The Lion & the Deathless Dark — Chapter 42

C HA P T E R FO R T Y-T WO

have never met anyone so intently focused on ensuring their own demise. Do you think before you act? Or do you just operate onI impulses? Like some sort of mollusk.”

The first thing I became aware of was the sound of Septimus’s voice.

And even though it was insulting me, it still made me feel warm and protected, like a blanket.

A violent clap of thunder trembled through the earth. I opened my eyes blearily to see lightning arc across the sky, visible through several layers of torn fabric and broken beams and cracked glass. I was lying against something warm and firm. A bitter taste coated my mouth.

“A mollusk?” I croaked.

The sound of my own voice—weak and raspy—scared me.

Septimus’s face came into my field of vision. I realized that the surface I was lying against was, in fact, him. He was cradling me against his lap. He set down a glass flask, and I wondered if the strange aftertaste was because he had been treating me with whatever had once been in it. The wound in my side, I realized, had been treated—and with powerful medicine, because it now barely even ached.

“Mollusks don’t have brains,” he said. “Seemed like an apt comparison.”

I wondered dimly if a mollusk was some kind of aggressive Obitraen rodent. But I said nothing, just stared into Septimus’s face.

He looked normal again. Normal-ish, at least. He’d cleaned himself up somewhat, and apparently had managed to retrieve our supplies. His eyes had returned to that familiar cool mix of amber and silver, though the red

ring remained around both irises, thicker on the left side. If I looked closely, I could see the threads of red swirling toward his pupil.

I didn’t realize I had reached out until I found myself touching his face.

His skin was now cool to the touch. My fingers trailed over his cheekbone, and his hand fell to mine, wrapping around my wrist, so quickly that it seemed like second instinct. His thumb swept over the sliver of exposed flesh at the edge of my sleeve, and it sent a jolt up my spine.

With it came a shockingly vivid memory of the orgasm I’d had grinding against him, his teeth buried in my throat.

My face, embarrassingly, heated. I was fucking blushing. I couldn’t remember the last time I had blushed.

But it was easy enough to avoid dwelling on that when I instead dwelled on the way Septimus had looked before it. A stranger wearing a familiar face. A step too close to the Bloodborn I had seen lost to their curses.

I licked my lips. Cleared my throat.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

A twitch at the corner of his mouth, barely there. But with it came a flash of fury that somehow seemed even more terrifying than the version of

him I’d seen before.

“Sit up,” he barked.

I did. My head was spinning, and I felt weak, but otherwise normalcy was rapidly returning. He crouched down before me. Before I could speak, his fingers pressed to my cheeks, holding my head still with a firm, gentle grip. His brow was low and focused as he stared into my face, eyes searching; for what, I wasn’t sure.

My skin prickled with the force of his attention. More intimate, somehow, than the countless faceless trysts I’d had on the road. It was one thing to expose my body to a stranger. Another to have a vampire looking so deep into my soul.

Then he let out a long, low breath, his head dropping, as if in sheer relief.

I finally made myself speak. “What are you—”

“What the ever-loving fuck were you thinking?” When his head snapped back up, his eyes were fiery again, furious. He stood and began pacing. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? Did you stop to think before you offered up your goddess-damned throat?”

“And here I was thinking you were about to thank me.”

“I explicitly told you to leave. I shouldn’t have let that happen. I would have gotten it under control.”

I scoffed and got unsteadily to my feet. “Told me? You could barely speak. What, you would have preferred that I just let you wander off to go chase around soulless? And besides, I knew you weren’t going to kill me.” I hesitated. Then added, “Because I can’t die without Zefiah, anyway.

And—”

“You don’t understand, Kyrene.” He snapped upright, eyes brighter than I’d ever seen them. Thunder clapped against the horizon with a deafening bang. “You don’t understand what could have happened to you. One thing to let some vampire feast on you. Fine. But I’m not any vampire.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Please, Septimus. Are we not past this ‘I’m such a terrifying—’”

“You could have been Turned,” he snapped. “Do you understand?”

I blinked. It was not what I had been expecting him to say.

“That’s not how Turning works,” I said, and even as the words left my lips, I realized how stupid they sounded. Still, they were the truth as I knew it. There was no such thing as an accidental Turning. It was a specific, intentional process.

What happened after that . . . well, that was less predictable. It was no small thing for a human body to go through that sort of transformation.

Most died doing it. Not that most vampires, who only wanted their forever slaves, cared about that.

But the distress on Septimus’s face, suddenly clear as the stars on a cloudless night, was a far, far cry from indifference. He looked furious. No —he looked terrified.

“When are you going to understand,” he hissed, “that nothing about us is like other vampires? The curse changes us intrinsically. It makes our blood turn against us. And with that comes . . . unpredictability.”

“Are you telling me that your curse makes vampirism contagious?”

Gods, I hated how all those words sounded together.

