Indomitable

t w e n t y - o n e

Duke Guatus laid upon his black-sheeted bed, eyes wide open. His body was tight and tensed, which only made the ribs that jutted out from the thin, sickly skin of his bare upper chest even more prominent.

Remi glared at him, annoyance flaring in her eyes. She sat by the bed on a chair, leaned over him with a hand on his chest. "If you don't relax, this will take a lot longer than it has to, and I don't really want to be touching you for any longer than I must."

The duke's eye twitched. "You're lucky to simply have the opportunity to touch my skin with your dirty hands, woman! Most women could only dream of such a feat."

"Most women are lucky to be unaware of your existence."

The guards behind Remi tensed, as if they expected the duke to give the order to kill her. The one holding a sword to the back of her neck pressed slightly harder, hard enough to draw a thin line of blood.

Remi smirked a little at that, and continued on sending her energy through the duke. "Relax."

Begrudgingly, Duke Guatus did as she said. "This feels strange, almost like I have a bunch of warm strings with bugs running across them in my body."

She shrugged. "That's one way to describe it."

———

After expending her energy for a while longer, thinking and reaching for the words of her father, searching and finding, replicating and removing, Remi sat back, leaning into the chair.

She felt like someone had siphoned all the energy from her body and left her in a state of exhaustion. She moved to cross her legs, and grimaced. Her limbs felt heavy, and moved like deadweight—as if they were cases in concrete.

Remi sighed. She hoped she'd done it right. Not for the duke's sake, but instead for her own, because that would mean she could successfully preform the immortal procedure. Her father and uncle had never trusted her with it before.

Now she could get Bliss and leave.

"All done," Remi announced, ducking under the blade behind her and standing up. She dusted the invisible dirt off her pants.

Duke Guatus sat up. "Does this mean I'm . . . immortal now?"

Remi pursed her lips. "Not entirely. You have the potential for immortality now. That means that unless you contract a disease or something in your body fails, or if someone kills you—which I desperately hope for—you will live forever."

She didn't truly wish him dead. Furious hate blossomed in her heart towards him for what he did to her cousin, but she didn't truly believe it was the place of any one person to take the life of another.

But that didn't mean she couldn't bluff a little.

"And my beautiful face," the Duke pressed. "Will I still look this perfect in the years to come?"

Remi gave him an exaggerated eye roll. "If that's what you consider perfect," she gestured towards his face, "Then yes, you will remain that way."

It was a curse enough for his face to remain that way until his death.

"Good!" the duke sat up slowly on the bed, clasping his hands together.