Phantom Page 8

  Sweaty hands didn't help me. I lost my grip once, twice, three times before I wiped my palm down the front of my magnificent dress.

  I had to keep moving.

  Eyesight of the Gods, for all I knew, could span across the gardens and lock onto me high up on the ledge. That was one way to earn a death sentence, the Prince's lover or not.

  Gripping onto the statue, I clamoured my way around it and onto the rest of the solid ledge. I only knew where I was going from my many late-night wanderings around the palace when Ava refused to see me. Gauging my surroundings seemed like a good way to kill time—and it sure as hell came in handy.

  A warm, gentle breeze crawled over me when I reached the next set of windows. The room beside mine. It was empty. Most of them were on my corridor. I didn't know if that was because there were so few of us in the favour of the Gods, or because Prince Poison wanted to keep me as far away from the others as possible. Isolate me.

  I tried the window.

  I shoved my weight against it, fumbled for a handle, even tried to boot it before I realised, I would have to smash the glass to get through. The noise could attract Felicks.

  I was only one room down in the corridor. He might hear glass breaking. It was too big of a risk.

  I had no choice but to keep moving down the ledge and hope that these blasted sandals didn’t slip over the stardust supporting me.

  It was another two rooms before I found a window that opened. As I climbed into the unlit room—full of shadows, spiderwebs, and dusty air—I tried to remember my bearings.

  I was far enough away from my room to avoid Felicks seeing me in the corridor. I rushed over to the narrow wooden door that was so unlike my own that I assumed I was in a supply cupboard for cleaning and the maids to retreat in.

  Cracking the door open just a little, I peeked into the corridor, whose white and cream walls flickered with the orange glows from the candle-lanterns hanging from fixtures.

  The aniel’s private worship room was only three corridors away. But in my heavy pink dress it felt like I was sneaking to the other end of the palace.

  I had only been in this worship room once before. And I hadn't stayed very long. Still, it'd been more than enough to notice the difference between the aniel room and the one I trained in.

  Just like last time, as I crept into the room, there were rows of tables and chairs, seemingly carved from the finest blackwood grown in the gardens. Pale light stretched over them from the never dying candles whose naked flames burned white.

  This worship room was more like a modest library than the other. The collection wasn't vast.

  I expected a greater library to exist within the palace, perhaps monitored by moskas—an elite kind of worshipers, charged with the care and preservation of the scrolls.

  Moskas were the ones to make the skriptas. They were the ones who selected the stories of each God, wrote them out, bound them, then distributed them to the Isles.

  Not just anyone could become a Moska.

  But there were none in this room, and that made me suspect there was more information to be found in larger, greater and private rooms of the palace.

  I would have to make do with this one.

  I couldn't risk going any further in the palace without my guard.

  So I rushed over to the shelves that reached from floor to ceiling, every cube stuffed full of beige scrolls. There were thousands of them and I didn't know how long it would take me to find what I was looking for.

  I noticed little, dusty brass name plates bolted on to the words of the cubes. The names of the Gods.

  My heart hammered in my chest as I ran my fingertips and gaze over the nearest one. Dust came away in one thick layer and revealed a name.

  Gaia.

  Using my hand, I cleared the grime away from every name plate, one at a time.

  Blaze.

  Trident.

  Sivon.

  Prince Poison.

  I hesitated. I almost reached for his scrolls, there were hundreds. But too much curiosity was dangerous, at least right now it was.

  Another time.

  I had to tell myself that just to find the strength to keep looking.

  And looking.

  And looking.

  It wasn't until my eyes started to ache and my brows were furrowed that I saw the name I was searching for.

  Phantom.

  With only three scrolls. Covered in dust. Stinking of age and neglect.

  I was certain Phantom had made more than one aniel. More than just Jasper. I would bet my life that he made Damianos.