His jaw clenched. He slid his hands in his pocket and turned to the broken window, watching the light and lightning and rain streak by.

“Think about it,” he said, with wry humor. He withdrew a cigarillo, lit it, and sucked in a resentful inhale. “Why do vampires Turn humans?”

This seemed like a trick question to me.

“For eternal slaves,” I said definitively.

He let out a scoff. “You are very cynical.”

“It’s not cynicism if it’s true.”

“Humans also love enslaving people, for what it’s worth.”

“Look, that wasn’t the question—”

He lifted one hand, a silver tendril of smoke trailing it. “Fine, fine. Let’s say you’re correct. The benefit of a vampire slave over a human one is that they will live as long as you do. They will remain eternally beautiful. But that isn’t true of a Bloodborn vampire, as you have seen. What good is a pet that will one day become a monster? Might as well keep them human. At

least that way they can be food, too.”

He turned around.

“And for the sake of argument,” he said, “let’s say there are other reasons that a vampire may Turn a human. Perhaps for love.”

I scoffed under my breath. Yes, I’d heard such stories. The kinds that drove foolish humans to chase infatuation with some beautiful vampire who was already licking their lips at the sight of them.

Still, after that thought came another. The memory of Sylina and Atrius, standing together in the sparring ring, arms around each other.

I said, “Atrius hasn’t Turned Sylina.”

“And he never will. He loves her too much. More than half of humans Turned die in the process. But even if it succeeds . . .” His face hardened.

“No love should damn any soul to the fate that awaits the Bloodborn. And Atrius would die before he’d allow Sylina to suffer it.”

So instead, he would watch her die before him. Watch her age, while he remained eternally youthful. And in exchange, she would watch his curse consume him. I was no sap, but even I felt a pang of sadness at this tragedy.

“So, you understand, Bloodborn rarely Turn humans,” Septimus went on. “Yes, we have more children than our Nightborn or Deathborn or Shadowborn counterparts. But hardly enough to satisfy the cruelty of a curse designed to inflict as much suffering as possible. The curse is hunger, Kyrene. It will take and take and take, sometimes without our consent.” He paused, then said, “Once it has progressed far enough.”

Those final words were heavy. I thought of the way he’d looked before he fed from me. Totally unlike himself.

He swallowed thickly and said, “My curse has progressed very far.”

Fear twisted in my stomach as the reality of what he was saying sank in.

I looked down at my hands. They trembled slightly, and they were bruised

and bloodstained. They still looked very human.

“So am I —”

“You’re fine.” He let out another long, smoky exhale. “No, you’re

lucky.”

Relief crashed over me.

“I always am,” I muttered, and he whipped back around to face me.

“This is not a joke,” he said. “I take Turning very, very seriously, Kyrene. Because I will not drag another living being into the hell that we live. And you—” His teeth snapped shut, and he let out a breath between them. “You are too important.”

Those four words caressed my skin like his tongue had when he fed from me. Gentleness when I had expected hunger. Softness when I had expected pain.

He meant that I was too important for the task ahead, I told myself. So

why did my chest feel this way?

I said quietly, “I didn’t know —”

He scoffed. “Words I never thought I’d hear from you.”

“—But I don’t regret it.”

“Ah. That’s more like it.”

I stepped closer, examining his face. I had been so relieved just to see him looking more like himself, but all the lingering effects of his curse now seemed so much more prominent. The ring around each of his eyes. The red-black spiderweb crawl of his veins visible beneath the near-translucent pale of his skin. They reached up his throat, brushing his jawline.

“Brought you back, didn’t I?” I said. “One might think you’d be more appreciative. Princes are so entitled.”

He let out a low scoff. His gaze dipped down my body in a way that, I sensed, was not entirely intentional. “I think I was plenty generous in return. But then, I suppose that was a bit selfish, too. If I’m being honest with both of us.”

A shiver up my spine, up the insides of my thighs.

If I’m being honest with both of us. He said it like it was some kind of flirty joke. But honesty this dangerous was never a joke. Not even for me.

Septimus, from the very first time I met him, had been my playmate. We took turns being the cat or the mouse. But now, I was done with games.

“How much time do you have left?” I asked.

The smirk faded. I watched the threads of red in his irises lurch toward his pupil, then recede.

He said casually, “You don’t have to concern yourself—”

“I don’t want a bullshit answer. I want the truth. How much? A year? Or

just months?”

At the look on his face, my heart fell.

“Weeks,” I said.

His throat bobbed. His expression remained still. And yet, I knew him well enough to read that it was really saying, Less.

“Enough,” he said. “The answer is, enough time.”

“What if it isn’t?”

He let out a small, wordless sound. If he meant it to be dismissive, he failed. All it did was confirm that he had thought about that question, and frequently. He gazed at the cigarillo between his fingers, and then at the storm raging through the cracked window.

