A Poison Dark and Drowning (Kingdom on Fire, Book Two)

by Jessica Cluess

  Sell myself? Fury ate my fear as the whispers around us grew louder. I launched flame into the air to keep the dark at bay, then embraced him. Rook clung to me, burying his face in my shoulder, coming back to himself. I felt as though I were walking the ledge of a cliff, one misplaced step away from falling. I kissed his hair.

  “Don’t you know you’re the reason I’m alive?” he whispered, wrapping me so tightly in his arms that I knew there’d be no escape without one or both of us being hurt. “That night the soldiers brought me to Brimthorn, I’d no memory, not even of my own name. I sat in that cellar, fading away. And then I saw your light.” He kissed me. “You brought me medicine. You named me. Don’t you know that from that moment on, I was yours? All I’ve ever wanted was you,” he said into my ear. “And you’d give yourself to a man who could have anyone else in the world.” He gripped my shoulders painfully. “He can’t have the only thing I’ve ever claimed for myself.”

  I was not some damned bauble to be traded from one man’s pocket to the next.

  “Rook, stop it!” I flung a spark into his face, and he released me. These had not been Rook’s true words. This was not him. “I know what’s doing this to you.”

  “You know?” He looked wild with terror. “Then for God’s sake tell me.”

  Something dark and cold wrapped around my wrist, and I broke.

  “You’re becoming a monster!” I screamed.

  The voices stopped. The blackness rolled away, and I could see Rook clearly in the window’s dim light. “Korozoth’s power is poisoning you.” I got as far from him and the shadows as I could. “You’re becoming less than human.”

  “Less than?” he said, barely breathing the words.

  “That’s why Fenswick and Maria have worked so hard to find a cure. That’s why you have to take all those treatments. I wanted to protect you from it. Because I love you too much to let it have you.” Those last words came out as a sob.

  “You wanted to protect me.” He stretched out his hands to examine the scars that decorated his wrists. It was as if he’d never seen them before. “But you’ve lied to me.”

  “We thought that if you knew, it might hasten the transformation.” Rook gaped at me. “I did it to help you.”

  “Protect me. As if I were a child?” I’d never imagined I could see Rook’s eyes full of hatred. “As if I were a pet.”

  “No!” I gasped. The blackness around me teemed with whispers. My flames began to die as the darkness forced itself on me.

  Something was happening: his teeth sharpened, his face grew thinner. “I will not be your toy! Your dog! Do you understand?”

  I swore I could hear tendons popping, bones breaking like the snap of kindling.

  “I’m sorry I kept it a secret!” My voice was high as he brought me closer to him. “I did it to help you.”

  “I don’t want your help,” he snarled. “I want you.” He began to drag me down.

  Screaming, I exploded in flame, the blast obliterating the dark container around me. Rook howled. There was an opening through the shadow, and I ran out the door. I thundered down the stairs. Back on the second floor, I sank to my knees and tried to think.

  A hand gripped my shoulder.

  “No!” I whirled around.

  But it was only Blackwood, his stave at the ready, Maria behind him. She handed me Porridge. I clung to the stave.

  “Told him,” she said breathlessly. Blackwood made to go upstairs, but I prevented him.

  “What on earth is going on?” he snapped.

  “Something dreadful’s happened,” I said. “We need to get everyone out of here now.” Below us, music lilted and the laughter rose and fell. All of sorcerer society was here tonight.

  They were in danger. They could kill Rook.

  “What is happening?” Blackwood blocked my exit.

  The candles and the lanterns throughout the entire house snuffed out at once, plunging us into pure darkness. Women screamed below. I relit the wall sconces nearby, but the flame thinned, a breath away from being swallowed again.

  “He’s here,” Maria whispered. I could feel some presence, some animal intelligence that dwelt in the shadows. Don’t fall down. Don’t scream. Work.

  “We need to get everyone out,” I said, rushing downstairs. “The party is over. Thank you for coming,” I called.

  Everyone stared at me now, and mumbles of confusion and anger began to surface.

  “What the devil is going on?” Magnus said, slipping through the crowd with Eliza in tow.

