Page 3

Idonea met her eyes. "It feels like the last one."

The skin around Nellith's eyes tightened. "Yes," Nellith said. "It is."

She moved to the side table and packed her instruments away with the same economy she'd used to lay them out. Idonea had stopped watching her mother years ago. Nellith was sixty-four, and the silver in her scars caught the gaslight in a way that the dark of her hair did not.

"Are you well, Nellith?" The question came out before she stopped it.

Nellith hands stilled over the cloths. "I am exactly as I should be."

Nellith turned. “Now,” she said, “go to the cemetery for some grave dirt.”

“I could've collected some on the way here.” Idonea took her glasses off to rub her eyes. She should’ve rested on the train ride.

“No, no.” Nellith waved her hand in dismissal. “You’ve now finished the rite. Now you must collect it.”

Idonea sucked in a deep breath. She was smart enough not to ask about postponing it. There’d be no alternative, no compromise. At the door of the sanctum, she paused and looked back.

Nellith stood at the side table with her back turned, gaslight throwing her shadow long across the floorboards. For a moment, the shadow looked wrong, too tall, too narrow. As if it belonged to something waiting behind her mother rather than to her mother herself.

Idonea blinked, but it was only Nellith.

"I'll be back soon," Idonea said.

Nellith didn't turn.

Idonea went downstairs, pulled her boots on, tied her curls into a messy bun, and descended into the cold night.

Chapter 2

The walk down to the cemetery punished her knees. Frost slicked the switchback path beneath her boots, and cold settled deep enough into her scars that every step pulled unpleasantly.

Thalorica buried its dead deep inside the mountain. Safer that way.

Fog thickened around the lower gates. The iron lanterns fixed into the rock walls burned weak and yellow behind cloudy glass. Draugaros let everything decay eventually.

Idonea tightened her grip on the grave jar tucked beneath her arm. The cemetery gates groaned when she pushed through. Fog dragged low between the graves, swallowing the lower markers entirely. Stone angels rose headless from the mist, marble hands reaching from whiteness towards nothing.

Idonea preferred cemeteries that made noise; silence hid too much.

She crossed between the graves carefully, boots sinking into wet earth. Some headstones held fresh flowers sealed beneath frost, while others had collapsed inward completely, names eaten away by mildew and time. She stopped before the statue Nellie preferred for grave collections: a massive winged woman carved from pale stone, her face weathered smooth by mountain rain. Moss climbed one cracked wing.

The grave beneath belonged to a magistrate who'd drowned in a river fifty years ago. Nellith claimed drowned corpses produced stronger grave dirt.

She drove the spade into the earth. Cold mud resisted then gave. The smell rose immediately; wet roots, rot and old stone. Idonea dug carefully as bare skin touching grave dirt contaminated ritual work. The spade slipped suddenly.

"Consarn." Her glove scraped the loose soil. She checked the leather automatically but found no tear. Good.

The jar filled slowly. When it reached the neck, Idonea dropped three silver scales into the pit as payment. The dead disliked theft; so did older things. She covered the offering carefully, then pressed a pinecone into the dirt.

The fog shifted. Idonea straightened immediately, her hand finding the knife at her hip. Nothing, only mist dragging itself between gravestones. She screwed the lid onto the jar and left the cemetery faster than she entered it.

The climb back towards the upper streets burned her lungs. Frost silvered the stone steps and fog thinned gradually until Thalorica emerged once more from the mountain dark.

No footsteps followed her now. That should've helped, but her shoulders stayed tight the entire walk back.

Idonea turned onto Nellith's lane and stopped so abruptly the grave jar nearly slipped from her fingers. The front door stood open, darkness filling the narrow gap beyond it. Wrong darkness.

Nellith never left the front door open. Idonea climbed the porch steps slowly. The Current hummed faintly around the doorway.