Chapter Twenty-Eight Inana
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Inana
It’s only after Dominic leaves that I realize how long it’s been since I’ve been well and truly alone.
When I lived in Nalheim, my hours were devoted to working, performing, or sleeping in the barracks.
Always near others. Never a moment of complete silence, for even the lavatory was a shared space.
The textile mill was similar, though most of my days were spent in a haze, still recovering from shock after escaping Henry.
I suppose the last time I was alone for an extended period…was back home.
Henderson’s taunting words come back to me now, sending a chill through my blood.
The woman who destroyed an entire village with her actions.
What did he mean? Who does he think I murdered, and in what way did I destroy Dunway?
I pace around the fire, anxiety simmering in my chest with every step.
Now I’m desperate for Dominic to return.
If anyone knows what Henderson meant, it’s him.
He knew who I was at the Wretched Lair. He knows of my crimes.
It was never a subject I wanted to discuss with him before, especially since he was giving us amnesty.
A clean slate not as outlaws but as Summoners.
But if there’s some fabricated tale going around regarding what happened in Dunway, I need to know what it is.
And if it isn’t fabricated…
What the hell happened to my village?
I curse under my breath and stalk over to a pile of pine branches, pushing them aside to reveal my mask and one of my fabric hearts.
I found them here when I was getting dressed and nearly wept with relief that at least one of my creations wasn’t lost or destroyed during my dunk in the river.
My patchwork heart is the only one that remains, but it’s something, and the creation I labored over the longest. It’s still damp, the threads severely tangled, but now I have something to do with my hands.
Something to take my mind off the questions swarming inside my head.
I take up the patchwork heart and begin brushing through the threads. It’s daylight and the fire has brightened the cave well enough, so there shouldn’t be much harm in working on this. I’m not making art; I’m fixing something. It’s practical—
My hands go still over the damp crimson threads. The Incarnate’s voice fills my mind, followed by a vision of its bloody fingers scraping against a bone.
It’s not art, it’s just a tool.
Shame burns molten in my gut. What the hell is wrong with me?
I was feeling anxious and my first instinct was to handle art and call it mending?
It’s logic like that that got the carver killed.
Just because it’s daylight doesn’t mean it’s safe to flaunt my art.
There’s a reason Dominic hid my heart under the pine boughs.
With a sigh, I return it to where I found it and sit by the fire.
And wait. And wait. And wait.
Dominic returns what feels like hours later, though it’s still daylight.
The sky is as blinding white as it was when I awoke, the snowfall just as incessant.
He marches in, trailing chunks of packed snow, then sets down an armful of cedar leaves and what looks like sprigs of wild rosemary, upon which he rests two filleted fish.
I blink in surprise, all the anxious questions I’d been storing up in his absence now fleeing my mind.
He caught fish in that horrifying, freezing river?
With no pole or net? Perhaps he crafted a spear or sent Sloth out to snatch them up in his muzzle. Before I can ask, he storms back out.
When he returns, it’s with an armload of thick branches that must be meant for firewood. Then he leaves again and returns with another armload. And another.
Gods, how much work did he do?
“We’ll need to keep the fire burning during every hour of darkness,” he says by way of explanation.
He adds a log to the fire, then sets about carving several sticks, removing the bark and chiseling them into points.
He then notches them together until they create a cross.
I furrow my brow, unsure what it’s for, until he drapes the two fillets on them.
“It’s for cooking them,” I say as he props them just outside the fire. I’m amazed by how quickly he worked, how expertly he set this up with minimal tools at his disposal. Now this is practical craft. Necessary art.
That dampens my mood, reminding me of what I want to ask him.
I open my mouth to ask, but when I turn toward him, his back is to me.
And his shirt is sliding over his head.
My cheeks heat. “What are you…”
He meets my eyes over his shoulder, and I quickly look away. “I need to dry my clothes again,” he says.
Right. That’s rational. Of course he does.
He’s been outside for hours and has probably gathered icicles in his clothing.
He returns to the fire and sits on the other side.
I note he kept his trousers on. His chest is bare, and I let myself look at it only to assess the state of the bandage I wrapped around his wound.
There’s no sign of blood, so at least he hasn’t torn his stitches.
I lift my gaze, taking in the moisture dripping from the ends of his dark hair, which he’s pushed away from his forehead.
The light of the fire dances across his face, over the bridge of his gorgeously crooked nose, that sharp jaw, that short dark beard.
I shut my eyes and remind myself to stop staring. This is no time to admire the Shadowbane. It’s time to interrogate the bastard.
“What did Henderson mean about me?” I say in a rush.
Dominic meets my eyes but says nothing.
