by Melanie Card
“You really think Stasik would have black buttons hanging around?” The mushrooms were more of a casual pastime for the second and third sons of the noble families in Brawenal. Those who were born in the event something happened to the family’s heir. She’d been more interested in the other aspects of her family, their control of the criminal underworld, to really care about some euphoric release. “This is a terrible idea.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“So we’re just going to go to his workroom and hope there’s a jar labeled ‘black buttons’?”
“I doubt anything will be labeled.”
“How are you going to find anything, then? It’s dark. We can’t light a candle.” She hated to reject his idea, but she really wanted to get out of this alive…more or less. Except for Ward the plan never was to get out of a situation alive. It was always to do the right thing.
He frowned. The witch-stone accentuated the sharp lines of his face, but instead of looking exhausted and gaunt, he looked healthy and dangerous. Funny how in death he appeared the man she always knew he’d be.
“Then it’s got to be ibagen leaves,” he said.
“Why does it have to be ibagen leaves?”
“Because there’s an ibagen tree on the rise by the fissure. It’s not our best option. We’ll need to steep the leaves to draw out the hallucinogenic properties, since I’m pretty sure we won’t be able to convince Stasik to chew on them.”
“How long do the leaves need to steep?” she asked.
“The longer, the better. We’ll need to pick up a water skin or a vial, or something to keep the mixture.”
“Vials I can get from the workroom. I noticed a few of those on the shelf just inside the door. I can get those on our way back to the fissure.”
“You mean we,” he said.
“You’re staying here.” She could do this faster and better if she didn’t have to worry about Ward.
He narrowed his eyes. “I think, given our situation, we should go together.”
“Our situation—?”
He waved a hand over his heart, where he’d been stabbed and killed. “Do we really want to test the limits of the soul chain right now?”
“No.” Crap. He might be right, but she didn’t have to like it. She straightened and headed to the door. “This is still a terrible idea.”
“I won’t argue with you on that, but given you’ve convinced me the fast option isn’t the wisest, I don’t see we have much of a choice.”
Chapter Fourteen
Ward followed Celia out the door of the sleeping chamber and down the hall to Stasik’s workroom. This really was a terrible idea. Ibagen leaves weren’t the best option to make someone talk, and soaking them wasn’t the most effective way to draw out their hallucinogenic properties. Not to mention, there’d be no way to check the potency of the brew before they used it, and then, if it wasn’t strong enough, there was no other subtle way to manipulate Stasik.
Once Stasik recovered from the drug and figured out what had happened, he’d mark Ward and Celia for death…or rather, more dead than they already were.
Regardless, Celia was right. They had to know what Stasik planned first. If they killed him and he was somehow connected to the Gate, they could make the situation worse. Best case, they’d interrogate him, learn he wasn’t actively bound to the Gate, and then kill him.
Except that thought made Ward’s stomach churn. Yes, killing Stasik was the most expedient choice—but what did willingly killing someone say about Ward now?
And that didn’t matter. His real priority—if he wanted to cling to whatever humanity he had left—was find out what Stasik was doing and make sure Grandfather knew about it.
Pungent aromas of burned herbs and sulfur filled the workroom. It was surprising the whole hall didn’t reek. But two windows, open to the forest beyond, helped to alleviate the smell. Shadows filled the shelves and darkened the tables. Dozens of bottles clustered around books and scrolls, while plants in pots sat near the windows radiating green magic, or hung, drying, from a lattice leaning against the right-hand wall.
Red magic radiated from jars scattered throughout the room, some beating stronger than others. Soul jars, prisons for souls trapped for an agonizing eternity, unable to cross the veil and utilized to give an Innecroestri more power. In that moment, between one heartbeat and the next, he swore he could hear the souls in the jars screaming for release. There were at least a hundred of them. If they broke, Stasik would lose the magic he’d captured inside, but without a necromancer to open the veil and usher them across, the souls would shrivel and vanish, lost forever, unable to find peace in the heart of the Goddess.
