Chapter 31
Chapter thirty-one
For the second time that night, Lux knew she was dying.
Her body had betrayed her, indeed. Blood pooled in her mouth—pouring down her throat and through her lips, both—and she couldn’t bear it. The taste. The warm wetness. The painful parts shredded. The rocks that had been forced down her had torn her throat wide. They’d not wanted to be expelled.
Everything was red.
To die this way is worse than all the rest.
Lux slumped onto the stairs. She thought there might have been voices shouting, but like before, her hearing had gone. Her vision darkened at the edges, tunneling then blurring. Her eyelids fluttered.
The pressure on her body seemed to come from far away: hands on her torso, on her legs. She tried to breathe, to help them help her, but when she dragged a breath, only blood ushered in.
After that, she could not breathe anymore.
This was not poetic. This was her most heinous nightmare coming to pass.
Her body was moving. Someone held her. Ran with her. The muffled shouts wouldn’t cease, and when she laid her head back, gasping for breaths that couldn’t come, only darkness beckoned.
Close your eyes, it said. It is peaceful here.
Maybe it would be. She’d gone down that road so many times in her revivals, but she’d never reached its end. A wall, a veil, had always blocked her path, and from there she could only call a soul forward. She could not go on.
She could go on now.
Her eyesight was gone. Perhaps she’d closed her lids after all. A different pressure bit into her arm then, and it likely would have hurt—if her nerves hadn’t been dulled to nothing. But she could feel the road beneath her feet. The veil at her fingertips. She could feel those two things plain.
Okay. I’ll go, she decided—and reached.
Bright light burst in her vision.
Lux turned her head at once to hide from its shine. The veil vanished. The road disappeared. Her brow furrowed and her teeth clenched. And then a pricking sensation swept through every limb until it centered in her chest.
“She’s not breathing.”
“She will.”
She did. A huge, gulping gasp and her lungs blessedly filled—with sweet air rather than blood.
From there, sensation returned. The hard surface beneath her horizontal body. The smell of iron and incense. She swallowed; her throat didn’t hurt at all.
“Lux. Lux, can you open your eyes?”
“Slow your breathing now.”
She could open her eyes. But she didn’t want to.
I’ve hallucinated him. Logic said she must have, and she wanted to sob.
She didn’t truly hear his voice or feel the caress of his eyes.
She didn’t see him standing on that threshold: tall and broad and determined.
Shaw could not be here. He was in Ghadra, and she was far away.
Now, she was even farther. This is madness, and he’s not real.
How quickly she’d spiraled into it.
Fingers gripped her jaw, and she could see no help for it. Lux blinked blearily upward. Her vision swam, the features indistinct for a moment. Then light eyes met hers. She jolted against the table.
“You swallowed too much,” said Corvin, hovering above her. Like it was her fault. Her choice for enchanted rocks to be shoved mercilessly into her mouth. His finger swept her cheekbone. “I was so worried we’d lost you.”
“It was a near thing.”
The man at the edge of her vision moved into view.
He was unfamiliar with his thick, grey eyebrows and full beard, his lips hardly visible.
But his voice, she knew. A revealed Artemis stared down his hooked nose at her.
She’d never felt more like a specimen. He said, “Tell me how you’re feeling.
I want to be sure you’re comfortable and all has worked as it should. ”
“I feel…” Her gaze narrowed upon Corvin’s pristine clothing. She’d been sure blood had poured from her like a fountain. Had it not?
Her head had been pressed against a hard chest. Someone had carried her.
Maybe I’ve imagined that too.
“I feel like I’ve vomited rocks.”
“Yes. It is a bizarre enchantment, I’ll admit. Of course, if you hadn’t vomited, they would have dissolved naturally without discomfort. That aside, has the pain gone?”
Her eyebrows met. “I don’t feel pain anymore.”
Artemis seemed pleased at this, and she supposed he should be. He’d discussed her future as Mistress of Mothlock at length with his overlord; her death would have nullified that. Her rare, precious usefulness snuffed.
A sudden suspicion twitched through her. She lifted her arm.
“What did you give me?” she asked and examined the dried flakes of blood. A small puncture wound marked the bend of her elbow, already healed over.
“A mending tonic. You were losing too much of your blood volume out your mouth. It’s a good thing I’ve managed a formula which can be administered in other ways.”
