6. Chapter 6

"You look fucking desperate to clean up. I'll get some water," Cynthian said before he dashed into the hallway.

Embarrassment singed my face as I noticed the pathetic stance I'd subconsciously adopted: arms held away from my body as if someone had stuck blades beneath them, fingers spread. I couldn't bear to touch any part of myself. A disgusting craquelure of viscera and grime covered my skin, my stiff underpants practically glued to my form.

Elias lit more candles before he pried the lid from one of the barrels, pulling out a crate. From it, he retrieved clean rags and a multicolored piece of soap, mushed together from scraps. With a sigh, he placed everything on the table.

"You will need clothes, too. Cyn isn't gentle when stripping our victims, and your garments have certainly been rendered unwearable. I salvaged some from other prey." He paused, turning away. "Say, little one, do you still remember the night we burned down the orphanage?"

I nodded as the sting of phantom smoke swirled in my nose. "The night we gained our freedom. I could never forget."

"When you struck the first match, Cyn and I promised you a kingdom."

Elias crouched, taking brown trousers and a tunic the color of eggshells from the box. He hung them across one of the chairs, and his demonic eyes snapped to me, roving over my body. The glint in their gazes was that of a stalker ready to pounce, ready to sink its teeth into me and tear.

A flicker of tantalizing alarm danced along my nerves, but unlike Cyn, Eli seemed to have his Demon under firm control. He was entirely himself as his humorless laugh echoed in the quiet cellar.

"Hells, look at us, Mynarin." He spread his arms, bitterness and resentment harshening the gesture. "All we've given you is misery. Loneliness. All we have to offer you now is a life in squalor. These twisted, monstrous versions of ourselves. We broke our promise, and for that, we deserve the torment which has befallen us. We deserve worse."

"Don't say that, Elias. It was never about money or splendor for me. All I wanted—"

My voice drifted off.

"All I ever wanted was you and Cyn," I whispered. "I wanted a life with you, in poverty or in prosperity, in health or illness. I still do."

My eyes burned again. Not only because of the self-deprecation in his words, but because I realized that the years of separation had changed us.

We'd grown into adults. And though my feelings were as immovable as the Nivis Peaks along the southern border and the thousand-year-old trees in the eternally autumnal forests in the east, the easiness of our teenage years had withered. Suffering and heartache had shaped it into a creeping shadow of apprehensiveness.

In our youth, I wouldn't have hesitated to embrace my brothers. But now, even as the tug of an invisible string drew me toward Elias, awkward bashfulness locked my feet in place.

"Thank you, Myna," Eli said, voice low like mine had been. "Only you can forgive our sins now. Only you can accept the monsters we have become. Not even the Creators may take that burden from you."

"It's not a burden. To find you was my only wish all these years. Even opening my own store as I always dreamed meant nothing without you. The money I earned and contacts I made, the small scams I ran with the members of our crew who didn't leave after your disappearance … they were all a means to a single end: finding you. I'm content so long as I'm with you—even down here."

"You might come to think otherwise, little one," Elias said. "There are three more floors in this dungeon, and three more killers like us inhabiting them. To reach the exit above, we must pass through the remaining chambers, and the others won't let us leave without a fight. If they don't kill us, their own lives are forfeit. Such are the rules in the House of Grief."

I planted my feet firmer against the cold ground, crossing my arms as I withstood a surge of adrenaline.

"The others … who are they?"

"We don't interact. Entering their floors and meddling with other hunts is prohibited." Elias tilted his head from side to side as if he hoped to shake some knowledge loose. "Denial. Depression. Acceptance. These are their code names. But we know little more about them, other than that they suffered similar fates as us, forced to bond with Demons. Which effects these bonds might have … I can't say. The transformations affect everyone differently."

"They are named after the stages of grief," I said, eliciting a hum of confirmation from Eli.

My brow furrowed. If I didn't despise Malachar for what he'd done to my brothers and me, I would've had to admire the wittiness behind the connection of the dungeon's name and the killers housed in it.

"That makes you—"

"Bargaining. I struck a deal with my Demon. First, my eyes as a sacrifice. And I give him what he desires, feed him. In turn, he allows me to control his magic—as much as my body can bear. Unlike Cyn, I've never attempted to fight him. Then again, our brother never stopped fighting, which results in the blood frenzy you witnessed when the Demon gets the upper hand."

