Chapter 431: et your maker 1
FIA
My eyes opened.
The ceiling above
was stone. Rough and gray, the sa kind I’d seen in the cell where Athena and I had spoken. Except this was real. This was solid and cold, and it pressed down on
with the weight of centuries.
I tried to move and couldn’t.
My wrists were bound to sothing tal. The surface beneath
was hard and freezing, and when I turned my head slightly, I saw restraints wrapped around my arms, my torso, my legs. All of it anchored to what looked like an examination table.
The kind you’d see in a morgue.
Pain radiated through my skull in waves. My nose throbbed with every heartbeat, sending fresh agony across my face. Blood had dried there, cracked and tight against my skin. My ribs ached when I breathed. My hip scread in protest at even the smallest shift of weight.
Everything hurt.
But I was awake.
"Can you give
so drugs first?"
The voice ca from sowhere to my left. Young. Female. Strained in a way that suggested she was barely holding herself together.
I knew that voice.
The girl who had beaten
unconscious. The one who’d covered my face with that rug and brought her fists down again and again until there was nothing left of
except darkness.
"I overused myself."
I turned my head as much as the restraints would allow.
She stood near a counter covered in dical equipnt. Vials and syringes, monitoring devices with screens that glowed a sickly green. Her hand rested against the edge of the counter as if she needed it to stay upright. Even from here, I could see her trembling.
Then I saw her other hand.
Bark-like lesions crawled up from her wrist, spreading across her palm and fingers in patterns that looked wrong. Organic but alien. The skin there had gone dark and rough, cracked in places like dried wood splitting under pressure.
She was ’rotting’. It looked similar to the ones mother suffered from.
"Give
a mont."
That second voice stopped my heart.
Valentine Blossom stepped into view. He moved with the kind of casual confidence that belonged to soone who’d never once doubted their place in the world. Tall and lean, with his salt and pepper hair pulled back from a face that would have been regarded as objectively handso if not for the emptiness behind his eyes.
He wore a lab coat over dark clothes. The coat was pristine. White and pressed, like he’d just put it on for this occasion.
"I just need to take so blood work, and we will get back to you, Number Four."
Number Four.
The na landed like a punch to the stomach. Number Four. Not a person. Not soone with a real na or a life or dreams that extended beyond whatever purpose Valentine had assigned her.
Just a number.
The girl who’d beaten
into unconsciousness, who’d used strange alien powers like they were second nature, who’d looked at
with that empty expression while I begged her to stop. She was an experint. Another victim of whatever sick process Valentine had perfected over the decades.
She looked at
then.
Her eyes went wide, and she stumbled back a step from the counter. The bark lesions on her hand seed to pulse, spreading further up her wrist.
"She’s awake."
Panic colored her voice. Real fear. She certainly did not expect or want
to be awake.
Valentine glanced at . His expression didn’t change. If anything, he looked pleased.
"Do not worry about it." He picked up a syringe from the counter and checked it against the light. "She is restrained and still badly injured. Not to ntion that she is not healing."
He said it like it was an observation. Clinical and scarily detached. Like I was a specin in a jar rather than a person strapped to his table.
I tested the restraints.
They held firm. tal bit into my wrists and ankles, unforgiving. Whatever material they’d used, it was designed to withstand far more force than a broken, bleeding Oga werewolf could generate.
"What is the end goal here, Valentine?"
The question ca out rougher than I’d intended. My throat was raw, probably from screaming or maybe just from the beating. Everything felt damaged, like my body had been taken apart and put back together wrong.
He turned to face
fully.
Then he smiled.
The expression made my skin crawl. It held warmth, genuine pleasure, like he was looking at sothing precious that he’d finally managed to acquire after years of searching.
"What do you know about your history?"
I stared at him.
The audacity of that question. The sheer fucking arrogance of it, coming from the man who’d tortured my grandmother to death in cells just like this one. Who’d experinted on my mother before she’d even been born. Who’d spent decades destroying lives in pursuit of whatever twisted vision lived in his head.
"I will not dignify your madness with a response."
My voice ca out flat. Final. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of pretending this was so kind of intellectual exchange between equals.
"I know my history, and I know your end."
Valentine’s smile widened.
"Cocky." He set the syringe down and moved closer to the table. To . "But I like you. You deserve to be cocky. Given what you are. What I made you."
The words hit
like a slap.
Heat flooded through my chest. Pure rage, the kind Athena had told
to hold onto like a lifeline. The kind that would keep
alive when everything else failed.
"You did not make ."
I let the laughter co then. Wild and bitter and edged with sothing that might have been hysteria if I’d let it go any further.
"You cannot truly believe that? The nerve to believe you made ? You think yourself a god?"
Valentine reached the edge of the table. He looked down at
with that sa pleasant expression, like we were having a conversation over tea rather than him preparing to take my blood while I lay restrained and broken.
"I think of myself as a creator, actually."
His hand moved to adjust one of the restraints. Not tightening it. Just checking. Making sure everything was in place exactly as it should be.
"The healers did not need to die out because of a few werewolves’ madness. Your goddess, of course, will not see reason. But we do not need to convince her of reason."
He spoke with the certainty of soone who’d repeated these words to himself so many tis they’d beco truth.
"The supernatural are allowed to be ingenious."
I felt the restraint give slightly under his touch, then settle back into place. Locked, secure, and keeping
exactly where he wanted .
"I made your grandmother and made your mother."
Valentine’s gaze t mine. There was sothing almost gentle in his expression. Almost fatherly.
"You might not know the story. But in doing so, I made you too."
The rage inside
crystallized into sothing sharp and focused.
I laughed again.
This ti, the sound ca out clear. Fierce. With all the contempt I could pour into it.
"I beg to fucking differ."
I pulled against the restraints hard enough to make the tal creak. Pain shot through my wrists where the edges bit in, but I didn’t care. I wanted him to see that I wasn’t afraid. That whatever he thought he’d created, it wasn’t submission.
"I know the story, and it is nothing like you are peddling. You fucked up the life of my grandmother and my mother, too."
Movent caught my attention.
Number Four had staggered away from the counter. She clutched her hand to her chest, and when I looked closer, I saw the bark lesions had spread. They covered her entire hand now, creeping up past her wrist toward her forearm. The skin there looked dead. Petrified.
She winced as another section of flesh hardened into sothing that resembled tree bark more than human tissue.
"Look at that."
I turned my attention back to Valentine, gesturing toward the girl with my eyes since my hands were useless.
"Even another of your experints is facing withdrawals."
The girl made a small sound. Sothing between a whimper and a gasp.
Valentine glanced at her, then back at .
"All specins cannot be perfect."
He said it without emotion. Like he was discussing a batch of failed prototypes rather than a living person who was rotting from the inside out right in front of him.
"But look at you, Fia."
His attention was fixed on
completely now. There was intent there. Focused in a way that made my stomach turn.
"You use your gifts and do not face backlash. Sure, your powers are limited. But I guess you got that from your mother. It was similar to your grandmother."
He picked up the syringe again and moved toward the table with asured steps.
"So you should still suffer from rot. But you do not."
The pieces started connecting in my head. The reason he’d sent Number Four after . The reason I was here on this table instead of dead in that dining room.
"You will be the key to understanding why."
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