Lux tracked her progress down the street, but when Riselda faded into the distance, she turned into the shop’s expanse. The shopkeeper caught her glance with a soft gasp and proceeded to pretend she didn’t exist. Rolling her eyes, Lux balled up the beautiful dress in her arms and shouldered her way through the door.
Sleeping the day away meant twilight was upon her before Lux had managed to arrive home. And so, because she had done it many times in the past, her feet trekked the familiar path, past her home, through the archway and outside Ghadra’s walls.
Lux watched the fog roll in, relaxing her harsh grip on the silk in her arms until it fell, loose and nearly to the stones beneath her. Movement caught her vision in the distance within the trees.
The death-cart. Making its way back to town.
“Thinking of offering your phantom a gift?”
Lux stifled a scream, spinning to connect her hand to the voice’s jaw. Shaw caught it a fraction before it landed, his eyes wide.
Lux’s were a mirror image. She ripped her fingers from his warm grasp. “What iswrongwith you?”
“With me? What is wrong with you? I wasn’t even walking quietly.”
She glanced down at his heavy boots, the creeping fog caressing up and over them. “You followed me?”
“Only to ask how you’re managing to not only walk without crutches but without a limp as well. Though, now I’m alsowondering why you’re headed into the trees again with a dress for a weapon. Call me curious.” He crossed his arms.
Lux huffed, stepping off the bridge. “You distrustme?Go away, Shaw. My business has never been, nor will it ever be, yours.”
His jaw clenched, a day’s growth lining it. He looked older. Older, and tired.
She told herself she didn’t care.
He opened his mouth, ready to fuel yet another argument between them, when the death-cart’s wheels met stone. Shaw moved back, away from her and to the opposite side of the path.
Lux studied his gaze regarding hers as the wagon rolled between them, relieved of its cargo, driven by a man with bruises beneath his eyes and slumped shoulders. He didn’t even glance their way.
Lucena.
Lux pressed her eyes closed briefly before giving in to the gathering grey. Shaw’s tracked her movement.
Lucenaaa.
The boughs bent. The wood beckoned.
“What’s happening?”
The branches curled inward. Inward and out again.
“The trees…”
But she didn’t face him. Instead, she squinted into the clearing, her mind tricking her into believing she could see a faint figure, cloaked and hooded, hovering above a mound of bodies. She shook her head, the vision disappearing.
“I’ve got to go. Can’t have this dress wrinkle.” She crushed the fabric back into her arms, hopelessly creased, before turning on her heel.
“Did you know that lifeblood can bring back your health, even from the brink of death?”
She whirled with a glare. Was he implying she had drunk it to cure her broken ankle? Her lips parted, words of rage boiling, threatening to burn them both. But her fury went unnoticed.
Shaw was staring at the fog weaving between his boots, hands in his pockets, his shoulders curved inward. “Did you know there’s a boy playing happily with his sisters at this moment when a week past, he was dying of fever? His family is so poor they couldn’t even afford a physician…let alone a necromancer.”
His eyes found hers then, and Lux almost stumbled back from them. “Did you know there’s a girl your age who can continue to care for her young, orphaned siblings because rather than simply dying from the beating she’d sustained, leaving them behind and alone, she drank a murderer’sessenceinstead?”
Something pricked at the corners of her eyes.
“Did you know, Lux, that every time a life left that of someone who purposefully hurt, mutilated, or killed innocents, I drained it, bottled it, and personally made sure it passed the lips of someone who deserved tolive?”
