Gypsy Truths (All The Pretty Monsters #6)- Kristy Cunning Page 0,182

and goading her along every step of the way. Everyone blamed you for that monster. Violet saw things differently,” Anna says, rubbing her hands together with glee.

I want to argue, but…can’t really argue. Clyde’s fucking terrible, but the only one who pays him any mind is Idun. To us, he’s a washed-up has-been who never-really-was.

Cold.

Jaded.

Cruel.

A man who kept his soul after he’d already blackened it with stains of the darkest, most selfish of sins.

Arion’s a compassionate priest all over again by comparison to Clyde.

But Clyde’s mostly powerless without Idun.

I take a step back, examining the entire scene. Clyde, the proudest man who never could understand he was nothing and nobody, the man who hated his children for being embarrassing, and the man who supported every vile act Idun ever committed with the utmost pride, has his eyes frozen in terror.

At the risk of it sounding like a bad pun, he looks like he’s…seen a ghost.

“It’s been a very busy twenty-four hours,” I decide to say.

Warily, I follow Emit and Damien. They’re following a convoy of severed body parts that is moving down the hallway. It’s embarrassing the way we creep behind the scene with wild confusion and baffled intrigue.

She’s turning us all into jokes. Even I feel more ridiculous than I’ve ever felt.

Idun’s a fucking joke.

Idun’s. A. Fucking. Joke.

She’d never allow this. Her heart’s intact. She’s still conscious.

She’d have already brutally tortured us all before she’d let this happen. Only Violet’s in the business of letting things happen.

If Idun could stop this, she’d have already done it.

“This is really happening,” Emit says, echoing my thoughts.

I’m sharing a wavelength with the fucking mongrel, while he’s naked and perched at a lean.

The barbarian is the only one struggling alongside me to truly take this in.

The world truly has ended. It ended last night, and now it’s starting all over. It’s also spinning in a completely different direction.

“Yes. Yes, it is,” I murmur in response.

Somehow, though I’m not sure how, we turn the corner and realize we’ve lost the convoy. Almost immediately, children’s laughter echoes down the hallway, and another trail of breadcrumbs appears.

Even though we can no longer see them, Idun’s and Clyde’s shared fear is palpable from here, though the apples are slowly masking the scent. We follow the breadcrumbs all the way to a distant stairwell I never noticed on the blueprints.

I study the door, taking in the fact it’s a bookcase that’s been left opened. A hidden room in Sanctuary? She really does love horror movies. There’s always a hidden room in good monster movies.

As I descend, it starts garnering a dungeon theme rather quickly, given the thick stones layered with some black tar-like stuff. A dungeon with fluorescent lighting, also.

Sure. Why the hell not?

Dwarfed, green apple trees are growing in small pots, nothing more than tiny sprigs tied to poles to help support the weight of the many apples.

It occurs to me that the stench of Idun’s fear is now completely absent.

“My senses have had a few cosmically empowered moments here and there where they’ve been heightened to somewhat match yours, I think,” Violet tells us, smiling tightly. “Nothing really to help me out, since it was just fleeting tastes that slowly gave me a little insight into you.”

She looks nervous again.

“You were frozen in this state,” Violet says, and then eyes Emit. “Only you got a few perks post-immortality,” Violet notes. “I was frozen the day my head came off. Your senses are only better than mine, because my senses adapted to be less sensitive to the more polluted world I was born into,” she carries on.

She gestures around. “That’s why you live in small, woodland towns, isn’t it? It’d be easier to keep a low profile and anonymity in larger cities. However, your senses are too sensitive to live too close to bigger cities.”

“Why are we discussing our senses and location?” I ask, unable to follow her confusing directional shifts.

She decides it’s the perfect time to turn and lift Clyde’s head. His eyes are just as frozen wide as Idun’s…which brings my gaze over to the head on a shelf.

How did I not notice Idun’s head on a shelf the moment I walked in?

No…not just a shelf. Is that a display case?

Sure enough, Violet closes the glass door in front of Clyde’s face, and then she turns to gesture to the body parts.

“Do you want to help me put these on the other shelves?” she asks, acting like this is obviously the next thing on the