Chapter 14
S omething bumps against my cheek, ripping me from the fiery clutches of a dream that was melting flesh from my bones in slow, sizzling sweeps. My eyes pop open, a scream sitting in the back of my throat like a welling beast threatening to split the world in two.
I sit up, hissing through clenched teeth, trying to refocus my gaze on the here .
The now .
Nee flutters around me, frantically nuzzling my chest while I scrub my sweat-dappled skin, trying to scour the terror from my flesh.
Unsuccessfully.
I rush to my washroom, fill the stone basin with icy water, and splash my face in laden scoops that do little to douse the burn. “A dream,” I murmur, repeating the motion again.
Again.
Nee continues to dance around me as I dunk a cloth in the water and use it to dab the back of my neck. I dunk it again, pressing my face into the sodden material.
Just a fucking dream.
I lift my head, looking in the small mirror hanging on the wall. My eyes are bloodshot, ice blue standing out in stark contrast against the red scribbles, my cheeks flushed from the rabid heat that chased me to the surface.
Growling, I screw up the cloth and toss it at the wall, scooping my palms full of water again, splashing my face and dragging the wetness back through my hair. I set my hands on the edge of the basin and close my eyes, humming my calming tune while I focus on my fingertips, then my hands, my arms—moving all the way through my body. Slowly loosening each muscle, convincing myself there’s nothing here that wants to hurt me.
To battle me.
Nee nuzzles much too close to my sodden hair, and a warning growl boils up my throat. “Don’t, Nee. You know how I feel about water getting near you.”
With a burst of fluttering motion, she rises above my head instead, circling a safe distance away.
I’m not certain she has waterproof runes, and I’m in no rush to find out the hard way that she was constructed before they were invented.
I press my face into the towel and pour a heavy sigh through the fluffy fabric, untacking the sticky remnants of my terror, a full-body shiver racking through me.
That one felt so real. Too real.
I jump a few times to shake it off, then move back into my sleepsuite, chased by a flutter of parchment wings. My eyes widen at the outside view, the sky clear enough that I can see the aurora already beginning to thread below the western horizon.
Falling. Wow.
I slept the entire dae away …
My stomach growls, clamping down on its aching hollow.
I’ll check on Essi, make us some food if she hasn’t already eaten, then try to get back to sleep. Otherwise, I’ll be out of sorts for cycles.
I make for the stone stairway as a thump sounds from above, like something heavy just fell upon the floor upstairs.
Frowning, I pause, scooping Nee against my chest to stall the sound of her beating wings. “Shh,” I whisper, looking at the ceiling as I listen.
Silence prevails.
Perhaps I imagined it?
Slowly, I tiptoe toward the stairs, pulling the small blade from the sheath at my thigh. I edge close to the trapdoor, pressing my ear to the wood.
A soft whimper stills my heart.
Essi.
I release Nee, nudging her in the direction of my pallet. “Stay here,” I order, shoving the trapdoor open and bursting through, dropping it back down so Nee doesn’t escape.
Essi is coiled on the long seater with her back to me, hiding beneath her woolen blanket that conceals all but her tumble of hair spilling onto the floor. Not unusual since she sometimes can’t be bothered going up the stairs to her sleepsuite and nods off on the seater.
My next inhale is laden with a metallic reek, and my heart lurches, stare slicing around the room, landing on a red hand-shaped smudge on the windowsill. The size of Essi’s hand.
Essi’s hurt.
She always tries to hide when she’s hurt.
I dash toward her, rip the blanket off, and grab her by the shoulder, tugging her gently onto her back despite her coiled reluctance. My gaze is immediately drawn to her hands clutched atop her abdomen, both of them shaking, slathered in … in …
Blood.
My gut churns as I take in her pallid complexion. The sheen of sweat dappling her brow despite her chattering teeth. I drop to my knees, pulling her hands back and lifting her shirt, revealing a stab wound leaking a constant ribbon of blood.
Every cell in my body stills, my lungs seizing—like jagged shards of ice just slit through them.
I’m suddenly sure I’m in a different place. A different time. Or perhaps I’m caught in one of my slumber-terrors?
Yes. That must be it. Essi’s not lying on the seater, covered in blood. She doesn’t have a hole in her abdomen, right where there are important organs that take time and finesse and a specialized mender to fix.
No.
She’s sitting at the table, working on a diamond cap she’s been obsessing over, eating buttermin loaf that makes our house smell like a home.
This isn’t real.
Not real.
Not—
“I don’t want to end up in the snow, Raeve.”
Our stares clash, her wide eyes wild with a fear that claws through my chest, threatening to cleave me apart.
Snow? What’s she talking about?
“Please don’t drop me down to the cold or put me in the ground,” she begs through trembling lips, her eyes so wide the tips of her lashes meet her brows, the red flecks in her irises lit like blown embers. “Feed me to the fire where I’ll never be cold again.”
