Lux watched them go, and then she glanced up to Shaw. He gazed back at her, his eyes filled with a shadow thicker than any fog. “You can tell me.”
He stared down at his hands, dried a dull red. He shook his head. “Does it ever get easier?”
Lux stared at them, too, and opted for the truth. “It’s been nine years since I killed my parents. Nine years of feeling cold and dark—and choosing to stay there. Because I thought I deserved to be broken. But I met you. And you were horrible to me, all warm and glowing like the sun, and it woke something… Something I thought I would never get back. Still, it’s like an ember trying to burn away a midnight. Maybe I’ll finally find my light in another nine years…” Her voice trailed off, thinking on how even if it took another decade for that ember to finally catch, it was still infinitely better than where she’d been. She lifted her head. “It is easier, I think, from then until now. I can finally swallow when I think of them. But you can’t embrace that place like I did.”
His eyes bore into hers, the copper and gold as faded and bleak as the crumbled wall behind them. Soon, it would build to an unscalable fortress to block out the world. “I don’t know how to stop it. It’s as if I’ve closed my eyes and stared into the dark too long, and I can’t bear it.”
When he would have turned away, she gripped his fingers. “What do you feel, Shaw?”
“What do I—”
“From my touch.”
His brow creased. “Your touch calms me…and also…doesn’t. It makes my heart constrict a little less, even if I know it will return.”
Lux frowned. His did the same to her, and yet, this wasn’thim.“The first time I touched you—the living you, that is—you were sowarm. Your skin nearly burned me. Every time. Nobody has felt like that. Not even my parents. Riselda was cold, the mayor’s like ice.” She was losing him, confusion creeping across his face. “You’re not warm anymore. Don’t you understand? And I think I’m not either. I don’t think I’ve been since the night I murdered them. There’s somethingclawingabout this darkness in me. I can feel its edges, can sense it like the dead. Likedeath. I can—” She choked, stumbling back.
“What? What’s the matter?”
“I cannot forget. But I’ve got to… Do you think…?” She ran her hands over her face.
“Saints above, Lux. You’re scaring me.”
She grabbed for his bloodied hand.
“Can you help me dig?”
When the last bitof stone was hauled away and the last remnant of dust blown from the cover ofThe Risen, Lux settled onto the righted stool.
She knew every margin of the book: the instructions, incantations and ingredients. And she knew she didn’t need it anymore. She possessed more confidence in her brilliance, and in herself, now more than ever.
Once upon a time, a returned Riselda had turned to a final page and smiled over what she found there. Lux bared that same page now. She knew what it was, or at least what it appeared to be: some pretty writings, the print large and flourishing. But she never wondered at it more. She’d not needed to.Untether,it said. It didn’t have instruction or a detailed list of powders andvenom. No lore about its becoming or illustrations to hint at its purpose. And yet…
“Give me your hands?”
Shaw leaned into the table beside her, willingly lacing his fingers with hers. “What’s this?”
Her mother’s voice:Shine bright, Lucena.
“Shh. I will pry these claws from us.” Lux shut her eyes. “Saints above, devil below—”
Allow me to know,she pleaded.Then she fell within.
She’d glimpsed it before.
But never like this.
Gnarled branches greeted her. Fingers bent and rigid. Unmoving.
Her soul was not only withered but barred, encased in a rib cage of poison. And pulsing behind it—inside it—yearning for freedom: the faintest glow. Lux trembled, twitching in her seat, breathing only when Shaw’s hands tightened their grip. Intertwined, overgrown: she didn’t know how she could ever peel herself free from its grasp.
Then she shifted her focus.
She saw his.
And it was impenetrable. Nothing but perfect, horrific darkness.
“No.Youmonstrous, wicked—”