“He said I was a murderer. That I destroyed my village. What did he mean?”
His shoulders tense, and for a moment I wonder if I’ll have to strangle the answers out of him. The thought of my hands around his throat is strangely intoxicating, so it’s a relief when he says, “You truly don’t know?”
“Which part? That I supposedly murdered someone, or that my village was destroyed? I know nothing about either.”
“Two years ago,” Dominic says, speaking slowly, carefully, “Dunway fell to a frenzy of Shades. Most died. The few survivors relocated to other towns.”
Most died. Does that include…my parents? My neighbors? The people I grew up with? I may not have been anyone’s favorite in my hometown, not even my parents’, but I would never wish death upon them.
My heart thuds like a leaden weight in my chest. “How did it fall to a frenzy? The village should have been protected. The duke…Henry…” Gods, was Dunway attacked because I escaped?
Because Henry didn’t claim another victim and light the brazier in time?
But why then? Dunway saw its share of Shades and even had to call in the help of a Shadowbane on occasion, but there was never a threat big enough to potentially erase our entire village.
Did my escape itself draw the Shades? Did my sin in defying a Sinless stir a frenzy?
“Henry Berkham is dead.” Dominic’s words stall my thoughts. “Every survivor of the attack insists he never arrived in Dunway. Records state he was killed in a Shade attack on his way to the village. Before his Absolution ritual could happen.”
I shake my head. “That…that’s impossible. I saw him. He was Sinless—”
“I believe you, Inana. I believe you were the last person who saw Henry Berkham alive, and that he was already Sinless.”
“Then what the hell does this all mean?”
“Think it through.” His tone is gentle. Calming.
“Henry Berkham is dead, that’s a fact. Records state he was never given the Absolution ritual and died while he was still mortal.
Yet you saw him alive and very much Sinless.
Sometime after you escaped imprisonment, Dunway was attacked by Shades, leaving very few survivors.
The only ones left alive confirmed they never saw their promised duke arrive. What do you think the truth is?”
I bite my bottom lip as I consider what he said.
If the records contradict what I know to be factual—that Henry was without a doubt turned Sinless—then the records are lying.
As are the survivors, unless they somehow missed the celebratory procession like I did and truly don’t know Henry arrived in Dunway.
But he did arrive, and he was already Sinless. And now he’s…dead?
I shake my head. “How can a Sinless immortal be dead? The Sinless can’t be killed…”
My voice trails off as understanding dawns cold and sharp.
“A Sinless…can be killed. Is that what this is all about?”
“If it’s true that Sinless can be killed,” Dominic says, “imagine what lengths to which the church and crown might go to keep that a secret.”
A chill runs down my spine at what he’s suggesting. “Are you saying Dunway was destroyed by Shades on purpose? Because if anyone discovered the truth—that Henry did arrive in Dunway, fully Sinless, and died right after—they’d know Sinless can die. And that…”
“That would make the Sinless vulnerable,” he says.
“But…how? How can a Sinless be killed? How did Henry meet his end?”
“I thought if anyone knew,” Dominic says, “it would be you.”
I pull my head back. “Do you think I killed him?”
“Did you?” There’s no accusation in his tone, but I bristle nonetheless.
I open my mouth to deny it, but my words don’t come. The truth is, I don’t remember what happened after I freed my wrist from my bindings and sliced Henry’s neck with my needle. Could I have killed him? I don’t think so. I’m sure if I did something so extreme, I’d remember. Right?
“It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do,” Dominic says. “Even if you killed him, I wouldn’t blame you.”
I lift my eyes to meet his over the fire.
His expression is fierce yet sincere. But isn’t that contrary to who he is?
What he stands for? Shouldn’t he be terrified of me?
If I knew how to kill a Sinless, I could kill him too.
Yet he’s never acted afraid of me. He’s never flaunted the so-called virtues of his kind.
And his peers—at least Henderson—resent him.
Suspect him. He offers his Summoners freedom instead of Absolution. And the way he feels about himself…
Why would I wish what I am on anyone else?
“What are you?” I ask, my voice coming out quiet.
He runs his hand through his snow-slicked hair, sending droplets falling on his broad shoulders. A dark, humorless grin warps his lips. “Maybe it’s time I told you everything. Maybe it’s time I gave you the one weapon that could be my undoing.”
Terror flits through me. Whatever truth he’s hiding, it has convinced some of his previous Summoners to turn on him. Am I ready for the truth? Will my opinion of him change once he confesses his secrets?
Who will I see sitting on the other side of these flickering flames?
An ally? My master? A Shadowbane who doesn’t seem as awful as I first thought him to be?
Or an enemy?
I take a bracing breath. “Tell me.”