Wildblood

Chapter 45

45

When Kai reached the southeast corner of the estate, a pair of oak doors greeted him. Knobs of antique brass waited to be twisted, to unlatch and give way to a fated encounter. Suddenly, Kai didn’t feel much like a calamity. Was he being selfish? Going rogue and placing his whims ahead of others? He’d come here without anyone’s input, claimed it was the fastest, cleanest road to a solution—one he’d pave himself.

Hyper-independence. That pesky word Kruni? used to describe his survival mechanism.

His qualm wasn’t with killing. It was killing without Miya’s sanction. He’d spent years pretending her opinion came second—that he did what he had to. Why did he act like she’d stop him? If he thought his actions were justified, why didn’t he share his convictions with her?

Kai realized, achingly, that he didn’t know which of his actions were warranted and which were wanton. He stonewalled Miya not to protect her, but to protect himself.

How pathetic, to learn that all this time, he’d simply been scared.

A wet rustle snapped Kai from his thoughts. Something moved behind the door, blotting out the faint light from the other side. A slither, followed by a creak. The point of a sinewy cord pushed through the razor-thin crack between the doors, a writhing thing that tapered to a mere sliver.

“What the fuck?—”

The wood groaned and chittered as vines sprouted from every crevice. Rotten flowers the color of blood—the same ones that’d colonized the King of Spades—bloomed along dark green veins that glided along the doors like a skein of vipers. Before Kai could make sense of it, pain sparked in his skull, mincing his senses. His hand flew to pinch the bridge of his nose, and as he folded, his vision grayed. He knew this agony—the familiar twinge of a forced transition.

Kai shambled back, disoriented. He needed to leave—to get out before he lost control, before his grip on his surroundings slipped.

Then, as quickly as it began, the stabbing in his head stopped. When he glanced up, the flowers and their Medusan stems were gone.

He burst through the doors, but the room was cold and cloaked in darkness. Shelves upon shelves of untouched books, an imposing desk, and an armchair fit for a titan, but no Pyotr, no anything. Only the faint smell of rotting wood.

It was too quiet, the stillness an eerie warning of something amiss, like a forest without birds. What’d changed? He’d been too scrambled from the momentary onslaught to notice the shift in his environment. Kai circled back to the nook under the stairwell but found no trace of Alina. Her phone lay abandoned on the bench, winking to life with unanswered messages. Kai picked up the device and read the text that flashed onto the screen.

Are you coming over or what?

The frustrated finale to a chorus of pending questions. Alina, it seemed, never got the chance to reply.