“Perfect,” Celia said, heading to a window. “Vials and a way outside.”
He dragged his attention from the soul jars. “What?”
“Windows.” She pointed at the opening. “We don’t have to sneak our way back to the entrance.”
They were also still on the first floor. That hadn’t happened since they’d broken into the home of the Keeper of the Assassins’ Guild back in Brawenal City to steal his secret journal. Funny, that had involved poisoning as well.
Ward had thought that heist had been dangerous, but on a scale of dangerous to more dangerous, drugging an Innecroestri to get him to reveal his plans had to be completely crazy. Or at least it would have been crazy before Ward had met Celia Carlyle. Now it just seemed like it was another day in the life of Edward de’Ath the Fourth, eighth-generation necromancer and now reluctant Innecroestri and unwilling vesperitti.
“Grab some vials and let’s get those leaves.” Celia pointed to the shelf beside him.
Soul jars sat at eye level, glowing and pulsing, and beside them was a basket of vials. The light from the jars shimmered with an illumination only Ward could see. It drew him closer, mesmerizing. He could even read the label on the smoky glass bottle between the soul jars and the basket: mortical. A dangerous, fast-acting poison.
“Ward,” Celia said, her voice a harsh whisper.
If Stasik had labeled his mortical, he’d probably labeled the other jars and bottles and tins. Maybe they could find something better than ibagen leaves. Except there wasn’t any guarantee Stasik would have ergostass or virala resin, and it could take hours to find one of them among the clutter.
“Ward.”
Right. Ibagen leaves. He grabbed a vial from the basket and uncorked it. Empty. He didn’t know how clean it was, but now wasn’t the time to get picky.
He grabbed three more and shoved them into his pockets. Celia sat on the window ledge, her legs hanging over the edge. She met his gaze, her pale eyes catching the hint of moonlight cutting through the trees, then she pushed off and slipped outside. He followed. The window wasn’t too high off the ground, and a bed of pine needles softened his footsteps.
They crept around the back of the temple, ducking below windows and heading to the fissure. Ward strained to hear or see signs they were being followed or about to be caught, but the sounds of the forest flooded his senses: every breath of wind in the trees a howl, every rustle a roar, and he had to concentrate on ignoring the overwhelming details.
Celia scrambled up the rise toward the fissure. Ward followed. They rounded a spike of rock protruding from the hillside, and there, up a steep incline, stood the ibagen tree. Its massive gnarled branches were dark and twisted arms against the night sky. Beyond lay the Gate. The evil seeping from the fissure pulled at him with a seductive, alluring whisper.
“How many leaves do you need?” Celia asked.
“Half a dozen will do.”
Celia leaned closer. “Keep your eyes open.”
Her breath caressed his cheek, heating his skin. Then she was gone, without a sound, climbing the incline to the tree. A lithe, dangerous shadow that made his heart pound, but not with fear.
He dragged his attention from her and drew in a slow breath in an attempt to focus. Get through this. Stop Stasik. And then…
&nbs
p; He had no idea. He wasn’t alive. He didn’t have a life he could go back to. Even if he weren’t dead, he’d never be able to return to his old life. His soul was stained by the things he’d had to do.
White flashed at the corner of his eye. He turned as Celia eased down the rise. Pale blue danced in a lattice through her aura. Just a hint of it. Of all the people he’d seen so far, only Celia’s aura had the lattice.
“Let’s get back to our room before someone notices we’re gone,” she said.
“Agreed.” Getting caught now would be a terrible idea. It was surprising enough Stasik had believed Ward’s lie that he wanted to join the Innecroestri. Being caught outside would ruin everything.
They crept to the workroom’s window, climbed inside, and headed to the archway, but Celia grabbed his arm. “We’ve got company.” She pushed him back into the room, around the edge of a shelf.
