Chapter 85 Obey
"I gave strict orders," a voice rasped from the far corner of the room. It was Klaus, but his tone was a hollow, jagged ruin of its usual commanding self. "No one enters."
I forced my legs to move. My eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, picking out the shape of him. He was sitting on the edge of a massive, unmade bed, hunched forward with his elbows resting on his knees. He wasn't wearing his heavy Admiral’s coat. He was stripped down to a thin, white linen shirt, and even in the dim light spilling from the single, dying ember in the hearth, I could see dark, wet stains blooming across the fabric.
"It's me," I said.
My voice trembled, betraying the absolute storm of fury and devastation warring in my chest.
Klaus’s head snapped up. Even in the shadows, I could feel the sudden, rigid tension seizing his massive frame. He pushed himself off the bed, stumbling slightly before finding his footing. He turned his back to me, his broad shoulders rising and falling with labored, uneven breaths.
"Get out, Nerissa," he ordered. He tried to infuse the words with his usual cold authority, but the tremor beneath the syllables ruined the illusion.
"No." I stepped further into the room, my charcoal silk skirts rustling against the stone.
"I am not in the mood for your defiance," he bit out, gripping the thick wooden bedpost so hard the timber groaned under his fingers. "Return to the West Tower. Now."
"I was in your study," I said.
The words hung in the freezing air, sharp and heavy as an executioner’s blade.
Klaus went entirely still. The ragged sound of his breathing stopped. He didn't turn around, but I saw his spine lock, the muscles in his back pulling taut beneath the ruined linen.
"I found the drawer," I continued, closing the distance between us until I was standing only a few feet behind him. The smell of the rot was overwhelming here, burning my nostrils. "I found the journals. All three hundred years of them. And I found the translation."
"You had no right to touch my things," he whispered. It wasn't an accusation. It sounded like a surrender.
"You had no right to lie to me!" I screamed, the sound tearing out of my throat, raw and agonizing. I grabbed his shoulder, my fingers digging into the hard muscle, and forced him to turn around.
He didn't fight me. He let me turn him, but he kept his eyes fixed on the floor, refusing to look at me. His skin was the color of old ash, completely drained of the pale, ivory vitality he usually possessed. His silver hair clung to his forehead in damp, sweat-soaked strands.
"Look at me," I demanded, my voice breaking. I hit his chest with the flat of my hand. "Look at me!"
He flinched violently at the impact, a sharp hiss of pain escaping his clenched teeth. His hand flew to his chest, covering the spot I had just struck.
The anger in my blood faltered, immediately replaced by a horrifying, icy dread. I looked down at his shirt. The dark stains weren't sweat. They were a thick, viscous black fluid seeping through the linen, spreading outward from the left side of his chest. Right over his heart.
"Take it off," I whispered, my mouth going dry.
"Nerissa, please," he rasped, finally lifting his head. His sapphire eyes were bloodshot, surrounded by deep, bruised shadows. The vibrant blue was clouded, drowning in a murky, grey haze. He looked like a man standing on the edge of an open grave. "Just leave. Go back to your room and hate me. It is easier that way."
"I said take it off!"
I didn't wait for him to obey. My hands were shaking violently as I reached for the collar of his shirt. He caught my wrists, his grip weak, his fingers trembling against my skin. His hands were freezing, but the heat radiating from his chest was feverish, burning like a furnace.
"Don't do this," he begged, his voice cracking. "Don't look at it."
"Let go of me, Klaus," I sobbed, tears finally spilling hot and fast down my cheeks. "Let me see what my family did to you. Let me see what I am doing to you."
His grip on my wrists loosened. His hands fell away, dropping heavily to his sides. He closed his eyes, a look of profound, agonizing defeat washing over his sharp features.
I grabbed the torn edges of his linen shirt and pulled. The fabric gave way easily, ripping down the center and falling open to expose his chest.
A sharp, terrified gasp punched its way out of my mouth. I stumbled backward, my hands flying to cover my lips.
It was worse than the translation had described. Much worse.
Over his left pectoral, right where his dead, immortal heart sat motionless, the skin was completely necrotic. It was a localized epicenter of pure, concentrated rot. From that dark, bruised core, a horrifying network of thick, pitch-black veins spiderwebbed outward. They crawled up his collarbone, snaked down his ribbed torso, and wrapped around his sides like climbing vines made of ink and poison.
The veins pulsed.
They weren't pumping blood. They were pumping the exhaust of my magic. They throbbed with a slow, sickly rhythm, carrying the heavy, toxic sludge I had produced every time I sang a note, every time I cleared the water, every time I used my voice to force the Emperor's court into submission.
"Gods," I choked out, unable to tear my eyes away from the spreading darkness. "Oh, gods."
"The curse requires a dead heart to act as a sponge," Klaus said quietly. He didn't try to cover himself. He stood bare in the freezing room, letting me witness the grotesque reality of his existence. "Queen Ligeia was thorough. She made sure the anchor would draw the rot directly from the source of the magic. Every time a royal Siren hums, the ocean stays clean, and my chest fills with the ash."
I looked up at his face, my vision blurred by tears. "Why didn't you tell me? When I was in the tower, when I was singing to the guards, when I hummed to clear my own lungs... why didn't you stop me?"
"Because you were dying," he whispered, stepping toward me. The floorboards groaned beneath his weight. "When the Blight hit the surface, you were choking on it. If I had stopped you from using your voice, the rot would have settled in your own lungs. You would have turned to ink in a matter of days."
"So you let it kill you instead?" I cried, my voice echoing off the stone walls. "You let me use you as a waste-pit? I hated you! I looked at you and called you a monster while I was literally injecting poison into your veins!"