Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (44 page)

“Sang-win,” I replied back. I took the papers from him and started looking at them. I was good at reading but they used complicated words that I didn’t know, and said confusing things I didn’t understand. I assumed if they were trying to rip me off I could kill them since I was a prince, so I signed the papers. Though admittedly I had to look at the card to see how to spell my own name properly.

“Sanguine…” Kass repeated. He cleared his throat and I heard his heartbeat speed up. “Um, does your family… know you’re here?”

“Are you allowed to ask these sorts of questions?” I asked plainly, and he flinched again.

“No…” he said and pointed to a place I had forgotten to sign. “Just… there too.”

He was quiet for a moment as I signed, but I realized quickly he was still squirming in his spot like he had to pee. I looked over at him as I handed the paper back and gave him a look.

“You’re a mess, why?” I asked. Did I really look that bad?

Kass’s blue eyes flickered up to mine, his pupils were small, little black specks lost in a sea of blue; I even saw hints of green. He wasn’t that bad-looking, though the streaks in his dyed hair were rather weird.

“Ah… Jan told me to ask you if the king was looking for you…” Kass said slowly. “He’s worried because we could… all be forced into Stadium if King Silas finds out we’re harbouring an escaped… an escaped chimera.”

I blinked as my brain processed this information. I didn’t think I would be putting anyone in danger. I just wanted a couple days by myself.

“If… if I don’t come down with an answer he’s threatened to fire me.” Kass’s voice was slow and cautious. “This… I, ah… do you… are you new here? I’m sorry, Master Sanguine, but you showing up here and buying an apartment is… strange. And it’s making the workers and Mr. Jan extremely nervous. You must understand… if you make King Silas mad, or Master Elish or the others… you die. Simple as that. You die.”

You die? I guess that was… understandable. The family had to keep the Skyfallers in line and if they were hiding something from the king that was grounds for treason or something. I felt badly for that but… King Silas liked me, if I asked him not to kill the workers he would.

“I am new here,” I said rather stiffly. “I am from the greywastes. I’ve only been here for a few months.”

Kass’s stricken face only got more apprehensive. “So… you don’t know how the family works do you?”

I shook my head. “No, I know how they work. You obey the king and the family or you die. I know how that works… but I’m in the family so you have to obey me, right?”

“Technically… but… Jan…”

“I’ll be gone in a few days… I’m not here permanently,” I said with a shrug. “I just needed a couple more days… then I want to go back and apologize to King Silas. So you can tell Jan that.”

But this seemed to make Kass pale even more. “A-apologize?”

My mouth twisted to the side, but I decided to exercise my authority and not tell him what I had done. Instead I had a better idea, something that made my insides quiver.

“I have an order for you…” I said, testing the waters on my authority when it came to the Skyfallers.

Kass looked at me, but I couldn’t read his expression well. “Order?”

I nodded slowly. Since I had hurt King Silas and had fled from Alegria, I decided maybe I should do something nice for Silas once I came back. Not just because I was worried he would be angry, even if he said he wasn’t before, but because I wanted to make him happy.

“I want to look good…” I said. “Can you help me look good?”

I wasn’t expecting a big grin but that’s exactly what I got.

Kass looked me up and down with a beaming face, before he tapped his chin with his finger. “I can make you look good… I can make you look
very
good. What do you want? Hair? Clothes? Soap? You need soap, lots of soap, that’s for sure.”

I nodded and slid my black card over to him. Kass stared at it like I had just handed him the chalice of life.

“Buy what you think I will need… but if there is any odd charges…” I gave him a look and at that look Kass chuckled dryly.

“You think I would steal from a chimera? One day, when you’re all established and killing random Skyfallers like the others, you’ll realize how stupid it is to even think I’d do that.” He took the black card and started running his fingers over it. “They’ll think I’m stealing from you though… you might want to come with me.”

My head couldn’t shake back and forth any faster. “No, no, I’m not going outside. Just tell them you’re my sengil, I’m sure it will be fine.”