"Cyn is Anger?"

Elias gave a nod.

"I can help fight the other killers," I said, squaring my shoulders. "I continued training with my bow, Eli. Every day since you and Cyn helped me shoot my first arrow in the alley behind our hideout in Hedonfel. Even after—" I swallowed the pressure threatening to stiffen my vocal chords. "Even after you were taken. I'm not bad with a dagger or knife, either. If I can get my hands on some weapons—"

"Before I strung you up, I took your bow and quiver. Your cute little boot blade, too. Thought it might be nice to keep ‘em," Cyn's cheery voice rang out from the hallway. He entered the basement with a slanted grin on his pierced lips and a bucket of water in his hand. "I hid them in the church under a pile of gore. They probably don't look that appetizing to you now, but they're usable."

A smile moved my mouth. As long as Cyn was in control of himself, he seemed to have retained his mischievous attitude.

I would have made do with any old bow or knife, but getting mine back was ideal. As was my habit every day before leaving home, I had coated the tips of my arrows and the inside of my blade's sheath in Phantombane extract. It remained to be seen how useful my paralyzing tincture would be against the other killers, but any possible advantage was worth a try.

"Do I look like I still care about a little bit of gore?" I teased, gesturing at myself.

"Fuck, I wish you realized how damned hot you look like this, Myna. Your fair beauty defiled with mud and blood," Cyn said and wet his lips, a stud in his tongue shimmering in the candlelight. "Makes me want to taste you. Makes me want to lick every inch of your skin to find out which strokes of my tongue make you moan the loudest."

My heart galloped. He sauntered past me, fingers drawing down along my spine, my skin pebbling under his fleeting touch.

"Cyn is right. When I first saw you in the chapel, I thought you were a bloodied apparition, a gore-stained angel sent by the Creators to tempt me," Elias said, his tone rough, hands clenched into fists. "The perfect sacrifice to bleed and fuck on their altar."

My cheeks heated as I stiffened, laughing for lack of a better answer. This was another thing that had changed: In the past, they never expressed any sexual attraction to me.

Touching one another was always normal. They'd even seen me topless before, many times. But as we grew older, platonic, innocent gestures turned into so much more for me. Desire sparked in my inexperienced heart.

In our youth, I feared those impulses. Would they spoil everything between us if I gave in? I couldn't bear to lose them. And what did I know? I was a greedy brat because I wanted them both, and I wanted them to want me.

I wanted my brothers to be the first ones to take me, make me theirs.

But I never dared to breach that last stretch of distance between us. I let it separate us like a thin sheet of ice covering a lake during the first frost. The kind so quick to break, you'd sink and drown if you set foot on it.

What if our bond broke just as easily?

What if we'd drown in the maelstrom of my yearning?

What if I dragged the men I loved down with me into the glacial depths of my selfishness?

So, those aberrant, dangerous feelings had stayed my secret. I never asked if they felt the same. I watched them kiss others, disappearing with them into backrooms, letting them give their firsts to people they never saw again, didn't care about.

At the time, I thought I was doing what was best for us. Protecting them. Protecting what we had. A decision I had bitterly regretted ever since they went missing.

And as Cyn's eyes raked along my body, Eli's demonic gazes smoldering with lust, too, that same desire from years ago speared through me—multiplied by a delightfully torturous thousandfold.

I pressed my thighs together, arousal dampening my small-clothes.

Even as I feared they might be dead or never wish to see me again, I had never longed for anyone but my stepbrothers, never wanted to touch anyone but them. But now, my inexperience paralyzed me.

Elias must've sensed my unease. He came over and gestured to the bucket of water before grabbing Cyn by the arm. "You can wash yourself over the drain in the corner. The water is frigid but from an untainted, pure well."

"Sorry for the tiny distraction," Cyn said, giving me a provocative wink and a grin as Eli dragged him along to the hallway. "We'll leave you to rinse off all that sexy grime."

"Call us when you're finished," Eli added, and though he tried to stay serious, his lips twitched into the briefest smirk. "We will wait by the entrance."

A warm glow filled my chest.

The crushing gravity and heinous urgency of our situation wasn't lost on me, but I still grinned back at my brothers. Because even in the darkest night, even in the deepest pit of despair they were my hope, my salvation.

And I had waited too long for a chance to smile at them again.