This isn’t just another ring of the city. It’s agraveyard. It’s the place the sick have been sent to be forgotten about.
Todie.
Rhordyn was right. I shouldn’t have come.
“I’m so sorry,” I rasp through a thickening throat, clambering toward the wall. I snatch the rope and haul myself up one frantic pull at a time, arms burning, hands straining. I’m halfway up when I realize the rope is jolting beneath me.
One glance down, and my heart plummets into the pit of my rotting conscience.
A young, black-haired woman is attempting to climb the rope. Other than her hands being riddled with weeping lesions, she appears healthy—her face luminous, almost beautiful. As though the sickness has only just begun to nibble at her.
Like it’s yet to sit down and trulyfeast.
A wave of deep sadness sweeps through me.
By the light of the blazing turrets, I can see the desperation in her gaze. Her desire tolive.
The backs of my eyes burn as realization stakes me through the chest.
If I let her climb free of this macabre pen, she’ll spread sickness throughout the city. She’ll kill hundreds, maybethousandsof people.
With a pained groan, she hauls herself closer … closer … while others hobble and crawl across the hard-packed dirt, coughing and spluttering, edging toward the rope as though it’s the dangled key to their salvation.
All I can see is the painting of Zane’s older sister—the tiny child who bore the same love heart birthmark on her thigh as I do.
Viola.
All I can smell is her mother’s tears as Gunthar recounted the young girl’s death. The same vicious death now clawing up this rope, threatening to take more lives.
Tospread.
Cainon’s voice cuts through my foggy thoughts like a blade …
Sacrifices.
I close my eyes, biting down on a scream threatening to charge through my teeth as my thorny emotions spike, slash, andsaw.I reach for the sheath wrapped around my thigh—hating myself. Hating the fact thatCainon’smy voice of reason in this fucked-up moment.
Wrestling my bucking conscience, I pull my dagger free and drop my hand to the taut stretch of rope beneath me, releasing a mangled sound.
I force myself to catch the girl’s wide-eyed stare as I set my blade against the coarse fibers.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
She stills, her mouth falling open. I squeeze my eyes shut and run the blade through the rope in one hard, clean swipe.
I feel the weight fall from the end of the line. Hear her too-short scream … the meatythumpthat cuts it off.
“I’m so sorry,” I sob, refusing to look at the scene below, the words ash on my tongue. Because it doesn’t matter what I say, how I feel, it won’t unbreak her body. Won’t save these people from their suffering.
From being a human wall that buffers Cainon’s treasured city from any army that would dare break through.
Rhordyn was so desperate to quell the deadly wave attacking his territory, while Cainon’s busy wielding his as aweapon.Lacking the empathy to give them a comfortable end when his city is steeped in gold.
Fury slashes at my ribs. Devastating, destructive fury that saws me to shreds from the inside out.
My wild, unruly emotions … they’re just as savage as my caustic blackness.
Just as deadly.
