Chapter 27
Chapter twenty-seven
Lux could hardly speak the remainder of the meal. She’d been thwarted. Of course, she had been. She’d next to no experience in seducing answers out of anyone. It had been poorly done from the start.
Corvin rose from his side of the table, and Lux watched him with new eyes.
I followed the saintforsaken zealots, just as she told me not to.
She, of course, being Mistress Farrentail.
But how was Lux to know this was whom the bespectacled, feathered vendor had meant?
The woman certainly hadn’t been specific. She hadn’t even so much as pointed.
Lux felt herself pale as Corvin came around for her chair; she pushed it back on her own before he could grab hold.
“I’ll return you to your room,” he said.
“I know the way,” she replied in a rush, standing.
“Lux.” And then he was there, bending over her, his thumb at the corner of her mouth.
Ever so softly, he dragged it beneath her lower lip, and she was too stunned, too frozen at his audacity, she did nothing but blink.
“I realize,” he began, his voice roughened, “you’ve been through unfathomable things in your past. Things that have stolen your trust and left you with scars.
” His hand dropped away. “But you would find you’re not alone in that here.
If you should wish to stay, I’m certain Mothlock would have you. ”
“I am nothing close to a saint.” Even saying the words aloud felt ludicrous and even a little nauseating.
“You could be. A master of brilliance in this life. Sainthood into the Beyond.” He straightened. “Just think of all the days we could spend together—I’ve shown you next to nothing yet.” He grinned so boyishly an instant confusion came upon her.
“And I would be fixed?”
“More than fixed.” His eyes shone with excitement. “Stronger than ever before. The greatest necromancer to have ever lived. All it takes is a minor adjustment, the smallest pain, and you will be free from any torment.”
“But you’re not.”
The luster fled his eyes like a flame snuffed. “What?”
“You said you cannot dream.” Lux caught her breath immediately afterward. His face—
“I…” He faltered. He would not meet her eyes. “You are correct.” Suddenly, they lifted, and she felt frozen to the terrace floor. “I should have told you from the start. Maybe you wouldn’t have felt so alone.”
He cleared his throat. “I was born unwhole. And—well—if you are broken, Lux…I am certainly shattered.”
By the time they stood outside her door, Lux knew this would be solidified as one of the worst days of her life.
She gazed down the dimly lit corridor while Corvin spoke of the banquet tomorrow and the guests who would soon arrive.
She stared at the apparition standing rigid in its center, and it stared back.
You did not tell me there was a third choice, she thought at it.
The nightmare only grinned.
All Lux wanted to do was scream. Instead, she said, “Why is there a tower but no way to it?”
Corvin’s hand ceased its turning of her doorknob.
“There was a way to it. It was blocked long ago.” She raised an eyebrow, and his lips lifted.
“One of those few places you rightfully inquired after in the carriage; I cannot take you there.” He sobered, however, as he said, “The site of Alixsander Alesso’s death. ”
Of course it was. “Corvin. This ritual—if I should agree to it and wish to join your society, what would they—”
“I’m sorry,” he interrupted. “It’s sacred and so we don’t speak it. All I can say is it’s a test of faith.”
The door swung in by his hand, and when Lux moved past him, he murmured, “May we both be fixed by tomorrow’s end.”
That stopped her. “It will be your first time undergoing it too?”
“No.” His eyes traced her face. “But I have faith it will be the time it succeeds in me.”
A pit formed in her gut over his words at the same moment a deep bell resounded.
“What timing,” he said.
“Where is it? That you assemble.” She did not look at him again, choosing instead to stare at her reflection.
“The sanctum. A holy place. We will show you soon.” A touch, featherlight, drew down her neck. “Now, get your rest.”
The mirror revealed him turning on his heel, and Lux made no further effort to move into the room. She waited, her pulse spiking, nails nearly puncturing her palms.
Because she’d been to the sanctum. Knew from the moment she entered it was not holy, but wrong. And any acts done within its confines must be why.
Stop. You’re to find lifeblood—or not—and that’s it, she told herself.
There would be no single-handed dismantlement of a zealot-fueled business.
No convincing a shattered boy he was also being duped.
If the vault was not in the underground labyrinth, then it must be in the sealed away tower.
She would find it. She would avenge Ghadra’s dead. She would—
She peeked beyond the doorway in time to see Corvin pass the balcony and begin his descent downstairs. Lux shut the door and ran.
Fumbling with the key in her bodice, she ripped it over her head.
The lock formed, steadily growing more distinct, but she had no more use for the crypt.
The entombing would have been long over, and she’d a tower to find.
She tossed the key into her pack. Had nearly drawn the strap over her shoulder—when Death tapped.
She shrugged it away; she did not care. But then a woman screamed.
Lux spun to face her balcony. She’d left the outer door unlatched, and now it swung in on the wind. She could hear all the sounds of the sea. She crept toward the landing.
