Gathering her skirts, she ran from the study and back to her room. She was within the last hundred pages of the final tome. She’d never sleep tonight anyway, not with the kind of adrenaline pumping through her.
The thrill of discovery, of at least fitting the pieces together, gave her energy. Turning down the corridor, she sped to her room and breathlessly shoved the door open the second her hand landed on the knob.
Jumping onto the center of the bed, she latched on to the book, trembling fingers practically tearing it open, and she began to read.
It was in the last fifty pages that she finally discovered the truth.
“In the year 9 BC, King Dionysis devised the games. A demone male is extraordinarily vulnerable in their first year of life, especially those born of royal parentage.” She flipped the page with fingers grown numb from cold. “It is only through the feeding of the mother’s soul to her kin that the male child will develop a sliver of soul and conscience. Demone are a warring and brooding race, but without souls, they would utterly destroy themselves. Legend states that King Dionysis’s own mother was brutally slaughtered before he reached the age of one. Knowing of his affliction early on, he believed that by inhaling the soul of a pure creature, he could attain that which was denied him.”
Her stomach ached, suddenly hurt as the awful, terrible truth of what she was reading made itself known. Swallowing hard, she looked up at the room which she’d grown to love. At the brilliantly painted clouds on the ceiling, the enormous bay window that let her stare into the heavens, the four-poster bed she’d dreamed of Rumpel taking her on night after night.
“This is why I’m here. Why you brought me here. Oh my gods…” Touching her cheek, she thought about every challenge, the warnings Dalia had given her over and over to lose.
But she was losing, right? That tiny sliver of hope was all she had. She’d not won one game yet. Not that she really understood what he was testing her on, but the baby had died, and her father had been cross, surely she’d failed. And if she failed she was not pure enough.
“Oh gods.” She began hyperventilating. But like watching a catastrophe unfold in front of her eyes—knowing she should look away, but unable to—she finished the book.
The book went on to highlight in great detail the king’s spiraling madness as none within demone was pure enough, why all believed in the end that that was the true reason why he called down war on the lands. To try to find his cure.
“…the sad fact is, there is no clear evidence of a soul being devoured curing our species. It’s not been done yet, and I, Atarxerxes the V, author of this great book of Delerium, do not believe in the tale’s veracity. Rumors abound of a cure in truth. A chalice buried deep in the heart of Boiling Mountain. It is said that a single drop of blood drank from the golden cup would cure the infection of the soul. But, as with all legends, the chalice of hope is steeped in half-truths and pure lies. I fear that should the king not find his soul, we are all doomed to the eternal pit.”
And that was how it ended. A horrible bedtime story if ever there was one.
Cold to her core, Shayera lay down on the bed and gazed up at the twinkling lights threaded all about, reminding her of fairy light.
Fat tears rolled unchecked from the corners of her eyes. He’d never out-and-out lied to her, but he might as well have. Because the pain of his betrayal was just the same.
“I was so stupid,” she sobbed. “So unbelievably stupid.”
In that room, a siren’s heart shattered.
Chapter Sixteen
Shayera never once turned to Rumpel as they headed toward the room where the final game was to begin. She’d not eaten this morning, hadn’t slept last night, had refused to allow Dalia to pretty her up.
She’d come out of her room with a sense of purpose. She would fail this test and she would go home and to hell with love.
A poisonous, terrible lie. Love was the fairy tale, not her.
Rumpel looked at her and his golden eyes were hooded. “Carrot, are you ready?”
I hate you. So much. I hate you so, so much. She thought the words, but they wouldn’t come. Nodding mutely, she let herself into the room, never looking back at him.
How he must be laughing at her. Mocking her in his cold, dark heart. Why had he left Delerium? He was no different than the rest of them. He was mercenary, cold, vile… she swallowed the ache in her throat and turned her face into her hands. She would not cry again, not anymore. She’d done it all last night, she’d shed her final tear for that man and she was through.
“Should I enter now, sir?”
Giles looked at Rumpel, but unlike every other time when he’d been sitting on his throne watching her, he was pacing, growling, staring at her, down at his feet, back and forth.
Back and forth.