Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Lux batted at the hands shaking her awake. “Devil’s tits, get off!”
“Wake up then, would you?”
Lux squinted open one eye. “Sven?”
“What happened to you? Is this regular?”
Lux glanced about the room: Sven standing worriedly above her. Lars staring slack jawed. His mother’s mouth pinched. She lurched upward when she spied Viktar in the corner, buttoning his shirt with shaking fingers.
Her head spun.
“I—” But she didn’t know how to answer. Not even when she was a child, not even when consumed with fear and grief over her parents’ deaths, did she faint.
“I can’t believe you can really do it.” Lars couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Sorry for thinking you were a lying fraudster only out to hoard your coins because you’re an uppity pile of—”
His strangled cry came about by Magda’s hand slapping the back of his head. “That’s quite a gift you have,” she said.
“It has its uses.” Lux pushed to her feet, waving Sven away. She decided immediately she wouldn’t tell them. Not about how this was quite irregular. And certainly not about how strange her insides felt at the moment. She flicked her gaze to Viktar’s.
And the man promptly broke down in tears.
Not gasping sobs, but cries, nonetheless.
His puddled eyes locked with her own. “I’m awfully sorry, girl.
I wasn’t thinking. I mean I was thinking, but not about you.
You were only a purse. And now here you’ve gone and brought me back.
” He breathed a ragged breath. “I can’t help but feel I don’t deserve it. ”
Lux began to reply when he cut her off, his confession incomplete.
“Devil take me. You weren’t the first I’ve done this to.
I keep doing it. But I can’t seem to stop.
I can’t quit seeing the possibility of help, only the money or whatever they can give me, and not the person.
I don’t care if they’re old, infirm or a little girl.
I’ve got ten children! Four of mine and six of my sister’s who’s disappeared and probably gone for good, and I’ve got a bad heart.
A bad heart chopping lumber. Who will take care of them when I’m dead? ”
His cries did turn to heaving sobs then, and he collapsed to his knees, head buried in his hands.
Sven rushed to his side. “I didn’t know.
Saints above, I didn’t know it was so bad.
I’ve been wondering why we weren’t picking our marks a little cleaner lately.
” Sven glanced at Magda, and Lux could plainly see the accusation he failed to hide.
“Viktar, I need to speak to you. In private.”
Four sets of eyes found Lux’s.
“Sure as anything,” he said. “You can do anything you want.”
She could sense they all were loath to go, save Lars, but she didn’t give them any attention as they filed out.
“Could you sit?” she gestured to the bed when they’d gone, then turned back to the desk. She opened her pack to tug The Risen free.
Lux pulled at the leather cord, working the wrapping away. She still felt odd, her fingertips tingling and mind abuzz, but this seemed more important. She turned with the book tucked in her hands.
Viktar’s glance flicked from her to it and back again.
“How long have you felt this way?”
“Like I’m drowning on dry land? I don’t know. Ever since she left them behind, I suppose. Half a year?” He squinted at the book, bending forward to read the metal plate embedded in the cover.
She stopped him with a palm to his forehead. She winced at how similar to ice it felt. Drowning on dry land. She knew the sensation with terrible familiarity. “What if I might be able to ease it?”
He sat back. “Ease it? How?”
She flipped open the book, thumbing through its pages until she came to the enchantment she sought. An inked drawing of a bud near to opening had been marked beside the title.
Overcome
She turned it outward and held it for him to see.
“I’ve been studying this ever since I—” She cleared her throat and pivoted from revealing more of her story.
“For some weeks now. And I think I’ve started to understand what each of these incantations might do.
You see here?” She tapped the line. “This alludes to despair, or a desperation. It’s interesting, really, because—”
She glanced up in time to catch Viktar’s perplexed expression. “Well. Anyway. I think it’s worth a try.”
“If you say so, Necromancer.”
Lux’s heart stuttered over the title, and though she cleared her throat immediately following and swore she’d ignore it, it didn’t matter. She was still cast back.
Shaw’s arm shifted beneath her body, his opposite draped across her waist. Her corset was gone, tossed to the floor, and now only a thin yellow silk separated his rough hands from her skin.
She pressed against his warmth, her fingertips trailing along the line of his bare shoulder. Her eyes closed when he feathered a kiss across one temple then the other.
“I won’t ask you to stay, Necromancer. But know I’ll be thinking of this moment every day you’re not with me.”
She sniffed, flipping the book back to face her. “It also might hurt some.”
“Is that what sent you to the floor?”
“No.” She scanned the pages, unfocused. “Exhaustion did that.”
But the thing of it was she didn’t feel exhausted—at all. The buzz in her fingertips quickened, an energy she’d not ever felt, and she laid the book upon the desk to distract herself. “I will need your hands,” she said.
He complied at once.
Saints above, devil below. Allow me to—
It felt like sinking. Not in a suffocating sort of way, but in a weighted, languid, relax-in-the-bath way. And just as she could feel lifeblood during a revival, she could sense the soul the same.
It wasn’t such a shock this time, since discovering her own soul that day, how overgrown and twisted its encasement had become, and Shaw’s—the fresh absoluteness of his. If she must compare Viktar’s to either of theirs, it would most be like that of the boy she’d left behind.