It had sounded far away, that cry, but if—
She jolted at a sudden shriek. It felt different from the first, more severe. Lux lunged onto the balcony and stood on her toes at its edge. She scanned the drenched rocks far below before instinct drew her to the right.
On a cliff stood a person. Whether in skirts or a robe, she couldn’t say, only that they wore white. And they were terribly close to the edge; closer than even she’d dared. Beneath the full moon’s light, someone stalked toward them.
Lux stared at the dire scene. Made her choice. She picked up her skirt and sprinted.
Prior to her dinner with Corvin, she’d tied Shaw’s knife to her outer thigh. It began to slip as she hurtled down the staircases. Lux gripped it along with her dress and used her opposite hand to propel her around the banisters.
She didn’t meet a single collector. She wasn’t sure what she would say if she did.
Lux shoved through the front doors and into the dark.
Gravel crunched beneath her boots, and she slowed only a little upon reaching the garden path. Another voice lifted on the air, more a shout than a shriek, and a word this time.
“Stop!”
“Don’t even think of it,” she spat at the parasitic stems. They swayed backward, scolded, and she resumed her fast pace. The air was cold; her dress whipped behind her. Lux felt her hair come completely undone. She arrived at the garden door and discovered it open.
I don’t even know them. What am I doing, risking everything on the cliffs?
But that shriek had sounded petrified.
She went through the door and slowed at the edge. Steps led downward to the cove, but if she walked carefully, she could follow a narrow path along the cliffside instead.
She wanted desperately to grip the fence for security, but the brambles had claimed that section.
“Please!” screamed a high voice. “Don’t come any closer!”
Don’t fall, don’t fall, Lux begged of her balance and hurried down the path as fast as she dared.
She noticed the white nightgown first, recognized its cut, and that led her to see the person grabbing hold of it. An attendant, or at least someone dressed in their uniform. The pair teetered on the cliff’s edge, so close Lux’s body pricked with fear.
“Let go of me! I only want to go home!”
The moonlight lit the person’s face as they turned, and Lux’s eyes widened as their gazes met.
Red hair tumbled to the girl’s waist—for she was indeed a girl, not a woman.
She couldn’t have been much older than Aline, and certainly younger than Lux herself.
Lux’s attention dipped at the resulting clank of iron.
The girl’s ankles were secured in shackles.
“Devil below, what is going on?”
The girl ripped at her nightgown. “Help me, please! She won’t let me go!”
The attendant was quiet but strong. A topknot of greying hair bobbed as she was dragged forward by the girl and still, the older woman’s grip would not yield.
“Hildred?”
The awkward attendant who’d tended her fire glanced at Lux for only a breath. “I cannot let you go,” the woman said, sure and steadfast as any line she’d delivered to Lux earlier that morning.
As if they weren’t all dangerously close to a perilous drop.
“You will let her go,” said Lux loudly to be heard above the crashing waves. “You’ve no right to keep anyone here. What has she done?”
“She’s disobeyed,” said Hildred and yanked.
The girl toppled forward but didn’t fall.
“I did not!” cried the girl, and though her voice was high and light, it wasn’t as meek as it’d sounded while Lux was eavesdropping from the cart. Red splotches bloomed on her cheeks. “I quit! I don’t want to work here anymore.”
“There you have it,” said Lux. “You can’t force someone to work for Mothlock. You certainly can’t chain them. That’s not done.”
“You must stay in your room until sunrise. Those are the rules.”
Lux gaped at the woman. Because either she hadn’t heard them, or she was too dense to understand.
“Hildred.” Lux stomped up to her. Sea-spray lifted on the wind and coated her skin. Saints above, we’re too close to the edge. “You’re going to cause her to fall. Unhand. Her.” Lux pried at Hildred’s fingers without hardly any success.
She dug her nails into Hildred’s damp forearm next. The older woman didn’t so much as blink. What the devil. Lux seethed and dropped her hands, reaching for Shaw’s knife.
“I only want to go home. I haven’t done anything I shouldn’t. I only want to go.”
“Mothlock is your home. You will do as the lords say.”
The girl screeched when Hildred’s fist tightened in her hair.
“That’s enough!” Lux shouted and ripped her blade free. “I will use this; I do not care where.”
Hildred hardly glanced at it. Instead, she hauled at her prisoner. But the girl dug in her stockinged feet—and slipped. She fell, crashing to her side, and the momentum propelled Hildred backward.
The girl screamed with a voice full of pain; the attendant hadn’t released her hair but used it as an anchor. Lux didn’t think any further before her wrist whipped out. She cut through red locks of curl easy as butter.
It freed the girl on the ground.
It freed Hildred too.
The woman flailed her arms for balance. Once. Twice. Then she pitched straight off the cliff.