Chapter 15

ChapterFifteen

Although the castle was as beautiful as it was terrifying, Katherine quickly realized she wasn’t needed here. There wasn’t anything for her to do. He asked her to stay for a few more nights, and every night was the same.

She would cuddle into the bed after a boring day of doing nothing and poking around the castle, hoping to find something entertaining, and then he would wake her when the moon was at its peak.

Every night she staggered out of bed, a little more tired than the evening before, and allowed him to cut through the same scab on her wrist. He never took too much blood. In fact, she thought he was rather careful to make sure that he didn’t drain her. Or even really take enough to affect her all that much.

But she was already tired of it. Just last night, she hadn’t even been able to fall asleep by the time he’d come to her room. Not because she was anticipating his arrival, but because she wasn’t tired.

Katherine was used to doing things. Anything. Sometimes when the clinic was quiet, she would be the person to wander out to people’s homes. Just to talk with them, make sure they were healing well enough or that their stitches weren’t infected.

She had never had such a long amount of time where she did nothing. Katherine was dying from it. She was certain. And though she would have told any patient that no one could die from boredom, she was quite certain that she was wrong. Because she was going to die.

Today, she would not stand for it anymore. She had dresses to wash, shifts that had turned into sweat stained messes, and she had enough energy to burn. If there wasn’t a laundry room in this place—which she was certain there had to be—then she would make do in the kitchens. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time that she’d washed her clothes in a sink.

Wandering out into the hall, she paused to listen as she always did.

There were no sounds here. None. Every house she’d ever lived in had the normal sounds of life. People shuffling around, creaking floorboards, the soft scrape of mice chewing in the walls. All signs that another person was around her and that she wasn’t alone.

Here? It was only silence.

Unnerving, unnatural silence, as though the entire world held its breath because it didn’t know who or what would arrive next. Would yet another victim present themselves to the demon king? Would he rip out their throat this time or would he let them live?

They were morbid thoughts, but what else was she supposed to think? Wandering through the dark halls, usually with a candle in her hands because light never penetrated through the dusty windows, she had come to think of herself as living in a tomb.

Maybe she was already dead, she mused as she rounded a corner and picked up the candelabra she left just for this purpose. The small matchbox next to it was already running low on matches, but she kept forgetting to ask Gluttony about getting more.

Perhaps because their interactions every night always felt like a dream. He was there right at the edge of sleep, every time she thought maybe it was a nightmare, but he was always so kind about it. Gluttony looked over her wrist, watching her movement, perhaps to see if she walked funny from lack of blood.

Katherine always had the thought that perhaps this man did not understand humans very well. He only took a few thimbles full of blood every night, and then food always appeared in front of her door. Piles and piles of food, as though he thought she ate as much as a village.

But she knew enough about humans and loss of blood, so she ate. Just as much as she wanted.

“I’ll get fat if I stay here too long,” she mused as she wandered down the hall. “Now, if I were a laundry room, where would I be?”

Her village had one that they all shared. It was very close to the water, and had a wall built between the swamp and it, so a tiny stream of liquid could trickle through without risking anyone’s lives if a creature fell through.

They’d all heard stories about towns who didn’t have that. Washing their clothing in the water was a risk that so few of them could afford to take. Unfortunately, that meant most of those towns had a lot of illness.

This castle definitely had a laundry room. It had to.

Squaring her shoulders, she marched through the eastern wing of the castle. She hadn’t been in this part very much, considering her own was in the western wing, and she chose to work in a clockwise search. Although she wasn’t nearly finished with any of the wings. This castle was so large it would take her more than a few days of exploration to see even one.

But she knew the kitchen was in the east wing. Which meant maybe that wing was meant more for servants than for visitors.

“This is the right way to go,” she muttered to herself.

And that was the other part of her problem. She was so lonely.

Gluttony didn’t speak to her in the middle of the night. He was just there when she woke and then gestured for her to move with a single flick of his fingers. She could see the hunger in his eyes, but that was for her blood. Not for her.

Then he left. With no thank you or how are you feeling, nothing at all. He just disappeared into the shadows of his castle and she was always so tired she never thought to follow him.

Strangely, it had left her feeling rather achy with a spot on her chest that refused to stop hurting, no matter how many times she rubbed at it.

