Vérzavar Ház

Chapter 2: A Sacrifice's Small Blessings

Again, silence fell, but they remained kneeling there, face-to-face. She said after a tense moment, "I hate him. No one knows it, but I do. He disgusts me."

-House of Sky and Breath, pg. 464

The water was scalding, steam filling the bathroom as the sound of the high pressure spray echoed off of the gleaming tile. She needed the noise, the roar. Needed it to drown out her retching into the toilet and her sobs as she collapsed to the floor of the shower. Lidia Cervos had thought there was nothing left to sacrifice. There had been so little left to give - after her father, after Pollux, after becoming the Hind. Even joining the rebellion had not saved her, since it was her role and her proximity to the Asteri that made her such a valuable asset.

And she had played her part impeccably, had risen through Sandriel's ranks with her ruthlessness, her ingenuity, her ability to get results. She'd lost everything in the process - her family, her innocence, her honor, her very soul. Some things had been stolen from her. Others she had foolishly given away before she realized what the loss would truly mean. Still others had been a willing sacrifice; an offering at the altar, to whatever God that might stoop so low as to accept it. She would surrender it all - even her life, if required - in exchange for the promise of a better world. Hardly a day passed that she didn't wonder how she'd managed to live this long.

It hadn't taken her long to deduce that Agent Night was the Valbaran prince. He was so clearly out of his depth, and she had bristled at his casual, carefree demeanor. As if the whole thing was a game. As if everything she'd worked for didn't hinge upon their perfect performance. But her frustration with him had quickly transformed. Ruhn had never been cold or calculating like her. He had only ever been honest about the kind of person he was, and had done all he could to get to know her - and she had not made it easy. Still, he'd melted through the thick layer of ice surrounding her battered, monstrous soul, chipping away at it with each moment on that bridge; the offer of a beer or a quick, chuckled retort when she would try to push him away.

Persistent concern, when he'd thought that perhaps her sexual encounters with Pollux were not consensual. Gods, how she'd wanted to tell him everything in that moment. It had taken nearly everything she had not to fall on her knees and beg him to save her. She'd wanted to believe that he would; dared to hope - in the darkest, most hidden parts of her heart - that perhaps the Hind wasn't all that she was. That Ruhn Danaan would help her heal.

He had tried to come to her rescue, but the little ember of warmth that glowed in her chest at the notion had been quickly doused by fear and hopelessness. The terror that she had felt when she saw him in those shackles in the dungeon - after she had warned him not to come, and he'd fucking done it anyway - could only be eclipsed by the devastation that washed over her when she had felt the world tilt on its axis. Felt something grow taut in her chest, binding her to him by a golden tether. As she desperately begged and pleaded for the prince - her mate - to let her explain, to let her in.

Ruhn Danaan had come to save her, a knight in shining armor, only to find that the damsel he sought to rescue was, in fact, the fierce beast he'd intended to slay. It had been a special kind of agony, to watch the play of emotions dance over the handsome male's face. To watch his beautiful, starlit eyes widen from the betrayal, then harden into chips of ice.

It had taken weeks for the Crown Prince of the Valbaran fae to wriggle his way into her heart, dismantling her defenses on that midnight bridge, but he had shattered her in mere moments. And she had been trying to piece herself back together in the weeks since. She constantly reminded herself that she was a soldier. Her soul was not salvageable, and it had been folly to hope that someone could see past the beast that was the Hind. All she could do was continue as she always had, and do everything in her power to keep Ruhn and Hunt safe without compromising her cover. They deserved the future that she'd given up on long ago.