46. Chapter 46
Chapter forty-six
When the ‘yes’ had left her lips, she’d meant it. Though now, as she stood outside the door to her home, she wasn’t sure it hadn’t, in fact, been a lie.
Lux gripped the handle, pulling it wide, and stepped inside.
It was a good day for the festival. Rare sunlight shone unobstructed through the windows and poured in at Lux’s back. She let the door close, slow and noiseless, and with a fortifying breath, descended the stairs.
The first thing she noticed were the gloves.
She’d lost them. They had disappeared in the darkness. Abandoned in the shadow of a cottage, deep within the wood.
Now they were clean, dry, and laid upon the table side by side. They were meant as a warning. Or a threat. She brushed her fingers across them. No . They were meant as a test.
Riselda floated around the corner.
“Good morning, darling. You’re late.” Her face was off. It pulled tight in odd places while slackening in others, her eyes lit too bright. Riselda’s smile tightened at Lux’s perusal, feral and begging for her to say something. Thirsted for it.
She tipped her head, and long, slender fingers tapped against the table’s surface. “What were you saying, Lucena?”
“I didn’t say anything, Riselda.” A thin sheen of sweat broke over Lux’s body, and with a heavy stone coming to rest in the pit of her stomach, she swallowed.
The cackling laugh wasn’t the deep, melodic one she’d become accustomed to. It was different. The high laugh of something, someone , else.
It was true, then.
“I know you didn’t. I only expected you to. Some explanation, surely, for disregarding my advice and thwarting my plan of seeing you safe.” Lux’s hand fisted around the glove nearest her. “Yours?”
Lux studied those eyes for much too long. Every muscle quivered, pulled taut. “Yes. Did you find them?”
“Yes.” And Riselda smiled, her teeth glistening. “How is Morana?”
“She’ll live.”
Riselda tutted. “I suspected it was you.” Abruptly, Lux needed to sit down. She pulled out a stool. It screeched, and Riselda glared at her. “Your gasp as I struck that worthless girl gave it away.”
Lux sneered. “And yet you still tried to kill me in the tunnels?”
“So dramatic. I only wanted to frighten you off. Of course, then you blinded me. What the devil was that contraption?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t even sure what it would do when I activated it.”
Riselda laughed. “I enjoy your honesty. It’s a lovely change from that secretive little attitude.” Pulling out a chair herself, she sat upon the stool opposite. “So, you’ve saved the mayor’s daughter in exchange for your own life, was it?”
Lux been honest enough. “Something like that.”
“I wasn’t going to kill her, Lucena. I only wanted to make her experience all you had. Fear, darkness, hopelessness. A bruise upon her cheek.” Riselda reached toward her, and Lux drew back. “Though, without lifeblood, she would have died in the forest eventually. Goodness, you should have heard her in the solarium, prattling on about her wastrel of a husband to the help. A solarium I solicited! None of it would have been so brilliant without my touch. Such a waste.”
“When was this?”
“Last evening. When I happened to deposit a little tonic for sleep in her spiced chocolate. Her grief had been so overwhelming , after all.” She winked.
It made Lux’s insides boil. “Morana tells me you both have a long history. That you grew up together even. Does such a life-long acquaintance deserve your treatment, Aunt? ”
Riselda blinked.
“I know Morana has lived long past her natural lifetime. Her family is selfish, scheming, and sordid, and so it didn’t shock me to learn they harvested the lifeblood of Ghadra’s poor as well. Very few would stoop to such an abomination. But you were there. A child as Morana once was.” Lux gripped the dagger hidden against her waist. “Who are you, Riselda? Because you’re certainly no family of mine.”
The words hurt more than she thought they would. She was alone again.
“I’m your aunt. We are family.”
Lux laughed, hollow and cold. “You’re mad.”
Riselda’s face darkened. “Do not call me that.” Her fingers twitched against the tabletop, as if they yearned for something between them. “I love you like my own daughter, Lucena. You’re powerful and strong, and you hate this world as much as I do. I knew it from the moment I found you, wide-eyed with excitement in the Dark Market, that you would be different. And when your parents begged for my tutelage—you, a possible healer like me—it solidified our future.”
“What future?” Lux wiped clammy palms down her skirt, the page of the book crumpling further within.
“To destroy the mayor. To devastate his family. And to devour this cursed city’s walls to dust.” Riselda leaned in, and Lux fought the panic. She didn’t want to be in the presence of the demented gleam in Riselda’s eyes any longer, but she felt frozen to the chair. “Your parents were so weak, you know. Not like us. Your mother idolized me from a young age herself, and I let it continue. Admiration, remember? She called me her sister as a child, to anyone who would listen to her incessant chatter, but it wasn’t until she mooned over your father that I truly lost interest in her. She was too compulsive with her emotions. She loved everyone and everything. Unfortunately, I noticed those traits beginning to surface in you as well.” Riselda’s wolfish grin blinded. “And that, I could fix.”
The wave of dizziness nearly sent Lux sliding to the floor. Riselda watched her closely, her head cocked and waiting.
“You killed them.” Each word felt like a branding iron in her throat.
It wasn’t a question. And Riselda didn’t answer it as if it were.
“You were born to the Dark. Did you know that? Your early childhood was filled with crumbling walls and moth-eaten rugs. I gifted them the home you knew. The fools. They didn’t even recognize the trap door for what it was. You should have seen your mother’s face when I appeared that evening. You’ve returned! ” Riselda rolled her eyes in memory. “She was blind to the true nature of the world, Lucena, and she wouldn’t be convinced of what hid in wait. I’m sorry to have taken your parents from you, but it was necessary. It was the only way to show you that Ghadra does not care for you. The world does not care for you. Only I do, and I will never betray you.”
Lux rose from her stool. “You have betrayed me beyond measure, Riselda.”
The blade slipped between the bones of her chest like marsh clay.
Several silent seconds went by with Riselda perched there, mouth gaping in shock, hands encircling the embedded ebony handle. Lux drew away from the table. “I admired you once. I even loved you, long ago. But I am nothing like you. I may have darkness in my soul, but you have become eclipsed by yours. It is all you are.”
Riselda pulled the dagger free, and it clattered to the floor, fallen from limp fingers. Blood pumped down the bodice of her dress, spreading across her skirt. When she made to stand, she collapsed, instead.
Lux turned away then frowned as an empty vial rolled past her feet, a drop of silver falling from its end as it came to rest.
“ No —”
The blow to the back of her head thrust her into oblivion.