The eastern wing was not as quiet as her own. She picked up on the crackling sound of a furnace hidden somewhere, likely the reason why the entire castle wasn’t as cold as a tomb. And there were a few scratching noises that she assumed were rats. Perhaps there was a room full of food, where Gluttony collected her meals only to place them in front of her door and race away before she could see him.

Rolling her eyes, Katherine adjusted the weight on her shoulders and continued forward until she heard the faint sound of bubbling.

She’d know that sound anywhere. Perhaps she was mistaken, but those sounded like burners and bubbling concoctions that she’d worked with in the almshouse. At least, a little. And there, that was absolutely the sound of glass clinking against glass.

Why would those sounds exist here? She couldn’t imagine he had a place for healing in this house of blood sacrifices, so...

Katherine changed her searching direction and went instead to the sounds. It took her a few times of pressing her ear against a door before she was relatively certain she had found the correct one. And then, gently, she eased the door open so no one would hear her.

It wasn’t an almshouse. It was a laboratory.

Jaw falling open, she stared into the room full of glass jars, beakers, winding glass tubes that rose and twisted through each other in intricate knots of bubbling, colored liquids that funneled and wove around each other.

The room was lit by electricity, much like Gluttony’s office. Naked bulbs hung from the ceiling and illuminated the entire room with very clear precision. It glinted off the glass of the tubing, and she wondered why there was so much of it.

She supposed he might have an alchemist working for him. Though she couldn’t imagine a reason for an alchemist to even be here. Gluttony had made it very clear that he didn’t think he could be cured. So there was no reason to have an alchemist on the premises.

Decorum entirely forgotten, she strode into the room with curiosity burning through her veins.

Katherine set her laundry on the floor so she didn’t knock into any important glass pieces, and then strode over to one of the nearby tables. There was more glass on this one, she thought, perhaps rejects of the research going on here.

At least, she could only assume. She had watched over the shoulder of the two alchemists who came into their almshouse to replace all the potions necessary to heal their patients. She had watched them avidly, wanting nothing more than to become like them.

The beakers on this table were full of a tar-like black substance that clearly was an experiment gone wrong. Those were usually thrown into the moors or the muck in the almshouse, so she was rather surprised to see them preserved here. In a jar, of all things.

Humming underneath her breath, she made her way from table to table, in the room that easily could have fit an entire crowd of people. Had he converted a ballroom into this space? But why?

And then, as she got closer to the back, she saw him.

Not an alchemist at all. But Gluttony himself.

He’d taken off his vest and dropped it on the floor as though the hand embroidered piece wasn’t worth the cost of an entire town here. He’d rolled his sleeves up, revealing long, pale forearms that flexed with each of his movements. Graceful fingers danced between the beakers, lifting one, letting a drop of liquid roll out before carefully placing it back where it had come from.

She could only stare at his broad back and tapered waist where he sat on a small, uncomfortable looking stool as he worked. Even now, the black waterfall of his hair had not a strand out of place.

But at least she’d seen it with dust covering that darkness. It made him seem a little more... real.

Swallowing hard, she told herself not to look at the veins on his forearms or the way their dark color seemed to ripple underneath his skin.

Katherine didn’t try to hide her presence. She didn’t have to. Her booted feet were loud, and the tell-tale thud, slide of her bad leg announced her presence even when she wanted to hide herself.

So instead, she walked up to his table and looked down at what he was working on. He had multiple beakers, two of which appeared to only have a colored mist in them, two with black liquid, and another with a strange dark smoke that swirled around as though it were fighting to get out of the beaker.

A single glass orb was in front of him. More of that swirling mist inside it as he had dropped a single speck of liquid upon it. And as she watched, he looked more at the other smoke than the orb in front of him.

The black mass swirled, stilled, and then seemed to go back.

“Shouldn’t you pay more attention to that?” she asked.

Gluttony let out a sound that she had never heard a man make before. With a shriek somewhere between a growl and the haunting call of a banshee, he moved so quickly that she didn’t even see the claws erupt from his hand. She only felt the wind of them, as he froze with those long, dagger-like nails so close to her throat that she didn’t dare swallow.

He was wearing glasses, she realized. Circular glasses with thin wire frames that perched on top of his nose and, damn it, that shouldn’t be so attractive, but it really was.

