Chapter 35

There’s a moment between sleep and waking where the world is soft and safe. Where actions haven’t been taken and consequences haven’t been set. Where there is no pain and no judgment. No anxiety or fear.

But that moment never lasts.

I was jolted out of mine by the violent rocking of the carriage. Memory hit me like a slug to the chest, and hot tears burned my eyelids.

“It’s okay.” Ordell cradled me in his lap as the carriage came to a halt. “You’re safe now.”

Bile shot up my throat, and I shoved him away, clambering out of the carriage in time to throw up on the side of the road.

Agatha…all those people…

I could have killed him. Should have killed him.

A warm hand fell on my shoulder. “Orina…” Ordell said.

I shrugged him off, tears leaking down my face, chest aching with impotent rage and acute grief. “Why? Why did you stop me?”

“The covenant?—”

I whipped my head up to glare at him. “Fuck the covenant. He’s a monster. An evil fucking monster, and he needs to die.”

“No, Orina, listen to me. You need to focus. Breathe.” He dropped to his knees and cupped my shoulders. “Think.”

I shook him off. “No! He played me. Played us all. This is a game to him. Human lives are a game to him. He killed them for sport.” I wrapped my arms around my waist and doubled over because all I could see was her face, her terrified face. “She was filled with life. Filled with hope. She was trying for a baby…a family…She might have been pregnant already and I promised…I promised to protect her. I fucking swore it and now she’s dead.” Sobs stole my voice. I sucked in breaths, desperate to wrangle in my emotions so I could find my words once more. “I failed. I failed because I trusted him. I believed he could be good.” I looked up at Hemlock’s face blurred by my tears. “But there is no good in him. There is no tempering. No managing…None of it…” I sat up straighter as the reality hit me, sweeping a cold numbness across my senses. “I can’t do this. I can’t stay here. I’ve got to go.”

“What do you mean?” Hemlock asked.

“I don’t want this. I don’t want to be his watcher. I can’t. I can’t stand by and watch as he kills over and over again.”

The tears returned with a vengeance. Useless. Fucking useless.

Ordell crouched beside me and wiped my face with a handkerchief. “Orina, do you remember when I said that we would tell you things if they became crucial for you to know?”

I swallowed past the tightness in my throat, forcing myself to breathe, to calm down. “Yes, I remember.”

“Well, there is something you need to know. About Ezekiel and…and about us.”

“Not here,” Hemlock said. “Let’s get to Betsy.”

Half an hour later,we were tucked inside Betsy. Hemlock had draped a blanket over my shoulders, and Ordell made me a cup of tea.

It was cramped but cozy with the three of us in the back, and the downer from adrenaline had left me exhausted. I’d succeeded in tucking away the bloody images that filled my mind and locked away the echo of terrified screams. My chest still ached with guilt and loss, but my gut told me if I was going to prevent more of the same, then I needed to don my armor and listen to what Hemlock and Ordell had to say.

I set down my cup. “Tell me everything.”

“You know about our curse,” Ordell said. “That we’ve been here before. Helped past watchers…Well, the reason we’ve done that is because Ezekiel…He’s our brother.”

I stared at them, dumbfounded. “What?”

“I know it’s difficult to believe. We don’t exactly look alike, but we had the same father, different mothers,” Hemlock added.

“Go on…”

They exchanged glances, probably wondering why I was so calm about this. But then Ordell continued.

“Several hundred years ago, we made a pact with an ancient deity called Loviator to save our people. We broke that pact and were cursed for it. But before that, we were given abilities to help us fight the threat against our people. I was given the ability to communicate with animals and commune with nature; Hemlock was given the ability to channel the weave and harness miasma, a special kind of magic that exists in the atmosphere. Ezekiel was given the ability to control shadows, telekinesis, and mind walking, but only if he drank blood. A small sacrifice to pay to protect our people. We were happy for a time after that. We bore sons who carried our abilities in their veins.”

“Druids, witches, and vampires came from us,” Hemlock said.

Fuck…That meant?—

“We’re the firsts of our kind,” Ordell confirmed. “Loviator gave us many years with our gift, time in which we did not age. Time in which our people prospered. But as the time to pay the price grew closer, we knew we did not want to pay it.”

“What was the price?”

“Our souls,” Hemlock said. “We did some research and discovered that Loviator was not a benevolent deity and that she’d been locked away for her crimes against creation, and we’d unwittingly found a fracture in her prison from which to summon her. We decided that we needed to lock her away for good.”

“When Loviator returned to claim her price, we were ready to seal her away,” Ordell said. “But something went wrong, and Ezekiel was locked away with her. It took us a year to find a way to fracture her prison again and draw Ezekiel out, but we succeeded. We got him back and stopped her from stepping into our world. However, before we sealed her away for good, she cursed us.” He broke off to add more tea to my cup. “You’ve seen my curse. Once a month I become a true beast with no control over my primal self. Hemlock’s connection to the weave was altered, turning him into a conduit for immense power, but every time he uses it, he risks detonating.”

“Pain is the only thing that brings it under control,” Hemlock said. “Pain, because she is the goddess of pain.”