  I snatched the scrolls faster than my heart was beating, and I wrestled them under my petticoat. Moments later I had too-old and dusty parchment tucked into my stockings, scratching at my skin. I suddenly had the urge to scrub myself clean in the tub.

  Just as I spun around and made to rush out of the worship room before my luck could run out, I saw it. Not a scroll, but something old and textured buried under layers of grey dust, hidden in one of Phantom's deceptively empty-looking cubes.

  A portrait.

  Suddenly, my heart stopped beating. It swelled instead, pushing against the weak bones of my ribcage.

  I couldn't breathe. Air was stolen from my lungs the way that courage was snatched from my shaking hands.

  As I reached out for the painting, all I could hear was the choppy sound of my breath in a silent room.

  My fingers pinched the corner of the painting. Thick parchment crinkled as I drew the painting out from the cube and brought it closer.

  The first thing I noticed was white light flickering over the paint strokes. I ran my thumb over the textured surface.

  My heart felt it before my eyes saw it.

  Familiar tanned hues, the shade of that sweet caramel pudding that Nalla sometimes brought me. The shade haunted my dreams in the best possible way.

  My breath was choked.

  Lately, I'd come to learn more about Phantom. To know more about him, his aniels. I was sure after my secret moments with Damianos that Phantom had made more than one aniel.

  Jasper had a brother. That was what I'd thought.

  I wasn't in anyway prepared for the face that stared up at me. This painting wasn't like the portraits in the main worship room. It didn’t move. Its eyes were dead stones looking up at me.

  Beautiful blue sapphires.

  Small scrapings of topaz.

  I stared down at the image of Phantom, feeling nothing beneath the numbness that swallowed me.

  Damianos was no aniel.

  He was a God.

  He was Phantom all along.

  My eyes burned with the beginnings of tears. I only noticed when two beads of tears hit the painting in my shaky hands and colour started to run.

  It hit me like a bag of stones. I was in more danger than I ever suspected. I was stuck between two enemy gods. Both of them pursued me, hunted me, with hidden motives. And I had one guess at what their motives circled around; my power.

  I was the only thing standing between an ancient pair at odds.

  In my short life, I survived more than I should have. I survived a lot.

  I doubted I would survive this.

  15

  With skripta scrolls stuffed under my petticoat, I stumbled into my bedchamber and quietly shut the window behind me.

  For a moment, I just leaned against the window sill and caught my breath. I wasn't exhausted from scaling the palace walls outside, six floors above safety.

  My body felt like it had run from one end of the isle to the other. But it wasn't my body that had been rinsed through. It was my mind, my heart, my essence.

  More lies.

  More deceits.

  More Gods.

  More than I can handle.

  The warmth of the air outside had dried up the last of my tears. Now, I was left with dry, itchy eyes and an aching heart.

  Why do I feel so betrayed?

  It wasn't as though Damianos was meaningful in my life
.

  It was never my friend, never pretended to be. Not my lover, not my anything.

  Before tonight, he was just a mysterious handsome man who made my heart flutter, and who stole seconds and kisses for me in the shadows of the night.

  He was exciting and dangerous, the two ingredients to the spell that unlocked me.

  Finally, I peeled myself away from the window and rubbed my hands over my face. The washtub called to me, not because I was dirty, but because I ached to wash away the knowledge I stumbled upon, as if I could somehow lather away the grains of hurt clinging to me.

  First, I had to find somewhere I could safely hide my things. The painting of Phantom’s true face. The phial of Prince Poison’s blood. And the scrolls I stole from the worship room.

  My dress suddenly felt like metal armour tightening, suffocating me. I started to rip at it. My fingers stiffened into claws as I tore at the tight bodice.

  Before I could get so much as an arm out of a sleeve, a tall silhouette rose from the chair beside the flickering hearth.

  I sucked in a breath.

  Silvery eyes gleamed fury at me, shrouded in the shadows.

  I froze.

  My skin prickled.

  The small hairs of my body stood upright.

  This is bad.

