“She took one look at my face and believed I was her daughter.”
A question swells in my chest, becoming so big and restless it feels like my seams are splitting.
I slide my leg free of the blankets, feeling his cool stare drag along the length of bare thigh all the way to my hip and back down again, settling on the birthmark I tap with the tip of my finger.
My stupid curiosity lengthens her brittle throat.
Begs to bebit.
“How did a mother who put her child in the ground years ago know I had this birthmark on my leg?”
Silence.
I dare a peek at his eyes, catching his stare as he studies me with a hardness that makes every muscle in my body brace for the psychological impact of his response. Is he about to lie to me? Tell me I wouldn’t understand? Perhaps he’s thinking up a riddle to weave for me so I’m left stuck to all the sticky strings, trying to untangle myself?
A big part of me hopes that’s exactly what he’ll do. Lie to me.
Push me further away.
He draws a deep breath and rubs his scruffy jaw, then points to my necklace. “That jewel is steeped in the blood of Kvath.”
My lungs compact.
God of Death …
My stunned mind cycles back toTe Bruk o’ Avalanste, and I hear Kai’s words as though he’s right here, speaking to me:
Kvath. God of Death. He can take on the many forms of the dead, and he made the Irilak with a piece of his shadow.
My mind churns, gutters, chokes. I open my mouth, close it, carve my stare across the dried bouquets. “I thought you believed the Gods don’t exist. You insinuated it right before you tossed that beautiful book in the flames like it was trash.”
“Some of themshouldn’texist,” he states with cold, brutal precision.
I swallow, chewing on his words like they’re a piece of gristle.
Curiosity lifts another foot, edges her weight forward, sets it down a little closer.
“And how did you get his blood?”
“He gave it to me.”
I suck the smallest gasp, head whipping to the side. He’s staring at me with such intention I can’t hold his gaze for more than two seconds before I break, stabbing my own back at the ceiling again.
Is that why Shay’s drawn to me? The reason that pack of Irilak obeyed when I told them not to feast on the fallen sprites? Because I carry the blood of their Creator around my throat, dressed in the skin of a dead girl?
He gave it to me …
The heavy, tangled statement weighs me down like a lump of lead plonked on my chest.
A tiredness seeps through my bones, mind, and heart, as if someone just slipped beneath my skin and blew out all the candle flames keeping me awake.
I roll to the side, facing the wall, giving him my back. Chastising my curiosity in the same ugly beat.
I’ve been wearing a dead girl’s face all this time—Zane’ssister’s.
No wonder I was so drawn to him.
And I almost lost him, too. Just like I lost my brother.
