Lord of the Night

Chapter 4: Maybe

Isalio was not well.

Shudders racked his whole body. His teeth were chattering, a tinny, irregular beat turned brittle by the metal floor and walls. The food lay untouched on the table.

I clenched the zaikut-laced bottle and gritted my teeth. The Morgabeast was still tearing through Anyalasa, and those victims were the ones who deserved my pity. Yet I couldn't stop the twisting in my chest. Fuck, I was not meant for this. Humans had evolved into Guardians millenia ago in order to protect, not to harm.

"You said you would last at least a few days," I said. "Why do you look so bad already?"

"So bad? Rude. I think I still look—"

His chest spasmed, speech succumbing to a coughing fit. He covered his cough with his arm. When his arm slid back down to his side, crimson blood speckled his pale skin.

Hissing a curse, I strode toward the table. When I plunked the bottle down, the glass resonated against the metal. I dropped to a crouch in front of Isalio.

His eyes widened. "Uh...what are you doing?"

The wide eyes offered him an air of innocence...but lust colored his voice.

I shook my head. Fuck. How close to dead did this Demon need to be before he would stop trying to seduce me?

Before he would stop succeeding?

With great effort, I flattened my expression and turned my gaze away from his. I drew a key from my pocket, rolled up his pant leg, and inserted the key into the rubber ankle cuff. The key chinked, the cuff clinked the floor...

And my breath caught.

Angry boils covered the skin where the cuff had been, harsh red contrasting the pale skin of his calves. The overhead lamps highlighted patches of the red skin like a mirage on water. Like plastic.

Like the gray swirls that marred Borgal's face.

Unthinking, I brushed a thumb over the red mark. A gasp caught in his throat, almost a whimper, and his foot tugged back to press against the chair leg it was strapped to.

"Sorry," I whispered, not quite sure if I was apologizing for touching the rash or for leaving the cuffs on so long. "I didn't know the cuffs could do this."

I felt his inquisitive gaze on me, but I busied myself in removing the second ankle cuff instead of answering his unasked question. Instead of meeting that too-human gaze.

I linked the discarded cuffs onto my belt loop and pushed to my feet. "Better?"

He drew a shaky breath and blew it out slowly. "Yes."

I glanced at the bottle of zaikut-juice on the table. The Guardians needed answers fast, and the poison was relatively harmless in small quantities. In fact, our intel said the Demons frequently consumed zaikut as a recreational drug. But how could I feed him poison when he still struggled to breathe?

I pushed the food toward him. "Can you eat now?"

"I think so." He reached toward the packet of the food on the table, then stopped and drew his hand back a few inches, fingers curling. "Is it poisoned?"

Some smooth, perfect version of me whispered, 'I would never poison you, darling.' That version was formed by fury and lightning—by the endless expanse of sky—like a Demon. Being a Guardian was no longer enough. To win, we needed to use the Demons' own weapons against them. So my tongue attempted to form the sweet lies...

But I couldn't.

Because that version of me was not me. The real me was still buried deep in the ground, like the First Guardian. Sprawling roots unseen; ambitions dusted by soil. The real me still succumbed to whimsical morals and an antiquated instinct toward truth.