“Stop talking like you’re going anywhere,” I growl, stuffing the blanket on her wound to stem the flow. “You’re staying right here with me, safe in our home.”
Just as soon as I get her fixed up.
“You’re going to be okay,” I murmur, looking to the kitchen cupboard where my mending kit is stored. I need to grab something to pack the wound full and bind it in place so she doesn’t bleed out while I carry her down to the Ditch.
Sereme can fleshthread. She’ll help if I fall to her feet and beg. She’ll probably drip Essi’s blood into the vial, using the excuse that she needs the bind to mend her, but I’ll find a way to deal with the bitch once Essi’s safe.
Fuck the repercussions.
“Put pressure on this.” I shift her icy hand and press it upon the blanket. “I’m going to grab some supplies so I can get you to Sereme—”
“I’m cold, Raeve.”
Her fractured voice cuts a messy hole in the silence, carving into my chest, deflating my lungs.
I meet her watery stare that’s barely holding focus.
Fear erupts behind my ribs with such violent force that cracks weave through my stony heart, exposing the fleshy core—so raw and vulnerable, withering like a juicy fruit tossed to a hungry flame.
“I can’t feel your h—” Her words cut off, breath coming in short, sharp gasps as she works to catch her rhythm again, panic exploding in her eyes. “I can’t feel your hand on me. I can’t feel it, Raeve— ”
“You’re always cold, Essi.” I swallow the lump in my throat, battling to keep my voice steady. I know the signs. I’ve seen death too many times not to know the fucking signs. “We live on the cold side. This is normal.”
It’s normal.
It’s normal.
It’s—
Her face scrunches, and my chest feels like it mimics the motion, making me want to ball up around the ache.
“Hold me?” she asks, a wobbly plea that begs me to fall with her into the hungry maw of resignation. Her entire body jerks, hands clawing at her middle, an angry spill of red seeping through the blanket and squelching between her fingers. “Please?”
I climb onto the seater and curl around her, my hand flattened across her chest, the other tangling with the one on her abdomen. She releases a shuddered breath, and I crush our bodies together, holding her so tight I picture my strength binding her like a bandage. Picture her sitting at the table, etching a normal trinket into something exceptional, her mind full of magnificent thoughts and an ample amount of blood in her veins. Whole.
Happy.
But she’s not.
She’s broken in my arms, draining away …
“Who did this, Essi?”
She flinches, like my cold, monotone words slit her through.
“I didn’t see. I rounded a corner and w-walked straight into him. It was … d-dark.”
The Undercity. She went to the Undercity .
The realization crushes my windpipe. Makes my hands shake—though I try to still them. Try to force myself to remain calm and composed.
For her.
I’m not going to lie here and chastise her for something I specifically asked her not to do—knowing how dangerous it is down there. I’m not going to break her down further when she’s already falling apart.
I’m going to hug her.
Love her.
Avenge her.
“He was h-hooded.”
“Okay,” I whisper, brushing her hair back off her face. “That helps, Essi. Did you see the color of his hood? Was it red?”
“N-no.”
Probably not from here.
“What did he smell like?”
“Leather,” she rasps. “S-smoke sticks. When he walked away, his b-boots made clattering sounds.”
Clattering sou—
“Tell me s-something that’ll make me f-feel warm, Raeve. P-please.”
“I love you.” The admission spills without pause. A heavy truth tilled from the raw, exposed ache in my chest. I realize the words were there all this time, tucked beneath my calloused bits, hiding in a place I thought they were safe.
Nothing’s ever safe.
“Why didn’t you go to a Fleshthread, Essi? Why didn’t you—”
“Because I knew you’d always w-wonder if I didn’t make it out. That you’d think I left you, like they left me.”
They …
Her family.
My heart rips straight down the middle.
“You’re here,” I whisper against her ear. “I’ve got you. We’ve got each other .”
I bind her deeper into my embrace, holding her tight while she drains away. Blood leaches across the seater beneath us, a wetness I can’t escape seeping through my clothing, sticking to my skin.
A wetness that should be pumping through her veins, fueling her life. But it’s not.
It’s not.
I nuzzle her hair, filling my lungs with her warm scent, past and present melding together as I recall another embrace. Another love.
Another loss.
I hum my calming song while she trembles against me, her heart pumping beneath my hand, each beat slower than the last.
Quieter.
Weaker.
“You’re the family I never had,” I whisper, and her lungs empty with a shuddered exhale …
She doesn’t fill them again.
I ’m not sure how long I hold her, bound around her body that’s no longer moving.
No longer warm.
Long enough that a parchment lark flutters into the room, then bumps against the sill, over and over. Perhaps Sereme’s—informing me that last slumber’s mission is complete, the children free of the city.
