Chapter 28
Chapter twenty-eight
Lux’s body wound tight. She walked along the precarious edge. Hildred was dead for certain, but she needn’t stay that way. Lux stared hard at the shore far below but could see nothing aside from jagged rocks and frothing waves. It was too dark.
“Where have you gone?” Lux asked.
What have I done?
“She’s…dead?” stammered the girl. Lux almost missed the question as a wave crashed.
“For now. Maybe forever,” Lux replied. Her dread intensified. “Are you all right? I’m sorry I cut your hair.”
Clumps of red strands blew about the grass.
The girl glanced at them and away again.
“I can’t go back there. They told me I would be better, that the drink would help the salt-sick, but I can’t wait.
There’s so much want here, and it’s making me sicker.
You’ll help me, won’t you? You don’t feel like them.
That woman… She felt like nothing at all and that scared me the most.”
Lux could hardly follow the girl’s running thoughts. Her own were in too much turmoil. “I don’t feel like them?”
“No. You feel lonely. And scared. And…very angry.”
The girl’s eyes had grown wide at her final assessment, and Lux had to indeed push down her anger. She was furious with herself. She hadn’t thought through every consequence of cutting Hildred from the girl. She’d only been focused on the most obvious one. Giving the girl her freedom.
Because for Lux, freedom had always felt like the most important thing.
She surveyed the girl’s attire. Her nightgown was a replica of Lux’s own upstairs, gifted by Mothlock. “I can’t help you yet. Wait for me if you can, but I must look for the body in the cove first.”
“I’ll wait by the garden door.”
Lux nodded. That would do.
A few minutes later, she stood upon the first stone step and cursed her long skirt.
This was why she’d always cut everything off at the knee.
With so much fabric, she risked tumbling to her death the same as the body she sought.
She adjusted her bodice and retied her knife, then she gathered her skirt in her fists. Saints above, let me live.
The first half of the path wasn’t so awful: she slipped only once.
But by the second half, she cursed and abandoned her grip on one part of her skirt to extend her arm for balance.
To compensate for the drag, her opposite hand clutched her dress higher.
Though her bare knees protested the exposure, it was infinitely better than falling.
The waves grew to a bellowing roar as she descended, and Lux almost lost her balance entirely at their sheer size. She’d been so focused on her feet, she’d not braved a glance. She paused now. A single step more and her boots would meet black sand.
She tried to remember what Corvin had said regarding this cove, what she should watch for.
The waves. I shouldn’t swim in the sea. Of course, she’d not told him at the time that she would never attempt it because she’d never learned how.
Lux stepped forward. Her boots sank. She tried to hurry, but it was difficult.
It reminded her of walking beside Ghadra’s marshes—the strange feel of ground shifting beneath one’s feet.
Rocks of various sizes littered the cove, the larger ones offering themselves as homes to blue crabs. She picked her way around two boulders dripping with seaweed and sea-spray, and a large crab sought immediate shelter at her nearness.
It was then she met the sea.
It came upon her quick, a collision rather than a meeting. A wave crested, the force of it peppering her face with drops, and when it rolled in, the water splashed over her more than she intended. It soaked her boots and a good amount of her hem. Immediately, she noted the added weight.
But she didn’t care. It was breathtaking. Even in the moonlight.
So utterly, terrifyingly—
Lux’s thoughts snagged. Because farther out was something decidedly not froth-like, but white all the same. A body. In a white apron. A wave caught it up, and for a brief moment, she glimpsed more than that.
Long hair. Sallow skin. Seaweed clinging to the length of skirt tangled about the legs.
Hildred.
Lux gasped when frigid water met her thighs. Except when she cast a surprised glance to the rock beside her, the one dripping and dark, it hadn’t moved.
Which meant neither had she.
“It is the changing tides you must be wary of.”
Her mind gifted her the remainder of her and Corvin’s conversation, just as another wave crashed against her.
Her dress hung heavy and limp from her hips.
Turn back, demanded her head, but the woman had drifted closer.
Enough that Lux could see the deep lacerations marring her legs.
The body wasn’t within arm’s reach, not yet, but perhaps if she took one step closer.
Lux stepped—
And sank beneath the waves.
For several heartbeats of time the world was dark and serene. She was suspended in a place she’d never found herself before, and it might have been peaceful—if only she could breathe.
Lux found the barest foothold and pushed.
She hardly moved.
The dress. That lush, emerald velvet. She’d never worn armor, but she guessed it must feel something like this. The heaviness had dragged her down to the depths, and now she would die here. Drowned—in the very sea she’d longed for.
How poetic, crooned the chaotic part of her mind, as the larger portion screamed, SAVE YOURSELF! Her lungs began to harmonize with it.
