In the Veins of the Drowning(62)

Theodore didn’t look at me. Didn’t touch me. Instead, he placed his body between mine and the Mage Seer’s. His voice was knife-edge sharp. “Hello, Rohana.”

“Oh no. You can’t still be angry. After all this time?” Rohana hummed, eerie and low. The notes curled through the air like perfumed incense, intoxicating, stifling. A Siren’s song. Panicked at the sound, at what it could do to Theodore, I gripped his shirt. As if that small restraint could stop him from being pulled toward her.

He didn’t budge. “Not this time,” he said.

Fury beat through me. What had she done to him?

Her song broke into a tittering laugh. “Of course not. Not now that you have her protection. Are you certain you want to give that up?” Rohana’s smile was beastly and snarling, her mouth studded with sharp, blue-tinged teeth.

There was a long pause before he finally spoke. “Yes. I do.”

“Shame.” The orbs of light hovered around her. They were made of nothing but faintly glowing air, swirling and thick. The rattling of her vines filled the room. They wove around themselves, raising her to stand. They coiled around her emaciated legs, around her gauzy, stained wrap, and rolled her toward a rough carved bowl protruding through the floor. It was made of the same rock as the island, as if the hut had been built around it. “Come, then. Give me your blood and your payment. And I will give you guidance.”

I moved my hand from Theodore’s shirt to the bulk of his arm and held fast. My body hesitated at the thought of bleeding myself into yet another ritual bowl. “What will you do with it?”

“You would be worried about that, wouldn’t you?” Her laugh changed. It was rough now, like sand on glass. “I remember the first day I tasted your blood in the water. You must have been just a babe. You’ve been quite generous with it since.”

My fingers dug deeper into Theodore’s arm. “Answer my question.”

“I will not feed off it the way Eusia does, dearest. We will forge no bond. I simply need a drop of it so I can see you clearer. So I know how to help.”

My head went light from quick breaths. I looked up at Theodore, who already watched me. His eyes were grave, but he gave me a small encouraging nod. We moved together toward the rock bowl and Rohana. Something clattered around our feet as we walked. Theodore kept his stalwart gaze up, but I looked down.

Bones. Human bones. And animal. Strewn all over the floor. The orb light caught on their yellow-white shapes, their broken ends, where it looked like the marrow had been sucked out. A whimper shook through my throat. Theodore pressed his arm around mine, pinning it harder to his solid torso.

At the bowl, I finally looked up, directly into Rohana’s eyes. Up close, her face was even more repulsive. The large bags of skin beneath her eyes were rippling and white-lined. They drew up to her eyelids, marring the delicate skin there too.

“It’s from the smoke,” she said abruptly. “From hundreds of years of prophecies. My eyes used to be the same gold as yours. Hair like yours too.” Bitterness colored her words. “We always give something up for power, don’t we?” A vine wove through the air and dropped a small jagged-edged knife into the empty bowl. “Blood.”

I let go of Theodore’s arm and placed the crude blade on the lip of the bowl. I pressed my talon tip into the end of my finger instead and squeezed until a single drop fell into the basin.

“And you, my king,” Rohana said, cloyingly.

I took Theodore’s hand and gave him the same puncture wound. He let a drop of blood fall. Two more vine tendrils snaked toward us. In the coiled end of each was a small vial of black liquid.

“Drink.”

“What will it do?” I asked.

“It will make you float.” Her voice was beautiful, lit by a sinister smile. “It will loosen your lips and free your mind. It will unstring your muscles so that I may truly know you. I do not give prophecies that cannot be received. You must open to me, dearest. You must let me in.”

I could think of nothing more terrifying. My tendons were strung taut, and I shook as I forced myself to take the vial from its coil.

Theodore took his and clamped it in a fist. “If the smoke makes her ill, you do not touch her. You will not rip at her hair or pick at her skin. Your foul mouth will not touch her body. She owes you nothing for your prophecy.”

“Payment is req—”

“Yes, I know.” Theodore’s voice filled the crooked hut. “But she is not yours to take from. She is mine.”

Rohana grimaced, showing her stained teeth. “Not for long, Your Majesty.”

Theodore was terrifying in his stillness. “Agree that you will not touch her. Or I’ll cut your head from your shoulders myself.”

Rohana held his stare for a moment before she gave a sharp nod of agreement. He lifted the vial to his lips and drank. I took his hand to stop mine from shaking and drank from my own. The liquid was thick and muddy and foul. It coated my tongue, my throat. I swallowed, coughed, gagged, trying to clear it, but it clung and only grew thicker. Theodore squeezed my hand as a prickling feeling filled my chest. A boom of thunder rocked through my head. I pressed at my temple, desperate for the feeling to ease.

Another coiled vine rose into the air and emptied the contents of a third vial of black sludge into the bowl where the drops of our blood had fallen. It hissed, bubbled, and then Theodore let go of my hand. In one slime-coated breath, he fell to a knee and groaned.