CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
VESPER
After Vesper unstuck his feet from the strange crimson fingers, he grasped Balthasar’s reins, and trekked toward Morana. Once he and Nef reached the stone gates, a blur of black buildings, sharp architecture, worn wood, and boarded up windows lay before them.
And that red stuff was everywhere—carpeting the ground, the city walls, the cracked windows, even floating on the breeze, and had reduced the once great city to a red-hot steaming pile of shit.
As they walked the streets, they stuck to the town walls to avoid the rattle of sickness stifling the air. Not that there were more than a dozen people inside this vast city, but those who lingered coughed, doubled over and pale. He’d never seen anything like this.
A flash of movement drew Vesper’s attention to a nearby shop.
A man stumbled out the door, his bloodshot eyes bulging and hand clawing his throat as he violently coughed into his wolf mask, like his breath lingered out of reach, his lungs plugged full of stuffing.
With a jerk he wrenched the mask free and vomited crimson on the toes of his boots and pale soil.
Strings of bloody drool lolled from his mouth like viscous spiderwebs as the man gagged.
Holy fucking Hollow.
Nef shrank back and yanked her tunic over her nose. “How long do you think this has been happening?” she asked, her voice muffled.
“I haven’t the slightest clue,” Vesper replied, his every instinct screaming to run as he too covered his face, and leaned into Nef like he could shield her from whatever this was.
How long would it be until it reached Ellynne?
They’d seen this red stuff climbing the mountainside.
The thought of his home swarmed by this plague knotted his stomach.
“The passage has been open for months, do you think it's been tracked across?”
Her brows creased, but she said nothing.
Vesper tucked Nef against his side, and Balthasar flanked his other as they entered the small block of shops.
He rolled his eyes when he spotted a gathering of people in white.
Their wrists snapped back and forth as they rang bells like their life depended on it, and from what they believed, it did.
He hadn’t seen these lunatics since he was a young man. These overzealous preachers claimed to be Instruments of the Gods to scheme people out of slate and allow them to ‘speak to the goddess’. The ludicrous lie spread the word of Kahlia, and conned desperate souls to sacrifice for redemption.
Now, it seemed, their open hands begged for repentance to ‘heal the rot’. Vesper had to admit, the one good thing Destonne had done was ban these crooks. Fucking nutjobs, the lot of them. Nothing short of a nuisance.
After their short sleep they were the last thing he wanted to deal with, so Vesper and Nef took a sharp right to avoid the group.
That’s when he caught sight of the tree. He hadn’t even realized what it was, probably because that red cotton shit shrouded it. He imagined the tree was once the heart of the town, where people gathered and celebrated Blood Moons and the blessing of their magic.
However, The Tree of Eternal Blood, like the people of Morana, was now consumed by the vicious plague.
Vesper took a few cautious steps toward it and held out his hand. When his fingertips grazed the bark, a deadly silence answered, unlike the steady pulse of magic from Ellynne’s tree.
This was a husk.
The spindly branches looked as if they would turn to dust at any moment and cave to the plague’s wrath. As Vesper ran his hand along the trunk, the bark disintegrated under his touch. And along with it, all his childhood dreams of the north shattered.
Nef’s eyes widened, before she breathed, “That’s an act against the gods.”
What if it was the gods? Who else would do such a thing? But why would Deimos or Kahlia harm their own children? Yet they had doomed and abandoned their people long ago. Maybe they’d cast aside their daughters too.
Nothing is free, nothing is fair. How badly did he want to be wrong about that?
Vesper responded with extreme intelligence, “Fuck.”
All his life, he’d wondered why he was some freak, some abnormality, with magic not even his twin sister shared, and Morana punished him with the burden of mimicry for some twisted reason.
But now that he saw the state of this tree, it all fell into place.
It seemed the gods had forsaken his magic, and now, evidently, the world had too.
A numbness settled into his bones. Gods, what he wouldn’t give to lie down on something soft and sleep for a while. He was too old for this shit, and this was all so catastrophic. “Let’s find somewhere to rest,” Vesper said, though he barely felt the words.
He searched the various shops on the exterior of the tiny town, but most were boarded up or simply abandoned. When he spotted an inn tucked beside an empty tavern, he breathed a sigh of relief and prayed for vacancy. Practically got on his knees and begged for it.
Vesper dismissed Balthasar and slung both horse’s saddlebags over his shoulders. Gods have mercy, his bad shoulder creaked from the heavy weight.
