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“It’s sticky, and sweet. If we start a fire, I could make some tea.”
“Let’s wait until the others are here,” she said. “Anyway, there are several rooms upstairs. Grab one.”
“And you?”
“Point the way to the cellar,” she said.
“Bring a mattress down at least.”
“Of course,” she said. “I’ll keep watch until dawn, anyway. After that you’re on your own.”
I took a small bottle of whiskey with me to bed, hoping I could drink myself drowsy, but it only messed with my vision. The ice cream and alcohol cramped my stomach, and before long I was sweating with a pounding headache.
I chose a smaller room, sparsely furnished. Probably a guest room or even a servant’s quarters. It reminded me of the hotel I’d stayed, when Damien was visiting. The night I was arrested as a rebel. The night my mother died. I could still feel the weight of Trevor’s pistol in my pocket, the sound as it struck the floor. The look of horror in Damien’s eyes as he saw that awful, cursed weapon and thought I’d betrayed him. It was barely enough to kill a slagpaw or an elite, but managed to kill everyone else, even when the bullets weren’t meant for them.
I twisted in the sheets, thinking of Damien, now a prisoner. My siblings at Nigel’s mercy. And Jazmine. The thought was like a razor at the edge of my brain, and I winced whenever I got near it. I wondered if this is how Trevor felt, after he lost me. Now he’d lost everything.
Years ago, a traveling performer had arrived with a cage full of captured pigeons. Blue feet, yellow beaks. For a small fee you could set one free, and watch it fly away. Trevor wanted to pool money and purchase them all. But my dad told him, it was just a trick. The birds were trained to return to their cage just outside the compound. Trevor tried to get his money back, but the merchant refused. Some of the other boys laughed at him. He wasn’t big enough yet to earn respect in other ways.
I was young, and foolish. I was angry at the merchant, for taking advantage of Trevor’s goodwill. As if believing in good things was a weakness to be taken advantage of and ridiculed. So I snuck out and hunted them down. I only caught three, but it was enough to make a large pie and some bone broth soup. We invited Trevor’s family over for an outdoor picnic. This was before my dad died; before my mom got really sick. Jamie and Trevor played with wooden animals, and Loralie had barely started walking. It was the last time we were all together.
I wondered if I was like one of those freed birds; going in circles, trying to find a cage I could return to. Hunted by predators in the wild, incapable of fending for myself after a lifetime of captivity. And even if I’d somehow survived, what about everyone else I’d put in danger, now stuck in the citadel. Would they come back to Algrave if given the chance, and the choice? Or would they risk their lives to secure their freedom?
A heavy weight seeped into my bones, and I drowsed off into a recurring nightmare. A boy with a crown in a dark forest, beckoning me forward. I take a step, and see the path split, a fork in the road. The next thing I know, my stomach has been ripped open, and a raven flies down and tugs out my intestines while I’m still alive. They writhe like earthworms.
I bent down, scraping the rough ground with my raw hands, my mouth open in a silent scream. I could smell the fresh soil, and at some point realized I was awake. Somehow I’d made it to the edge of Algrave, the orchard where we bury our dead. I stared at my dirty fingers and the handful of shallow holes around me. Had I been digging? Looking for something?
Large family crypts dwarfed the smaller headstones, though a few graves were marked only by a simple wooden sign. I scanned these, looking for my mother’s resting place. I should have asked Trevor what happened to her body after she was killed. It was unthinkable to me that she wouldn’t have been placed next to my father’s single granite headstone, but I saw no trace of a second grave. I curled up on the cold ground, wishing I had flowers or some trinket to leave him.
But then I remembered the custom I’d learned in Skormhead. I didn’t need pretty things to honor the dead. I reached through a gap in the perimeter fence to scoop a handful of toxic ash, marking it on my forehead. It felt like a private sacrament, a ritual promise, between my adopted parents and myself.I would make us whole.
Bats whizzed overhead as I returned back into town. I caught the scent of elixir and stiffened. But it was faint, old. And yet pungent; real vampire blood, and it didn’t smell like Penelope. My senses caught it easily, since it was already low in my system.
I stood confused in front of my former house, burnt and charred, a ruin beneath the starry skies. Moss and green vines curled in through the cracks, starting to tear up through the floors. How long had it been since I was arrested? A few weeks, a month? It felt like a lifetime.
I kicked over the rubble until I saw it, a small wooden box with a bronze clasp, tucked away in a corner. Perfectly preserved, in a way that stood out. This had been left recently.
I lifted it with shaking fingers in the moonlight, brushing off the top and opening it slowly. Two long objects, pale, nearly bone white. I gasped, clutching my chest when I saw they had fingernails. I could smell the elixir in them. Sweet. Familiar. Damien.
Without thinking, I pressed the bloody stumps against my tongue, tasting the blood. I saw a flash of memory, and Nigel’s leering face.
“I’m waiting for you Emily. I’ll cut off a finger for every day you’re late. Don’t worry, they’ll grow back in a few months. If he lives that long.”
Something clattered in the box, and I tilted it, dumping a masculine sapphire ring into my dirty palm. I slipped it onto my thumb. My chest felt tight, so I focused on breathing. I studied the scorched walls, which seemed to expand and contract, swelling with each breath. A fragment of a colored drawing in chalk, under the remains of the kitchen table, felt like an anchor in a storm.
10
It was still dark when I woke later, and heard someone else’s breath in the darkness. A dark shape was in the chair by the door. I stiffened when I smelled elixir, but then I recognized his handsome profile.
“You made it,” I said, pushing away the blankets.
“Yeah,” Tobias said, in his deep timbre. “Everyone’s downstairs.”
I studied him in the darkness, his pale, beautiful face and long blond hair. He was wearing one of the fine suits from the citadel, black trimmed with purple velvet, a loose collared shirt, with gemstone cufflinks that winked in the darkness. But his shoes were dirty, and he looked older than I remembered. More anxious, maybe. Even though elites don’t age, I felt like the added pressures had robbed him of a touch of his youthful beauty. Now he looked calculated, sullen. More like Damien. When he caught me staring, however, he offered a half-smile.
“I thought you’d be with Penelope,” I said.
“I was. I am. Just, checking in on you.”
