Darkness and Beauty (The Fated Series, #1)

Chapter 24 - Fauna - A Sleepless Night

\ I wake with a start when a blanket is thrown over my head. Instantly moving, I toss the blanket off and stand, a dagger already in my hand. I didn't even hear anyone walk in.
The night chill kisses my body through the ungodly thin nightdress. I look around for the person who put the blanket over my face but find no one. There's no sign of anyone else being in here. No footprints on the carpet, nothing out of place, and two of the dozen are still outside the door...I begin to think that it's Lance pulling a typical prank of his when I notice that the blanket that fell on me is from the bed. I look at Darius and find him sprawled out across the huge mattress, his hair tossed like a salad and slicked with the sweat gleaming on his forehead and chest. By the looks of his extremely ruffled sheets and pillows now lying on the floor, I'd say he's a kicker.
He mumbles something, his hand twitching as if trying to shake something off. He's a talker too. Great.
I roll my eyes and move to lay back down and try to fall back asleep when Darius's breath catches.
Good Gods if he's going to do this every night, I'm never going to sleep-
His breathing turns wheezy and his head arches back revealing his neck. As I look closer, I realize that he's not dreaming but being choked. Cursing, I run to the side of the bed, pulling my balaclava that had fallen with all the shifting I've been doing in my own sleep back up. I hop onto the bed and put my hand over his neck to find the string around his neck, only there isn't one.
I try swinging my arm in the air over him but find no rope or string of any kind coming from above. So I lift his head and feel the sheets, but once again come up empty. Not knowing what else could choke him I open his mouth and try to see if a spider somehow crawled its way into his throat. It's happened to Lance, and let me tell you, it wasn't pretty.
Nothing.
I check his heartbeat, placing a finger to the inside of his neck, and my ear to his chest. It's racing. At least some part of this shit is normal. I go to call for The Dozen, but movement catches my eye. On the inside of Darius's wrist is some sort of faded symbol shaped like a flame. It's lines they...move like - like three snakes but they don't move up his wrist they just stay there over his pulse. I reach to touch it-
Darius's back arches and he gives out a long wheeze. Not knowing what else to do, I curse the Saints and grab a hold of his face.
"Darius. Darius, wake up," I whisper angrily. Ignoring the sound of Mal and Winston rushing in, I continue calling his name trying to get him to wake up.
"What that fuck is going on?" Mal practically runs into the side of the bed trying to get here so fast.
"I don't know."
"Fix it," Winston urges from the other side.
"If I don't know what it is, I can't fix it!"
What sounds like a growl cuts me off. We all go silent. It happens again and we look down at Darius at the same time.
"Is that...is that coming from him?"
I don't take my eyes off Darius as I honestly answer, "I don't know-"
Darius's fist catches me in the stomach by surprise and I know that if he keeps going, he's going to hurt himself. Out of ideas, I straddle Darius and use my body weight to keep him on his back. I snatch his wrists, and with all my strength, pin them beside his head to keep him from hitting anyone else or himself. He thrashes and pushes against my efforts, but doesn't gain much ground. Aside from his legs which are kicking and kneeing me in the back, I'd say I have it under control.
"Go!" Winston runs out to get the others, and Mal curses beautifully, still standing beside the bed like a useless stick. "Dammit, Mal would you stop praying and pin his legs." I cry.
He instantly moves to the end of the bed, grabbing Darius's shins and pinning them down. Without him trying to throw me off, I start calling his name again.
"Saints what did Thomas give him," Mal says, struggling to keep Darius's feet beneath him.
Ignoring the acquisition, I continue calling Darius's name, this time more frantically than the last. His wheezing turns to snarls and growls, and the more he thrashes, the harder it is for me to keep him pinned. Then, like the snap of a finger, Darius goes limp and his breathing returns to normal. Mal lets out a long sigh and I let my chin fall to my chest thanking the Gods that it is over. But still, neither of us let go of him.
Taking a steadying breath, I look at his face and wonder what in fucking ten hells he was dreaming about.
"Darius?" I whisper not wanting to scream in his ear and risk him jolting awake and hitting his head on mine. I did that once when Lance thought it'd be funny to try and scare me one night. Idiot. We had huge red bumps on our forehead for the entire day.
His eyes flash open and my breath catches. Gone are his sea-green eyes, replaced with one orange and the other silver. I hear several footsteps enter the room and Garrison's voice already questioning Mal and no doubt me on what happened, but I don't listen. I'm too focused on trying to come up with explanations as to his change of eye color overnight.
"What the fuck?" I ask myself.
Not realizing that my grip had loosened on his arms, Darius bursts upright, his arms going right for my exposed neck. I don't even have time to stop him as he flips me onto my back using his weight to keep me pinned and presses on my neck.
