Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
MORGANA
M y vision was speckled the entire night as I sat with my back pressed to the wall, dagger in hand and eyes glued to the door.
I halfway expected his chase to continue—that he’d follow me home and wait for me to sleep. Maybe that magic of his could cause nightmares worse than anything I could ever imagine, or even paralyze me into a never-ending cycle of slumber. If I didn’t wake up, I couldn’t tell people what I saw.
I didn’t know who he was, but I had a hunch. His shadowed gaze still pierced through both the light and darkness. Every corner threatened me, every blink was rife with uncertain terror, and every sound beyond my dirty walls made me jump. Eventually, the sun peeked through the white curtains.
My feet were the first to plant into the splintery floorboards, creaking as I rose and shifted to the bathroom. There was only one dusty window in the bathroom, and the light wasn’t hitting the wall yet. The darkness faced me once more, and when I breathed out, the fear was pushed deeper down my throat. Along the wall was a match I kept atop a shelf. Chirk went the stick against the box, igniting into darkness. The kerosene lamp was on a table across the way, but I was utterly frozen.
Not many things got to me. I’d made more mistakes than I could count at this point, and got in nastier fights than last night, but something about the darkness that ebbed off him… it was like it sickened me.
The heels of my feet scraped against the floor, inching closer and closer to the lamp. The shadows cast along the wall from my open flame taunted me, but I kept my gaze fixed ahead and reached for the glass chimney to remove it. It was slippery in my hands, but my shaky fingers snaked to the wick.
Something hissed in my ear.
I screamed and dropped both the chimney and the match. The glass shattered at my feet, and the match rolled across the wooden ground. I turned around, ready to fight whoever had snuck into my home, but nothing awaited me. In fact, as the light slowly bled onto the floor through the hazy glass, I was faced with nothing other than the copper tub situated in the center of the room and the match fizzling out, charring the floor.
My chest rose and fell as the panic settled into me. I was losing my mind—but, to be fair, I was surprised it hadn’t been lost years ago.
So I breathed, closed my eyes, and stared back at the crimson death that haunted the darkness within me.
We’d gotten through half of today’s bodies in silence. Isaac had deep bags beneath his eyes, and when he yawned for the sixth time, I turned to him. “You didn’t sleep either?”
Isaac’s head snapped to me in surprise, as if he’d forgotten I existed. I couldn’t help but grin weakly. “No. No, Thena decided we’d play a game of chicken. The person who quit drinking first had to pay double the coin we’d spent at the bar.”
I choked on a laugh and returned to my subject. I picked up the clipboard to read the few tidbits of information the Umbra Guard gave me regarding his health and demographic. Gods, this man was only thirty-three. Strangest part was, they didn’t name him.
Subject no. 5124.
Grief struck me in the chest, and I set down the clipboard. “I hope you won, given how shitty you look right now.”
“You know, you have such a way with words, and I don’t tell you that enough.”
“I lost my calling as a poet, it seems,” I muttered and started peeling back the thick sheet. The shrill bell tolled through the room, and I only caught the briefest sight of the examiners as they rolled his last subject away. “How many more?—”
My voice caught in my throat. I originally paid no mind to the greasy brown locks of hair that greeted me, but as I pulled the sheet the rest of the way, I saw the sunken eyes with black, webbed veins spilling from the sockets. Every vein in his body was kissed by midnight, and the bruising along his lips was familiar.
“What is it?” Isaac asked, straightening so he wasn’t hunched over his next subject. “ Oh, is that one particularly gruesome?”
Isaac tittered like a kid who got the last cookie at midnight. He slithered over, and I yanked the blanket back up to step away. This subject wasn’t unnamed—it was Francis DeBurne.
And I knew he was not in the Umbra Guard. There was no reason he should have been sent to us—and, even if a mix-up had occurred, there were dozens of other Mortuary Arbiters he could have been sent to. Ones closer to Rivereast Plains.
Nausea roiled in my belly, and I lifted a hand to cover my mouth. “Sorry,” I rasped and turned my head away to fetch water from a pitcher near the exit. Isaac pulled the cover down again, and instead of gagging, he whistled in admiration. I stared wide-eyed at him as I gulped.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen somebody make it back here with so much rot in their veins,” he muttered and leaned so close, I feared he’d get infected by whatever killed Francis. I knew that magic died with the host, and that was the same whether it was due to an arcanist or the void wrought dangerous depths. But what I saw last night defied everything I knew about magic.
And I thought I’d known more than most.
“Get the hell away from it, Isaac!”
He peered at me through his lashes and scoffed. To my fortune, he backed away, but I knew it was because he had his own subject to examine. “What has got you so on edge today, Morg?” he asked. “You’ve seen corpses with dismembered arms and their guts spilling out. What’s a little rot?”
“That’s not rot, and you know it,” I said and slowly approached the table. I blinked down at Francis’s body, my body trembling. I put on my gloves and leaned in closer, despite the logic warring with me on the decision. If this was a mistake, the coincidence was comical.
This wasn’t an accident though.
That meant there had to be a clue. A message from the bastard yesterday.
Licking my dry lips, I pulled the sheet lower and studied the map of blackened veins that traversed his overweight body. He was paler than a drowned corpse. Another shudder rocked me, and I returned to his face where most of the damage was. What had that man done to him?
Frowning, I straightened my posture and prepared to mark him as DNR , even if I knew he didn’t belong here, but my pen faltered. This was the man Siren told me to find.
I had him now.
I didn’t know where they brought the bodies after we rang the bell, but I knew that those who were being brought back had to be delivered to the arcanists. It must have been in the same building—they wouldn’t transport actively rotting corpses more than necessary. Not if they wanted them back.
I chewed on my lip.
“That’s an easy do-not-resurrect, Morg,” Isaac said, his voice drawing my attention. He stared at me with arched eyebrows, lips parted in disbelief. “Why are you hesitating so much?”
The breath caught in my throat. Clearing it, I shook my head and looked back at the clipboard. “You’re right,” I muttered and tapped my pen to the page. “I think I’m still just shaken up is all.”
I didn’t circle DNR. Instead, I circled ‘R.’
Resurrect.