40. Chapter 40
I didn’t have any things to pack. My bag was likely still where I’d left it in the wood. I spent a few fruitless minutes calling into the void, half-hoping Remy might answer, but the only thing that greeted me was my own echoing voice.
I was alone, truly, for the first time in six years, and I’d never felt so naked and afraid.
How would I make it back through the wood without him?
What sort of awful punishment would he have to endure now?
Was he clutching the icy bars of a Frost cell, shouting obscenities, begging his mother’s pardon?
I took one of his cloaks and loaded myself with his knives; he certainly had enough of them. Then I sent a last hopeless glance about the place before I left in a daze.
No guards outside the door. I wondered briefly as I headed for the antechamber if I ought to look for Finn, beg his help, but why would he wander through the woods looking for Serich, a man he’d never met?
He was probably being punished, too. So, feeling jittery and scrutinized, I made my way toward the gates.
Souls in the antechamber, young and old, rich and poor. I hardly noticed their wailing this time, hardly even cared, too wrapped up in my own problems, which seemed insurmountable.
If I didn’t die looking for Serich, I would probably die not long after entering Monde’s End.
Perhaps I could slide through the village by night, head up the road toward Darensdale, find a new place in which to settle, but I had the look of Monde’s End, that gray, tired aura so ubiquitous to our townspeople, and I doubted I would go unnoticed.
I would be questioned about where I’d come from.
I would likely be turned away. I supposed I could find work in a brothel if I were terribly desperate, though I didn’t know of any.
Or I could beg Blathilde for shelter, learn how to be a hag, if such things could be taught.
Stay in the damned wood indefinitely. There was a kindness in her, I’d felt it.
Perhaps she’d take pity on me. At least I might live, were I to stay with her.
So consumed was I with my own thoughts that I didn’t even hear Riquin calling for me until he stepped directly into my path and grabbed me about the shoulders.
He knew immediately that I was alone, that Remy had been removed from me. “Where is he?” he asked, matte black eyes locked upon my face.
“I don’t know,” I said, in an awful, helpless, little-girl voice as I looked up into his chillingly handsome face. “His mother only told me he was gone. I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. I don’t know if he’s dead or locked up or—”
His lips were red, his breath laced with blood. “Where are you going?”
Some damned soul nearby was cursing God in a strange, monotonous drone. “She told me to go, so I’m leaving. I need to go back through the wood.”
He shot an edgy glance toward the barred gates, through which gray daylight was beginning to pour. “I can blink you back to the village.”
Another damned soul, this one calling for his mother. “But it’s almost daylight.”
“It wouldn’t kill me immediately, I’m not full-blooded incubi. I’d be fine for about an hour. It wouldn’t take but a few minutes to get you back home.”
I shook my head and tried to offer a grateful smile. “I have to go back through the wood to look for someone. He didn’t make it through the mist outside the gold wood. I have to try to find him if I can.”
How long would it take me to make it through the wood without Remy, without the alcerin and wulfsnare? I could try to find the bag I’d left behind in the wood, but what if I got turned around, couldn’t locate it, wasted hours of daylight searching?
Riquin had said something I hadn’t heard, steering me back the way I’d come, through the antechamber and toward the hallway that led to the apartments.
“Where are we going?”
“My apartment.” He shouldered us past a stream of demons pouring from the hallway. “I can give you something to help you on your way, but I’d rather nobody knew. It’s not something I ought to do right in the middle of the antechamber.”
He was clearly fastidious about his housekeeping, I found when we entered his space.
The bed was made, the floors swept. No clutter.
No weapons lying about. When I looked back at him with a question on my lips, I found him tearing into his pale wrist with his fangs.
His blood welled up, so red it looked black.
He held it out to me as if he wanted me to drink.
“It will help.” Blood dripped from his ripe lower lip. “It can make you fast. I may not be full-blooded incubi but I’m as fast as any of them. You could make it through the wood by tonight.”
I stepped back from his offering. Rivulets were beginning to flow down his chalky arm. “That’s kind, but I couldn’t. If I find my friend he won’t be able to keep up with me.”
The wound was already beginning to heal over.
Riquin bit into it so it bled afresh, crossing the room to his desk, rummaging through drawers.
He held an empty vial when he turned back to me, letting his blood drip into it.
He had to bite himself three more times to fill the vial because the wound kept knitting, but when his blood brimmed to the top, he stoppered it and handed it to me.
“For if you find him,” he said as I took the vial, opening his wrist yet again and pressing the wound to my lips.
I drank. It was the best option I had and the only help I’d get on my way back.
His blood filmed my mouth, brackish and glutinous, trickling slowly down my throat. Salty and unappetizing, laced with the sweet taste of decay, but bearable to swallow.
I felt my heart rate plummet into a near flatline, and when my eyes found his inscrutable black ones, he smiled slightly. “It’s normal. Your breathing will slow, your eyes will sharpen. The effects will wear off eventually, but you should make it home. Nothing will be able to catch you.”
He blotted his blood from my lips with his sleeve. I could feel the raw edge of exhaustion seeping out of me already.
“Now go.” Riquin tipped his head toward the door. “I’m sure Remy will find you once he’s able.”