“Pain is what she used on Ezekiel,” Ordell said. “You see, a year passed for us, but for Ezekiel…He was with her for over a century. Her plaything. We can only imagine what she did to him. He never told us because part of his curse was to forget. Forget his pain, forget us, and forget his humanity.”

Was I expected to forgive him for his crimes now? Forgive him for killing Agatha and countless humans? I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t. “Is there a way to break this curse?” Once again, they exchanged looks. “Tell me.”

“Ezekiel needs to find his humanity again. Right now, he feels very little, experiencing emotions through the pain and devastation of others, through their desire and longing. He…mimics it.”

“Then why not just tell him that? Tell him the truth and what he needs to do to be free.”

“Ezekiel may not remember us or what Loviator did to him, but he’s figured out that he’s cursed. The few times that we told him who we were, it broke his mind and cut our time with him short. We learned it was safer to keep this information to ourselves and hoped that it would give us time to heal him.”

“Tell her,” Hemlock said. “Tell her the rest.”

Ordell sighed. “There’s a woman who arrives every rising. A woman with dark hair and gray eyes who’s the key to healing him.”

“The portraits in the east wing…He painted her?”

“Yes. She’s the key, but we’ve lost her every time. One way or another.”

“Oh God…all the women in the chamber tonight had dark hair and…Does he know? Does he remember the women?”

“We believe that he’s figured out her part in this, and that tonight was his way of giving the universe two fingers.”

“But why? Doesn’t he want to break his curse?”

“We think that he’s stopped caring,” Hemlock said. “We think his humanity is almost gone, and if he loses it completely, then we’re doomed.”

“Or…” Ordell said. “He thinks he has more time. But…this is our last year. Our last chance to reach him. To bring him back. If we fail…If we can’t fully restore his humanity, then Loviator will be free, and her sons will walk the earth once more, bringing death, disease, and devastation.”

If they’d told me any of this when I’d first come to Dracul territory, I might not have believed them, but after everything I’d seen and felt… “What do we do? How do we fix this? He probably just killed the woman who was the key to saving him.”

Hemlock leaned back against the counter and looked down his nose at me. “What happened the other night? Ezekiel mentioned it on the way down to the ball.”

A few hours ago, the memory would have elicited embarrassment and made my cheeks hot with the residue of the desire I’d felt, but now…Now my stomach turned with disgust.

“He wanted to feed on me, and I said no.”

“And he accepted that?”

“Not at first, but when I held firm…yes.”

“Not at first?” Ordell asked, his eyes bright in the gloom. “What happened first?”

“He touched me, okay. Intimately.” I ducked my head. “I should have stopped him but…”

“You liked it,” Hemlock said tightly.

Ordell’s chest rumbled, and I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m disgusted with myself. With how he made me feel.”

“Don’t be,” Ordell said. “Ezekiel has charisma. It’s the nature of his beast. He could have pushed you to give him your blood. He could have made you, but he didn’t.”

“He’s shown you the type of attention we’ve not seen before,” Hemlock continued.

“It was a lie. He told me he was manipulating me.”

Hemlock shook his head. “No…I don’t believe that. I believe that tonight was a defensive reflex on his part. You’re under his skin, and this is his way of pushing you away.”

“Humanity hurts,” Ordell said. “And somewhere, deep down, he knows this.”

“What are you saying?”

“We’re saying that we believe that you might be our only hope of helping him connect with his humanity again.”

Hemlock slipped into the seat beside me, caging me in with his body. “You have to help him to care. To show him?—”

I shook my head. “No. I can’t. I can’t be around him. I can’t bear to look at him and pretend that?—”

“You don’t have to pretend. You don’t have to forgive him. You just need to stay. Stay and help us.” Ordell took my hands in his from across the table.

“We can figure it out together,” Hemlock added.

“So now you want to spend time with me?” I didn’t bother to hide my bitterness. “After giving me the cold shoulder for days.”

“I’m sorry,” Ordell said. “Sorry you felt so alone. But I was trying to protect you.”

“You can protect me by being here for me.”

“She’s right,” Hemlock said.

Something unsaid passed between them, but I was too exhausted to figure it out.

I was exhausted and desperately sad for the losses I’d failed to prevent. I couldn’t do this right now. Couldn’t make this decision.

“I need to sleep on it.”

“Of course,” Ordell said. “You can take my bunk at the back.”

Hemlock slipped off the bench and led me to the back of Betsy where two bunks sat side by side. I climbed into the one Hemlock indicated and fell asleep enveloped by Ordell’s scent.

Orina sleeps soundly, snoring softly. I draw the blanket over her shoulders, and she doesn’t stir. Fuck, she’s beautiful. Enticing. No wonder Ezekiel is captivated.

I haven’t wanted a woman like this in a long time.

And I can’t have her now.

I join Ordell outside Betsy where he’s sipping on a fresh cup of coffee. I doubt either of us will sleep much tonight.

“We should have told her everything,” Ordell says.

Everything is simply too much. “Bad idea. This is for the best.”

“And if it goes wrong?” Ordell runs a hand down his face. “I won’t be able to do it, Hem. You know that, right?”

My heart sinks, and I tip my head up to stare at the stars, accepting my fate and my duty. “Yeah. Don’t worry. If it goes wrong, I’ll do it. I’ll kill her.”

Orina’s adventure continues in Hunt the Dusk out fall 2024.