Long enough that I discern the hard segments of my heart aren’t going to shift back together and protect the soft core that feels too much. That I’ll have to nurse the hurt until it’s calloused over, a realization that makes me not want to rise again.
Long enough that I take my time inspecting each moment since I woke, stripping the emotion back like shelling nuts, leaving the smooth pit inside—safe to handle. I bundle all the clutter into piles on the shore of my immense frozen lake that’s more silent than it’s ever been, then ferry them across the surface.
Silver light spears up from beneath while I carve an icy grave to drop the parcels down. A curious luminosity that hunts every step, chasing me back and forth between the shore and the hole—something that would usually frighten me. But I’m numb.
Hollow.
I’ve lost Essi, and I’ve lost the will to care about anything but the thing that keeps me upright. Keeps me moving forward .
Vengeance .
Dropping the final package beneath the frosty expanse, I rise back into myself, raising my hand to brush Essi’s hair back from her too-pale face. “You sleep.” Eyes squeezed shut, I kiss her temple, letting the moment linger. “I’m going to find whoever did this to you,” I pledge against her cold skin. “I’m going to find them, Essi.”
And I’m going to make them hurt.
I tug my arm from beneath her stiff body, my bottom lip trembling as I untangle our legs and step off the seater. I swathe the blanket around her shoulders to keep her nice and warm, then make for the stairs on unsteady legs, bracing myself against the wall so I can heft the trapdoor up.
Nee swarms free in a wobbly waggle, bumping against my cheek, neck, and chest while I go about the motions of moving down the stairs, eyes cast blankly ahead. Not bothering to remove my bloodstained skinsuit, I strap a sheath to my other thigh, tucking the many pockets full of small dragonscale daggers while Nee continues to bump against me in a frenzied flutter. She nosedives toward the ground, but I pinch her from the air, gently setting her on a shelf.
Not that she stays there long.
Motions becoming sharp and precise, I thread my arms through my leather bandolier laden with iron blades, stuffing my feet in black boots and lacing them to the knee. I bind a veil around my neck, then move up the stairs, chased by the sound of parchment wings.
I pause by the table while Nee bumps …
Bumps …
Bumps …
She nuzzles into my neck like she thinks she’s safe. She’s not.
Nobody I care about ever is.
I swallow the thickening lump in my throat and snatch a quill, dip it in a pot of ink, then swoop Nee into my hand and unpleat her face, tail, wings, and body, flattening her upon the table where I read her message—one final time.
“No you don’t,” I rasp, scratching the words upon the parchment in my less than perfect handwriting, butchering beautiful Nee into something far less tender.
Less vulnerable.
The backs of my eyes burn as I fold her up again, tarnishing her with a smudge of Essi’s blood as I work her back into shape.
My fingers linger over the final fold. One I haven’t pressed before.
The activation line that will return Nee to her sender.
My gaze lifts to Essi—still and silent on the seater.
Dead.
My fingers pinch of their own accord, crimping the fold into place.
Nee wiggles to life, her flapping motions smooth and mechanical. Void of everything that makes her her .
That ache in my chest intensifies as she glides toward the window in a steady flutter without another neck nudge or giddy swirl, and I know she’s gone. That her soul has slipped free, and that whatever “magic” tethered her to me … it’s not there anymore.
Just like Essi’s not here anymore.
Just like Fallon—
I cut off the thought, clear my throat, and force myself to watch Nee pass through the window and disappear from sight, into the merciless sky—stuffing down the temptation to rip off my ring. To beg Clode to bring her back to me with a push of wind.
No.
I move to the kitchen and pack the trough with rags that trail over the edge, making a path to the rug. Then I pull a bottle of sterilizing spirits from the cupboard of mending supplies, crack the lid, and douse the rags. The rug.
The blanket keeping Essi warm.
I douse the corner of another small cloth, tuck it in my sheath with a stick of flint, then move toward the window, pausing by the seater where I drop to a kneel.
Brushing my hand through Essi’s hair, I take in the sharp slopes of her ethereal face … Too beautiful for this world.
Too pure.
“I love you,” I whisper, mapping her freckles. Storing the vision of her somewhere safe where I can treasure it forever. “I’m going to take away the cold, okay?”
The silence that follows is a cruel taunt that rips at the contents of my chest. Like a Moltenmaw is caught within me, slashing.
Feasting.
With a final kiss on her temple, I force myself to turn. To climb out the window and up the bloodstained wall, sullying my hands with more of her . I pull myself into the wind tunnel, stare stabbed at the drop chute as I push to my feet.
Feed me to the fire where I’ll never be cold again.
My face crumbles, then knots into a savage twist despite the reluctant shudder tilled from my ashen past.
The thought of burning Essi’s body … it makes me want to bunch up and scream. The idea of casting her in flames goes against the grain of everything that shaped me into who I am this dae, but I will not cower from this fire she asked me for.
I will not fail her again.
