Chapter 52
August lay flat, using his bunched-up cloak as a pillow and staring at the ceiling as the lamps in the drafty cellar caused the shadows to flicker overhead. Cobwebs hung in the corners, and the wooden boards were edged with rot.
Sleep had already claimed the others, but for August, it felt like a distant, unreachable thing. The unnatural chill of the locket still clung to the skin of his palm, and he traced the outline with his finger.
His thoughts were stuck on the ring. He hadn’t thought about it in so long, but it felt significant now, knowing where it had come from.
The sudden need to have it back was a deep, nagging thing.
It was from the Hollow Dark, and August felt like, in some strange way, that made it his. Like he was connected to it.
Where was it now? When had he found it the first time? Why didn’t he remember?
He was twelve years old the first time he went to the Hollow Dark.
The night the anchored woman tried to push him from the window.
The memory of that night was vivid in his mind.
There was no ring then. He was sure of it.
But he didn’t go through the veil again until after Lottie found the ring in the wardrobe.
It made no sense. He was missing something. It was sitting right there, just out of sight, like an anchored clinging to his periphery. Whenever he tried to look directly at it, it would vanish into smoke.
He pressed his palms against his closed eyelids, digging through his memories of the year prior to the night he’d first opened the veil, but it felt like dredging through murky water.
Crisp memories mixed with strange, blurred faces and missing pieces.
Moments in time stitched roughly together with wrinkles in the fabric. So much of that year was a haze.
Why?
He’d always blamed it on grief, assumed his mind couldn’t handle the loss of his father. But the explanation seemed so flimsy now. There were moments, even before his father’s death, where the memories followed the same pattern. Missing pieces patched over.
“You should leave,” Lottie said, shaking him free of his tangled thoughts.
He dropped his hands to find her sitting on the floor beside him, skirt fanned out around her.
“Now?” It was the middle of the night, and his entire body ached with exhaustion.
“He’s asleep. You might not get another chance.”
August tilted his head to look at Felix.
He was propped against the wall, his breathing slow and even. Was he a light sleeper? He’d taken off his prosthetic. That would buy a few minutes. But Gideon had said Benjamin was upstairs.
The veil? He could open a doorway and disappear before anyone could react. But his chest felt ready to burst. How much more could his body handle? Was it worth the risk?
He eyed Felix’s cross holster. Two flintlocks, two daggers. August could take a blade and use it. Kill Felix, then Benjamin. He’d never killed anyone before. Well, not intentionally.
Two daggers, August realized. Both with simple handles. Then where was Lottie’s? It was her tether. If he left it, he’d leave her.
After he killed Felix, he could search his pockets.
His gaze lifted to Felix’s peaceful face.
A few strands of his light hair had fallen over his forehead, and his lips were parted slightly.
All the vicious anger was gone, and he looked like the boy August had met at a festival.
The boy sprawled like a cat on a bay window bench.
The boy he’d almost kissed at the pub that felt like a home.
Do you want me to kiss you?
August’s thumb unconsciously pressed to his lower lip.
Stupid.
He scowled and forced his hands flat against the bedroll. Lottie’s death was Felix’s fault. Thinking of him as anything but the monster he was felt like a betrayal to her.
Guilt settled heavily in his chest.
He was going to kill Felix. He had to. Wanted to.
“It wouldn’t work,” Felix mumbled.
August’s heart leaped into his throat, and his eyes went back to the ceiling.
“What wouldn’t?” he asked, trying to sound half asleep.
“Whatever you’re planning. I’m faster than you and an incredibly light sleeper. Now, stop chatting with the anchored and go to sleep.”
Felix was wrong. It would work. August only had to time it right. He sighed, closed his eyes, and finally surrendered to sleep.
Some time later, Lottie’s voice dragged August awake, and he muttered an incoherent response, not registering the panic in her tone until a hand clamped over his mouth. His eyes flew open, and he grimaced at the leathery face looming above him. Benjamin wasn’t the most pleasant sight to wake up to.
The man pressed a spindly finger to his thin lips. Then his hand fell away.
August swiped a hand across his mouth, as if to scrub away the man’s touch. Words fumbled at the back of his throat through the haze of the rude awakening, but the glint of metal shoved them back down into his gut before he could speak.
A blade. Benjamin had a blade.
What was happening?
August’s eyes went automatically to Felix. So much for being a light sleeper.
“Keep him out of this,” Benjamin whispered. “Please. I really don’t want to hurt him.”
Benjamin was Felix’s friend. Would he really hurt him? August shouldn’t care, but he still nodded an agreement.
Benjamin rose, blade steady, and flicked it upward in a silent command.
August’s heart pounded so hard it hurt, radiating a sharp, jarring pain through his chest. But he obeyed. As soon as he was upright, Benjamin grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, and shoved him forward.