Her boots brushed sand a second time—she would have wept if it were possible—and with better footing and arms outstretched, Lux shoved upward with all her strength. Her fingers reached the surface. But nothing else belonging to her did.
She was dragged down again.
The taste of brine swept into her mouth; she refused to open her eyes. Please. Don’t let me die like this.
Her body smashed into rock.
Lux clenched her teeth against a cry and grabbed hold.
Or attempted to; the edges had been worn smooth.
Her fingers slipped against the slick surface, the rest of her at the mercy of waves and the dress’ weight.
But then her hand met something else—a cold, limp limb.
She didn’t think it through. Perhaps because her consciousness faltered, her lungs the only part of her capable of screaming now. She grabbed it tight.
Using the body as leverage, Lux hauled it down while she rose. Her head broke the surface. She dragged a frantic breath before another wave descended—and pulled her back under.
Lux did not know how to swim. Even if she could, she could never swim dressed as she was. And it was dark and cold, and she was too tired. Not even the small gasp of air had helped. The underwater sounds became a beckoning lullaby.
Her grip on the body loosened.
Then there was nothing.
Her chest burned. In the worst sort of way. There was too much pressure, and it came from both inside and out. She tried to gasp a breath, but nothing moved.
Then it all moved at once.
Water ran from her lips. She coughed, and it poured faster. She felt a pressure again, this time at her shoulders, then she was shoved onto her front, her forearms in the rough sand. There, she hacked until she vomited. Seawater poured from her mouth and nose.
It burned so terribly, Lux’s eyes streamed from behind closed lids; she wanted to cry but couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything until it was done.
Her first true breath was agony.
Her second was a sob.
“Saints above!” exclaimed a small voice. “Please, you have to breathe not cry!”
Lux lowered herself to her side where she gasped like a fish, her injured thumb stinging from the salt and her lungs stinging from the same thing.
Her eyes fluttered open. Vague features blurred in her vision, her tears obscuring anything distinct. Lux still felt as if she were underwater. The world remained muffled.
“How”—she coughed and wheezed—“did you save me?”
“I almost couldn’t. You were floating like the other woman, but knocking against the rock. Lord Artemis and Lord Corvin say I’m blessed by the Saints. Maybe you’re not blessed?”
If Lux could have rolled her eyes, she would have. Instead, she pushed upward until she could sit. She coughed again and spat seawater into the sand. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“You’re welcome. The woman is over there. She’s wedged in the rocks.”
Lux’s gaze tracked to where the girl pointed.
The moon highlighted a single pale leg. A large wave crashed and receded, dragging the body back into hiding where it caught between a boulder and a cliff ledge.
Lux shoved to her feet. She waded into the water, but only up to her knees; she wasn’t about to repeat her near-drowning.
When the next wave came, it crashed against the boulder, dousing her, but a torso emerged along with it. She gripped Hildred’s upper arm.
She hadn’t even managed to drag it before the girl’s hand grabbed the woman’s opposite side, urging her release from the rocks. Together, they plucked the body from the water, hauling it onto shore.
It was all Lux could do to simply breathe when it was done. Her chest ached with her efforts. The girl knelt beside the woman and stared down at what they’d held. Lux did the same.
Hildred was bruised beyond belief. Lacerated too. Lux didn’t think there could be any blood left in her body; her skin was translucent. A portion of her hair remained in the topknot Lux had seen on the cliff, but the rest had been swept free by the wind and waves.
She stared at the attendant’s bloodless face.
And—laying dead like this—a resemblance began to materialize in her mind. Viktar’s sister disappeared six months ago…
“I should be able to revive her,” Lux finally said, and her voice emerged rasping. She needed water. Preferably without salt.
“But she’s dead.”
Lux shifted her eyes to the girl. She’s not afraid of death. How interesting. Relievedly so. Lux was sure she couldn’t have managed another’s hysterics in her present state. “What’s your name?”
“Cecily Otterbee.”
“Lux Thorn. My brilliance is necromancy.”
Albeit a broken one.
The girl’s eyes rounded. “I didn’t believe necromancers were real.”
“Real as this disaster I’m in.” Lux reached down toward the dead woman. With two fingers carefully placed, she closed Hildred’s eyes, and out of habit, felt for the lifeblood congealing within her.
Her fingers paused in their assessment. She frowned—then quick as a gallow root, shoved Hildred’s eyelids back. Lux leaned forward, looked closer, and gently pushed against one fixed pupil. She stared at the result on the pad of her finger in the moonlight.
Perfectly ordinary.
There was no slit. No leaking lifeblood.
But the body…
It was empty.