Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

The day and most of the night had passed in a blur of constant action, and my limbs trembled with fatigue as we worked to clear through the final patients. Imra was the last of the healers left with me, the others having headed out over the final hours of the evening to make some house calls and deliver tonics to the Fae who hadn’t been able to show up in person.

As I turned to cross the room, the toe of my shoe caught on a flagstone and I stumbled, catching the arm of a man who I hadn’t even seen.

“Sorry,” I muttered, righting myself and pulling back, frowning as I looked up into his face and took in the uniform of one of the city guards. “Are you here for the clinic?”

“No. I’m not here for myself. We found… There has been an incident which I’m sorry to have to inform you of, but this is the Dumari household, is it not?”

“Yes,” I replied hesitantly, looking beyond the guard and spotting another lurking in the doorway, his gaze hard as he looked around the room at the few remaining patients. “What is it you want?”

“Are the Lord and Lady home currently-”

“My parents have been travelling the continent for several years. My sister and I act on behalf of the estate in their absence,” I told him. “What is it?”

Fatigue tugged at my mind like it was laced in cotton wool and the words he spoke were but distant things. I was tired. Right down to my bones, I felt drained of both physical and godly energy. There had been more than a few difficult cases today, and so much use of my Affinities always wore on me. No doubt I’d remain in bed for the entire next day and likely part of the one after to recover.

The guard cut a look to Imra, and my friend took the hint, dipping into the barest suggestion of a curtsy before heading across the room to finish bandaging a man with a broken arm. I’d used my power to help the bone fuse back together, but he needed to keep it still for a week while the bone hardened again.

“This way,” the guard inclined his head, and I followed as he led me from the room, tossing the cloth I’d been using to clean my hands into a bucket by the door as we went.

The torches which had been lit along the main hall had burned low and darkness pressed in on me as I followed the two guards along it, their heavy steps echoing in the empty space while mine stayed silent against the flagstones.

I swallowed a lump in my throat as we walked, each step we took towards the courtyard to the front of the manor house seeming to clear a haze from around me, and I jolted in alarm as a voice hissed in my ear.

“One kiss from the lips that betrayed you, one smile for your time in the dark, a scream for the monsters which plague you, a debt paid to he with the mark.” Carioth’s voice made my feet trip over themselves, and I stumbled forward, hardly even noticing as one of the guards caught my arm to stop me from falling, let alone hearing the words he spoke to me.

I righted myself, whirling to look back down the long corridor into the heart of the house, a breath of laughter weaving through the air which had the guards cursing behind me just as I spotted a pair of bright green eyes.

I opened my mouth to demand an answer from the god of tricksters but before the words could spill from my lips, a curtain seemed to lift from my mind, memories rushing in so fast that they stole my breath, and my heart began to race so quickly that I pressed a hand to it in fright.

“Why are you here?” I demanded of the god, feeling like a fool as my mind raced over everything that had happened last night. Everyone knew Carioth was the most likely of the gods to strike a bargain with a Fae, and in my desperation, I’d called on him. But he was also the god of stealth and cunning, a trickster who delighted in messing with the rules of the deals he struck, and as my memories came crashing in, I realised with terror what he had done, how he’d stolen them and stolen our chance to flee too.

He had helped us escape like our bargain demanded, but he had also made us forget what we’d been running from. We shouldn’t have lingered in the city. All of us should have fled the moment we were free of the palace and never looked back, but instead we’d remained here, gone about our days as if nothing at all had even-

“We found her in an alley in Rower’s Bay,” said the guard who was still holding my arm, answering the question I had intended for the god.

Ice water spilled through my veins at his words, my head shaking in denial even as I struggled to put them together.

“It ain’t a part of the city where noble ladies tend to go,” the second guard muttered. “We were thinkin’ maybe she had business of an unsavoury nature over that way. Or perhaps she was there for a clandestine liaison-”

“No,” I breathed in horror, yanking my arm free of the guard, and looking beyond him, my eyes falling on the open carriage waiting there, the covered shape which lay in the back of it looking all too still.

“Maybe you can shed some light on why she went out that way-”

I wasn’t listening to them anymore. There was a ringing in my ears which was drowning them out and the pounding in my chest was so violent that my ribs seemed in danger of cracking from the force of each pounding thump.

