deaths hand reintroduction: valeska jelínková
There was still a disconnect between what Valeska had heard and what she could understand and part of her, a stupid, wishful part of her hoped that it was false. That she’d misheard or misunderstood and that the man in front of her was still someone good. “I know,” she said, voice cold and detached.
“Know what? Really, you brought me all the way down here just to be cryptic?”
“No, Jakub, I know.” She forced herself to look at him, to not shy away. “I know what you did. To my home, to my family. I know everything.”
He froze and fear flashed across his face. Only for a moment, though, before it was replaced by his calculated calm.
Jakub took a step forward, reached a hand forward to touch her arm. In the firelight he was like a different person. He wasn’t the clean cut soldier or the respectable prince, he was something unhinged. The light brought out the red in his hair, the amber of his eyes, it illuminated the hard planes of his face bringing light to his cracked nose and bruised eyes. Things he could hide in the light of day, but not in the dark of the catacombs. It was how she’d liked him best; but instead of turning her blood hot all she felt was ice.
“Valeska,” he licked his lips, letting her name hang in the air like a promise. “I cannot begin to let you know how sorry I–”
“No, I want to hear it from you, say it.” The silence was almost tangible. “Say it,” she screamed.
The pressure that had been building in her bones these past months, that had become her constant companion, was building. Like the onset of a migraine. She wanted nothing more than to close her eyes, to curl up and give in, but that would not do. She’d made a promise over the body of a broken girl. No one, no man or god would bring her to break it.
Jakub’s hold on her arm tightened. Keeping her in place, as though he was frightened she would lash out or flee at his words. “That day in Zadov, the day the bombs dropped, it was because of me. Because I told my Commander about the rebel movement.”
“You bastard,” she snarled, pushing him back as the dull pain, the tender promise of bruising, made its way through her arm.
Jakub put his hands up, eyes wide in surprise. “Soyi,” he called, voice low and steady like he was taming a wild beast. “Calm down.”
She recoiled, the wall cold on her back, the dampness seeping through her clothes to meet skin. Her heart raced. It was cold and dark and damp and it was too much like that day in Zadov. The air was thick, heavy. Far too heavy and breath escaped her.
The pressure was unbearable now. Like a prisoner rattling against the bars of their cell there was something inside her that wanted out. That wanted freedom. She could feel the cracks in her soul begin to deepen. Fissures became fractures became breaks and her vision began to swim in and out of a dream.
One moment she was there, Jakub was there halfway between a confession and a plea for mercy, and the next she was hiding. The next she was back in Zadov and she could hear the explosions and the screams and taste the ash on her tongue and she couldn’t move.
“Valeska,” Jakub called, but she could barely hear him. It was like listening to someone whilst underwater. Distorted and distant until his hand on her shoulder pulled her back into the present.
It was not a soft thing, the transition. The panic and despair that had already rooted itself in her heart was amplified and she felt surely that she was going to die.
She lashed out. She closed her eyes, raked her nails across his arm, kicked her legs out and tried to retreat and that release opened something. His hands left her body and a crash echoed in the hall.
All this time she had been afraid to delve too deep, to look too close for fear of what might happen. But the worst had already happened. The worst kept happening and there was no going back.
It had been an endless well of void. Of deep, dark nothingness that threatened to consume her is she dared look too long. But it wasn’t nothing, she realised as she opened her eyes to find Jakub pinned against the far wall by a blanket of shadows, struggling for breath. It was power.
She took a step forward. And then another. Eyes roving over Jakub’s struggling form. She could feel his fear now. Taste it in the air like blood.
“Could, could you let me go please?”
Somehow she knew how. There was an instinct in the base of her skull guiding her, and she called the darkness towards her.
The shadows danced around her fingers. Smooth, graceful, gentle almost, yet underneath she could feel the power that controlled them. Something old. Something ancient. The only other time she’d felt this was when she was with Zovdi.
“Is that better?” Her voice was still cold, still detached, but dreamlike. She hadn’t recovered from the revelation and it was like her emotions had simply shut down rather than continue reliving that pain.
Jakub stayed flat against the wall, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. “What the fuck was that?”
With the flick of her hand she sent the shadows over to him and laughed when he flinched away.
“It’s my gift.” It made sense now. For months she had tried and failed to call Zovdi down again, to beg her to explain what she had given her. But the panic had released something primal in her, had broken down the barrier she built around herself, and now she knew.
Zovdi had given her the Darkness.
She walked towards Jakub with soundless steps and took his hand in hers. “Can you feel it? It’s always with me now, this darkness. This shadow we warn our children of.” He stared at her. He’d stared at her before yes, in amusement, in bewilderment, in anger, in lust. But never like this. Never with fear. She found she liked it. “He’s underneath my skin, and you should be afraid.”
Her gaze lifted from his hands to his eyes and she smiled. “Because we’re going to destroy you.”