Kass didn’t seem to be happy about this but that was too bad. No way I was going to go out in broad daylight with lots of people around, least of all talking to the store clerks, and having all of them flipping out because of my eyes and teeth. And further more they would know right away I was a chimera and that might leak back to Silas. I didn’t want to see him yet.

I didn’t know how he was now. I assumed since he was immortal he would have some process they went through to heal his face. Though I never learned how that worked obviously. Nan and Gill had just known King Silas and some of the chimeras were immortal and could heal themselves somehow.

“What are your measurements, do you know?” Kass asked. He reached over and pulled on my t-shirt and glanced at the tag. “Small… well, I guess that’s obvious. I’ll get you some nice clothes that should fit. Do you have a style? You kinda seem more like… rock star, gothic, punk.”

I stared, I didn’t know what any of those words meant and I think Kass realized that because everything else he just wrote on the back of the folder he had kept the deeds in.

“Want me to get you some food too?” Kass asked after he had stood up to leave. “You look like you’ve missed about fifteen hundred meals.”

“Sure,” I said. “I like meatball subs and I like cheesecake.”

“Who doesn’t?” Kass said and slipped his shoes back on. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” And with that my new delivery boy left the apartment.

I locked the door behind him, and walked into my bathroom, my very pink bathroom. I looked at the tub and sighed.

Admittedly, I spent about fifteen minutes just staring at the tub, trying to find this bravery that seemed to be coming in spurts. I haven’t had a bath in years and even then it was in a river. Never in my life had I had one with hot water.

I turned on the tap and ran my finger under the water. Then I picked up one of the bottles of soap that was resting on a white wire rack that hung from the showerhead and smelled it.

Then I drank some, but spat that out into the collecting bath water. It smelled like fruit and perfume but it tasted just as bad as those plant leaves I had eaten.

Eventually I figured out how to plug the drain so the water would stop draining out and after squeezing a little bit of everything into the tub I got in and sat down.

So there I sat in my hot, bubbly water. I sighed and breathed in the fragrant steam and tried to relax. No one was going to find me here, no one was going to hurt me here – I just kept having to remind myself of that.

I held up my hands, my fingernails chewed short and my skin rough and covered in scars and cuts. Then I lifted up my leg and saw that that was even worse, though I got a glimpse at my groin and immediately lowered it. Even seeing it made me nervous, so I got out of the tub and grabbed my underwear.

“Okay… scrubbing time,” I sighed and picked up a scrubby, rough mit-thingy and started getting to work on my body. I had to get this done before Kass knocked on my door because I knew if he did, Crow would flip out and he had been acting like a huge asshole lately.

After trying to scrub off the layers and layers of dirt, I took a break and soaked in the hot water, just to loosen up the other grime. Then, with lots of scraping and scrubbing and more soap, I got the important parts of me clean, or as clean as I could get them. I decided to leave my hair for Kass, since I had no idea how to do that and I didn’t even want to try.

When I was done I drained the tub and put on a robe coat thing that was fluffy and also pink. Then I laid down on the bed and took another nap. I liked naps, a lot.

I woke up in the worst possible way, to banging on my door. I jumped to my feet; my entire body tensed as if anticipating the world ending again, and tightly did up my bathrobe. I debated getting my clothes but the robe actually covered more of me than my shoddy nightclothes had.

I walked to the door with a yawn, eagerly looking forward to finding out just what Kass had bought for me. It was like having my first Christmas in a way. I was going to have lots of little presents to open.

Though when I opened the door… it wasn’t who I expected at all.

Nero stared down at me, his indigo eyes burrowing into me with such an unimpressed look it made my head drop in embarrassment and shame. Though as I took a step back and mumbled and apology I realized he had Kass by the neck, standing just off of the doorway.