My feet began to move as dread sliced me open and left me bleeding out with every single step I took.

A shaft of moonlight pierced the sky to land directly over the carriage, marking the spot in pale light which defied the press of the dark.

Inside my head, the voice of a little girl was screaming, begging me not to take a single step further. The voice of the child I had been, the one who had played in the long grass outside the family manor with Aalia day after day, creating imaginary worlds to explore and speaking of all the things we would venture out into the world to see when we were grown.

She was crying now, sobbing and begging, while on the outside I didn’t so much as flinch. It was as if my skin had set to stone, my expression halted in a mask of absolute nothingness as I fought the urge to believe what my heart already knew.

It couldn’t be.

There wasn’t any light in a world without her.

The carriage seemed so innocuous, just a simple wooden structure lined with hay and drawn by a single black horse who looked tired and ready for a return to his stable.

My hand trembled as I reached for the blanket covering what lay in the back of it, my throat thickening as that voice in my head kept screaming and screaming, the force of her fear ripping through me like I might tear in two and become half of the person I was if I didn’t heed her denial.

But the cold, hard statue which had taken control of my flesh didn’t slow, didn’t stop.

My fingers reached the edge of the blanket, and I choked as I felt the coldness of the body laying beneath the rough fibres. The unnatural stillness that met with my touch.

My fingers knotted in the rough fabric, my heart racing, racing, racing so fast that the pounding in my ears almost drowned out those screams.

I yanked it hard, the blanket tearing free of her and catching on the air as it fell all too softly to the ground.

It shouldn’t have been soft. It should have caused a thunderclap which ripped through the world and set it all alight with the power of the grief that stole through me as my gaze fell upon her.

“Aalia,” I choked out, my shin slicing open on the edge of the carriage as I hauled myself onto it, that screaming ripping through me, tearing me open from the inside out while I scrambled for her, shaking my head in denial of what I saw.

The guards were talking but there was no noise which could reach me in the fog of grief echoing through my core at the sight of her beautiful face, too pale in the moonlight, lips swollen with bruises, a slit through the lower like she’d taken a strike to the face.

The screams broke free of me, pouring from my lungs in an unending wail of denial and despair as I reached for her, pressing my hands to her cool cheeks, and willing every ounce of power I possessed to rise up inside of me and reverse this fate.

I hauled her into my arms, her body a limp weight as I heaved her into my lap and screamed her name.

The collar of her dress parted as I begged for her to return to me, her beauty only accentuated in death as the moonlight cast her stunning features into stark perfection. There were bruises on her, dark, purple bruises which ringed her neck like a collar, the outline of hands far bigger than mine marring her skin and providing the reason for her demise.

My anguish turned to horror as I realised my own blame in this, the day we should have spent escaping lost to us through Carioth’s tricks and the cold bite of reality.

Power rattled through me as I called on all I had and tried to offer it to her. I was a healer, blessed by Luciet herself with the power to ward off death.

“Please,” I choked out between sobs, that power in me growing as I tried to use all I had for the benefit of my sister, offering it all if only her body could heal from this.

Silver light grew on the edges of my vision, and I knew the goddess was watching me, I could feel her grief compounding with mine as she felt the raw brutality of this loss, but she did nothing to change it. Because it was already far too late for the power of a healer, far, far too late for my magic, or even the power of the goddess who had bestowed it upon me, to have any affect.

Tears spilled free of me then as my screams tore through the darkness of the night.

“Take me,” I begged, my mind slipping to those precious souls who needed my sister even more than I did. Her beautiful twins, the light of her world and mine alike, waiting for her to return. “Herdat hear me, and take me in her place. Her children need her, please take this trade.”

Her body was so cold in my arms, so still and void of life, everything she had been so far removed from what was left of her here.

My soul was shredded apart, my heart destroyed and mind cracking as I screamed to the gods for mercy, for pity, for anything and everything I could, begging them each by name before offering myself up to Herdat over and over again, my Affinities burning so bright that my skin glowed with the useless power of them.

But the goddess of death and ruin did not rise to my pleas, did not answer my request, and no matter how potent my own power was, I was no match for death itself.