42. Chapter 42
The plains felt endless last time I’d traveled them, but with Riquin’s blood pounding in my veins I made it through before I’d realized it, dodging the last few mounds of graves and slipping inside the next stretch of wood.
Carnivorous flowers didn’t snap at my ankles; by the time they felt my presence I’d already buzzed past. Should anything see me, I’d be little more than a blur.
I ran until I stumbled into the patch of wood where the trees had faces and remembered I ought to eat another hunk of bread, drink some water, as Blathilde had cautioned me to do.
Incubus blood, it’s strong stuff, she’d said, pressing the bread into my hands before I’d left her cottage.
It works, but human bodies aren’t made to handle it.
It’ll make you sick again if you don’t take care of yourself.
Remy had killed all those faeries not far off from where I stood now, I remembered as I chewed, watching the trees smiling all around me.
He’d been an ass about it, had taken his sweet time, but he’d shown up for me when I needed him.
I didn’t need him now, with Riquin’s blood quickening inside me, but I wanted him all the same.
I would take anything, a snide comment, some lewd aside, even an angry curse.
He wasn’t anywhere near flawless, but maybe the damage was part of my attraction.
I’d never liked perfection, never wanted it.
I’ve always been too worried about messing it up.
But he wasn’t there and I didn’t belong here, so I pressed forward through the wood and into the thickening trees. I kept my eyes peeled for signs of Serich, though none manifested.
What little light filtered through the branches had begun to dim by the time I drew close to the edge of the treeline.
I was almost too afraid to leave the numbing, quiet incandescence of the wood, nearly as afraid as I was to stay.
I didn’t know what would meet me in Monde’s End, whether Serich had made it intact.
Whether he had had a chance to tell the villagers what happened, that John Dale had met a just end.
How long had I been gone? Just over a week, a week and a half?
It felt like a lifetime. I almost had the sense that I’d died, somehow.
So I stood there with a thrumming heart and let the darkness close up over my head.
I would dart out once night had completely fallen, when everyone in the village had locked themselves away for the evening.
Then I would tap on Livvy’s window and beg her to let me in.
She would take the risk of opening her window after dark, I was reasonably certain.
Even when she’d known of my affliction she hadn’t flinched away from me.
Her first inclination had been to offer what help she could.
From between ghostly white branches, I found pops of glowing lanterns growing through the gathering darkness.
The village watch making their rounds, rounding up the stragglers, ushering everyone back inside.
Soon the lights would disappear entirely, plunging Monde’s End into black, and I could make my way to Livvy.
She would be beside herself; she would throw her arms around me.
I would suffocate in her rambunctious curls and bury my face into her shoulder and hold onto her for dear life.
Though it seemed something lurking behind me didn’t share my visions of the future.
It had crept upon me as I leaned against a wizened tree, noiseless as the rest of the wood.
A finger slid down the sleeve of Remy’s cloak, a hot breath in my ear.
If I hadn’t been drunk on Riquin’s blood, my heart would have hammered.
“It isn’t wise to linger on our doorstep after dark,” it whispered.
My brain reacted before I’d given it any orders. I stepped back on the creature’s foot, sank my elbow into its gut, and loosened a blade from my hip as I turned. My borrowed steel slid through a belly as if it were soft cheese, and whatever it belonged to let out a hiss of pain.
I hadn’t realized the darkness hadn’t seemed to affect my vision until that moment.
My mind had been somewhere else entirely, but I saw the demon quite clearly now, dragging himself back from my blade and sinking into a defensive crouch.
He was filthy, matted, worn to a bone, thin as those mad humans from the gold wood.
“You looked human from behind.” He eyed me and the wicked Hell-forged blade I held warily, as if afraid I would pounce. “I didn’t know.” And he scuttled back into the wood.
I shoved the blade into the belt at my hips and left the wood before I could be approached by something else.
The lights were off in the lane running through the heart of Monde’s End, but here and there threads of light filtered through the gaps around cottage curtains.
No fogs to shield me anymore, should someone take it into their head to peer through their window.
Jessa had her brother back. Or did she? Was she visiting him in a Frost cell right now, or had her mother come to her with grave news of his demise?
Should I move as fast as Riquin’s blood would allow to get to Livvy faster, or keep my pace slow and human, in case someone spotted me?
I saw no fingers edging around curtains on the homes I passed, but I pulled my hood up just the same, my cloak streaming out behind me.
I slid into the alley behind the row of cottages and found I did not burn uncomfortably when I passed the church, despite the demon blood in my veins. Was Serich inside it right now, thanking God for his return to the village?
