. There’s nowhere to jump from here. No one around for him to occupy.

Calla steadies her hands. Anton watches her. He merely watches, even while his life is under threat, even when he has the opportunity to find some way out.

“Go on,” he says evenly. “Kill me. Be the murderous princess they say you are.”

“Do you think you’re insulting me?” Calla tightens the chain. Though his throat must be closing, breathing made intolerable, Anton makes no move to claw at the chain. “You sent people to murder me. At least I have the guts to come after you myself .”

“If you don’t believe me, then I have nothing to say.” His hand shoots up and grips her wrist. She doesn’t know if it is his hands that are covered in blood, smearing the red between them, or if her arms were already this bloody to begin with. “But you do , Calla. I can tell that you believe me. Why are you doing this?”

Because this is how it must end. Again and again, she tells herself there will be only one victor in the games. It would be foolish to think otherwise.

Her grip loosens the barest fraction.

She is a fool.

“Did you kiss me just to distract me?” he goes on. “Or because you wanted to?”

Her heart is close to tearing through her rib cage, beating a path outward and spilling blood everywhere it goes. She hates that he keeps asking such questions. Calla has never had the luxury to consider what she wants . It has always been about what needs to be done. Want is dangerous. Want is…

She lets go of the chain. It falls around him, the weight of one end dragging heavier than the other, coiling around the ground like a serpent. Anton moves immediately—not to seize the chance to get the upper hand once again, only to clasp both his hands around her face. His lips find hers again with a vicious energy, and Calla responds with the same franticness, abandoning caution and reason. She pulls at his shirt collar and feels the stickiness of blood beneath her palm. The stench spills the more they move, metallic and violent. It is on their clothes, their skin, the floor, but Anton pays no heed to the wound. The red only spreads when Calla tears his shirt off entirely, the gash evident even in the low light.

“Anton,” she warns.

“Leave it,” he commands immediately, pulling her coat off and pushing her to the floor. Her back collides with the tiles, cold when she slips her own bloody shirt off her shoulders, but there is only the barest pause before his lips are on her throat, her hands in his hair, his hands gripping her waist. It’s as if he is trying to pin her into place, afraid that she might change her mind and run off at any second. But then one of his hands is sinking lower, trailing a path along her hip, fingers brushing the waistband of her pants. His mouth hovers close to hers again, and Calla captures his bottom lip, pulling with her teeth and resisting the urge to bite when her skin prickles with goose bumps. She’s never once felt out of control since becoming Calla Tuoleimi, but this comes close. It comes closer than anything else as her stomach flexes under his touch, his fingers skimming at her navel, and then lower, moving beneath her waistband, sliding between her legs. On instinct, Calla pulls at his hair, her eyes flying open, her head tipping back.

“Fuck,” she whispers, because she has nothing else to say, all thought fleeing.

Anton, unbothered, nudges his mouth along her jaw to the space behind her ear. His fingers press down harder, finding a rhythm against her, and it’s everything at once, barreling at her senses. A clap of thunder comes outside, almost startling her from the trance she is sinking into. She cannot bear it, cannot handle all the sensation at once while she tries to push into him. By some primal urge, she puts her hands on Anton’s chest, and then presses down on the very wound she’s made, her heart thrumming at breakneck speed.

“Does it hurt?” she asks, barely able to catch her breath or keep from writhing.

Anton winces. His hand slows, but he does not stop. His gaze is heavy, mouth brushing against hers again, only to whisper above the rain, “Everything you do hurts, Princess.”

The floors seem to tremble, the very structure of the building shaking under the thunder that approaches closer and closer. Calla draws an inhale, trying to control her racketing pulse.

“So hurt me back,” she offers.

Anton withdraws, rising on his arms and bracing to either side of her. His wound has stopped bleeding. He blinks at her, a smear of red on his cheek, another along his neck. When he rocks back onto his knees, Calla lifts off the floor too, propping herself up by her forearms to watch him.

Anton shakes his head. It’s a subtle movement, barely visible if lightning had not briefly illuminated the room. Without looking, he reaches for her ankle, unzips her boot, and tugs it off. The other follows. Calla’s gaze tracks him intently when he reaches for her waistband next, and without hesitation, she lifts her hips.

The barest smile twitches on Anton’s lips. “Thank you for being so cooperative.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Calla warns.

“I would never.”

There’s the sound of leather striking the floor. Calla takes a short inhale, releases it in a short exhale. When Anton sets himself between her raised knees, she lets him. When he leans forward and presses a kiss to her thigh, to her hip, to the curve of her breasts, working his way up until they are eye to eye again, she lets him, awaiting his endgame. Perhaps there is none. Perhaps there is only this.

“I didn’t send them,” he says. He speaks so quietly, drowned out by the rumble of the storm outside, that she can hear him only because he is this near. When Calla brushes a lock of hair out of his eyes, his gaze is swallowed entirely by the shadows of the room, and Calla cannot read anything except what he shows her, cannot know that he means not to hurt her when his hand comes around her throat. She’s almost sick from delirium, sick by the ache from her stomach to her toes, willing to throw preservation out the window if it means relief. But Anton does not tighten his grip on her throat. What should be a deathly squeeze becomes merely a caress, and he leans in to kiss her, more softly than any of the times previous.