  “Get the women out of here.” I stepped around him and walked onto the floor, preparing to tell the crowd something, anything, when screams erupted from down the hall. Several maids raced into the foyer, caps askew, not giving a damn about the party or anything else. They kept looking behind them, into the black entrance to the downstairs hall.

  “There’s a Familiar in there,” one of them shouted. “In the dark!”

  The sorcerers summoned what meager flame we had onto their staves and moved forward to investigate. The cold kiss of the black air ate at my fire. Protecting one another’s backs, we headed silently down the hall. When the grandfather clock chimed the hour, it felt like an explosion going off.

  “Does anyone even know what we’re looking for?” Valens asked.

  Something rustled ahead. We heard the clicking sound of claws on a marble floor, and the world froze.

  “Rook?” I whispered.

  The beast came out of the darkness.

  He lunged at me with his mouth wide open, fangs gleaming. Hooked talons reaching out to catch me. Soulless black pits where his eyes should be, lengthened bones, a face twisted by cruelty.

  He wasn’t human. Not anymore.

  Several sorcerers fell, their flames extinguishing. Screams, then gurgling cries, then silence and the smell of wet blood. The shadows pulsed, feeding on the dead.

  “Attack!” Valens swung his stave, shooting a stream of flame.

  I joined him, shooting fire into the monster’s face, and Rook shied away, hurrying back to the shadows.

  Together, we drove the monster into the main hall with waves of flame. Rook curled in on himself, darkness flowing over his body like a cape of protection. He grew larger, more monstrous—the new shadow and fog. But he did not know how to control it, and he shriveled in the face of our assault.

  We were going to kill him.

  “Stop!” I shouted, trying to push through to Rook. He roared in pain, leaping into the air.

  Someone screamed at the corner of the room, by the staircase—Eliza. God, she hadn’t left with the other women. She gaped up at the beast, her face white with terror. The sorcerers were all caught off guard by her cries. With shadows bristling on his spine, Rook roared toward her.

  Someone threw herself before Eliza.

  “Run!” Fanny shouted, her body protecting the girl.

  Rook dragged Fanny to the floor as Eliza escaped. Fanny’s legs kicked wildly as he buried his fangs in her white neck, and I could have sworn I heard the smallest, most sickening crunch. He began tearing and thrashing like a dog shaking the life out of a rat. Even in the near darkness, I could see the blood gush onto the floor. Fanny stopped striking at Rook. I attacked him then, blindly, because I knew that it wouldn’t hurt Fanny. Horrified, I knew she was beyond all that now.

  And I heard Magnus’s wail.

  The sound was agony itself. He charged into battle with a mass of fire at his fingertips. Rook leaped off Fanny and snarled, his mouth dripping with rich, dark blood. Magnus launched fire, strengthening it with wind, and all the others joined him. The onslaught sent Rook crawling across the floor like an animal. Magnus moved to shield his mother’s body, his face illuminated, his eyes frenzied.

  The front door blasted off its hinges with a squeal of metal. Splinters of wood rained onto the floor. Dark figures in the doorway surged forward, cackling gleefully. Too fast to make a sound, several sorcerers fell, blood gushing from their necks.

/>   “Kill them!” someone roared.

  We opened fire on the shadow Familiars, catching two, three, five of them. But there were so many. Two landed on either side of Rook—of what had once been Rook—and lifted him high up into the air.

  “Little lady sorcerer,” one of the Familiars cackled. I knew it was Gwen. “The bloody king has claimed what is his. You should have gone to him!”

  Shoving forward, I exploded in fire, a searing column that took out a group of Familiars. They tumbled to the ground, crisping as I went after Gwen while she laughed and laughed. The men about me shouted to stop—I was going to take the damn house down with me.

  There was enough reason in me left to know they were right. The column disappeared, and the room around me was all smoke and darkness and death again.

  Gwen and the remaining Familiars flew back out the door with Rook between them, leaping over the threshold and up into the night sky.

  I ran alongside the other sorcerers, though I was barely conscious of what I was doing. Pouring outside, we discovered the Familiars and Rook had vanished utterly. The night sky was clear.