The Dozen move to pull him off, but I put my hand out to them and they stop. Agitating him more isn't going to help our situation. Not with this not being him. This isn't Darius, and if it's not him then he won't care for their lives. It won't end well for anyone, especially Darius if he ever comes back. I need them all alive, not killed by some murderous bitch who somehow got inside the Prince's mind. Not that that makes any sense either, but it's the best explanation I've got for my airway being pinched.
I look back into his creepy eyes and hold my hands out in surrender. "Darius." I wince at the pain in my windpipe but keep trying. "Darius, it's me. It's Clarice. Let go." I hear myself wheeze as I try gasping for breath and automatically hate the sound.
"Darius."
He is really starting to be a careless bitch. I slowly bring my hand towards his wrists, still not sure if he'll actually make me pass out or just break my windpipe. I've got seconds before the former shuts my mind off.
"Darius. Let go." I bring the palm of my hand to the outside of his wrist, and carefully wrap my fingers around it. I don't want to hurt him, but the less dangerous and easiest way for me to get out of this is to squeeze the pulse at his wrist, causing him to faint. Hopefully.
As my fingers begin to slowly press into the thumping artery, he blinks a few times and shakes his head once. When he opens his eyes again, I nearly cry at the sight of the beautiful quartz color. I will never admit to anyone just how much I missed them at this moment. Eyes restored and now fully awake, Darius looks down at me and his hand around my neck. His gorgeously green eyes go wide.
"Shit." His hands fly from my neck and I swallow a gust of air. Coughing and trying not to hurl, I feel at my throat checking for any possible injuries. Thankful to only find searing pain and a tight throat, I look back to Darius and find him horrified.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I don't know what happened."
"That was one hell of a nightmare," Mal says sitting on the edge of the bed. His eyes are wide too and he's leaning away from Darius as if still afraid that he'll lash out. He at least came out of this okay. I on the other hand will need to find a way to explain the bruises I'll likely have in the morning. I don't think being choked while in the Prince's bed will go over well. There are two possible ways for that to be interpreted, neither of which I approve of.
"I...I don't know what happened." He rubs the sides of his head as if he's got a headache. At least I'm not the only one.
Realizing that Darius is settled between my very bare and very open legs, I sit up pulling my legs away from him and letting them hang off the side of the bed.
Not a word, I glare at Amel who's giving me a sheepish grin.
"I don't know what happened," Darius repeats for the hundredth time.
"Look," I say, finding my voice hoarse and absolutely agonizing to use. "What happened was not your fault and none of us can try and explain what did happen even if we tried."
"But..." He drifts off, a shadow passing over his face. Whatever it is he's remembering from his nightmare isn't something of priority right now.
I wave him off and try to take a deep breath. It doesn't go very far. "Let's get some rest. We can talk about it tomorrow." Garrison looks at me like he wants to argue, but one looks to Darius and he nods at everyone to leave.
Mal gives Darius an encouraging tap on his shoulder, but by the look on his face, he knows it's not what Darius needs. Garrison doesn't even make it outside of the room before he starts stationing The Dozen out in the halls and inside the front room. He's the biggest mother hen I've ever met.
I follow Henry to the door, smacking him and Alister in the back of the head when they try and look down at my legs. Alister walks to where Garrison points him, but Henry stops just outside the door. "Do you think he'll be okay?" he whispers.
I look back at Darius who's still rubbing his head. "Would you be?"
Good Gods, I forgot how much being choked is a bitch afterward.
With one more glance at Darius, Henry closes the door leaving me with the psycho. Gods, it's been a while since I've been choked. And not in this way.
Sighing, - or more like wheezing - I walk back over to Darius and sit back down on the bed. I wait to see if he tells me what he remembered in his dream, but he doesn't. We sit there for a good five minutes, letting the events of the night sink in.
This is the weirdest shit assignment I've ever done. I haven't even been here a cycle, and let me tell you, these bad guys like to keep you on your toes.
"I'm sorry," Darius whispers. "I'd never try and hurt you."
"Oh please, we both know that's not true." He doesn't smile at my joke, doesn't even blink at it. Alright. "You should sleep."
He shakes his head. "Not tired."
"No. You just don't want to go to sleep because you're afraid that if you do, you'll end up right back here."
"With me suffocating you." The weariness in his voice has me biting my lip in concern. It's obvious this has never happened before, and everything's always worst the first time around. Actually, that's the second time. The first time just has more adrenaline and shock you can't control. The second time is worse because you never thought it'd happen again and makes you question how many more times it'll happen before it stops - or if it'll ever stop.
Sighing, I pick up the pillows off the ground and toss them back to the head of the bed. Darius doesn't move, barely blinking as I go around the room restoring it to order. Once I'm finished, I gently place my hand on his shoulder so as not to startle him. "Go to sleep. I'll keep an eye on you to make sure it doesn't happen again."