His eyes widened as he realized who she was. “Katherine?” he asked, as though he didn’t believe she was standing right in front of him.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.” She risked swallowing, his nails brushing the long column of her throat and leaving what felt like welts behind.

He grunted, dropping his hand immediately. “I am unused to anyone else being in this home, pet. I should be the one apologizing.”

“I didn’t realize there were places in the castle I wasn’t supposed to go.”

“There is not a single room that you are barred from in this place.” Gluttony stood, knocking over his stool in the process. He winced and bent to pick it up. “Is it lunch time already? I have been very busy and I’m afraid time must have gotten away from me.”

“It’s not lunchtime.”

“Oh.” His usually smooth brow furrowed in confusion at that. “Why are you out of your room, then?”

She was going to hit him. She was going to smack that confusion right off of his face because surely he wasn’t so dull that he couldn’t see the problem?

“I...” Katherine blinked, trying to get her words right so he wouldn’t kick her out of the castle outright. “I’m bored.”

He had yet to stop staring at her like she’d grown an extra head. “Why?”

“Because it’s been days and all I’ve done is sit in that room or perhaps look around a little in the castle, but there’s not really a lot here for me to do.”

“No, I suppose there isn’t. But is that not what you want?”

“To do nothing?” There was her temper again. Perhaps she spoke a little too curtly, but she couldn’t stop herself from adding, “What woman doesn’t want to waste away in a corner until she grows mold?”

“Excuse me?”

Katherine jabbed a finger at him, poking him so hard in the chest he flinched. “I don’t want to sit around and just be some mindless blood donor for you! If you wanted me to do this, then at least let me go home! I have use there. I work in the almshouse, and there are people who could use my stitching right now. I’m certain of it.”

Gluttony took a step away from her, his eyes somehow going even wider as he lifted his hands in peace. “I’m not requiring you to stay. I just thought you’d be more comfortable here. My home has down feathers and silk sheets and all the food you could want.”

“And I refuse to be some rolling ball of food for you!” Katherine jabbed him again, her hand quickly slipping between the defense of his own to hit him hard in the ribs. “I’m going back to the almshouse and you can’t stop me.”

“You’ll reek.”

“I don’t care what I smell like to you,” she hissed. “I’m not your pet!”

He tilted his head to the side as though disagreeing with her. “Well, if you want to get technical—“

“Finish that sentence.” Katherine curled her lip in threat. “I dare you.”

He almost looked... frightened of her until he shook the emotion off with a visible movement. “Ridiculous. You cannot threaten me.”

Katherine was apparently feeling rather reckless. She should have backed down, she knew. This was a demon, and she could still feel his marks on her neck where he’d just barely grazed her with his claws.

If he wanted, Gluttony could remove her head from her shoulders and he wouldn’t even feel all that bad about it. He was as dangerous as holding a knife to her jugular. But she wasn’t afraid of him right now.

And frankly, she was a little thrilled to finally be doing something other than sitting and staring at a wall.

She took a single step back and grabbed a beaker full of yellow mist. “I can threaten you all I want. I will pour this entire bottle into that one if you don’t give me something to do.”

The other bottle was the one with the black mist, and the one she was quite certain was more important.

Considering the flash in his red eyes, she’d guessed correctly. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Maybe I don’t. Or, maybe I do.” She tilted the yellow mist in her hands. “I think you already tried this combination, and that’s why you were staring at it. You know this yellow stuff will destroy what you’re testing.”

“Easy there, pet.”

“I have steady hands,” she assured him, but those steady hands were still tilting the bottle. “I’d like to help you in your lab.”

“It’s far too dangerous for a human.” His nose wrinkled and then smoothed out. Perhaps a desperate attempt to keep his glasses on his nose where they were already sliding a bit. “I will not risk you.”

“You don’t want to risk my blood, you mean. Truly, I have no intention of murdering myself in this room full of what I can only assume are explosive substances.”

Mouth off one more time, she thought to herself. Just do it. She wanted to see what would happen if he thought she wasn’t serious.

Gluttony crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at her. “Your skirts will get in the way.”

“I doubt that.”

“They will.” But then he waved his hand at her, as though he were the king submitting to all her desires. “But if you think you will be of use, little human, let’s see what you are capable of.”