He heard it, too. Footsteps. But were they in the hall outside the workroom, or somewhere else? If he let the roar in, he could hear more footsteps, the rumble of voices, and a breath of wind in the trees.
Candlelight danced over the wall and floor outside the workroom’s archway. Footsteps drew closer—thankfully only one set—as well as the light. The magic in the fire sparkled.
The footsteps stopped. Now they sounded close. Just outside the archway. Ward’s heart pounded. He had no idea what he’d do if they were caught. Celia would probably kill whoever it was, and then they’d be forced to hide the body.
Please, just keep on moving.
Celia’s hand brushed his hip, sending a shock through him, then it slid to the hilt of her dagger and she tensed.
Come on. Just keep moving. It was bad enough they were going to drug Stasik. Having the island on the lookout for a missing person while they did it made things more complicated.
Whoever it was started down the hall again.
Thank the Goddess. Ward blew out a soft sigh, and the tension pulling the soul chain taut eased.
“Let’s get back to the room.” Celia drew away from him. Light flickered in the hall, and the footsteps drew close again.
“Shit.” She rushed back to him and grabbed his arm to tug him back behind cover, but light flooded the room.
“What are you doing in here?” a pirate asked. He was an average-sized man—build and height—with dark braids and bristled with half a dozen daggers and a wickedly curved sword.
Celia leapt past Ward, grabbed the pirate’s extended arm holding the candle, and jerked him into the room. The candle fell to the floor and went out.
“Don’t kill him. We can’t afford the body.”
“We don’t have much of a choice,” Celia growled.
The man’s aura flashed with fear, the promise of the magic in his soul taunting Ward.
Not now.
He snatched the man from Celia’s grasp, the only thing he could think of to stop her from killing him. “We have to think about this.”
“He’s going to report what he’s seen.”
“I haven’t seen anything,” the man said.
A swirl of something pressed against Ward’s thoughts. The same feeling he’d had when he’d made Declan run away. He could enthrall the pirate. “That’s right, you haven’t seen anything.”
The man shuddered. Even his aura shuddered.
“What are you doing?” Celia hissed.
“Dealing with the problem.” Ward grabbed the man’s face between his hands and forced him to make eye contact. “You thought you heard a noise, but it wasn’t anything.”
“It wasn’t anything.” The man’s aura softened even more.
“That’s right.”
“Ward.”
The man’s eyelids fluttered shut then opened again. His aura flickered brighter. “Where am I?”
The pressure in Ward’s head billowed and spiked pain behind his eyes. He backed the pirate against the shelf and focused all of his will at him. Eye to eye. Mind to mind. “You haven’t seen anything.”
“I haven’t—”
“That’s right. You haven’t seen anything.” The pressure built, the pain in Ward’s head strong and sharp.
“I—” The man trembled. It wasn’t going to work, but then he sagged and his aura softened again and stayed soft. “I haven’t seen anything.”
“Good. Now continue down the hall.”
“Yes.”
“And what have you seen?”
“Nothing,” the man mumbled.
Ward released him. He picked up the candle from the floor and glanced back into the room, but his gaze slid over them, and he left, his footsteps retreating down the hall.
Celia grabbed Ward’s arm, and they rushed back to their sleeping chamber.
“What in the Dark Son’s name did you do?” she asked, shoving him to the back wall on the far end of the pallet.
Tremors shook Ward, and pain still spiked behind his eyes. He’d done it. And yet intentionally manipulating that man’s mind made his stomach churn even more with a mix of nausea and hunger. “I enthralled him.”
“How did you know you could do it? Why didn’t you use a reverse wake like you did on the guards outside Stasik’s parlor?”
“I couldn’t have cast a reverse wake. All the magic in the blood on our clothes has been used. Someone would need to bleed for me to cast anything.” And right now, anyone bleeding was a bad idea. Even thinking about it made his insides twist with hunger. “I enthralled Declan more or less by accident. I figured if I tried I could probably enthrall the pirate.” He grabbed a cup on a low shelf by the wall and filled it with water, desperate to distract himself from his sudden, ferocious hunger.
