43. Chapter 43
Chapter forty-three
The agreement was struck. Lux would see Shaw freed once Morana was brought before the mayor in exchange. Then she was to gather her things, say her goodbyes, and move within the mansion, giving her brilliance over to the mayor to use at his will.
She never had any intention of following through on that final promise, of course.
Rescuing Morana, planting her before the mayor, and seeing Shaw walk from those poisoned walls, she would do. But she would never truly consent to becoming another’s plaything. Unfortunately, that left the problem of her likely murder once the mayor discovered he’d been cheated.
She’d think on that later.
Right now, she had to focus on escaping Ghadra’s walls without being seen.
She couldn’t go home. Riselda would demand to know where she’d been and why she didn’t heed her warning. And she couldn’t go through the tunnels. For one, she wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t end up lost, and for the other, she hadn’t any desire to face the phantom in the dark again. Better to brave the trees.
A rotten hint still clung to the air as Lux passed through Ghadra, leaving it to rise behind her. A quick glance over her shoulder, toward the grey walls, and the mayor’s threat entered her head: Bring her back unharmed and whole, or my end is forfeit. The boy dies.
She only hoped now that the phantom had indeed left Morana’s body intact and that the bruise surely gracing her cheek would fade before the time of her father’s inspection. She yawned beneath the cool moonlight. These late-night excursions may be the death of her yet, long before the mayor ever got to her.
It wasn’t lost on her that several weeks ago she wouldn’t have dreamed of entering the wood, and now here she stood, for the third time, beneath their black boughs. Desperate times. It only irritated her further that her reason for venturing amongst the trees again was to rescue an ageless girl whom she didn’t even like, and maybe even hated.
For Shaw. He didn’t deserve his fate, and the quick reminder propelled her first steps into the dark soil.
A swift swirl of cold welcomed her return, and Lux cursed her loss of gloves and ruined cloak. She shouldn’t have returned Shaw’s coat. If she could do it all again, she would have kept her mouth shut about Morana and left her to the phantom. She could be happily plotting her escape from a lush bedroom right now while Shaw walked free. Maybe, someday, she would learn to think things through.
Something niggled at her insides. No . She couldn’t possibly feel sorry for Morana. Could she? Lux huffed, rubbing her hands along her sides. It returned the feeling to them somewhat but did nothing in drawing away the empathetic sensation.
Benevolence was not her nature. “Damn it all.” She didn’t even recognize herself any longer.
The moss squelched beneath her boots, and she curled her lip at the sound as it brought back memories of being doused head to heel. She hurried through the trees, and when she came to the slope that had made a fool of her once, she dug her dagger in deep and climbed. The wood didn’t speak to her, and as she clambered down the opposite side, no roots greeted her descent.
All in all, it was already going infinitely better than last time.
The eerie glow of the forest beckoned her forward, and if her fingers hadn’t felt as though they would fall off at any moment, she knew they’d be slick with sweat. For the cottage was near.
No light suffused the window, nothing but the pale glow of the trees. But Lux knew that nothing so simple meant the phantom wasn’t at home. Slipping from shadow to shadow, she drew near and hunched over, her body well beneath the window as she followed along the exterior. Perhaps the mayor’s daughter was already dead. At the least, she was drugged. The Morana of her childhood would have never made for a silent prisoner.
A spine-tingling howl rose up through the wood.
Though she would certainly take a dead body’s discovery as opposed to that. Risking a quick glance through the windows, she picked out nothing of note. Another howl joined in horrifying harmony with its mate, and in that, the decision was made for her. Phantom or no, Lux opened the door and slipped inside.
Every muscle of her body tensed with the snicking of the door at her back. Her eyes roved the room, coming to rest upon the trap door. The rug lay askew across it, and a small seed of hope took root in that perhaps the phantom was gone and not hiding in the shadows after all. She stepped forward.
The floorboard creaked.
Lux jumped even as the sound came from her own two feet. She cursed her clumsiness. She didn’t often make such mistakes.
Still, the hooded wraith didn’t come.
With a relieved breath, Lux hurried toward the back of the cottage, where the bookshelf rose up first. She slowed. She hadn’t gotten a proper chance to comb through it for clues to the phantom’s identity, and now that she knew she was alone, aside from a sedated Morana somewhere, it drew her in.
Most were ancient. Most were thick. Most were covered in dust.
There was one that was none of these.
Lux pulled it from its perch and flipped open the cover. The subject was some variant of botany, but the topic didn’t hold her attention long. A yellowed piece of parchment, folded several times over, fluttered to the floor.
