Chapter 10 Bite

"You believe your own lie," he said softly, staring down at me. "Because the truth is too big for your mind to hold. It is a defense mechanism. Shatter the reality to save the sanity."

He reached out.

I flinched, squeezing my eyes shut, expecting a blow.

He didn't hit me. He took my hand.

His skin was fever-hot . He lifted my hand, the one I had sliced on the dungeon door just minutes ago.

He held it up to the firelight.

"Look," he commanded.

I opened my eyes.

My palm was smooth.

"No stitches," Ignatius whispered. "No scars. No trickery. You sliced your hand open on a rusted hinge, Victoria. Vasilis saw the blood. The guards smelled it. And now... it is gone."

He ran his thumb over my palm. The sensation sent a jolt of electricity straight up my arm.

"What drug does that?" he asked. "What contact lens knits flesh in seconds?"

I stared at my hand. My breath hitched, panic rising in my throat like bile. "I... I don't know."

"You do not know," he agreed. "And neither do we. That is the problem."

He dropped my hand. His face hardened, the amusement vanishing.

"Who sent you?"

The question was a lash.

"What?"

"Who sent you?" he roared. The fire in the grate flared up, responding to his anger. Shadows leaped up the walls. "The Iron Coven? The Southern Resistance? Who engineered you?"

"No one!" I cried, backing away until I hit the edge of the table. "I told you! I was walking home! A man chased me! I ran into the tunnel!"

"A human walked through the Veil by accident?" Isidore scoffed from the table. "Impossible. The wards would have incinerated her. Unless she had a Key."

"Check her," Orson suggested, spinning his dagger. "Strip her down. Maybe she has a rune tattooed somewhere. Or maybe she swallowed it." He licked his lips, his eyes dropping to my stomach. "I can cut it out."

"No one is cutting her," Vasilis said from the shadows. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the room like a blade. "Look at her eyes. She is terrified. She is ignorant. If she is a spy, she is the greatest actor in history."

Ignatius stared at me. He was dissecting me with his gaze—peeling back the layers of my panic, searching for the rot.

"You say you ran from a man," Ignatius said. "What man?"

"They call him the Butcher," I whispered. "He... he had a knife. He cut me."

Ignatius’s gaze dropped to my arm. The sleeve of the gray wool dress I had found in the tower was pushed up, revealing... nothing. Just pale skin.

"He cut you," Ignatius said flatly. "And yet, you are whole."

"He said I smelled different," I babbled, the words spilling out. "He said I smelled like sugar. He licked the knife. And then... then he stopped moving. Like he was paralyzed."

The four men went still.

Ignatius exchanged a look with Vasilis.

"Paralyzed," Ignatius repeated.

"Yes. He just... froze. That's how I got away."

Ignatius turned away from me. He walked back to the fire, resting his arm on the mantle. He stared into the flames for a long moment.

"The blood is a narcotic," he murmured. "A paralytic to humans. A stimulant to us."

"A super-stimulant," Orson corrected, hopping off his chair. He walked toward me, circling like a shark. "You smelled it in the dungeon, didn't you, Vasilis? It drove the ferals mad. It didn't just make them hungry. It made them high."

Orson stopped behind me. He leaned in, sniffing my hair.

"She's a drug," he whispered in my ear. "A walking, talking, breathing hit of pure ecstasy."

I spun around, shoving him away. "Get away from me!"

Orson laughed, dancing back. "Feisty. I like it."

"Enough," Ignatius commanded.

He turned back to face us. His expression was resolved. Cold.

"We have a problem," he stated. "We have a human who is not human. A breach in the Veil. And a blood source that is potent enough to destabilize the entire Court if the Houses get wind of it."

He looked at me.

"You think we are a cult, Victoria?" he asked softly. "You think this is a game?"

"Yes," I lied. My voice shook.

"Then let me show you the truth."

He walked toward me again. This time, he didn't stop. He invaded my space, pressing me back against the hard stone edge of the table.

He placed his hands on the table on either side of me, trapping me in a cage of his arms. He leaned down. His face was inches from mine.

"Open your mouth," he ordered.

"No."

He didn't force me. He just smiled.

And then his face changed.

The skin around his eyes darkened, veins turning black and spiderwebbing across his temples. His eyes... they didn't just glow. They burned. The red iris expanded, consuming the white, until his eyes were pools of liquid fire.

And his teeth.

I watched, paralyzed with horror, as his canines lengthened. They slid down from his gums with a soft sound, sharp, curved, and gleaming white.

"Do these look like prosthetics?" he whispered. His voice had changed too—deeper, layered with a growl that vibrated in my bones.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't blink.

He was a monster. A real, living monster.

"You... you're real," I wheezed.

"We are the only thing that is real," he said. "Your world? Ashwick? That is the dream. A little bubble of ignorance we allow to exist because it feeds us."

He leaned closer. His fangs brushed the skin of my cheek. I flinched, a tear leaking out.

"Please," I whispered. "Don't eat me."

He paused. He pulled back slightly, looking at the tear tracking down my face.

He reached out with his tongue and licked it off my skin.

The sensation was rough, wet, and intimate. I shuddered.

He looked at the other men.