Sweat trickles down my cheek. My head jerks again, scraping my neck raw.
The blue flames of the hearth burn in my peripheral vision, a chimney carrying the smoke out. Cold to look at, but I know they're hotter than hell itself.
My right side throbs, not just the phantom pain of my missing arm, but the ache of knowing that kid is getting punched now.
He screams, and I look back. Gene is halfway out of his chair again.
I shake my head. Don't.
He freezes and understands. He knows what would happen if I snapped. It would be a slaughter.
We'd all end up with our heads on spikes, and sure, I'd take a few of those blues with me.
But that's a small comfort. Walking, I look over the room like I'm back in the school cafeteria.
Back when everything used to be normal.
When I was walking Ren out of the aula, hand in hand. No one threatened us, no monsters in blue coats waiting to butcher us for sport. Now?
A couple of dozen men, at least half with whores on their laps, a quarter or less of them being of blue blood, the rest of my people, red burning through their veins, anger and fury, which has yet to leave their bodies.
More watch from the second deck, they are shadows leaning over the rail.
It would be a bloodbath. I think again, imagining who of them would die first, and how many I could take down before being penetrated by bullets.
I don't thank my cowardly legs. I hate them for obeying.
But they carry me anyway, all the way to the bar. The bartender is there. Next to him, an icy-looking woman behind the counter. She's filling a massive beer mug, watching me with open curiosity.
Her eyes dart to my empty sleeve. I feel my teeth grinding, and my head still twisting slightly to the side like I'm half-broken. But it isn't too obvious, otherwise she would look at my face and not my missing arm.
I exhale through flared nostrils, sounding like a man detoxing after days of drugs.
"One Avelorian scotch. Straw. Extra liquor." The words spill out before I even think them.
She freezes, her eyebrows knit.
"What?" She heard me. She knows she heard me. But she doesn't understand.
My heart stops beating, but my mouth keeps going.
"We forgot something important," I say. My voice sounds calm, almost polite. "Could I just take it with me again?"
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My eyes don't waver from her eyes until she licks her lips slowly.
As if the last bit of warmth has drained out of them.
"Fair enough," she says, turning her body away from me. Instinct drags me after her, my shoulder lurching like a fish over a stormy sea. Pain blooms through the stump where my arm should be, raw as a fresh wound, hammering in time with my frantic pulse. I want to stop, to clutch it and scream in agony, but I can't. My legs move without my permission, my body locked off from my own will, a vessel I barely inhabit. I am not myself. I sweat. I breathe. I walk. I am alive, but I feel more corpse than man.
There's the coppery tang of blood on my tongue, cloying and sweet like cheap candy, iron and sugar and memory. The burned flesh in the air makes me think absurdly of childhood grills with Ren in summer, the way we'd laugh even as flames roared and blackened the meat. My stomach clenches at that memory, its warmth now a mockery in this place.
I stand there in the darkened room, behind her, watching as she retreats and leaves me alone, no flame created by paper enlightening the room, unlike at the entrance of Aston. The only light is from scattered candles, wavering orange, casting grotesque shadows on cracked walls. Their flames shudder as if they fear the dark more than I do.
Somewhere beyond these walls, I hear the boy screaming. His voice is high and ragged, cracking with fear. But he isn't the only one. There are other voices—older, younger, male, female—wailing in overlapping misery like a choir of the damned.