“You should be sorry!” Nero suddenly said loudly, though when I flinched he lowered his voice. “Kingy’s been having kittens over this, and then I get an emergency call from fucking Peterson saying some asshole is in Skyland hitting five shops in an hour using Sanguine Dekker’s new black card? After he’s been gone for five days? Do you have any fucking idea how worried I was that some dude had slit your fucking throat?”

Nero stalked into the apartment. Kass stumbling behind him, rubbing the nape of his neck. I took another step back until my back hit the corner of the fridge.

“I just…” I stammered, but Nero whirled around and gave me a hard look.

“What? You just what, Sangy? Where’s your fucking logic? You run away, make it three whole fucking blocks, and decide it would be a fine idea to buy a fucking two hundred thousand dollar condo? You knew we would know where to find you. You suck at running away, fucking dumbshit,” Nero snapped.

I stared at the floor before walking towards my bedroom.

“Don’t you even hide under that fucking bed! I’m not done being pissed at you!” Nero called angrily.

I ducked into my room but I was horrified when I realized the bed I had been sleeping on had no under-the-bed, only wooden drawers attached to the bed frame.

Quickly I turned around to go back out into the living room, but Nero was already in the doorway, still looking angry.

Nero glanced behind him. “You can piss off. You got off easy this time.”

Soon after there was a slam of the door and all attention was on me again.

“Why, Sanguine?” Nero asked coldly.

My eyes travelled around the room, looking for any place I could hide myself, any dark corner, but I was out and exposed. This didn’t sit well with me or Crow, but I knew since it was just Nero – I was on my own.

I shrugged and shook my head, before sitting on the bed.

“Why did you leave?” Nero asked again. “And why did you hurt Silas? I know you don’t fucking know how he usually is, but he is being unworldly and uncharacteristically kind to you. Why the fuck would you take advantage of that? You don’t know how good you have it, do you?”

My face burned. I could feel the humiliation and shame smouldering under my skin. It was searing me so badly I was surprised smoke wasn’t seeping out of my pores.

“I can’t… tell you…” I said slowly, wiping my nose though it was more from stress than anything.

Nero paused but I didn’t look up. I just stared at my bare feet, now clean and pale.

When he spoke, his voice had gone softer. “Tell me what? There’s something to tell?” He was quiet again. “We’re friends and brothers – you can tell me anything.”

Slowly I looked up at him. Nero’s arms were still crossed but he looked a little less pissed at me now. There was still trust left in me to trust Nero… I think out of everyone in my life he was the most worthy of being trusted. I wasn’t sure if that was smart but… I didn’t want him to be angry at me, or at least angry at me for the wrong reasons.

“He kissed me and I didn’t like that I liked it,” I said quietly.

Nero gave me a look of pure confusion, before he narrowed his eyes and spread out his hands. “That’s it? No asterisk at the end where he tries to savagely rape you or something? That’s it?”

Rape me?
I choked on the shape intake of breath and closed my robe around me tighter. My heart raced at even the mention of something like that. Automatically I tried to pull my robe even tighter around me, but it was stretched to the point where I was worried it was going to rip. Instead I grabbed a pillow and held it on my lap and clutched it for dear life.

“Oh no…” Nero moaned and he swore. I glanced up to see him wiping a hand down his face. “Silas tried to get with you, didn’t he? You fried his face and took off… I get it. You’ve been raped before, haven’t you? Well that makes…”

Suddenly Nero stopped and I saw the exact moment he remembered just how long I had been in Jasper’s basement.

“Don’t tell anyone…” I said in a cracked voice. My own terror over Nero realizing who Jasper was had sucked all of the liquid from my mouth and throat. “Please.”

Nero’s lips disappeared into his mouth.

“I think the entire family… except Elish… is in denial about it… about why Jasper had you three in there,” Nero said. He walked over and sat beside me on the bed. “Silas is really really in denial about it and I’m worried about how much he’s going to fly off the handle when he finally accepts it.” I felt him put an arm around me before he pulled me close to him. “So he wanted to get with you and you just kinda lost it?”