  Amid the screams and shouts of terror from the guests, Blackwood was shaking me, saying my name. I could barely hear anything, couldn’t feel anything.

  Until I went back inside the house and found Magnus sitting on the floor, his mother’s body cradled in his arms. The candles and lanterns had flickered back to life, illuminating the garish scene. Crimson blood had spattered everywhere, most of it pooling in the center of the room. People had tracked through the gore, leaving red footprints in wild zigzags. Five sorcerer bodies lay upon the tile, gazing vacantly at the ceiling. The ashed corpses of Familiars littered the staircase. Magnus rocked Fanny back and forth, sobbing into her hair. She looked so small now, so fragile. Eliza clutched the banister, weeping openly. Her and Magnus’s cries blended in gruesome harmony.

  My legs gave out, and I slumped to the floor. I was useless to them, as useless as I was cruel.

  Cruel and useless: the Howel family motto.

  Sorcerer funerals are held as soon as possible. The magic of the earth clamors for its own, so they say. A day after they had taken Fanny’s body from her son, washed her, tended the horrible gashes in her neck, and dressed her in her best black gown, we were at the churchyard saying goodbye. The men who had fallen last night would have a grander ceremony tomorrow, with the queen’s blessing. It was a miserable morning, the sky an oppressive gray and the air thick with bone-chilling mist. Rain would have at least been something.

  Blackwood, Eliza, and I listened to the minister’s promise of everlasting life. Eliza crushed a handkerchief and wept as the final blessings were said over the casket. Then, one by one, the mourners left, stealing away as awkwardly as dinner guests who’ve overstayed their welcome. The undertakers lifted Fanny’s shrouded body from the coffin. Sorcerers were never buried in wooden boxes—caskets were for the funeral service. A sorcerer was wrapped in black silk, head to toe, and placed directly into the ground, to be absorbed by the earth that much faster. Though Fanny had never had a sorcerer’s powers nor wielded a stave, she had been a sorcerer’s daughter and had given birth to a sorcerer son.

  I thought about the laughing, happy woman I had met only a few weeks earlier. I could not understand how such a lady now lay under the earth, her body called back into the dirt and the darkness. I thought of the way she’d greeted me when I’d come into her home that first time, as though I were already a friend. As though she could trust me.

  Even in my numb state, tears began to fill my eyes. I had allowed Rook to transform and damn himself with her murder. I whimpered so softly only Blackwood noticed.

  Magnus stood by the grave’s edge, his face pale against his mourning clothes. I had never seen him in black before. His rich auburn hair stood out starkly against his bleak garments and the gray of the day. He dropped the first handful of dirt onto the body, then stayed staring into the grave. There was no flicker of life in his face.

  “We’ll stop by the house to pay our respects,” Blackwood murmured to Eliza. “Since you are his fiancée.”

  He didn’t have to say it so cruelly, I thought.

  At the house, black-garbed sorcerers moved silent as shadows. Only the occasional hushed whisper, or the creak of a floorboard, indicated that anyone walked these rooms at all. Sheets had been hung over all the mirrors. On the dining room table, someone had laid out a circle of candles. They were all lit, save one in the very center.

  “The unlit candle signifies the sorcerer’s extinguished life.” Blackwood stood beside me in the doorway and spoke low. “After sunset, they’ll light it and leave it burning the entire night. It’s to represent her soul as she moves from this world to the next.”

  In the parlor, Eliza was sitting beside Magnus, her cheeks stained from crying as she spoke to him gently. He was hunched over with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.

  Eventually, people drifted out the door. The house grew even quieter, until there was only the ticking of a clock and the muffled sobs of Polly in the kitchen. I looked in to find her sitting down, her apron over her face, wailing bitterly. Through the front window, I saw Dee standing by the side of the house, near a cherry tree. He was leaning his forehead against the trunk and biting on his fist. He would not share his tears with anyone.

  I wanted to go to them and offer what comfort I could, but it was as if my voice had been stolen away. The words would not come.

  Returning to the parlor, I watched Blackwood collect his sister. They went to gather their hats and cloaks while I sat with Magnus for a moment.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, finding my voice at last.