“Let me help,” Nef protested, scooping random bits from his arms.
Vesper wheezed, “It’s fine.” He nodded to the front of his trousers. “There’s slate in my pocket. Can you get us a room?”
After Nef fished a few out, she turned to the shop and shoved open the inn’s crooked door. It opened with a vexed groan and dragged against the worn wooden floor while she stepped inside, but it quickly slammed behind her. The useless doorbell rang a pathetic sound like a spoon against a tin can.
Truly glamorous.
Vesper waited a moment. Then two, though it bled into eternity.
As he watched the fibres stir into the air, his stomach twisted, begging him to run so far from this place, he never saw the colour red again.
He hissed a curse under his breath and followed Nef inside.
The moment the door shut at his back, he dropped the saddle bags with a grunt of relief then rolled his shoulder and exhaled between his teeth as it clicked back into place.
His shoulder had never been the same since Callias’ childhood dare to see how long he could hang from that tree.
At least he still held the victor title.
The last time the old injury had given out, Emmery had popped it back in for him.
Usually it went by itself, but that day he’d been particularly unlucky.
The dank inn greeted him, all dark, rotted wood and creaky floorboards.
A man behind a counter with skin the colour of parchment, surveyed Nef and Vesper with dull-brown eyes, the whites streaked in red webbing.
“Y’all need a room?” he asked, his voice muffled under the crow beak mask that concealed half his face. His shoulder-length locks were tangled beyond belief. Since he bore no vestige and Vesper couldn’t spot a cavae or zvezda, he was likely Forgotten.
“I’m with her,” Vesper said. He nodded at Nef’s back.
Nef threw over her shoulder. “One room?”
Vesper gave her a noncommittal shrug.
“One,” she affirmed.
The innkeeper nodded and sifted through a drawer until he retrieved two mismatched keys. How he found what he needed in that mess, Vesper couldn’t fathom. Something sharp screeched and papers rustled as he jammed the cluttered drawer closed.
The man glanced between them. “I don’t care if y’all are Hollow or Fallen. Do what you want, long as you pay. We’re all doomed anyway.”
The less than cheery sentiment twisted Vesper’s gut.
Nef set down three slate. “Enough?”
The innkeeper’s hungry eyes surveyed the black diamonds like jewels as he snatched them up. He stood from the stool and swayed like he fought for consciousness before he waved them forward.
As Vesper gathered the saddlebags and followed the innkeeper down the hall, he asked, his voice strained under the weight, “What’s with the blight? That clingy red shit?” At the man’s cocked eyebrow, Vesper added, “We’re from the southern valley.”
“I heard a rumour the passage was open,” the innkeeper said, his words interrupted by a rattling cough, then he continued, “but didn’t know if I believed it. Can’t travel far on foot these days.”
Vesper’s gaze slid to Nefeli whose brows furrowed in confusion.
“So the red stuff?” she prodded.
The innkeeper cleared the phlegm from his throat.
“Bloodlace. A gift from Deimos himself, they say.” He narrowed his eyes on them.
“Y’all should really get a mask before you catch it.
Once it's in your lungs, there’s no riddin’ it.
” Vesper frowned at the innkeeper's strange diction, not typical of the north.
And his words were less than comforting.
“And the tree?” Vesper pressed. He tried to alleviate the strain off his shoulder and failed.
“Been like that ever since I can remember. Started spewin’ the bloodlace a few months back. Was like some bad omen waitin’ to erupt all this time.”
“So,” Vesper said, his brows pinched, “who rules this land then?”
“Not sure. Most fled to Delmira or Tsillah. Those of us that already caught it were sent away. We live here now.”
A new dread filled Vesper’s chest. This whole situation had only gone from terrible to catastrophic and then sank to the deepest pit of the Hollow.
The innkeeper tried the first door with one of the keys, peeked inside, and slammed the door shut. “Not that one,” he muttered.
Vesper’s stomach churned. He didn’t dare ponder exactly what hid in that room, but the second was apparently satisfactory because the innkeeper creaked open the door, took a quick glance around, and handed the key to Vesper.
As Vesper eyed the thin metal, he wondered how easily the blasted thing would snap inside the lock.
After that creepy ass behaviour, he’d have to barricade the door tonight, too.
This place gave him infinite bad feelings, and the bloodlace, as the man called it, didn’t quell the unease in his gut.
What the fuck had this place been reduced to?