I pull the cloth and flint from my sheath and force myself forward a single wobbly step. Hand trembling.
Soul squirming.
Teeth gritted, I scour the flint across the stone wall, catching the spark on the cloth. It bursts into flames so fast they nip at my skin, and panic wraps its hands around my throat, squeezing so hard I can barely breathe. But I maintain my trembling hold on the cloth, forcing three strangled words past my chattering teeth.
“I’m sorry, Essi.”
I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe. That I never said I love you before you were dying in my arms.
I’m sorry I wasn’t the family you deserved.
I flick the flaming cloth down the chute, followed by the flint, staggering back from the blow of heat that blasts my face, choking on the pour of smoke.
There’s the sound of glass shattering, and I squeeze my eyes shut, picturing her jars of tinctures popping—one by one.
The heat intensifies, and I picture the rug burning, the smell of fried flesh coming to me too soon.
Too fucking soon.
A strangled sob squeezes up my throat as I stagger back from the heat. The smell —clapping my hand upon my mouth.
Something clatters against my boot.
I open my eyes, looking to the ground splotched red. To the bloody blade resting by my foot and the leather satchel beside it.
Black.
Essi’s.
My heart lurches, like something just tossed it against my ribs so hard I’m surprised they didn’t fracture.
Tentatively, I bend down and flick the mouth of the bag aside to peer in, seeing a book and a frosted jar. A book she must’ve gotten from the library.
From the Undercity .
I don’t bother opening the jar, knowing exactly what’s within. The final ingredient she required to bind the diamond cap to my tooth …
The cap she’d made to protect me .
My lungs constrict.
I reach for the dagger Essi must’ve pulled from her abdomen. The dagger that did this to her.
That took her from me.
I’m about to sheathe it next to my own when something catches my eye—a slithering motion on the flat face of the blade.
Every cell in my body stills as Essi’s blood congeals into a collection of ruddy letters:
A summons. For me.
From Rekk Zharos.
The blade slips from my hand. Clatters to the ground.
He’s narrowed his eyes on me. Discovered where I live. Taken down Essi to lure me out.
Somehow.
Which means it’s my fault she snuck out to the Undercity. My fault she got stabbed, then returned to our home rather than finding a Fleshthread to heal her. My fault she bled out on the couch until she stopped moving.
My fault she’s burning—
Dead.
A guttural groan ruptures from deep within, bruising my insides as it wrestles free. As the realization crouches upon my chest, slashes me open, then stuffs its maw in and chews —masticating my lungs. My heart.
My soul.
My face crumbles, shoulders, spine.
Knees.
I heap upon the ground, deflating just as fast as my rupturing resolve, crushed by a mountain of suffocating guilt. Certain I’m being slit through the chest in long, jagged severs—again.
Again.
I flinch with each agonizing slash, my gaze dropping to the blood-soaked hands I used to lead Essi from the dark bowels of the Undercity—so determined I could give her a better life.
I promised I’d keep her safe. Instead, I gave her a grave.
And I—
I—
I can’t do this. I can’t fucking do this anymore.
Something within me shifts, and a booming collision jars me from the inside out, my bones locking from the impact. A thunderous crack ricochets from deep beneath my ribs before a sharp explosion pierces through me, shattering my insides into a thousand icy shards.
My body temperature plummets so fast I hear my heart slow, like it’s wrestling slushy blood through my veins one sluggish beat at a time.
I inhale a shudder of air that feels too warm. Like pulling lava into my frosted lungs.
It’s coming.
A tear shreds down my cheek as I lose sensation in my fingers and toes.
My arms and legs.
Part of me wants to fight it. To be strong for Essi, despite the fact that I’ve never felt weaker in my life. To tear the fucking world to shreds until I find Rekk Zharos and string him up. Slit him a thousand times. Wait for him to heal.
Do it all over again.
But there’s a bigger part of me that’s still lying on that seater inside, tucked around my young, miraculous, beautiful friend who just lost her life because I loved her. A bigger part of me that’s burning right alongside her. And that part …
It’s tired.
Lonely.
Lost.
Sad.
More broken than I’ll ever admit.
That part of me just wants to stop and never start again.
The icy anger inside me roars , its essence expanding with such ferocity my organs feel like they’re being shoved aside. I lose sensation in my chest, and my face twists as I slip from my sight, falling backward into a frigid numb that swaddles me so tight I can’t move. Can’t see.
Can’t feel.
A beautiful, blissful numb. So pure—like a cold, silken bandage for my soul. So soft I can almost forget I won’t get the glory of killing Rekk Zharos and avenging Essi’s death, but as I sink, curled into this frigid comfort, I grow calm.
Resolved.
He deserves to be ripped limb from limb. To have his vertebrae crumbled, brain mulched. To have his insides pulverized by the strange, savage entity that exists within me.
He deserves—