  It seemed he had not heard me. Then he said, “I could’ve seen them all safely outside, but I had to go back. I wanted to see what all the excitement was about.” He laughed bitterly.

  “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “I wanted to speak with you before the announcement.” He looked up at me finally. His eyes were clear but cold. The laughing, carefree part of him had been buried back in the churchyard.

  “Why?”

  “To explain. Our engagement was only to protect Eliza from marrying Foxglove. We planned to end it once a suitable period of time had passed.”

  My stomach clenched. “Why did you want to tell me?”

  “Can you not guess?” He truly looked at me. “You forbade me to speak of my feelings ever again, and I agreed,” he growled. “But I couldn’t bear to have you think I’d regressed to being a fortune hunter.”

  “I wouldn’t think that,” I whispered.

  He got up and went to where his grandmother’s portrait hung. Leaning against the wall, he said, “I blame myself for what happened. If I’d only told Agrippa, or the Imperator, when I knew Rook was transforming, maybe…” He didn’t finish his thought but looked at me again. “Then I remembered how you rushed up those stairs, like you knew what was at the top. Tell me.” He could barely get the words out. “Did you know what was happening to him?”

  My composure finally shattered, and I wept. Magnus slammed his fist into the wall, the sound an explosion in the still house.

  “What is it?” Blackwood hurried into the room.

  “Nothing. Tend to your sister.” Magnus’s voice was dull and heavy. Blackwood looked wary of my crying, but he reluctantly obeyed.

  Magnus strode over. “I want you to leave, Henrietta,” he whispered. Rage was in the deadly tone of his voice. He sat down on the sofa again and stared out the window. “Leave. Now.”

  I nearly ran from the house. Eliza caught up with me on the pavement, slipping her hand into mine. I was grateful for her strength. We leaned against each other in the carriage on the way home. Blackwood sat across from us, gazing out the window and saying not a word.

  When we arrived home, Blackwood went at once to his study. Walking to the stairs, I passed the spot where Fanny had died. Even though the blood had been cleaned, I could tell exactly wher
e it had been. The precise place and moment where everything had changed.

  Upstairs, I entered the study to find Blackwood sitting behind the desk, the pulsing glow of the lantern casting harsh shadows over his face, creating a chilling effect of dark sockets where his eyes should have been.

  He picked up a gilt-edged book and leafed through it, looking as if he’d crawl into the pages to avoid me. Finally, he spoke.

  “It’s not that you tried to help Rook. It’s not even that you rejected my proposal in favor of him.” A muscle jumped in his cheek. He was fighting some deep emotion. “But you lied again. I was a fool to think you’d changed.”

  Right though he was, I’d had enough guilt today to last a lifetime.

  “You might have told me you were ignoring Mickelmas’s orders about the weapons, you know.” I was on the verge of shouting. “You might have told me you were digging further into your father’s research, because…”

  I stopped, for I still hadn’t told him about our shared family histories. Well, he was right about one thing. I hadn’t much changed at all. He slammed the book closed, causing an eruption of dust.

  “I imagined you as my wife. My best self. I pictured Sorrow-Fell as a type of Eden, and you my Eve.” He sounded furious, and more than that, disappointed. “I was wrong.”

  “Perhaps it’s for the best,” I said tartly. “Adam and Eve made a pretty pathetic end.”

  Without waiting for his reply, I stormed out. Going down the stairs, I gripped the banister to keep myself upright. The butler awaited me below, a tray with the post balanced in his gloved hand.

  “Miss Howel, a letter’s arrived for you.”

  I thanked him and took the note, ripping the envelope with shaking hands. Immediately, I recognized a familiarly loopy script.

  Howel,

  Come at once.

  Poison.

  Lambe

  I rushed to grab my cloak and bonnet, called for the carriage, and went straight out the door.

  —

  WOLFF AND LAMBE HAD TAKEN ROOMS in Camden, preferring privacy to life in the barracks. Their surroundings were humbler than most sorcerer boys would accept. Their neighbors were charwomen and stallkeepers, and the flat they shared was small. But they had made it their own, and quite comfortable.