I said quietly, “What would have happened if I didn’t let you drink from me?”

He watched the lightning for a long moment, silent. Then he turned to me.

“I have told you many times now that I’m no hero. All I am in this story is the person who set the stage for the real one to step through. I have made great sacrifices for it. If I make one more, I won’t pretend that’s some great injustice. Not after all I’ve done.”

He touched what remained of the glass, his fingers aligning to the beams of light bursting through the temple ruins.

“We’re at the end of the road I’ve walked for over a decade,” he said. “I hope to cross its threshold with you. But I’ve already played every card in my hand. I’ve rolled every set of dice. My usefulness is waning. So to answer your question, if I hadn’t come back from that episode, you would have simply continued without me.”

My throat was so tight that I couldn’t have spoken even if I wanted to.

I glanced at Zefiah, who lay against the wall, sheathed, barely glowing.

I swallowed the visceral yearning to hear her voice scolding me. To ask her a question I couldn’t quite word, and that I knew would give me an answer I

didn’t want to hear.

“Septimus, I—”

“I expect you to complete the job I hired you for, bounty hunter.” He gave me a wry wink. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your payment regardless.”

I felt vaguely sick. “I have every intention of killing that bitch,” I said.

His smirk bloomed to a smile. “Just what I like to hear, lyri.”

But unspoken words bubbled up under my skin. Words that seemed suddenly so urgent. Gods, I wished I was better at wielding them. It was so much easier to throw around steel than all the things I should say.

I started, carefully, “What if —”

A vicious crash rang out in the distance. The floor trembled. An arc of lightning illuminated the broken room. Somewhere below us, glass shattered.

We whipped around. I grabbed Zefiah and scanned the room, then turned to the window and surveyed the landscape below.

The soulless? Oraya, dragging herself after us?

Or something worse?

Between the darkness and the rain and my shit human eyesight, I could barely see. My eyes leaped from movement to movement across the ruins— scraps of tapestries and flags whipping sadly in the gusts of wind, soulless roaming the forest below, bare branches straining and bowing with each roar of the storm.

Zefiah’s glow beat steadily. In her silence, I felt so terrifyingly weak.

We were quiet, waiting. The storm was so loud that it was difficult to hear much over it. Even the screams of the soulless were nearly drowned out.

Then Septimus’s eyes widened. He yanked me away from the windows

before I could react.

I heard it right after he did: Ticktick ticktick ticktick— Faster and faster, more and more, a steady roar of mechanical clinks and

clicks.

Tickticktickticktick— Glass rained over us as an army of automatons burst through the remaining window. They crawled up the side of the ruined building, vaulting themselves through any opening with gleaming copper limbs that moved in all directions. Every one of those featureless metal faces stared straight at us.

I leaped into action, swinging Zefiah, metal clanging against metal.

Septimus and I retreated to the back corner of the room. He seized a broken copper pipe, given that his magic was useless against machines, which he wielded with terrible form—the man really was no warrior. I knew instantly that we were not going to get out of this with brute force.

“We need the leader,” I called to him, voice straining over the wave of metallic hums and a roll of thunder. There had to be a general somewhere here, like there had been at the Salt Keep—someone to think for the thoughtless army. But as my eyes scanned the encroaching wave, growing thicker and thicker, there was no soft flesh to be seen.

A blade opened a fresh wound on my right arm. An automaton seized Septimus, and when he smashed its arm, another simply took its place.

Something sharp jabbed my side. Septimus and I were right up against each other, our ring of free space shrinking and shrinking.

And still no general. But they had to be somewhere— And then, as a set of steel claws seized one of my arms, digging deep into my flesh and dragging me forward as I thrashed, I looked out the

window.

At last, I saw it.

“Fuck,” Septimus breathed, pulled along beside me.

I began laughing, because what the hell else was I going to do?

Wisps of rainbow light hovered in the sky. The sign of a god’s presence.

There was no human general because the ultimate general was already

here: Srana herself.

Septimus and I thrashed against the tide. In a desperate last effort, I grabbed a lit torch from the wall and whacked my nearest attacker over the head with it. Metal bent with a clang, a stream of oil bursting a fountain from its neck, but the machine did not release me. Now so many automatons crawled over the building that no matter where I looked, there was nothing but metal. The stone began to groan beneath us. The next roar of thunder shook the floor. I wondered if I was imagining that it was tilting.

No, I realized, as fire hungrily consumed what remained of the curtains.

I was not imagining it.

My feet no longer touched the floor. The automatons dragged me toward the edge of the building. The rumble of collapsing stone mingled

with the thrashing of the storm. Septimus had lost his makeshift weapon, the machines hoisting him like a rag doll.

He reached out for me. Our fingers brushed.

But a deafening roar burst from beneath as the ruined building at last gave out.

The last thing I felt was the sensation of falling, falling, falling.