  This is really bad.

  The Prince stood in the dangerous, fiery light of the hearth’s flames.

  Like a bread-thief caught with crumbs on my face, I was cornered. I couldn’t move. Not even a foot off the floor. All that moved was my heart as it plummeted to the churning pit of my stomach.

  “So this is what you do in the middle of the night,” he said, his voice a dark growl of anger, ready to be unleashed. “I should have barred the window from the outside.”

  “Why are you here?” It was the only sentence I could string together in my whirling mind. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  The Prince studied me for a long, cold moment that chilled my bones. “I thought to visit you,” he said and shifted his gaze to the fresh sheets. “After you left the festival, I thought only of you asleep on your bed.”

  I got the unnerving feeling the Prince meant more than to just fuck me. He wanted to lay with me too, head on pillow, arms around me. Somehow, that was more terrifying than what I’d expected his feelings to be—purely primal.

  “Tell me, Valissa—” His darkening eyes turned on me, searing with hate. “—when you first arrived at Scocie, did you ever expect to make a fool out of a God?”

  His sigh was a dangerous sound that forced me to take a step back. Then, in a blink, the Prince was storming towards me.

  I threw up my hands before he could reach me. The Prince struck out to grab my neck but my crossed forearms shielded me.

  I snatched out at him, taking him by surprise.

  The crumpling look on his face lasted only a second before my hands were firmly latched onto his wrists and, with every bit of power within me, I drained.

  The Prince’s stunned look gave way to something cruel and wicked, as if I wasn't using my power against him to save myself, as if I wasn't stealing his essence.

  The Prince’s smile made my toes curl.

  A cry tore out from my throat.

  He shoved his whole weight against me, slamming me back into the window hard enough for the glass to shatter. Sharp flakes of glass rained down on us.

  I cringed and tried to turn away from the attacks surrounding me. I was thrown again—this time to the bed.

  I landed with a grunt. In a hurried heartbeat, I was flipped onto my back and the Prince's grip found my neck.

  He shoved me down into the mattress, his body following mine.

  Aligned, he smirked down at me but there was nothing friendly in his eyes. He, in that moment, was the embodiment of his name. He was pure poison.

  “That bracelet will only hold so much power at once,” he warned me. I was surprised at the rush of excitement that harshened his breaths. “Is it worth the secrets between us?”

  My face was turning purple. I could feel the blood trapped in my head, throbbing against my skin. Veins ready to burst.

  I choked back at him, “Secrets like who really attacked me?”

  I used his crack in confidence to my advantage.

  I grabbed his shoulders for leverage, then brought up my knee. The hit caught him right between the legs.

  The Prince didn’t even flinch. But his eyes darkened to pools of silvery souls.

  “The temptation to destroy you grows each day,” he growled icily. “Fight me until you have no more breath in you—it does not change that I can rip the life out of your mortal body before you can scream.” My grip tightened on his shoulders. He turned his head to the side and ghosted a deadly kiss over my knuckles. “Because of all that you are, you are not a God.”

  I bared my teeth at him and changed tactics. My hands smashed into his face, fingers gripping, and I stole as much of him as I could fit into me.

  Bruises blossomed all over me.

  So much poison.

  I wrestled every drop into the bracelet and fought to keep my grip on his face.

  Behind my hands, an icy sounding chuckle came before the Prince struck out at my arms. I was thrown onto my side by the sheer force, my face twisted in pain.

  “I haven't done this in a long while.” He sounded almost exhilarated beneath the fury lacing his voice. “As satisfying as it has been, isn't worth my time.”

  A whimper choked me as I clutched my right arm to my chest. The arm that took the brunt of his hit. The bone just below my elbow was on fire—splintered, I was sure of it.

  “And you are no match for me, my dear Valissa,” he whispered lovingly, his breath disturbing my hair. “Though I do admire your courage.”

  With that, he pulled back and stepped away from the bed. He called once for Felicks before the door swung open and in-stepped my guard.

