He spun, clothes tucked under his arm, not the least bit self-conscious over his state. Lux didn’t move. He may have towered over her, all chiseled parts and beautiful eyes, but she refused to be intimidated by a naked man.
When he smiled it was all edges, and she blinked her surprise. “I’m sure you’ll be safe from any madman prowling the streets, love. The mayor would never tolerate the loss of a prized pet.”
Her lip wasn’t even allowed a sneer over the mocking endearment before her body flushed hot.Pet?A coil wound within her chest, ready to spring forth and devour the boy before her.
“I belong tono one.”
He scoffed. “Yes, as evidenced by the good people of this town all reaching the ripe age of two hundred years and counting. But wait a moment… It would seem only the mayor’s immediate family possess that luxury.”
Lux’s lips compressed to a white line, seething. “You know nothing.”
The boy laughed, low and cruel.“More than you it seems. I know a pair of rapists were brought to justice. An abuser before that. Tell me what good you’ve done for this world that didn’t require gold to line your pockets?”
Lux flinched against his serrated words, at his hard eyes flashing with hidden emotion. Belting his trousers, he watched her, expectant, nearlyeager, but she had nothing further to say. She feared if she were to open her mouth, a gut-wrenching scream would escape instead.
“Aline!” He seemed as though he would say more as he finished calling his sister but thought better of it. With a quick once-over of the plants swaying with agitation and a final glance at her, he strode from the room.
Lux didn’t move until she heard her door scrape open and closed. All the while the pressure in her chest grew, tight and heavy until she was sure her ribs would cleave in two.
He knewnothing.
The crock of gold erupted into a hundred sharp shards as it collided with the floor.
Chapter five
Lux stood, unmoving, uponthe stone bridge.
The sun had begun its hidden descent beyond the town’s buildings, folding the world around her in deepening greys. The air was damp with a mist that never fully abandoned Ghadra’s borders, what with the endless marshes on one side and the dark forest on the other. That mist clung to her hair, curling it further. It weighed upon her shoulders.
Without tearing her eyes away, she wrapped a long tendril about her fingers. She hadn’t cut it for years and now it grew almost unmanageable in its length. She let it fall.
The forest mocked her. It knew she held no power there. It relied on the dead to sustain it even more than Lux herself did, and if it weren’t for her, it would be more satisfied than it was. Every life she revived was one fewer for it to feed upon, and she knew it tracked her movements with an eerie, unyielding consciousness.
The dead were forever silent there. But at twilight, when the air thickened and the winds hushed, the grass damp with dew, Lux swore she could hear them.
Her parents.
Lucena. Lucenaaa.
She had been eight years old and only just beginning to learn the extent of her gift. Her parents were ordinary people. They didn’t ask for a strange daughter capable of even stranger things, and they died for it.
Blood was everywhere. It coated the walls, stained the floors, and it had soaked into every pore of Lux’s skin as she had attempted in vain to revive them. She’d mixed and painted and shakily read the words over and over through tear-muddled vision.
It hadn’t mattered. She hadn’t known what she was doing. She hadn’t yet learned the tricks: sift the wyvern claw, stir three times clockwise, stir twice as many counterclockwise, and blend the lines but nottoomuch.So many little things that made a world of difference. The difference between death and revival.
In the end, the hours drifted by. She had to stop; her time was up. Her lungs ached, pushing through the cracks of her ribs with every painful breath, and she was so, so tired. With red, swollen eyes, she’d surveyed the mounds of ingredients tossed and spilled and sticking to the shelves.
She’d enough for one more try.
Lux did indeed murder her parents, but the parents who had returned weren’t hers anymore.
Along the setting sun, she’d watched the death-cart rumble across the bridge, through the worn, grass path and into the forest beyond. And when it had returned, her body shook with the grief, the guilt, and the completeemptinessof her new reality. She could not handle the sight of blood since that night, not the warm, clinging touch or the rich, copper scent. Andfrom that day on, at twilight, she walked to the bridge. Still as a statue, she stared back at the unflinching, veiled eyes of the forest and listened to her name-calling through the twisted, black branches.
Lux released the memory from her grasp, sending in plummeting into the abyss. Until tomorrow.Shooing the crow perched curiously beside her hand, she turned to stride back across the stone, cracked and overgrown with thick, green moss. Her gaze swept over Ghadra.
Ugly, cold and grey, it melded into the bleak countryside like a wet, dead thing sinking into the marshes as it decayed. Lux hated this town. She hated the forest. She hated the rain. She hated the sun for only gracing their dreary walls for one day out of seven.
If she looked too hard, she could see the toxic darkness rooted in her soul. Mostly, she hated that.
