Chapter 48
Chapter forty-eight
Corvin screamed. She had never heard him scream before tonight.
When the knife pulled free from his side, he slouched, his hands pressing to the wound. Then he fell to his knees.
Shaw drew back Corvin’s head, poised to strike again and end his life, when he hesitated. His eyes found hers. And before Lux could grant or deny the permission he clearly sought, he cried out.
The blade retracted from Corvin’s throat when Shaw’s opposite hand flung to his shoulder. To the star-shaped bit of glinting metal embedded in his jacket. He bared his teeth and yanked it free.
“Shaw! Duck.”
A second flew through the air and burrowed into the wood behind him. Shaw ran to her. Lux grasped his arm when he reached, his longer stride propelling her up the staircase—
“He will die soon. We can feel it.”
The apparition scuttled along the banister—a moldering mimic of her. And Lux had no sooner shoved herself away from it when Kent moved into view at the topmost stair.
“The Harvest will not be postponed,” he said, a heartbeat before he dodged Shaw’s violent swing.
The collector’s large fist met Shaw’s temple in a sickening crack Lux felt in her soul. He slumped to a heap on the steps and did not move again. “No!” she shrieked, but as she lunged, Kent’s hand enclosed around her throat, hauling her backward.
“I know you did it,” he hissed, when she was pressed against him and unable to move. “I know you revived her. Where has she gone?”
“I don’t—” Her lungs squeezed, unable to draw breath. Lux dug her nails into his arm, but found it was not tight against her neck. Panic. She was panicking.
But, bafflingly, her head remained clear.
She attempted a new breath; a choking gasp was all she managed. “What—”
“You wear my creations well,” murmured Kent. “I really am sorry to use it against you, but this is far too important.”
Lux’s attempts to rip at her tightening bodice were thwarted by Kent’s changing grip. Her vision was greying. She focused on Shaw. On his unmoving form, his head pressed against the step’s edge.
I have to help him. That has to hurt.
But she—could—not—breathe. Her vision darkened, and Kent swept her up, when she, too, would have hit the floor.
Death stole across her skin, pulsed in her chest. Then, she felt nothing at all.
Lux woke upon a throne.
She hardly managed to open her eyes at first. From beyond, she could sense torchlight flickering. A room once large, now feeling very small. Cold air. Goosebumps littered her skin where it touched the unforgiving stone beneath her, and she shivered. She could not focus; her eyes fell shut.
Ahead, voices chanted with a deep and droning cadence. She tried to make out the words but could not; they all streamed together, a seamless link.
It seemed an age before she returned to her body. To acknowledge that though her head felt hollow, her body seemed weighed down like she’d been filled again with enchanted stones. She twitched in sudden fear. But her limbs moved as they should, after all.
It was only the result of whatever they’d done to get her here.
A voice rose, loud and forceful above the chant.
It was a familiar voice—a grating, rasping voice—and it said, “On the one hundred and eighty-fifth anniversary this Hallowed Day, we honor the sacrifices made by the Grimrook family. Through their generosity, Mothlock was founded. By blood, it has flourished. May their presence continue to bless our mission and our Harvest.”
The chant ended with his words, and at the rasping voice’s final uttering, a chorus of assent followed.
“But this night…” A bated quiet descended.
“This night, my lords, our society has been granted mercy. Long have we labored. Long have we suffered. Our pious road littered with deceit, disloyalty, and even death. We are the chosen minds. We are the blessed people. And we will be granted a reward tonight.”
Murmurings of affirmations and hiccups of exalted cries had Lux sickened to her core.
The decrepit voice droned on. “Mothlock has long possessed an overlord. And long has it been unbalanced. We feel it every day beneath our feet. The Saints understand our trials. They understand our hearts. And they have sent us a reprieve. A mistress to balance the fates. A Grimrook with the power to harness Death. To reverse the curse upon us all.”
Lux grew rigid where she lay, draped over the throne’s seat. She opened her eyes again by the barest measure.
The room was a sea of men swathed in black. Black robes. Black hoods. The Collectors of Mothlock formed a wide circle around the ice grave. Standing atop it was a man with arms widespread, his head thrown back and uncovered.
Lux hardly breathed as she beheld the greying skin, the sloughing texture, the pale hair clinging as best it could. It was the voice she’d overheard from the cart that day, but as for the monster it came from, she couldn’t identify.
