In the Veins of the Drowning(63)

“Theo?” I took his face in my hands. His skin was cool and slick. “What’s wrong?”

“Sick,” he grumbled. Then he was tilting backward, toward the bones that littered the damp wood floor. I did my best to guide his dead weight down slowly, but he was too large. I slipped, sending us both to the floor with a rattling crash.

I moaned from the pain, but it was the blood bond in my gut that had me clambering, fighting my way back to Rohana. “What did you do to him?” I seethed at her through the tendrils of smoke that were lifting from the bowl.

“He’s all right, my sweet,” Rohana said, lowering her face to the smoke. “He expected it.”

“Expected it?” I lunged for her, but her vines yanked her back. “Undo it.”

Whatever I’d drunk from that vial was beginning to affect me too. It made me feel like I was sinking. Like time and the world around me were suddenly submerged in thick water, rippling and slow. I blinked, trying to clear the way Rohana’s visage began to blur.

“I slipped him some hedera. I cannot undo it.” Her empty eyes locked with mine. “Payment is required before we begin. Magic must be fed, Imogen, and I know my God-king very well.” She gave a chuckle that only stoked my blistering anger. “He’ll prefer paying me while unconscious.”

The three glowing orbs winked out. There was abject darkness, filled only by the slithering, rattling sound of her vines. My senses were so overwhelmed that I couldn’t place where in the little room she was. Then Theodore’s body jerked at my feet.

I looked down to see the faintest bloom of yellow light. A pale arm, snaked in vines, hooked over Theodore’s torso. Rohana was there, sliding her decrepit body up his. Her bony fingers dove into his thick hair, gripping like she would pull some of it out. Her lips scraped up his cheek, teeth settling against his ear.

Without a thought, I lunged and forced my talons into the thin, sagging skin around her feeble biceps. My other hand sliced through her robe, stuck into her ribs, and drew an ear-piercing shriek from her. Rohana was only bone. With ease, I hoisted her up and slammed her down onto the floor, placing my body between hers and Theodore’s.

My voice ripped from my chest. “You touch him again and I’ll tear your limbs from your fucking body.”

“He must pay.” Her voice had turned weak and begging. “The ritual has already begun, the smoke is already in my chest. I must replace what is taken.”

I was nearly choking on the rotting mist that was filling the hut. And I needed my severing draughts. I needed a prophecy, but my anger was consuming. I dug my talons in deeper.

“Please,” she moaned. “I need flesh.”

Flesh. There was no way I could let her touch him.

Her thin lips pulled back in a snarl. “There is an order, a balance that I keep. Killing me will ruin it. If you will not let him pay, then you must so that I may continue to serve.”

“I’ve grown tired of paying with my body so that monsters may keep living.” My talons scraped against her rib bones as I forced them even deeper. Her scream bounced off the walls.

“Do not be like Eusia and kill your own. What kind of monster would you be if you took me from the people I am here to care for?”

I’d grown into a woman believing I was a monster. Living in shame and fear over what I was. But even with my talons tapping against Rohana’s ancient bones, that feeling had momentarily fled. I was not like her. I would never be.

“What exactly do you require?” I ground out. “How much flesh?”

“Just a piece. With fat still attached,” Rohana answered in a relieved wheeze. “And hair. Pulled out at the root.”

The foul, sweet scent of the smoke sat heavy in my lungs. It smelled like dead things, broken down, nearly gone. My head beat with the pressure of that brew she’d given me, but I managed to pull my talons from her crepey flesh. “Don’t move.” I sounded like I’d downed an entire flagon of wine.

It took all my concentration, but I wrapped a clump of hair at my nape around my fingers and ripped it from my scalp. One of her vines stretched longingly for it.

Rohana’s empty white eyes watched hungrily as I lifted my shirt. I dug a talon tip into the soft band of flesh beneath my navel, pulling out a small round of bloody meat. The vine took both my hair and skin and tucked them inside Rohana’s gaunt cheek.

Her entire body relaxed, instantly satiated.

She was dragged back to the bowl, looking like a pale corpse in the lone orb light. The brown mist crested the lip, and the vines heaved her up, holding her so her face hung above it. A rank sucking sound cut through my ears as she gulped the thick, brown fumes deep.

I could hardly see her now with how thick the mist had become. My sight began to fracture with the more breaths of it I took. I adjusted myself so that Theodore lay protected between my legs just before the orb light went out once more. In the dark, I felt like I was floating.

The voice that came was not that of a maiden. It was the voice of a crone, reed-thin and wobbling.

There is a crown. Ripped, ripped, ripped from the head.

There is a bond. Cut, cut, cut from the blood.

The queen lies drained of her divinity.

The king sits wrecked and ravaged beneath her wing.

Rohana made an awful gasping sound that droned on for what felt like minutes.