The medicine. It was early. It was risky, but— “What do you mean, no?” she repeated. “Where are you going?”
“I just…” My tongue wouldn’t cooperate with me.
She made a strangled sound, almost a humorless laugh. “You’re going to him.”
If I hadn’t been so distracted, I might have been surprised. My sister saw more of me than I thought she did.
I just said, “I have to go. Here—”
“Enough, Lilith. Just—just stop.”
Mina’s voice cut through the air like a blade, sharp enough to make me pause.
“Look at me,” she demanded.
My fingers, deep in my bag, closed around that single precious vial of medicine. I couldn’t bring myself to lift my eyes.
“Look at me. You never look at me anymore.”
I turned around slowly.
I never found it necessary to look people in the eye when I spoke to them, a bad habit since childhood. But with Mina… it was different. It wasn’t about discomfort or disinterest or manners. I had to force myself to meet her gaze, to acknowledge all the blatant signs of death devouring her. She stepped closer, not blinking. She had our father’s eyes. Light and bright, like the sky.
Right now, they begged me for something.
My risk calculation resolved to a single solution.
“Give me your hand,” I said.
It wasn’t what Mina wanted from me. I knew that. But I couldn’t give her that warmth, that affection. What I could do was try to save her life.
“Don’t go there,” she said. “We can fix this.”
Ridiculous. What would “fixing it” look like, in her mind? Restoring the status quo? Curling up to die quietly in a socially acceptable manner?
No.
“I am fixing it,” I snapped. “Give me your arm.”
“This isn’t—”
“I refuse to let you all die.” I didn’t mean to shout. I did anyway. “It isn’t supposed to take you and I won’t let it. So give me your gods-damned hand.”
Her jaw tightened until it trembled. Those blue eyes shone with tears.
But she thrust out her hand, exposing a forearm of pale skin so thin the webs of veins beneath were easy to see.
I didn’t give myself time to doubt as I filled the needle and injected her. She winced, and I realized I was so used to the durability of Vale’s skin that I’d pushed too hard. A veil of dust fell to the floor. So fragile now.
I withdrew the needle and turned away abruptly.
“Don’t open the door for anyone. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
I thought she’d tell me to stay, again. Thought she’d still try to talk me out of it. Farrow was looking at me like I was some kind of foreign beast—the same way he looked at a specimen that didn’t make sense, his brow knitted, jaw tight. He was seeing something new in me, something that didn’t reconcile with the version of me he had always known.
Maybe I was seeing that in myself today, too.
I couldn’t tell if it was a good or bad thing.
“I’m coming with you,” Farrow said.
I didn’t look at him. I grabbed the axe from the wall and threw my pack over my shoulder. “Fine,” I said. “Then let’s go.” And I slammed the door behind me.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We galloped hard through the morning. My horse, the one Vale had given me, was strong and fast. Farrow’s, however, was not used to running for so long and over such uneven terrain.
“Don’t slow for me,” Farrow called after me, and I let out a rough, wild laugh that I was grateful he didn’t hear. I never planned on slowing for him. I’d ride as fast as I could.
I felt like a fool.
A fool because I had spent all this time worried about the dangers my relationship with Vale would pose to me, my sister, my town. But it had never occurred to me that I would be dangerous to him.
Thomassen had gone after Vale with several dozen men, Farrow had told me as we ran—young and strong ones. They’d brought weapons and explosives and fire. And they’d brought the most dangerous things of all: desperation and rage.
The acolytes believed that Vale was the reason for the curse. They’d convinced themselves that slaughtering him, offering his tainted blood to Vitarus, could end the plague. They convinced themselves that they could only save themselves, save their families, through this murder.
It didn’t matter that Vale had lived here far longer than the plague had. It didn’t matter that we had sacrificed to Vitarus many times before, and it hadn’t worked. It didn’t matter that they had no evidence that Vitarus even remembered us at all—even remembered he had damned us.
No, logic doesn’t matter in the face of fear and emotion. Logic falls to its knees before hatred, and hatred flourishes in fear—and my people were terrified.
I was terrified, too.
I knew Vale’s blood so intimately, now. I knew what it would look like spilled over the steps of his home, spattered over the faces of the people who came to kill him. I’d dissected many animals, many cadavers. I knew what Vale would look like with his guts pulled apart.
I raised my eyes to the sky. The sun was now high, beating down on my back and forehead through the tree leaves.
That, I did not know. What would happen to a vampire in daylight. I thought that after all I had seen, known things were the most terrifying. But this—this unknown—made me sick to my stomach.
I smelled the fire before I saw it. Burning flesh—in a plague, one recognizes that scent innately.
Finally, I saw the gates of Vale’s estate glint through the tree branches, open and gently-swaying in the breeze.
I kicked my horse and tore through it.
Behind me, Farrow shouted my name, and I ignored him.
Because before me, there was only blood.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Vale had fought them.
The house was bleeding. Blood dripped down the white stone face, pouring from a broken window on the second story, where a limp body hung draped over broken glass, a sword dangling from his motionless grip.
Blood painted the front steps of the entryway—smears of it, pools. Handprints on the door, on the handles. Strokes of it ran in rivulets down the pathway, collecting in the spaces between the brick pavers. It sank into the rose bushes. Into the grass.
Was it horrible that I wasn’t horrified? Was it horrible that I was relieved?
Because it was all red blood—human blood. Blood that belonged to the lifeless bodies strewn around the property. So many I couldn’t count them. A massacre had happened here.
Farrow had told me that Thomassen had come with two dozen men. Surely few of them remained.
Maybe Vale had escaped. Maybe he…
But then, as my horse slowed to a trot beyond the gates, I saw it: the black blood mixed in with all that red. Smears in the grass, along the path. More of it down the path to the back of the house.
Too much of it.
I kicked my horse into a run toward the back of the house, ignoring Farrow’s calls after me.
And when I saw him, my heart sank and leapt at the same time.
For some reason, the phrase that flew through my mind was, Vale.
My Vale.
Only a handful of men remained alive, but Vale was so injured that he wasn’t fighting anymore. They had dragged him outside. He was on his knees in the garden, white and red flower petals around him. His head was bowed, black hair covering his face. His wings were out, the white feathers gorgeous in the daylight sun—gruesome contrast to the spatters of black blood and the open burn sores spreading across them.