A Burning in the Bones (Waxways #3)

Chapter 62 Mercy Whitaker

Mercy pretended to be asleep when she heard Dahvid Tin’Vori’s footsteps. They were easy to recognize. Heavy and purposeful. The sound of a man who moved deliberately through the world. She could feel him lingering there, watching her, debating whether he should wake her up and see how she was doing. He had not stopped taking care of her since they’d left the burial chamber. Even blind, she could sense the weight of his attention. It took all the restraint she possessed to not turn and ask him to come closer. She felt that if she so much as breathed the wrong way—Dahvid might be foolish enough to sit down at the foot of her bed. Maybe he’d even be foolish enough to stay there for as long as they both should live.

And that she could not abide.

Not when she had one more task to complete. Which meant that she breathed in and out and pretended to be snoring until it was no longer a pretense. Sleep claimed her greedily. A dreamless few hours—and then Mercy woke to pain. A throbbing headache that stemmed from the ruptures in both eyes. There was a terrible tightness in her dead calf. Itching all along her scalp. She had very specifically misled Ren Monroe, walking her through the steps to make a draft that would dull the pain for only a few hours. It was far less than she would have prescribed to a patient who needed a full night of sleep—because she’d had no designs of sleeping through the night.

The truth was that Ren Monroe had helped Mercy make up her mind. She’d already been leaning in one direction, but that weighty thank-you had told her everything she needed to know. People would call her a hero after what had happened. Undoubtedly, rumors of her gift would spread. How long would it take for someone to beg her to be a hero again? Mercy knew in that moment that she’d spend the rest of her life deliberating on who was worthy and who wasn’t. Deciding which lives to save and which lives to pass over. Like some terrible angel of death. It was a burden that she knew she could not bear.

Carefully, she sat up in bed. Listening for sounds. There was some kind of mountain insect making noise through the closest window. She maneuvered off the gurney. Her good leg could not suffer all her weight. She was forced to slump down to hands and knees. Still listening, she crawled in the direction of the door. It was open. Her hands felt the frame, calibrating the direction of the hallway. Again, she paused to listen. There was snoring, but farther down the hallway. Maybe in one of the other rooms? She crawled in the opposite direction. On and on until the air grew cold.

A draft was coming up from the morgue.

There was no graceful way to maneuver down a set of stone stairs on hands and knees. Mercy did her best, keeping each thump as soft as she possibly could. At the bottom, she paused once more, listening. No footsteps answered. No voice called after her. Dahvid was asleep. It took time to cross the room, but eventually she reached the back wall. Pulling herself up from the ground was the most difficult part. She managed it, grunting against the pain and the sudden vertigo. She probed with her hands and found fabric. Then the body beneath it. Limping, she repositioned herself so that she could set both hands over Nevelyn Tin’Vori’s heart. Mercy’s entire body felt as if it was on fire. It used to be that her fingers would throb and itch whenever she was near the dead. Whenever she sensed a lingering soul hoping to cross back into the land of the living. Now all of her burned and it was the most unbearable kind of pain. Maybe she was being a coward—or maybe she was being brave. It was not Mercy’s place to say. All she knew was that it felt right to her. She would bring back the one person who’d willingly sacrificed herself so that everyone else could live.

“All right then,” Mercy whispered to the ghost. “Come back to us.”

She unleashed her magic. Nevelyn had been dead for several days. Far longer than any person she’d resurrected before—but as the magic coursed through her veins, Mercy Whitaker’s hands did not shake. An exchange was made. She heard that quick gasp of breath at the exact moment that a terrible sharpness knifed through the right side of her head. Pain so intense that it stopped being pain after the first few seconds. It became a bridge that led to another world—and Mercy knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that she was ready to see what waited there for her.

And so, she began to walk.