Setting the book down, she snatched it as it landed. Drawing as close to the glow of the trees as she dared, she unfolded the old paper with swift fingers.
Lifeblood, one must make an incision directly over the iris, extending through the pupil and to its opposite side. The pocket located deep behind the eye is best drained by gravity, and thus repeated on the subsequent pupil when emptied.
WARNING: Harvested lifeblood must never be administered to the deceased. For should it pass a body’s lips, regardless of time passed, Life will be granted. It is not human life. It is an abomination, and should the vessel awaken, it will yearn for the lifeblood of the living, and it will take it by any means necessary.
Lux couldn’t concentrate on the dark images of gnarled hands crawling across the page, or of the anatomical eye, labeled and slit, an ink-black substance pouring forth. Her own hands shook too much.
The missing page of her book.
The missing page of Riselda’s book.
When the soft exhale reached her, her heart nearly shattered. She shoved the page into the pocket of her skirt and rounded the corner. The chair she’d last witnessed Morana in sat empty, the ropes in a pool around its legs. She frowned.
But when another exhale broke the quiet, she spun toward it. To the figure on the bed. Lux backed away, sure it couldn’t possibly be Morana. She had to have been wrong. The phantom was here. And asleep, no less.
She only made it several steps when the silver sheen emanating from the trees highlighted the thick chain traveling from the mattress toward an anchor hidden from sight.
Morana wasn’t dead.
Morana was here, in the wraith’s very bed. Napping.
“Don’t touch me!” Morana’s sleep-tousled head snapped up from the pillow following Lux’s less-than-gentle shake of her body.
“Be quiet,” Lux hissed back at her. “That’s all we need is the phantom here to witness our endearing reunion.” When Morana only stared at her with a blank expression, she added, “You’re not dead. I’m surprised.”
The mayor’s daughter blinked her owlish blue eyes so many times that Lux finally grumbled in annoyance, kneeling to discover where the chain led. It appeared to be twisted around the far leg of the bed several times, but aside from that, she couldn’t make out much more.
“Get up. I need you to help me lift this bed.” Morana said nothing, and she didn’t move. “Are you drugged? Can you not hear me? Get. Up. Now! ” The heated words scraped against her throat, her voice a strained whisper. “Finally.”
Morana had moved to standing, the manacle surrounding her ankle clanging loudly against the floorboards. She copied Lux’s position without a word, and together, they lifted the frame. It was much heavier than it appeared.
The sharp ringing of the chain uncoiling felt loud as thunderclaps, and with panting breaths from Morana and grunted oaths from herself, they moved it back into position. She pulled the cool metal from beneath the bed and blew out a breath of relief that it came easily. The phantom hadn’t thought her charge able to move the frame on her own, and she likely couldn’t have.
“Are you real?”
Lux shoved to her feet at the tug of her hair. “Ow! Yes! What’s the matter with you?”
Morana moved back with a clanging step. “I’ve had dreams similar to this.” She shuddered. “And then they turn into very real nightmares.” With a furtive glance, her eyes found the glowing trees.
“This still might become one of those. We need to leave. Can you walk?”
“Yes, I’m fine. It’s my pride that’s suffering more than anything. And my skin! I haven’t been allowed to wash my face since I’ve been brought here! Can you imagine?”
Even in the scant light, Lux could see the blotches of color entering Morana’s cheeks. “No, I can’t. The atrocities committed here clearly knew no bounds. I don’t have a key to that shackle either so hold onto the chain. And if the howlers are still outside, we’re going to have to run.”
Lux was already at the door, and with a quick scan of the wood, found no eyes staring back at her. She swung it open further. The forest’s glow highlighted the cages she’d been met with on her last visit. The very ones that housed the largest rats she’d ever beheld.
They were empty.
“Where did the rats go?”
“Rats! Where?”
Lux shook her head. Clearly, they’d been gone long before Morana awakened. Perhaps they weren’t pets after all but a light snack for the phantom’s fanged companions.
“I don’t have a cloak. It’s freezing out there!” Morana shivered dramatically.
“Oh, I’m sorry, would you like mine?” Lux held her arms wide, coat-less, cloak-less, and thoroughly irritated.
Morana’s eyes narrowed. “Sarcasm is a fool’s humor. Lead the way then.”
Lux stepped from the cottage and Morana followed after her, her chain falling to the forest floor. She scooped up the length with a loud oath.
