Chapter 31
Asudden rush of blood poured from Enid’s throat, her trembling hands reaching up to the vicious slash as she stared at Anelize wide-eyed before her legs grew weak and she fell to the ground. Anelize screamed in horror like she never had before.
“Enid!” She made to run down the steps. Only to feel a sharp unending pain lance through her side. Anelize gingerly glanced down to where she saw a knife protruding from her abdomen. Watching as it was pulled out, only to be thrust back in once more, stealing the air from her lungs.
“I’m sorry, Anya,” Henry murmured into her ear. “But it had to be done.”
“Henry?” she slowly turned her head to look at the man who had been like a father to her and Enid, to all of them, as he stared at her with solemn eyes full of tears.
Henry pulled the dagger out from her side, sending her tumbling down the steps.
She crashed to the ground, groaning in pain as she forced herself to look up.
A wrenching sob of rage spilled past her lips as her eyes found Enid’s across the chamber.
All while Enid struggled to breathe through the gash across her throat.
“No, no, no!” Anelize groaned as she used her hands to drag herself across the ground to her, leaving behind a trail of blood as warmth seeped through the front of her shirt. Her hands gripped Enid’s arms as she hauled herself to her. “Enid…Enid…”
Enid’s hands were covered in blood, still gripping her throat as she struggled to breathe. She couldn’t breathe, she was drowning in her own blood, and she couldn’t breathe.
“I think that’s enough, Gabriel,” she heard Henry say behind her through her unending panic.
The sound of footsteps approaching them made Anelize release a snarl at the man who did this to her sister as he approached them. “Get away from her!”
“Gabriel is a skilled healer, Anya,” Henry said as though she were nothing more than a stupid child throwing a tantrum.
When she glanced over her shoulder, Henry was sitting upon the steps, eyeing the blood—her blood—on his dagger with fascination.
“If you care for your sister, you will let him heal her.”
Anelize’s eyes were frantic as they looked between the two men—one of whom she had trusted with her life—and to her sister, who was slowly dying in her arms.
When she didn’t say anything to him, Gabriel didn’t look at either of them as he dropped to his knees and conjured. His hands hovering over Enid’s wound. His face unfeeling.
Henry then said, “Just enough to keep her alive, Gabriel. We may need more.”
Gabriel nodded, then seemingly slowed his conjuring as he stitched Enid’s throat closed, barely enough to heal her wound properly. She was losing too much blood. It was too much.
Her brown eyes stared up at the ceiling, the light within them slowly fading.
Placing her hand upon Enid’s, she sensed for her heart.
Willed it to keep beating as she found that soft, fluttering glow that reminded her of a butterfly seeking flowers to rest upon.
After what she’d done to save Aeric, Adan had said she was capable of returning life.
If that was the case, she would do it. She just needed time.
The wounds on her side were unbearable, and conjuring only seemed to make it worse as more blood poured over the ground, coating her clothes. She didn’t care.
Before she could, she felt hands dig into the back of her hair and yank her away from Enid.
Sending her onto her back, the searing pain on her side making her cry out.
When she looked up, she found Henry looming over her.
A look she had never seen on his face before sending a chill down her entire body.
“Why…why would you do this?” She struggled to sit up, bracing a hand over her side. Sending a hateful glare at Henry, she demanded, “We trusted you. Why?”
Henry snapped, “Why do you think? Is it not obvious to you by now, child? Are you truly that daft after hiding yourself away all these years? That you and your sister are quite possibly Samca’s last surviving relatives. Her direct bloodline.”
Samca. That name, though she’d never heard it before, rang in her mind. An incessant bell pounding in her head. Forcing her to listen. A memory, a whisper, a gentle caress. All of them sounding off, circling that one name. It was there within her grasp, yet too difficult to place.
Relatives.
Bloodline…
Seeing the look of confusion on her face, Henry sighed. “Did you not hear a single word I told you before? That the only one who can put an end to Samca’s—the Weaver’s—curse would be her blood. In other words, her child. Or children, by the looks of it.”
