When Blood Runs Cold - Chapter 239

“…But when I came back I quickly learnt that the palace had no mind of it’s own any more.”

“No mind…?” I repeat to myself vaguely, mulling over the thought as I stare sightlessly at the ground. Wiping away the sweat on her hands, Reshma plants her gaze firmly on the ground, refusing to look at me. The sour taste of dread fills my mouth.

“Oh, you mean-”

She nods once.

“Azrael managed to bring the entire palace under his control seemingly overnight. He left no one to spare. This place… it used to be my home. But I can’t even call it that any more.”

Unsteadily, she takes a sharp breath inward, clutching her hand over her arm with a pained expression on her face. Shortly after, the consciousness in her eyes drifts into a sullen dullness as memories sweep up her mind, dragging her away from the presence. Part of me wonders how much more she can possibly bear of all this. If my home had suffered the same fate, I’d…

Clenching my fists over my lap, I dismiss the thought. I do not want to think about that. So instead, I put my efforts to a better use.

“Come on,” I whisper gently, seeing the unsteadiness of this fairy. There is a potent unease in the twitch of her wings, the tightness of her eyes, and so I place a hand on her back, guiding her over to a bench just beside the entrance of the room and sit her down gently. I have never seen someone who isn’t a vampire look so pale. The silence continues to persist between us as I allow her to get her bearings, tenderly rubbing small circles on her back whilst ensuring my fingers stay far away from her delicate wings.

I have heard some faery wings are so delicate they can be ripped clean off by the hands of a vampire. I wonder how many faeries Azrael has de-winged in his time here. A second later, I decide I don’t particularly want to know.

“I wasn’t the only one who escaped the mind wipe,” she admits, sniffing loudly as she tips her head back against the wall in despair. Scowling, I lower my hand a bit, my movements on her back stopping. Then with bated breath, I manage to usher out:

“So, you mean there are others like you? Others who are awake?”

“Were,” she corrects bitterly, knocking her head back against the wall again in a manner that seems to suggest the pain she is inflicting on herself is anything but accidental. In fact, it seems entirely intended.

A punishment.

Curling my fingers behind her neck to keep her still, I give her a firm look.

“You will be of no use to anyone dead, Reshma,” I remind her darkly, but it seems enough to jolt her out of her daze. Straightening the frills of her dress, she gives a wiry smile.

Of course, she must realise I am right, however disdainful she is of admitting it. Biting her lip, she continues, but the waver in her voice is hard to dispel.

“There were many who managed to escape Azrael’s mind wipe at first. Many of us came back to the palace later from an excursion, or errand. At first many of us didn’t understand what was wrong, why our people would not talk to us, why they appeared as mindless drones. There was confusion, chaos. Some presumed it was the spell of a witch. No one understood what had happened, or why. Until we saw Azrael”, she adds, her expression turning sour. “There were a few who thought he might be here to help us, who thought he could solve the mystery of why our friends and family could no longer speak freely, why their eyes no longer saw what we saw.”

For a moment, she turns away, allowing me to gingerly remove my hand from her back and rest it in my lap. I get the feeling that any touch of reassurance now would do little to reassure and more to aggravate this wounded, broken fairy. That much seems obvious from the stony, guarded expression that haunts her face, the way her body becomes rigid as she retreats once more into her mind.

It then occurs to me if she and I have shared the same thought- that all this would perhaps be more manageable if I  were  a mindless puppet in the first place. Perhaps then, the two of us would not have to outwardly endure all the suffering that has been thrust upon us now.

But it is a baseless thought. A world cannot be saved when still attached to the strings of the puppeteer who ended it.

“I take it that Azrael didn’t do as the fairies hoped then,” I say with an equally bitter tone as Reshma, folding my arms into myself as I lean back at the wall next to her. The dark skinned fairy spares me a grievous glace as she begins to pick at her skin.

“That is one way of putting it. Casting such a large spell over an entire palace had obviously drained him profusely, he would be unable to cast another spell for quite some time I would assume. So instead of waiting, or wasting his energy further, he merely-” she makes a clicking noise with her tongue, followed by a breaking gesture with her hands. “-Snapped their necks. And for those he didn’t kill instantly, he drained and killed after. I was surprised that he didn’t fuck any of them- I would imagine someone as grotesque as him might do that. But it appears he was saving that for you,” she almost laughs- almost, before sparing me a pained expression as she glances over my body, up and down over the new silken dress I have attired myself in.

I had tried to choose something this time which would act as much less of a temptation to Azrael- long sleeves, mid length, embroidered with jewels like a set of wings spanning the top, but there is no telling if my attempts will be successful. Azrael isn’t exactly one to pass up an opportunity when he sees it. Rather, he is more likely to exploit it.

“He is going to try it again, I am sure,” she whispers to herself, but I do not hear her, instead consumed in my own thoughts about the hedonistic vampire. A cold shiver runs through me at the memory of his hands on my skin.

Once Reshma has decided I am fully back in the present, she resumes her tale, staring out into the bathhouse, her fingers whirling over coils of smoky steam and vapour, twirling them into a tornado like apparition.

“I watched all this from the safety behind a window outside the palace, and quickly realised that if I wasn’t going to end up dead on the ground like my friends, then I would need to get awfully good at pretending.”

No more words are necessary after that. For the proof is in the pudding- Reshma did get awfully good at pretending. But just as I am getting up to leave, dusting off my clothes and wincing at the moisture that clings to my skin, Reshma leaps up, her hand tightening on the handle of the door as she stares at the ground for a few fleeting seconds, her eyes dulling as she admits.

“I was going to kill you, you know,” she whispers, fingers tightening as the whites of her knuckles protrude against her flesh. “When I came to get you, and thought you were his wife, I was going to kill you.”

But instead of fear consuming my heart like I thought it might, I turn to her, giving a small smile as I ask softly:

“Then why didn’t you?”

Her eyes meet mine.

“Because as soon as you got in that dining room, I realised you hated him just as much as me.”

Laughing a little under my breath, I turn to clap a hand lightly on her shoulder, giving a strained yet somehow warmed smile.

“Well, you aren’t wrong there,” I admit, relinquishing my voice to a low and sullen whisper as we tip toe our way out into the hall, aware that our conversations are no longer private. Reshma, too, reclines her head, taking the lead in front of me as we begin to traipse our way back through the castle, wincing away at the construction work and the labourers of faeries taking down paintings from the grand marble walls. It doesn’t take a genius to realise what those paintings are going to be replaced with.

Our traversing down the hall passes in a blur of silence that sucks at my mind, each step becoming more monotonous, stagnant, and I realise with a rhythm such as this, it would be easy to fall into the ease of bewitchment. Looking at it now, I can understand how Reshma manages to do it: simply by draining out the rest of the world.

But before we can reach my room at the end of the last corridor, something stops me in my tracks, pulling me out of this daze with a tug of voices in my mind:

Outside.