A candle guttered behind the blanket Livvy had tacked up in lieu of drapes. Its flame flickered and poured through the loose fibers of the ancient material. It was still early. She wouldn’t have plugged her ears yet.
I tapped against her window, hoping I wouldn’t scare the daylights out of her.
No response. I didn’t dare knock any louder for fear of alerting the rest of the family or the neighbors.
It had just occurred to me that I had no protection, now that Remy had gone, from the demonic suggestion that might soon be rolling off the edge of the wood.
I had no wax to fill my ears with, no scraps of linen.
Would Riquin’s blood shield me, or should I carry on down the lane, as far from the wood as I could get?
A few more desperate taps. I’d half-turned away from the window when the blanket lifted at the corner, candlelight pouring out into the alley, and there she was, a sliver of her face, anyway.
Livvy had one hand funneled near her temple and her eyes slitted as though prepared to squeeze them shut should she find a demon salivating out there in the alley—
And then her eyes went wide. Livvy stripped the blanket off the glass and gaped through it. Her lips framed my name as she unfastened the latches and threw open the window.
“Get in, get in,” she hissed, grabbing me by the shoulders and dragging me inside.
I landed with a louder thud than I would have liked and scuttled back against the bed nearest the window—my old bed, lumpy and uncomfortable, but oh how I’d missed it when I was out there sleeping in caves and on tree branches—as she threw the blanket back up against the glass.
Livvy hit the floor in front of me, made to throw her arms around me and clutch me to her chest, but her expression went from total shock to frightened in a heartbeat. She fell back against the wall instead, her hand flying to her throat.
“Des?” She said it experimentally, as if she were unsure it was what I was really called, suddenly looking as joyless as a corpse.
A ragged gust of wind blew past, rattling the window. The candleflame flickered. “What? What’s the matter?”
“Are you—is that you?”
“Of course it’s me!” Almost insulted, as if she’d forgotten what I looked like.
She inched closer. A length of scratchy old silk covered her tight curls, her eyes veiled with a mist of suspicion. “Your eyes—what’s wrong with them?”
“What do you mean?”
She groped for a foggy old looking glass on my bedside table, keeping her gaze on mine all the while, as if she couldn’t afford to lose sight of me for a second. I saw why when she showed me my reflection.
It was as if my pupils had expanded, eclipsing my irises, two dark holes consuming the blue so only a thin ring surrounded the black.
They looked demonic. They looked like Riquin’s, and they consumed all candlelight playing across them.
My cheeks were hollower than they used to be.
A stuttering scratch that looked like dainty coagulated rubies swept the length of one cheekbone.
My dark hair was a wild mess, like ruffled raven feathers.
“It’s nothing.” I set the looking glass aside. “I’m fine. There’s nothing wrong with me. It should go away soon.” Just as soon as I’d worked Riquin’s blood out of my system. However long that would be.
“But—” Still flat against the wall, still with eyes like saucers, like she was perhaps hoping this would all turn out to be a fever dream— “why has it happened?”
“I had to take something to help me get through the wood quickly.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell her it was demon blood. Not yet. Not when she was looking at me that way. “This must be some side effect.”
Still she seemed uncertain, her spine stiff and straight. I leaned forward to touch the hands she’d clasped in her lap but thought better of it.
“It’s done.” I sank back against my bed. “Its gone. Its not with me anymore.”
“Truly?” Like she half-wondered if it was a joke.
“Yes, it’s just me now.” And I would be glad of that soon enough, wouldn’t I?
“I was so worried when you left without a word.” Livvy was visibly warming now, a bit of color tiptoeing into her dark cheeks. “The town’s been in an uproar, Serich disappeared at the same time you did—”
My heart gave an unpleasant little lurch. “He came with me. Has he not returned yet? We were separated—”
“I don’t know, I haven’t seen him or heard any news, but John Dale—” Creeping closer, eyelashes fluttering rapidly, as if I’d flicked water in her face— “they went through his belongings, his bakery and his quarters. They found things that belonged to the dead girls everyone thought were killed by the incubi, cross necklaces and woven bracelets and undergarments—”
“So they know he killed them?”
“Well, it doesn’t look good. There’s no reason he should have had any of it in his possession.” She slid her palm upon the toe of my filthy boot, dipping her head to meet my eyes. The candlelight ignited the fan of bronze around her pupils. “You were gone so long I thought you must have died.”
I maintained a respectful distance. Didn’t reach out, too afraid of spooking her. “I came close, a few times.”
Livvy wrapped her arms around me, pulling me close. “Tell me everything,” she said, her hand stroking the wild hair streaming down my back in a way that made my eyes gloss with tears.