“Nothing else?”
Her gaze flicked up to meet his. In time for an incredulous expression to sweep across his face.
“What else is there for the brink of death?”
Well, she certainly wouldn’t know. He turned away, returning soon after with a burning lamp, which he placed beside her head.
“Allow me one last exam. No tonics or tinctures,” he said with a hurry when she stiffened beside him. “Only looking.”
Lux ground her teeth. Corvin touched her hand, his gloved forefinger rubbing a circular pattern atop it.
She didn’t pull away.
She desperately wanted to.
“Only looking,” she finally agreed.
She grimaced when the pads of the healer’s leather-clad thumbs pulled at the sensitive skin beneath her eyes.
He leaned in.
Lux’s lips parted. Her thoughts muddled, suddenly bewildered. Because the healer’s eyes in the lamplight were not so dark as she’d thought. They were brown in places, yes, but hardly. The rest…
Silver as Corvin’s. Silver as Kent’s. And now that she studied these, she realized Silas’s had also been shot through the same.
She didn’t understand it. “Why are your eyes that way?” she whispered. Because not only were they silver, they were also red-lined and swollen. Like Corvin’s.
The circle stopped on her hand.
“Corvin didn’t tell you?” His unusual eyes roamed over hers. “Maybe he didn’t wish to scare away something he’s come to care for.”
“Artemis—”
But the healer’s expression only softened at Corvin’s reprimand. “We have been cursed, Necromancer. All of us.”
Lux was drenched in salt and blood; her skin itched and her chest felt tight. She stood beside the hearth, beside a cauldron suspended from a hook, and she sipped black coffee with a reluctant pleasure. They’d told her to sit. She would not.
Could not.
It was late. She’d nearly crossed into the Beyond twice. She was on the verge of hysterics. She could feel it bubbling away in time with the brew at her hip.
Too large a part of her wanted to run. She couldn’t ignore it. She’d thought she was brave. That she was determined to see this to its end. That her life—all she’d gone through—would be worth something. But the hollow hole in her chest leaked a darkness she couldn’t stopper.
Lux winced at the bitterness flooding her mouth.
“Can you not see she’s been through enough tonight?” Corvin glared at the healer.
“I didn’t tell her with any expectation. I merely told her because she asked. And because if she is to trust us, in what we’re doing here, then she should know.”
Trust. That single word encompassed a myriad of memories, emotions, and dreams.
Lux had no experience with curses. Only Riselda’s instruction and the healer’s own dismissal. It was the latter she addressed now. With a healthy amount of bite, she said, “Is it the dancing, then? Or the inability to love?”
“To sleep well,” said Artemis while Corvin groaned into his hand. “To sleep at all.”
“Let me guess. Riselda Grimrook’s fault again?” Lux choked on a frightful laugh. She could hardly focus on the conversation, never mind all the other snapping threads.
Pay attention. You cannot give up or give in.
She wouldn’t run—but she’d be damned if she didn’t allow Cecily Otterbee a second try.
“Alixsander Osric Alesso.”
Lux blinked dazedly at Corvin. “Your overlord?”
“He cursed us—using a mix of blood and fire and a healthy amount of intention. Unwittingly, we believe, assuming he meant to only harm his assailant. Distress distorted it.” Artemis spoke while tidying his space.
“But that is the risk of blessed blood pacts, connecting us all. Now, every day we plead for respite and receive very little.”
“How? How can someone wield a curse so broad it spans decades of time? How can he still when he’s dead?”
Corvin’s expression turned pained. His tired eyes roved over her. Her stomach twisted. He said, “He cannot still. He could then.” He drew a deep breath. “And because of it, our bodies have petrified.”
“I don’t—”
“We cannot age, Ms. Thorn,” cut in Artemis. “We are stuck in a blasted worldly purgatory. To wield a curse requires the blood of the person you wish to lay it upon—you were correct. But to reverse such a thing requires the blood of the wielder themselves.”
This cannot be true. Her cup sat upon the hearth, forgotten. Her stomach knotted so tight she didn’t think it could ever be undone. It was…unfathomable.
“And he’s dead,” she finally said.
“And he’s dead,” agreed Corvin, picking at his sleeve.
Lux, lost for a moment in all the secrets and lies, suddenly snapped straight when Artemis murmured, “But he needn’t stay that way.”