Chapter Twenty-Seven #3
The mandrake dove at her, its mouth wide, ready to snap its jaws around her head. She imagined its rows of teeth sinking into her, ripping, tearing…
The mandrake kept screaming. And then its face exploded.
One minute, she was staring deep into the creature’s throat. The next, she was staring at the open wound of its neck. Ichor and bits of flesh covered her, sprayed over her face and gown. She stood frozen, ears ringing, unable to move.
The mandrake’s headless body swayed for a moment and then collapsed. It twitched on the floor, neck wound gurgling green blood onto the wood.
Percival lay on the far wall of the room, propped up against a shattered table. His stomach still bled, creating a puddle on the floor around him, and his skin was gray and damp. He held the elephant gun that had once hung over the fireplace. The wide barrel smoked.
“Take that, you bloody pansy,” he said. He coughed, and more blood gurgled into his beard. Then he dropped the elephant gun to the side.
Elswyth ran to him, wiping the ichor from her eyes. He lay there, chin against his chest, slumped to the floor. His breaths were shallow and rapid, and when he looked at Elswyth, his eyes seemed glassy and far away.
“I saved you,” he said. He smiled, his teeth bloody, foam bubbling at his lower lip.
She unbuttoned his shirt and looked at the wound beneath. With each breath, more blood poured out of it, staining his skin red.
She screamed for Kehinde, but her words came out in a sob. Elswyth looked around for a cloth, anything to stop the bleeding, but there was nothing, so she pressed her hands to the hole in Percival’s stomach, trying desperately to stanch the flow.
“Elswyth…” Percival said. His voice was gentle. Weak.
Blood spurted through her fingers. Too much, too much for anyone to lose.
“I—I can heal you,” Elswyth said. Tears started falling, and her words came out panicked and broken. “I just need time. I need my tools. Hold on, Uncle. Please hold on.”
She peeled back his ruined shirt and began fabricating a salve to stop the bleeding.
She could weave roots through the wound, to close it, but what of the wound on his back?
Blood came from his mouth—that meant his stomach was punctured, probably the intestines too, and he was wheezing through what sounded like a ruptured lung.
Could she repair it? No, but perhaps Dr. Gall could. Perhaps—
Percival’s shaking hand found hers. “It’s too late, Elswyth,” he said.
“No, I can fix it, I can, I just need—”
“Elswyth, dear, I am gone. It’s all right now. Don’t cry.”
“It’s all my fault,” Elswyth said. Her face twisted as she cried. “I brought this on you. If I hadn’t insisted on looking for her… If we hadn’t gone to the Rows…”
“It wasn’t your fault, Elswyth. It is Silas. You must go now. Save Mrs. Rose while you still can.”
Elswyth shook her head. “I’m not leaving you. I won’t go. I—”
Percival coughed. Blood sprayed from his lips. He took Elswyth’s hand, but his grip was weak.
“There’s no time. You must listen to me. What you told me about your mother… Cerise loved you. She loved you more than anything.”
“I know, Uncle,” Elswyth said. She sobbed over the words. “I’m so sorry.”
“No. You misunderstand. Cerise was powerful. More powerful, even, than you. And if you took her vitae to heal yourself, it was because she gave it to you.”
Elswyth froze. She wiped tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. “What?”
“You did not kill her, Elswyth. You were a child, and sick. I believe she gave you her life, so that you might live yours… And though I miss her dearly, I am so happy that she did.”
When Percival smiled his teeth were bright red.
What he described was impossible, and yet Elswyth’s ability to take vitae from humans was also said to be impossible.
Percival could not know if what he said was true—only Elswyth and her mother had been in the room that day—and yet he sounded so resolute.
Perhaps he was convincing himself as much as he was reassuring Elswyth.
But why wait until this moment to tell her?
She reached into herself and felt the pulse of light within her, feeling the flow of vitae along her veins, pooling in her stomach, pumping through her fast-beating heart.
She wove her fingers beneath his ruined shirt and around the bleeding wound, feeling the cold skin there and the shaking breaths that rattled through him.
Elswyth sent her floromantic sense into Percival.
She saw the outline of his body in orange light, saw the pulse of his vitae.
It dimmed by the moment, receding from the wound in his stomach, his blood draining with it.
Then she pulled on her own vitae, breathed deeply, and pushed it into Percival.
His eyes widened for a moment, and he took in a rattling breath, looking up at the ceiling.
And nothing happened.
The vitae wouldn’t move. She tried again, pushing harder this time, but his body rejected her vitae, like oil to water. It flowed back into her, continuing along the path of her veins, unused.
“But—”
A sob interrupted her. She turned to see Kehinde limping into the room. His left arm was in a sling and he used a crutch to support his left leg. His eyes were wide with horror.
“Percy?” he said. His voice was high, helpless. He saw the wound in Percival’s chest, and a grim wail escaped his lips. He dropped the crutch and hobbled to them, falling to his knees.
Percival smiled. “My love.”
Kehinde brought Percival’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’m here, I’m here Percy.”