  I rolled onto my back, breaths coming out in chopped gushes of wind, like a sea storm cutting through a window crack.

  I looked up at the Prince. All of his excitement had been engulfed by pure iciness. It was like staring into two icebergs that promised imminent death.

  Instead, the Prince straightened his coat and, looking down at me like I was little more than dirt on his shoe, he ordered, “Take her to the dungeons.”

  I gasped a strangled sound and scrambled to sit up.

  Glaring at the Prince, I saw no hint or crack of mercy. I was lucky not to be decapitated by his bare hands in that moment.

  Still, I just couldn't stop myself.

  “I despise you,” I spat at him. “You're not a God. You're a monster, more than I ever was or ever will be.”

  Those words had no effect on him. In a blink, he snatched my arm and yanked me off the bed with one swift pool. His strength was lazy, so lazy that if he'd only put a little more power into our fight, I would have been crumbled like dried leaves in an iron fist.

  Hand on the back of my neck, he locked me in place and whispered against my mouth, “Yet your heart sings for me and your body yearns for mine.”

  “Never,” I gritted out and tried to pull out of his solid hold. He might as well be a cage built from the strongest metal. All I could manage was squirming.

  Weak.

  Even at my strongest, I'm so weak.

  A dark smile lifted the corner of his mouth against mine. “You forget so quickly, Valissa. I have tasted your secrets.”

  His hands shot to my shoulders and before I could even scowl or sneer, he tossed me into the waiting arms of Felicks, like I was the weight of a pebble pifted into a lake.

  “Still,” he added, all smirks gone, “some time in the dungeons will serve us both. You will learn your place, and I will decide your fate.” He looked away. “Get her out of my sight.”

  Before I kill her.

  He didn't have to add the last words, I could read them so easily in the clenched fists at his sides, and the shuddering tension radiating off of him
that, after a beat, I knew to be his power. Power that begged to unleash on me.

  I shut my mouth and let Felicks steal me away from the bedchamber, away from the Prince.

  Tonight, I wouldn't die, but my future was not certain. And again, like nearly every time before it, I only had myself to blame.

  16

  Felicks wasn’t as rough as I expected. He nudged me over to the dewy stone corner in the dungeons. If Adrik had been the one to take me here, he would have thrown me down to the ground.

  I turned my back on the guard and looked around.

  A metal bucket was tucked beside a lump of damp, coarse blankets. Bars carried down the stone wall in lines, making doorless nooks.

  It wasn't until rusty metal bars shot up from the ground that I felt trapped. I flinched at the noise and, with a cry, staggered around to face Felicks.

  Now, bars separated us and I was finally caged in this cold, wet corner in the bowels of the palace.

  Felicks left without a word.

  Once the soft pad of his footfalls turned into a distant echo, a deep feeling of loneliness settled in my bones. If I thought I was isolated in my boudoir with only my lessons, the Prince, and Ava to break up my mundane weeks, I would be grateful to return to it, because just seconds into being cramped among these bars, I already felt alone. Really alone.

  Luckily, I had things to keep me company. A phial of blood tucked between my breasts and parchment scrolls stuffed into my stockings.

  Careful to avoid the smelly suspicious puddles on the slippery stone floor, I plodded over to the lump of blankets in the corner. Wearing a pinched look, I dropped onto the blanket pile and booted the bucket away from me. I knew what that was for and just the sight of it had be longing for my chamber pot already.

  Mind, the whole of the dungeons stunk of waste. I was probably no safer on the blankets than on the bucket.

  I shifted around to face the wall where moss was growing in patches, then made to fish out the phial from my bodice.

  I stilled at the sound of crinkling that came from under the blanket.

  Gingerly, I peeled back the corner of the blanket to reveal a folded piece of paper. Cleanest thing in the cell. So I knew it was a fresh letter—that, and my name was written in fresh ink across the blank side.