Chapter 16 #2
My racing heart kicked into a gallop. It was the Box, the poison I’d seen used only once during my time in the Order.
On that occasion, a Rose had betrayed one of our scouting teams to a reader—an eyeless Olden creature of Jaetris gifted with the art of reading and influencing the thoughts of others.
To gain safe passage into Edyn, the reader had convinced everyone on the team that it would be wise to throw themselves off a cliff into the sea, and they had agreed and jumped happily to their deaths.
When the traitor Rose had been found out and the Warden had asked her why she had betrayed her sisters, she had answered, dry-eyed, “They aren’t my sisters any more than you are my mother.” It was the only explanation she had offered.
The Warden had made me stay and watch as she’d injected the traitor with the Box.
We’d been in the Stillhouse; even then, at age twelve, I had already been her favorite.
I would never forget the sounds the traitor had made as the Box did its work.
By the time she was dead, she’d been nothing more than a mess of viscera on the floor.
Imagining Posey convulsing as that Rose had done—imagining the poison snapping each of her bones, and jerking her across the ground, and knotting up her beautiful green limbs like they were nothing more than gummy ropes of clay—gave me the strength to move.
The Warden’s binding magic was fierce, turning my legs to stone and my blood molten.
Its commands circled through my mind—don’t move, don’t move—but I thought of my father, how he would feel fear but not be afraid, and pushed through them.
As I dragged myself across the yard, sound came to me in muffled bursts.
I heard Brigid yell something furious before falling abruptly silent.
I heard Posey’s screams turn animal as the poison took hold of her.
What remained of her crystalline fae voice disappeared.
Through my hazy vision, I saw someone approach the Warden.
Two people. Three. She moved toward them, shouting angrily.
Now was my chance. I willed myself to move faster, calling on all the strength I possessed.
My bandaged hand scraped across the cobblestones.
When I reached Posey, she gurgled something I couldn’t understand.
I pulled myself closer, trying not to gag at the sight and sound and smell of her.
One of her legs snapped in half, exposing muscle and bone.
One side of her face collapsed, leaving her jaw dangling.
The scents of blood and urine surrounded her like a rancid cloud.
“Please,” she rasped, “kill me.”
Nerys had said the same, and Petra too. Their voices lived in my memory—one gnarled and ancient, the other that of a trembling child. And now Posey’s joined their ranks. I would hear her pleas every day for the rest of my life and remember how completely I had failed her.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. At least I tried to. The Warden’s magic slowed my voice. But I think Posey understood. I locked eyes with her, or with the eye I could see—one was buried in the ruined pulp of her face—and grabbed her head, and twisted. Hard. Sharp.
Her neck snapped. Her screams stopped, and her body went still. It wasn’t as neat as the Warden’s sword slicing through Nerys the harpy’s neck, but it was better than the Box. Anything was better than the Box.
There.
Her long suffering has ended.
Am I not merciful?
I wanted to lie down beside her and let the snow cover us both. But once she was dead, the Warden’s compulsion died too. There was no need for it now. The object of her wrath, her reason for forcing my obedience, was gone.
Even so, pushing myself to my feet and facing her was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do.
She stood in silence not far from me with Brigid and Cira, Glynis and Edra, and even Danesh just beyond her.
I didn’t dare look at their faces. They would show me the truth of how awful it had been to hear Posey die.
“Get out of my sight,” the Warden said hoarsely. Her mouth twisted. She was looking at me as though it were her neck I’d broken. Utter gutting betrayal.
I obeyed, hurrying out of the training yard. Roses parted in silence to let me pass, but no one followed me, not even Freyda; Brigid must have wrangled her inside. I couldn’t even feel glad about that. The world was a pulsing blur around me.
I didn’t stop until I reached the temple of Kerezen. A circular building of weathered gray stone, the temple had once been a favorite retreat of mine. The faceless statue of Kerezen and the profusion of ivy vines had reminded me of home.
Now I sat on one of the prayer benches at Kerezen’s feet and stared up at her featureless stone visage, trying to find Mother’s face within it.
Depictions of godly faces were considered blasphemous, a tradition that struck me as rather funny.
Having now met two gods, I couldn’t imagine any of them would actually care about something like that.
How fragile and fumbling we humans were. How easily we could fall apart.
Sitting in Kerezen’s shadow brought me none of the peace I wanted.
The childish urge to flee north to Wardwell and hide away with Mother came and went.
She wouldn’t be able to help me. Only Jaetris, god of the mind, could scrape memories out of someone’s head, and there was no way to know where he’d gone after my sisters and I had killed his human host in Mhorghast. Some godly scrap of him was floating around somewhere, I assumed, waiting to be resurrected.
Or maybe without a body, he had lost hold of himself and his memories and drifted away into nothingness like ashes on the wind.
Numbly, I rose to my feet and stared at the pile of half-melted candles perched on Kerezen’s dais—old prayers, old hopes. I couldn’t drift away like ashes on the wind unless someone burned me, and I didn’t particularly want to die in that way if I could help it.
But there were many other ways to die.
I just had to find one before anyone could stop me.