“I know,” Calla replies, matching his volume. She closes her eyes, her hands tracing down his back, nails running along the muscle. There’s some feral feeling humming in her chest, and she has to resist the urge not to attack him when her hands sink low, feeling how hard he is. She’s going to lose her mind.

His hand runs another caress at her jaw. She can hear the teasing in his voice. “Is something the matter?”

“You are wicked,” she breathes. “Take your pants off and fuck me .”

He complies. There’s a pause as he drops his clothes and draws nearer, like he’s waiting it out, gauging her response. This is someone else’s body, but in San-Er, that detail is as normal as jumping. When it comes to this sort of use, bodies are only accessories, discardable and utilized based on need.

Calla yanks him close with a hiss. She must seem impatient, because Anton laughs before pushing inside her in one fast thrust, his hand sweeping up her waist and his mouth on hers, pressing a groan onto her tongue. A gasp, from her—probably, possibly. There’s sensation building along her thighs, a humming spreading through her every limb. She shifts her hips with each motion, her legs lifting to hook around him. Anton doesn’t rush, and still a frantic pressure emanates from her very core, scrambling her mind with each movement. She knows she’s leaving marks on him, her nails digging deep, and by the intensity of his fingers on her hips, he will have left a canvas of damage too. Let it bruise. Let him mark her skin permanently as a memory of what divine agony is.

“Calla,” Anton murmurs when their mouths separate for a moment, “I won’t hurt you. I refuse.”

A mighty large promise in this city. After everything else has come off, they both still wear their wristbands.

Calla kisses him again so he will stop talking. Anton seems to know what she’s doing, because he clasps her throat to hold her down and stops thrusting, and Calla almost kills him then and there.

“Anton.”

“Was that a whimper?” he asks, grinning. “That’s the first time a princess has ever whimpered for me.”

But despite his taunt, his hand snakes down as he pushes into her once more, then again and again. He moves against her hips, and she matches each push until Calla is arching back on the cold floor, her body freezing with pleasure. Dimly, she is aware of the storm outside, of the windows shuddering from the onslaught of rain, wooden frames trembling. But those raging elements are nothing in comparison to what is building and building to a crescendo inside her, hitting a peak just as Anton tenses too, the lines of his arms flexing as he holds his weight over her.

For a moment, there is no outside world. The rest of the city ceases to matter. All of San-Er could blink out of existence, and Calla would not care.

Anton is whispering her name. Relaxing against her, then rolling to his side, an arm still locked on her hip. With a sigh, Calla presses a kiss to his jaw, almost chaste given what they had just done, and he smiles, his eyes fluttering closed.

Calla stirs awake later that night, a corner of the bedsheet tangled around her naked waist. They had moved to the bed at some point, which was just as well when they went at it again, because she could have tolerated only so much of the cold floor.

The storm has stopped. It’s quiet outside the apartment, a momentary lull after the rain cleared the streets and chased people into their homes. Paired with the hour, the food carts have been pushed in and shop gates have been pulled down for the owners to rest, casting San-Er in a hush. Calla lifts her head, staring at the light beams streaming through the blinds: red from the nearby nightclub that keeps its sign bright even after its dance floor has dimmed, blue from Big Well Street’s emergency siren that is perpetually activated, spinning on silent alarm. When she props herself onto her elbow, her vision sharpens, focusing on an object by the closet. She hadn’t noticed it before when they kicked into the bedroom in a tangle. Now, she recognizes her sword—the sword she had dropped back at the Hollow Temple. It rests upon the wall, casual in its stance, the sheath polished and gleaming under weak neon.

“Oh,” Calla whispers into the night. She turns, facing Anton. He has his back to her, his breath rising and falling with the heaviness of deep sleep.

He had gone back for the sword. That’s why he’s in the body of a Crescent Society member. Not because he was plotting against her, but because he wanted to find her weapon.

Calla settles onto the pillow again slowly, her hair splaying on the soft fabric. The red light has changed to a bright gold. The nightclub responsible for this light show must be running its electric bills high. When Anton shifts in his sleep, Calla draws a finger along his bare spine and marvels at how he doesn’t startle, like he has let his guard down, even knowing that she could take a sword to his chest.

She could kill him right here if she wanted. The apartment hosts only the two of them. The rest of San-Er sleeps within its own walls. He would have nowhere to jump.

But she won’t. She trusts her life in his hands, and for that she wants to deserve his trust too, offer him safety in her embrace.

Suddenly, Anton turns, nudging his shoulder closer toward her. Calla snatches her hand back with a start, but he’s not stirring against her touch. He has not awakened at all: he only adjusts until he is facing her, eyes still closed. Before Calla can react, Anton draws her near, seeking her body amid the sheets. He reaches for her, an arm curling around her waist, solid and steady.

Even asleep, he reaches for her.

Gently, Calla puts her arms around him too, returning the gesture. There’s a surge of emotion in her chest—a foreign feeling, twisting at her insides like a rapid-setting infection. She brushes at his hair, and when his arm tightens at her waist, a tear slides down her cheek, landing silently onto the pillow. It would be easier if he had betrayed her. That’s familiar territory, something she knows how to navigate.

Calla can handle pain. She can handle blood. But this—this is somehow all and none of that at once, a wrenching in her very soul.

This is tenderness. And she is more afraid of it than anything else in their forsaken kingdom.