Her heart called for her to look down. Down at the feet of the throne. To a crown of honey-gold hair she would recognize for all her life—and her chest stilled.
Shaw’s chin had fallen forward, his head bowed and body slumped, and she waited—painfully long—for any part of him to move. His hand twitched.
Thank fate. He was alive yet.
And she would soon make them regret she was too.
“Our holy quest to Sainthood will no longer rely on glamours and hoods, beholden to weekly doses of lifeblood to render us palatable. Upon this revival, our rest shall be restored. Our health permanently returned. Our final obstacle in grasping perfection will be no more. Rouse our necromancer.”
A hooded figure broke from the circle. Lux couldn’t be sure, but she guessed it to be the wretched healer. She closed her eyes fully when he neared, stepping around Shaw as though he was nothing more than a rogue bit of furniture. When she breathed next, her nose burned with a horrid scent.
Lux jolted upright. The figure moved back to his place. And while sitting fully upon a cultist’s cold throne, holding tight to the carved arms on either side, she stared into a monster’s eyes.
A nightmare.
With irises of lifeblood-silver.
The decaying creature held a narrow pitcher in its hand. And when it smiled, Lux found it to be the same one Corvin had worn every time he’d found her amusing. A tongue, black and bloated, ran over a row of rotting teeth.
It said, “We’ve entered a new day, Lux Thorn. Let there be no more secrets between us.”
The voice. It was not in her head. Nor did it sound the same even if it were. It was the voice from the workroom. From moments before. Harsh. Rasping. Old. If she would imagine the voice of the devil, it would sound something like this.
“Corvin,” she said, cringing when her voice also rasped up her throat.
How much time had passed?
Hallowed Day, they said. Not eve.
“Don’t fret, doll. I know I do not look so attractive to you now in this form. Soon, it will be righted. Soon, we’ll be the most powerful Overlord and Mistress of Mothlock.” His red-rimmed eyes swept the room. “Nearly two centuries without proper sleep. Our bodies are exhausted.”
Revulsion sickened her. “That cannot be why.”
He tsk’d, and the sagging skin about his mouth shook.
“Please don’t tell me the why of things.
You’ve barely lived, and you’ve spent that meager time with the dead.
I, however, have lived. Learned. I know everything.
” He turned away from her and, stepping toward the grave, upheld the pitcher.
It tipped. A dark liquid ran from the lip, splashing against the ice with an alarming hiss.
Lux folded over her knees. Until her hand could reach Shaw’s head.
Until she could just run her fingers through his locks.
His head lolled backward. The side of his face pressed to her leg, but the other, she could see.
And it was blackened and swollen. She seethed.
Digging within the confines of her gown, she searched for her dagger and discovered it missing.
She found a berry, instead, round and whole.
Her hand retreated when Corvin spoke again. “Bring her here.”
Lux shoved herself backward into the throne, drawing her knees up, allowing Shaw’s head to fall. Of course, it didn’t matter. Collectors flanked her, their ungloved hands reaching—and Lux realized their skin was the same. Grey. Sagging. Nightmarish. She recoiled.
“Don’t make this difficult,” the one on her left sneered.
Lux’s eyes snapped to the shadowed hood. “Silas. Your voice is as ugly as ever.”
Silas dragged his hood back, and Lux flinched.
He did not smile—he seemed incapable—but his bloodshot eyes appeared pleased by her discomfort.
His lips, deeply cracked, moved nearer. From her jaw to her temple, he inhaled her scent.
“You killed Hildred, didn’t you? I tracked this scent all over the rocks. ”
Lux’s veins iced over, a cold sweat breaking out along her brow. “Get away from me, dog.”
His hand gripped the fabric around her middle, and Lux bit her cheek against crying out when he dragged her forward. “Call me that again, Necromancer, and we’ll see how far you can run before I find you.”
“Silas,” warned the other. But he, too, reached for her—the one who’d filled her with rocks.
“What?” she hissed. “You don’t wish to show off your monstrous looks too?”
In response, the mason shoved back his hood. And he was old. So old, his skin hardly seemed attached to his skull. “Is this better, girl?”
Lux stared at his foul face. Recognized its bones from the portrait of Mothlock’s founders in the morning room. “No,” she said.
She was hauled off the throne before she could say anything else.
“Sew her lips shut for us, Kent,” said Silas. “I’ve been sick of hearing what comes out of them since Verity.”