"And if it does?" He looks up at me and I feel my breath catch again, but not for the same reason as before. There's raw fear in his eyes. It isn't like the fear you see when they're about to die, but that of a five-year-old scared to pet a dog for the first time.
  The first time I recognized that fear for what it was, I was staring in the mirror after mom died. I was eight, and that fear - the one with a gentler caress but strikes twice as sharply as any other - it was embedded so deeply into me that my hands shook for the next two days, and it's been controlling me for the past ten and a half years. I hate seeing it in anyone, even him, annoying as he is.
I have to swallow the lump in my throat before responding. "Then I'll pull you out before it goes any further."
His eyes move side to side looking for any sign that I don't believe I can't do what I've promised - and I have promised to do so, I just didn't speak the two words aloud. After finding nothing there, he sighs and settles himself between the pillows and under the blanket he earlier blinded me with. Prick. Though I don't know how he wants a blanket on him at the moment. His hands felt like liquid fire on my throat.
Knowing that if I lay down I'll fall right into sleep, I turn to sit in the most uncomfortable looking chair in the corner of the room when Darius speaks. "Clarice?"
"Hm?" I murmur, turning back to him.
The look he gives me reminds me of an assignment I once had that involved saving a kidnapped child. He was six and had been missing for a month. No message, no note to his family saying he hated them and left. I tracked him all the way to the eastern coast and to a man who was looking to get a coin in exchange for a kid slave. I followed him, tortured him, scarred him, and then sent him on his way with nothing but his bloody shirt to cover him. The boy was kept in a tavern's storage below ground, left to drink the old ale and pee in a corner.
Our first night heading back home, I gave him the bed to sleep in and promised to watch over him while he slept. I had been sitting in the chair for only a few seconds when he asked me if I could sit in the bed with him instead. One look into his eyes and I saw the fear that the damn coward of a man had instilled in a child. I wish I had done the kid one better and gotten rid of the problem altogether, but the parents were Saint worshipers and frowned upon killing. They didn't like the idea of me cutting into him either, but they didn't need to know the details of that fact.
For all they know, I just gave him some strong words and took their kid back.
I trudged over to the bed and sat atop the blanket, waiting for him to fall asleep. He shifted closer to me so that he could rest his head on my thigh, and he fell asleep to the sound of my voice singing a lullaby while my hand brushed over his head.
Looking at Darius, I know that there's no way I'm allowing him to sleep in my lap so I can sing him to sleep and rub his head. Especially dressed in so little. But I know the comfort of having someone simply nearby to call on or just knowing they're there to make the shadows seem less animate and red-eyed. So I walk back to the bed, lazily sit with my back against the headrest, and wait for him to fall asleep. But his breathing never evens, and after fifteen minutes of sitting there trying not to let my tired body pull me beneath sleep before him, I look over at him only to find his eyes still wide open. They stare at the scars on my left leg, but I can tell he's not actually seeing them. His mind has pulled him somewhere far away from the castle.
I look at the scars myself. Two long jagged lines going across the outer edge of my thigh, and a little indent below them, a slightly lighter discoloration emitting from all three. Three scars saving my brother's ass got me, but, you know, he doesn't really see a problem with them.
Darius still hasn't closed his eyes and they're still too focused on something in the distance. I think my brain was deprived of oxygen for a little too long because I start talking to pull him out of it before I can think better of it.
"My brother calls them trophies - the scars." He doesn't respond or even move, but I keep going anyways. "We were on separate assignments at the time, but those we were hunting ended up on the same ship headed east to Linnaea. Kind of hard to board a ship wearing what we wear, so we had to sneak below deck and hide out there for a few days. We moved around the ship at night when there were fewer eyes to spot us and found out that the ship wasn't just a trade ship, but a slave ship. They didn't take many slaves and kept them in the hull, only a few dozen at a time.
"The man I followed was a smuggler who could get them into Linneae with forged papers. My brother's targets were rapists and thieves who were using the ship to get out of Vandaria before one of the noblemen from Lander could hire someone to hunt them down for raping his youngest daughter. The idiots made the mistake of stopping here in the capital. Didn't take long for my brother to find them. We could've killed everyone on that ship easily, but with the slaves down below we didn't want to risk doing anything without precaution. So we started from the hull and the men guarding the gates. Knocked them out, stole the keys, and let the slaves unchain themselves while we made our way through the lower level and then up the stairs, taking out those we could without killing them.
"We didn't save anyone who we had watched torment and sexually abuse the slaves. Them, we killed, but everyone else was temporarily disarmed until we could tie them up and leave them to be dealt with by the Linnaean court. It didn't take long to get most of the crew down while they slept, and everything was going to plan until we reached the deck. We planned for a fight and to have to kill without question to get the slaves free, but what we hadn't accounted for were the slaves taking up their own arms and bringing about chaos. A fire broke out, a few sails torn or burned, and canons untied to crush people as the sea bucked and bowed.