“Are you trying to get us killed? You’re doing a wonderful job of it so far.”
Morana gripped the chain to her chest with both hands, spearing Lux with a ferocious glare. “And you’re doing a wonderful job of annoying me. Though, as I remember it, you’ve never struggled.”
“Shaw. That’s the only reason you’re doing this.” And Lux continued to mumble to herself as she stepped amongst the trees, her boots silent in comparison to the ringing ones at her back. Her eyes stung in their refusal to cease staring into the shadows. At any moment, she felt sure yellowed eyes would appear. Followed shortly by very white teeth.
But they didn’t come. Maybe the fates had decided to gift her a reprieve at last. She snorted, followed quickly by a huff of irritation as Morana’s voice pierced the air between them.
“Stop! There’s something in my boot. Don’t sneer at me simply because I don’t want an infection. Oh, it may be too late. I think it pierced the skin. Damn!”
Lux rolled her eyes, turning to find Morana swaying on one foot as she removed the boot from the other. She nearly toppled, and to steady herself, she reached for the tree.
“Morana! Don’t—”
The soil shifted beneath their feet.
“What is this? Lux!” Panic-filled, Morana’s voice rose to a shriek as she tried in vain to wrench her hand from the black trunk. However possible, the pitch heightened when the first vining root snaked up her leg.
Lux fell when the next shift occurred, the roots bursting from the moss-covered soil, coated with an oozing gore. It seeped through her skirt, staining her skin, but none of it was meant for her. Lux shoved the hair from her eyes at the blood-curdling scream ripping through the night.
The tree before her appeared as if ruptured from the inside out. It yawned wide, darkness spilling from its pit to dump ice crystals in Morana’s hair and on her clothing. Morana’s terror had finally petrified her into silence. When the roots pulled against her, she didn’t even blink. Her body tipped forward.
But Lux refused to surrender anything to the wood, even a selfish creature like the mayor’s daughter. Her dagger sliced through the empty space at Morana’s wrist.
Black branches fell at their feet to writhe and twist like great snakes. Morana’s voice returned, and she screamed again. Lux winced against it as she bent to hack at the roots too slow in their retreat. They, too, thrashed about as if in pain. Perhaps they were.
Lux gripped Morana’s wrist so tight it’d likely bruise and wrenched her free.
Together, they tumbled sideways before Morana fell to her front, knocking Lux to the ground in the process.
“What the dev—”
Morana sobbed, scrabbling at the moss beneath her fingers, choking against the sludge spraying upward, dousing her open mouth. And for a moment, Lux laid there, unmoving, confused as to why, when slowly, Morana’s body drew backward.
“ Lux .”
Her name was a desperate plea on Morana’s tongue, and Lux scrambled to her feet to see a faint glimmer of chain. The chain from the manacle drawn taut through the moss and pulled deep into the belly of the tree.
The steady motion was unyielding. More horrifying was that Lux couldn’t see anything in which to sever. There were no roots. No branches. The tree itself was drawing her forward. And it’d swallow her whole.
“Help me, please . Oh, saints above, save me!”
Lux hacked at the chain. Aside from the barest indentations, it did nothing. “You hellish nightmare,” she growled, spinning to the tree.
She could feel its triumph.
Shadow fell across Morana’s ankles when Lux stepped over her, and the scream that shattered the forest wasn’t Morana’s this time but hers, as the trunk snapped around her arm, crushing the bone to the shoulder.
The branches bent, curling and twining toward her, welcoming…only to stop. To shudder. Leaves fell, slick as oil and darkest black.
And when the tree’s expanse opened once more, it wasn’t to draw Lux in further, but to spit her out.
She hurtled back with a silent cry against the pain, her dagger falling to the ground, her fingers unable to hold it any longer. She’d pierced the tree, and now it writhed in agony.
Morana, rather than lying petrified as she’d done prior, hauled the chain up from its depths as fast as she could. When the trunk snapped closed a second time, it was upon nothing. They were free. Morana continued to sob with great, heaping gasps, piling the metal into her arms. The final length sent the dagger skittering toward her, and she bent. Picking it up, Morana looked it over once; with tear-streaked cheeks, she held it from her.
Lux stood unmoving, simply attempting to breathe away the pain, but when Morana extended her arm, she reached for the blade. They’d have both been dead without it. She tucked it safely away as the mayor’s daughter quieted at last.
“Is your arm broken?” The question almost felt woven with genuine concern, even amid the lingering hiccups.
Lux winced at an inadvertent movement. “Definitely.” She released a controlled breath. “How is your ankle?”