Outside, her eyes were closed, but inside, she scrutinized every clawed branch. She worked her nails into the minuscule spaces between, pitying Viktar’s pained gasp; it couldn’t be helped. When she’d enough of a hold, she began.
“Pressure builds in the time beneath. No rest nor reprieve, it will not sleep. A stone is strong and still it’s worn. A yielding is to remain alone.
Reach for aid, surface slow.
To Overcome is to fight from below.”
The buzzing in her fingertips now entered every part of her.
Lux felt as if she were vibrating, unable to stay still no matter how she fought.
And that energy seemed to pour from her, lighting the darkness, until that poisonous cage flamed its last. Until all that remained was unfettered brilliance and dissipating ash.
She recognized that terrible sensation seeping through her at its demise. How awful, she thought.
It was hopelessness.
Later, alone at her desk, Lux scrawled hope across the bottom of the enchantment’s page.
Once, she would have never fathomed marking The Risen, and now she’d done it twice. She flipped the pages until she came to another. Beneath Untether she’d written forgiveness. Two enchantments now to pry away a consuming darkness. At least with this Overcome she didn’t faint.
Her finger traced the word, and at the final letter, her hand lifted away.
Mothlock’s Manuscripts did not have a copy of The Risen.
Was it because her brilliance was rare, and the book deemed unsellable?
Or was the book itself rare? Maybe the bookseller didn’t have a copy because none could be found.
What had he even meant when he’d labeled it a dark brilliance anyway?
Lux reached down into the pack tipped at her feet. Her fingers skipped over the wrapped book of art until she pulled a frame free.
The crow’s wings beat a steady rhythm, the sunshine lighting her face.
Lux closed her eyes for several heartbeats to better absorb its warmth, and when she opened them, she felt lighter for it.
No matter how far she’d gone away, she would never be without this piece of home.
Her hands gripped its edges gently as she propped it at the desk’s back.
She’d been wary to bring it out in her travels, worried some sudden rain or wind would come and destroy its beauty, but here, it would be safe.
Next, she dragged out the map. She unrolled it and spread its edges flat, and then she leaned over Ravenwood.
She’d not noticed a town between Loxlen and the sea, but she’d not thought to stare at the inked trees.
She found Verity at last; it took much longer than it should have as it was written the same camouflaged way the entire town lived.
The candle near her arm flickered and spat a black cloud.
Lux’s nostrils flared. These candles were cheaply made, mostly fats, and it smelled of it.
She didn’t want more of its venting to tarnish her painting.
With a huff of breath, it snuffed. She leaned back in the chair, where she stared instead out the window.
A thin fog began to brush against the buildings, caressing lampposts and shutters.
It didn’t curl or creep, but still, it brought back memories of Ghadra she didn’t wish to linger on while alone.
It was harder than she’d thought.
When she left, she’d been so intently focused on achieving her dream of escape, she’d not thought about what it would feel like in these moments. How, now that she’d carved away the darkness inside her, there’d be so much space leftover.
She’d forgotten. What it felt like to spend time with those she cared about. To talk about things that excited her. She’d become accustomed to her companionship with silence in all those years alone that trying to create a similar relationship with her voice now felt awkward and strained.
And now there was something else the matter with her, and she had no one to tell.
Her fingertips no longer buzzed, her body quieting nearly to normal. But two enchantments in a single evening would have had her trudging to her bed only a month ago.
What has happened to me?
Because she felt like she could walk all night.
Her stomach grumbled, and she placed a hand over it.
The idea of going back downstairs to enter a common room full of sideways glances sounded like something worth starving for.
But the smells… She smelled roasted things.
Savory things. Things that were not travel food.
And she did want to ask after that carriage.
“You’ve survived a plague and devouring trees to be scared off by a few suspicious townsfolk? Unacceptable.” She shoved to her feet.
She opened the door and stepped out.
Her shoulder collided with another’s.
“Blessed Saints! Apologies,” said the stranger, righting her. “I suppose I should pay closer attention when walking a corridor of occupied rooms.” Gloved hands left her shoulders to adjust the sharp cut of a black coat. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” said Lux. “Yourself?”
The crude excuse of a lamp offered little light in the hall.
The squat candle only lit one half of the man’s face.
A strong jaw, a straight nose, hair several shades fairer than Shaw’s bothersome sister, and a grin stretching his mouth.
“Never better. I’ve made it through worse.
” He stepped back from her. “After you.”
Lux didn’t like the idea of that. After being shot with arrows, she’d joined the rest of Verity’s occupants as a suspicious sort. “No, I’ll follow.”
She watched his eyes widen, a pale frost-like blue. “If you insist,” he said, and turned away.
She waited a few seconds until he disappeared down the stairway. She followed then, but slowly. Something had pricked at her while she had stood in his presence, but she couldn’t describe it more than that. Lux flexed her fingers.
“You have to figure out what’s the matter with you—and fast,” she whispered crossly to herself. “You’re about halfway to useless.”
She headed down the stairs.