Where were they going?
The wood groaned loudly as August stepped cautiously onto the first step, and he pleaded silently for Felix to hear it. To wake up.
Lottie appeared in front of him, walking backward up the stairs. “Open the veil, Auggie! Run!”
Fear twisted in his stomach. She sounded terrified. This was bad.
August focused, letting the prickling build in his fingertips. He could escape. His magic was there.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Benjamin said as they reached the top. “I had to tell them. They’d kill us all for hiding you.”
Tell who? The Watch? Ashcroft?
Benjamin stopped, his hand still gripping August’s shoulder. “They’ll be here soon. Sit tight.”
Here? They were coming here?
Did Benjamin know that they were after Felix and Marlow, too? If they came here, it wouldn’t just be August they dragged away.
He should run—slip through the veil and leave the others to deal with the consequences.
He tore open the veil in one sharp movement, but instead of escaping through it, he dug his fingers into Benjamin’s wrist and dragged him with into the Hollow Dark.
When he let go, Benjamin did, too. The man turned to flee, but the impact of his body against the solid doorway sent him staggering back a step. He tried again, first with his fists, then his entire body, throwing his weight against the opening.
But Benjamin couldn’t leave unless August let him leave.
He was the one in control here. This was his realm.
The man spun around, panicked and shouting, and when the words fell silently from his mouth, swallowed by the oppressive silence, it only made him spiral more.
Gideon had called August dangerous. Maybe Benjamin should’ve listened.
The man’s expression hardened to anger, and he lurched forward, driving his dagger up beneath August’s ribs.
August gasped, wide eyes dropping to the hilt jutting out from his abdomen. Panic seized him all at once, and he stood frozen, waiting.
For pain. For blood. For death.
Nothing happened.
He gripped the hilt and held his breath as he tore the blade free. It left a gaping hole in his shirt. But there was no blood. No pain. The skin around the gash blackened like rotting fruit, then, somewhere between one breath and the next, the wound was gone, the rot vanishing with it.
August wrinkled his nose. Was that what was running through his veins? Was he decaying from the inside out?
It didn’t matter. He was alive.
He fixed the man with a furious glare. Benjamin had tried to hand him over, then attempted to kill him when his plan failed. He betrayed Felix.
Anger burned with an intensity that cut through the numbness of this place, melting away the frigid cold. The anchored mist forms thrummed around him. He narrowed his focus to one of them, giving it shape, then he threw out his arms and thrust it forward in a silent command.
The anchored lurched past him and knocked Benjamin off his feet. He writhed against it, his wide eyes confused and pleading. Then, his head twisted sharply, and though the crack of his neck made no sound here, August could almost feel it.
He blinked, coming back to himself with a dizzying gasp. The anchored was gone now. Even the mist forms of the others were suddenly absent, the air around him empty and still.
How had he done that? The movement felt practiced, like something he’d done countless times before, his muscles remembering the sequence without conscious thought.
But that was most certainly new.
A flicker of something—an almost-image. A blurred room, the shape of a person.
“Do it again.” His mother’s voice.
It was a charcoal drawing of a memory, swiped over, smeared into something unrecognizable.
And then it was gone.
He looked down at the twisted body, and his eyes caught on a small piece of metal embedded in Benjamin’s wrist. August snatched the dagger from the ground, crouched, and drove the tip of the blade into Benjamin’s arm, working it beneath the thin piece of metal to pry it free.
It resembled the strange caern the apothecary had given him in Bedwyck.
He turned it over in his hand, studying the blood-smeared engraving before closing his fist around it.
What now?
He stared at the opening back to his world, feeling completely off balance. He needed to get out of here. This place was devouring him.
But his feet didn’t budge, and his thoughts twisted, changing course in an instant.
Did he really need to leave? At least on this side of the veil, it would be a painless death. Better than the drawn-out suffering on the other side. The incessant throbbing, the awful tightness in his chest. He couldn’t feel any of it here.
It was a blissful relief to be numb. Why would he ever want to leave? It was so quiet here.
This place felt . . . right.
He sank to the floor and let his eyes drift shut. The relief of sitting, of surrendering, swept everything else away like ash.
Then Felix’s words rang out inside his head. It won’t stop. Fallowmoor will fall. Then it’ll come for Haverglen.
August forced his eyes open. It would be so much easier to run and hide. This felt impossible. But the tear was his mistake. If he didn’t close it, it would keep spreading. Keep killing.
Alright, time to go.
August stood, then took a moment to brace himself for the pain before stepping back through the tear.
He expected to return to the same peaceful house he’d left behind, expected the faint sounds of distant snoring to greet him from the cellar.
But instead, August returned to chaos.