“My heart,” Percival whispered. He opened his shaking hand and cupped Kehinde’s face, leaving a smear of blood on the scars there.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Kehinde said. “We’re going to heal you. We’re going to get you to a hospital. Won’t we?” He turned to Elswyth. His voice trembled and his eyes were red with tears. “Won’t we?”
Elswyth’s mouth fell open. What could she say? Kehinde stared at her, desperate. His teeth clenched, his face a mask of pain. He grabbed Elswyth by the shoulders. “Tell me you will heal him!”
Percival stroked Kehinde’s cheek, bringing him back. His fingers shook. “We’re past that now, Kehinde. It’s time.”
“No—” Kehinde said, shaking his head. “No, please.”
“It’s all right, love. We knew this day would come.”
Kehinde began to sob openly. “I’m not ready, Percy. I’m not ready for it to be over.”
Percival’s eyes began to water. Finally, tears spilled over the edge, mingling with the blood. He looked at Kehinde and smiled. “You were the only adventure I ever needed.”
Kehinde laughed through the tears. He nodded. “And you were mine.”
Percival began to fade. His eyes fluttered, and his voice was weak.
“We had a good go of it, didn’t we, love? For what we were given?”
Kehinde lifted his head, wiping the tears away with the back of his hand. “The very best.”
Percival smiled. He took one last, rattling breath, and then stopped. Then Lord Devereux’s eyes went still as glass, and the great hunter was dead.
They stayed like that for a long while. Kehinde, with his head in the crook of Percival’s neck, cried quietly.
Elswyth kneeled by his side, numb. All around them, the glass eyes of Percival’s trophies stared down at him.
The only sounds were the crackling of the fire, the ticking of the grandfather clock, and Kehinde’s gasping breaths.
After a while, Elswyth stood. She moved over to the dead body of the mandrake, staring at its elongated limbs and twisted gray skin. It seemed to be deflating, the viscera within pouring out the open wound of its neck.
It’s been waiting since the day I found it, Elswyth thought.
Like a poisonous seed waiting to sprout.
She’d let it happen, too, all because she wanted to see how it worked.
Had Silas known that, when he sent it to spy on her?
Known that she would keep it—that her curiosity and her ambition wouldn’t let her dispose of it?
She stood there for a while, feeling strangely distant, as though the room were floating away from her.
Behind her, Kehinde’s sobs had stopped. He forced himself up. “Elswyth. It is time,” Kehinde said.
“Kehinde…”
“I’m going with you,” Kehinde said. He limped over to her, arm still in his sling.
“You can barely stand.”
Kehinde’s face twisted. “I will have vengeance on the man who took Percival from me,” he said. “You will not stop me.”
He tried to move toward the door, but stumbled, wincing at the pain in his leg. Elswyth caught him and steadied him. She looked into his eyes, trying not to cry.
“I have already lost one uncle tonight,” she said. “I will not lose another.”
Kehinde’s eyes widened. He looked away. “But how will you find him?”
“The Royal Gardens. Silas keeps his rooms there. He must be keeping Mrs. Rose nearby.”
Kehinde nodded. He wiped the blood and tears from his face with the back of his sleeve. At that moment, he seemed almost young. Fragile. He straightened himself, stepped toward Elswyth, and to her surprise, cupped her face in his hands.
“What are you doing?”
“If you are going alone, you will not go unprotected,” he said.
“What do you—”
A surge of power cut her off. Through his hands, Kehinde sent waves of vitae.
It spread through her like fire, burning away her pain and fatigue.
Kehinde concentrated, eyes closed, and Elswyth felt something growing over her face, down her neck, over her arms. She looked down, and ivory-toned wood plated her exposed hand, glowing faintly in the dark.
He took his hands from her face. Sweat glistened on his brow, and his breath raced.
Elswyth looked at her hand, turning it over, flexing her fingers.
The pale wood moved seamlessly. She caught her reflection in a shard of the shattered mirror on the wall, and then saw her face: It was coated entirely with bone-white wood, emanating soft light.
Not Ebony, she thought. It’s elderwood. There was no mistaking it—she could see the faintly luminescent grain weaving beneath the polished surface.
The branching mark of her scar arced across her armored skin, a red vein through the white.
Then the armor vanished from her face. She tried to call it forward again, but it would not come.
“Where did it go?” she asked.
“You cannot control the Ebony on your own, not without training. It will come when it is needed. I promise.”
“But Kehinde… this technique is sacred to you.”
“Tonight, vengeance is sacred,” Kehinde said. “Now go. Find Mrs. Rose.”
Elswyth studied his face. Then she nodded, standing, and moved toward the door.
“And Elswyth?” Kehinde asked. She paused in the doorway.
“What is it?”
Kehinde, staring at Percival’s body, slowly turned to her. Something fatal shone in his eyes. “When you find him—kill the bastard.”
The words hit Elswyth like a stone. Her body froze—they were the very same words her grandmother had whispered to her beneath the elderwood tree all those months ago at Persephone’s funeral.
Elswyth hesitated at the door. She looked over at where Percival’s body lay, covered in a sheet, and thought of Kehinde’s words: Perhaps some violence is worth the flame that follows.