Enid convulsed on the ground, and Anelize made to crawl back toward her, but Henry angled his bloodied dagger toward her. Leveling her with a hateful glare.
“If you wish to prolong your life and Enid’s a bit longer, you will stay put.”
Anelize said through gritted teeth, “What you’re saying is impossible. Our father was—”
“Your father was a sad excuse for a Vedran. After the war, he wished to be seen as a weakling residing in the port district as a healer, of all things. His shame was his undoing.” Henry scoffed.
“He left us all to go on and live a life amongst those rodents, and it was his cowardice that kept him from being slaughtered alongside all the rest of his people. And yet, somehow, he had two children by the time we all scurried our way out of the forest to find shelter after the massacre. I always wondered how it was that he had you two when there was no mother to be seen. When I asked, he said that she died during the birth of your sister, but I never found a tombstone with her name in the cemetery. I tried to find it, merely out of curiosity. Deep down, I knew something was not quite right.”
“What does this have to do with anything?” Anelize demanded, her blood pouring between her fingers, gathering in a pool on the ground. She was losing too much blood, too quickly. Her vision starting to blur.
None of this made sense. Henry had been her father’s closest friend. He’d been the one to tell her about her father’s execution taking place, had tried his best to shield her from the pain and loss. He and Zara had always tried to care for them.
Henry impatiently said, “Because, sweet Anya, your father was nothing more than a coward.
I always knew he kept things from me, even when we were children.
He thought I never knew that he had developed a liking to Samca when we were young.
He was the only one who did not see her for what she truly was—a snake in the grass plotting against her own people by siding with the king.
They were madly in love, so much so that she convinced him to leave the forest to discover what laid before him in the city.
That they may start a life there together once King Amaranth granted us all amnesty to live on freely after the war. So long as she granted him the book.
“During the massacres, Samca was nowhere to be found, proclaimed dead by the king’s men after they stole the book. That very well may be true but then imagine my shock and utter revulsion when I saw two little girls running about their father’s shop. One bearing nearly the same likeness of Samca.”
“That proves nothing. These are all theories.”
Henry reached down and gripped the collar of her shirt. Anelize groaned in pain as he forced her to look into his hateful eyes.
“It proved nothing until he told me one night, the night before he was killed by the Watchmen, drunk on ale and his own pathetic sorrows, how he’d loved Samca enough to give her a child—children.
And how he would do anything to protect them from being used by the king to break this curse on the book and us as a result.
Do you want to know what he said to me when I insisted we hand you girls over to the king to put an end to all of our suffering and need to hide in the shadows? ”
Anelize shook her head, tears rolling down her cheeks, unable to recognize the man before her anymore.
Henry’s laugh was cold as he jostled her.
“He threatened to kill me and my family if I opened my mouth about what he’d told me in confidence.
As if it would only affect him. The selfish bastard had the gall to order me to keep his confession to myself.
I knew he would pose as a problem for me, my family, and the rebels if I didn’t do something.
So, the next day when he went out to market, I took matters into our own hands. ”
Dread sluiced through her and bile rose up her throat.
“It was you? You reported him…”
“He was a complication, and I needed to ensure I would be able to use you girls when the time was right. Getting rid of your father was by far the easiest thing. Your aunt was another obstacle, but she was too foolish to deduce you possessed Samca’s blood, so I let her be until the time was right.
The only problem was being able to get the book.
Imagine my surprise when there was a little rat amongst the Watchmen already, practically raised by them, yet too overcome by his own guilt to truly turn his back on us. ”
Aeric.
“Yes, it took time, but I eventually learned how to coax him to our side. Earn his trust. I half expected him to betray us at any given moment, but he has a good heart, so my wife loved to remind me,” Henry mocked.
Anelize felt the need to purge her stomach as she feared the answer that would come, but needing to know.
“Did…did Aeric know about this?”
Henry laughed, the sound sending a chill down her spine.