“You figured? There’s still a chance he’ll remember,” Celia said.
Ward dropped the ibagen leaves in the water. “There’s always a chance he’ll remember.”
“You should have let me kill him.”
Yes, stab him. Cut him.
Ward’s hand shook, and he set the cup back on the shelf before he spilled. “Killing him wouldn’t have solved anything.”
“Yes, it would have.”
Yes, blood.
His shaking increased. He pressed his palms to either side of the cup, desperate to still them. “And then there’d be a body to deal with—”
“Easily hidden in the forest.”
“And what do we do when someone starts asking about him? What then? Stasik will get suspicious.”
“We’ll be long gone by then.”
“You don’t know that.” His whole body shook. He was so hungry. “Things get complicated. They always get complicated.”
“We are not staying long enough for that.”
That was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. He whirled on her, but whatever he was going to say vanished. She was close, too close, and stared at him, her eyes hard, her face hard, everything about her posture hard. She was daring him to challenge her. This was Celia at her most dangerous. Her assassin self fully revealed.
Except fear bled through the soul chain. It was unnerving to know her expression, that sense that she could kill a person and not feel anything, was a facade. She wasn’t supposed to be terrified. She was supposed to be the one who knew how to handle situations like this, how to get them out of this alive.
Chapter Fifteen
Of course, getting out alive was a moot point. Ward was dead…and so was Celia. Alive was no longer an issue.
She pursed her lips and some of the panic coming from the soul chain crept into her expression. There was an icy fragility to her, a crystalline lattice that would shatter if struck the wrong way. Those pale eyes that had seemed so cold when he’d first met her now revealed the frozen dread spreading from her to him.
She feared for his life. Except he didn’t have a life. Just like she didn’t. When he’d first seen her, she’d been in her bed in Brawenal City and he’d been hired to wake her from the dead. She’d been insistent someone had murdered her—which someone had—and only she could pr
ove who’d done it—which was also true. That had been the beginning of everything, of his life being turned upside down…of them.
Yesterday there hadn’t been a them. There were laws against the living and dead having relations, and he’d wanted all the laws to be wrong. She was vivacious, alluring, incredible. He’d never met anyone like her before. Yesterday, when he’d thought she was permanently dead, he’d realized the laws could be damned. He knew how he felt about her, and when he’d somehow survived the fight to save the people of Dulthyne, he’d professed his love.
Goddess, had it really only been yesterday?
It felt like a lifetime ago. It had been a lifetime ago.
She grabbed his arm and yanked him close. “We’re not staying. Just long enough to learn what Stasik is doing and then kill him.”
His heart skipped a beat. She was so beautiful, so mesmerizing. All words escaped him.
“Ward,” she said, her voice dark with warning.
His chest burned. The compulsion to draw her close, wrap his arms around her, press his lips to hers, was overwhelming. A step…not even, a shift of his weight, and he’d be so close a breath would brush their bodies together.
She cupped his face with her hands. “Promise me. We won’t let ourselves get caught up in anything else.”
Heat welled around her touch, sweeping down his neck and pooling in his chest. “I promise.” But he couldn’t remember what he was promising.
Her gaze dropped to his lips, and lightning snapped across the soul chain. Attraction. Desire. The emotions were so clear, pulling him closer, closer.
His lips brushed hers. More lightning. Snap. She tensed, and he froze, his lips a breath from hers, waiting, praying, yearning. Had he misread the emotions from the soul chain? He probably had. Women like Celia weren’t attracted to men like him. Yet he couldn’t draw back, couldn’t give up the need that flooded every nerve of his body. Goddess, he couldn’t let her go. He had to prove to her that they belonged together.
He wrapped an arm behind her shoulders, captured the back of her head with his hand, and dipped in for another kiss. She melted against him, into him, molding her body to his.