"I was trying to get to my brother who had gotten up to the bow of the ship when someone had set off a flame in the hull using the whole stash of ale the ship had been carrying. It set off a chain reaction. I remember the first hit and how it rattled the deck, then the second that had wood flying and people being thrown overboard. I remember hearing my brother scream for people to get back, and then the third explosion went off...right below his feet." I close my eyes, seeing the whole scene play out in front of me again.
"He was thrown from the ship along with two dozen others and the foremast which slowly fell. I saw his body go over the edge as the ship started to capsize. I knew that in a few seconds I wouldn't be able to get a footing, so I ran over to the side where a dinghy was still attached. I cut the ropes and jumped in. There weren't many survivors, and those who did ended up stacking themselves in the other longer boats. I didn't bother watching as the ship sank and searched for Arthur. When I did find him, he was unconscious and bleeding from his head. I assume a piece of debris hit him or the other way around, but whatever it was did enough damage to slice his skull.
"I rowed for a day before we came to Cressida's northern shore near a small village. We were lucky - or I was. Arthur was still unconscious. I left him in a small cove hidden behind a thick treeline to go into the village and try to find something to help him and get me some water. I ended up in a small temple, figuring that there was a lesser chance of someone hearing me enter their stores while they slept on the higher levels. I was right and easily found some healing supplies for him as well as some food and water to stuff into a basket. I planned for getting caught or running across a person, but I didn't plan on there being a dog patrolling the temple inside the small four foot wall. It chased me from the back kitchen door all the way to the wall. I would've gotten away without a scratch too if a rabbit, scared from the dog's barking, hadn't decided to hop across the damn lawn at that exact moment and trip me. I threw the basket over the wall and leaped to follow. My torso made it to the top, but the dog managed to get a hold of my leg. Three canines, both on top, one on the bottom. I tried to pull free but only managed to tear my own skin and muscle."
I drag two fingers down the scars, mimicking how the dog's teeth dug in. The pain was scorching and made me want to let go and fall to the ground, but my fingers dug into the brick, nails cracking as I kept my body on the wall and used my other leg to drive my heel into its eye. It let go with a yelp and I pulled myself up and over that wall. I did fall to the ground after that, bruising my side and spraining my wrist from the impact, but at least the dog didn't follow.
"After I got over the wall, I hopped back to my brother and patched us both up. The hit to his head was worse than I thought after I cleaned it. I found his skull had cracked and I knew he'd be better asleep than awake, so after taking a rather dangerous dose of a pain elixir, I made my way back into the village and had the first person I saw find a gifted healer. They came back an hour later. A point, at which, the elixir had worn off and I was bleeding out through the stitches I had torn walking there. The Healer fixed me up but I told her to leave the scars so I could rub it in my brother's face. She fixed him too, and I paid her a pretty penny to never mention the occurrence to anyone. Paid the man I had sent to retrieve her too.
"After he woke up we found our way back home and took a long, long nap. Now I just have the scars and the story, and my brother's stupid fixed skull."
My eyes open again after recalling how the two of us lied when we told our father that we had gotten out of the shipwreck unscathed. Not sure if he bought it, but he never brought it up after that. Part of me thinks that it was better he not know that Lance had nearly died from a blow to the head. I never told my brother, but the healer had said he would've died had I waited an hour or two longer or hadn't given him an elixir that slowed his bleeding, along with bandaging his head with an herb that helps blood clot. A trick I learned from my mother.
I figured neither of them needed that on their conscious and I can't say that I was wrong. Not when my brother's alive.
My skin prickles with goosebumps. A nod to how chilly it's gotten in here. I blame the scandalous gown. This might just be the last time I let Kat choose my sleepwear for winter. I wouldn't mind the gown during summer, but when the weather's turning and making the nights colder, a good thick layer that covers about ninety percent of my body would be nice.
I look down at Darius, envying him and his earlier decision to go beneath the blanket. He's still awake but his eyes are sharper. He's no longer lost in whatever wormhole his head fell into. I don't know if he'll sleep again tonight.
Eyes still not moving from the three scars, he asks in a quiet voice, "What about the one on the inner side of your arm?"
I blink. I wasn't sure he was listening, let alone had taken notice of the second scar placement. It's not really in an exposable place, though with Kat's lively dresses I don't suppose much is hidden anymore. But the arm one isn't one I'd think anyone would notice unless I hold up my arm, and I haven't, which begs the question of how he saw it.
"I uh...it's a reminder," I answer, pivoting my gaze to the closed doors and pinning them there.
"Of what?"
A broken mirror and a thousand shattered eyes flash across in my mind. "What happens when I hope."