Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
MORGANA
D eath had lost its edge ever since I tasted it four days ago. The cut on my neck was healing, but my colleague, Isaac, had asked about it at least three times already.
With every corpse that was brought through those doors, the uncertainty of it became a less confusing thing. I was no examiner, and most morticians would laugh at my precision. Unfortunately, my job as Mortuary Arbiter was somewhere in between forgettable and important.
“Must have been an accident,” Isaac muttered to my left. I turned my head, watching him cover the seventh body with a rough cloth blanket before rolling it toward the exit doors. When he rang the bells, the examiners on the other side breached through and took it. The screechy wheels echoed through the old building, and I returned to my own subject long before it faded into the distance.
They didn’t give us much information about who they were or what they did, but it didn’t take a mastermind to figure it out. This woman couldn’t have been more than twenty, but the shadowy magic on Verdantis’ borders had blackened her veins, thus aging her at least ten years. When I lifted her wrist to examine the thin skin, her fingers were smooth and cold. This wasn’t a fighter—this was a healer. There was the possibility she could have been a cartographer or a military court reporter, but her nails weren’t dirtied by charcoal.
“What business do the healers have near Vespera?” I muttered, mostly to myself, but Isaac took it upon himself to look over my shoulder.
“Well, if my accident theory rings true, a lot. You know, Morgana, when are you going to stop asking why and just do your job?”
I thinned my lips into a line and let the cold hand plop onto the silver table. Isaac held his hands up in surrender before backing away to start on the next subject. He was right, to a degree—it wasn’t our job to understand why, or how, or even when they died. It was to determine if they were worth bringing back.
How royally fucked is that?
So, no. I didn’t fear death. Not when my heart was in the hands of those far wealthier than I. The men and women who pulled the strings and decided that death was beneath them and could be altered with the right arcanists.
The Arcane Magics were the foundation of our world, a glorified cult that gave common ground between nations that would otherwise eat each other alive. There were the archmages, or those who reigned over it all; the arcanists, those who studied it all; and then me.
I wasn’t quite sure where I fit into the equation, but like Isaac, we were as close to them as anyone on our side would get. If death was a give and take, the finite line that divided it from life determined by a list of regulations passed on to the healers and Mortuary Arbiters, then there was no reason to fear it. It was out of our hands anyway. The sooner I came to accept that I wasn’t worthy of an eternal existence that withstood—no, defied—the laws of living, the less it would keep me up at night.
I grabbed the clipboard dangling from the table near her head and started to take notes about her condition, from the rotting veins to the plague that would surely follow if they brought back this arcanist. Then, I circled the DNR— do not resurrect.
“You’re cheating!”
Rolling up her sleeves, Thena tutted. “I don’t have any cards up my sleeve, Isaac. Stop being a sore loser.”
I drew my drink to the edge of my lips to conceal my smirk. Oh, Thena was cheating. But I wasn’t going to rat her out—not right now. This was one of the first nights where I wasn’t hopelessly lost in my head. Although I knew I wouldn’t be going home to sleep after we were done drinking, this was the closest thing to a fun night out I could get. I’d worry about the rest in the coming hours.
Isaac threw his cards on the table and cursed under his breath, standing to go order us another round. I turned my gaze to Thena, who merely grinned back. “Don’t look at me like that. Isaac enjoys this.”
My smirk widened, taking another sip before clearing my throat. “Any commotion near Vespera lately?”
Thena’s smug little expression faded, and she averted her gaze toward the crowd. “You’re going to have to be more detailed than that.”
I pinched the skin of my palm and followed her gaze. There were groups of men and women dancing to the lively folk tunes. In a past life, I would have been right up there with them, dancing with the first handsome man I found before deciding to have my mother rolling in her grave. Ever since Galen was lost to the shadow realm of Vespera, I didn’t have the energy to dance.
My mother, may her soul rest in a pit of vipers, would be thankful for that.
“There’s been a lot of bodies lately. More than usual.”
“I think that’s a question for our faceless crown prince, aye?” Thena said with a stupid little smirk. I let my head fall to the side and gave her a knowing look. She took another sip and then said, “My answer depends on which version of Morgana I’m talking to.”
Though I didn’t turn to capture her glare, I could feel it burning into the side of my face. I rubbed my lips, the beer foam softly fizzing against the skin. “You’re talking to the Morgana. The same one as always.”
“Funny,” she muttered. When Isaac returned to the head of the table, he slid a glass to me first, then to Thena. “There was another group that got lost. I’m not sure where or what happened—it’s not my fleet or my concern. It shouldn’t be yours either.”
“You know,” I said, accepting the fresh glass of beer and smiling at my friend, “you have such a kind heart. I hope you know that.”
She offered her glass to cheer. “Here’s to the coldest and most unwelcoming parts of life, Morg.”