“I’m sure it’s hideously large, but it bears weight.”
Branches continued to thrash above them. “Good. We shouldn’t stay here any longer. I’m not sure what damage I’ve done, but I don’t think this wood is the forgiving sort.”
Lux braced her arm as best she could, though it didn’t stop the hiss of pain from leaving her lips every couple steps. She could concentrate on nothing else. Instead, she counted on Morana to follow her, and to keep her eyes and ears open to any further threat around them.
“You’ve dropped something.”
“What?” Lux didn’t stop. The pain wouldn’t let her.
“A page from a book. You know, we were taught never to tear apart our texts.”
Lux did stop then, even as Morana’s tone wasn’t particularly vicious. She didn’t want her reading it. “I’ll take that back, thank you. And I didn’t tear apart anything. It belongs to my aunt.”
“You mean Riselda?”
Lux rolled her eyes, shoving the page deep into her pocket where it would hopefully stay put. “Yes, obviously. She’s the only one I have.”
A heavy silence fell for several heartbeats. One in which they avoided angry branches and furious roots. “I’ve always thought you knew. That this ‘aunt’ bit was built from a fondness between the two of you.”
Blood rushed Lux’s ears. “Knew what, Morana?”
“Riselda isn’t your aunt, for one. How could she be? She’s older even than I am. Than my true age. And she has no family.”
The blunt force of those words sent the air fleeing from Lux’s lungs. She gasped against it. “You’re lying.”
Morana walked ahead. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your family died that day. I’m not sure what Riselda’s interest in you is, but it isn’t due to familial duty. If anything, I’d be wary of her.”
Even with the agony ripping through her shoulder, Lux almost choked out a laugh. Only her utter shock over Morana’s words held it back. The mayor’s daughter was as untrustworthy as they came, and Lux had been wary of her from their very first interaction.
She is lying.
Lux couldn’t believe her.
“Your true age, is it? A glimpse of permanent death and now you admit to drinking lifeblood?”
Morana paused in her path, nearly causing Lux to collide with her. “I…”
“I already know, in case you’re attempting at a lie right now.”
Morana muttered a slew of unpleasantries. “Then why ask?”
Lux pushed them forward. “You, your father, Colden, the rest of your lovely family. Tell me how you’ve managed it. How have you managed to get away with immortality? Does not one old person recall finding you the same today as you were when they were a child?”
Lux saw Morana stiffen from the corner of her eye. She knew she risked hurting her by mentioning Colden, but these questions were too important in discovering what really went on inside Ghadra’s only mansion. When they trekked on, Morana steadfastly silent, limping and no closer to answering, Lux felt what little empathy she’d built evaporate.
“We deserve— ”
“I heard you, all right!” Morana huffed, and winced, stumbling on her injured foot. “I’ve had two names all my life. Morana when I was born, one hundred and ninety-six years ago. Giselle through the middle, as Morana’s daughter. And Morana again, Giselle’s daughter. My family’s story is the same.”
“That doesn’t make sense to me. What dimwit wouldn’t realize you wore the same face?” She felt near to abandoning Morana to the wood if she didn’t tell the truth.
“We don’t.”
Lux stopped in her path, a new horror beginning to eat away at her. “You don’t what?”
“Wear the same face, obviously.”
Lux couldn’t speak.
Morana spoke, instead. “I suppose I should say thank you for rescuing me. I’m sure it’s only for the price my father has placed on my return, but nevertheless.” She peered into the gloom surrounding them, ducking below a swiping bough. Lux, reeling yet, gripped her injured arm tighter against her abdomen. “I never imagined someone could live out here. What a horrifying place. How did you find me?”
Lux’s mind stumbled away from all she’d learned and into what Morana asked now. But she would never tell her the truth. “One of the reapers mentioned a strange sighting in the forest. Rumor spread of a phantom, cloaked in grey. Your father is offering a reward, and I thought, perhaps, it may have been you, lost in mourning. When the figure vanished amongst the trees, I discovered you anyway.”
“My kidnapper,” Morana hissed. “When I return home, this entire forest will be combed to its edges.”
“Do you have an idea of what it might be?”
“ Whom. A woman.” Morana glanced over her shoulder, eyes gleaming in the darkness. “A dead woman. She will pay for her crimes.”
It can’t be.
Lux needed something, anything, to disprove the theory unwillingly conjured within her head. Ever since she’d discovered a weathered page buried within a book in a cottage far from home.
She has no family.