The wounds somehow looked even worse in here, but to my relief, they had stopped spreading once he was out of the sun.
But he wasn’t moving. He was only barely breathing.
“Lilith…” Farrow said quietly.
I looked up. He peered out the window, to the dead bodies lying in the yard. At first, I thought maybe he was sickened by what we’d just done—we’d killed, after all—but when he glanced back at me, it held something harder than guilt.
“An acolyte,” he murmured. “Vale killed an acolyte.”
The reality of what had just happened hit me.
Vale, a vampire, a child of Nyaxia, had just murdered a high-ranking devotee of Vitarus.
I had already been pushing my luck with my experimentations with vampire blood. I had been so careful at first to hide my work, to make sure I didn’t touch the blood long enough to attract the attention of a scorned god. And if a few vials of blood might have been enough to earn a god’s wrath…
…Imagine what the death of an acolyte could do.
Cold, cold dread fell over me. Some gods were fiercely protective of their acolytes. Others ignored them. Most, Vitarus included, fell somewhere in the middle, depending on their mood and your luck. He might not notice what had happened here. But if he did… few things were considered more insulting to a god than the murder of what they considered theirs—especially by someone touched by their greatest enemy.
My hands went numb, like all the blood had drained from my extremities.
“I don’t know what to do.”
I didn’t mean to speak aloud. I always knew what to do. Always knew the next logical step. But right now, logic seemed so far away. There were so many problems, all so big. I couldn’t find the answers.
I turned to Farrow, wide-eyed, and swallowed a stab of guilt at the sight of him.
Farrow. Poor Farrow. I had barely looked at him before. He was covered in blood, too. One arm looked injured.
But his hand fell to my shoulder, giving it an encouraging squeeze.
“You will,” he said. “Just think.”
Farrow did always make me want to believe him, and that counted for something.
I drew in a breath, let it out, and stood.
“We need to burn the bodies.”
Maybe if we burned them fast, Vitarus would never know. Gods were fickle and flighty. They had a whole universe to pay attention to, after all. Maybe we’d gotten lucky, and this one hadn’t noticed us today.
But if we weren’t…
I looked down at myself. My blood-stained hands.
I’d make sure the blame would be mine. If Vale and I stayed away from town, I could pray that we would draw Vitarus’s attention, miles away from Adcova.
And if we only had a little bit of time before we attracted the attention of Vitarus, then we needed to use it.
“Here.” I shoved my bag into Farrow’s hands. “Take this back to town. The medicine in it…”
Did it work? Did I know for sure? It worked on the mice. Gods, I hoped it worked on…
I had to blink away Mina’s face, because the thought of her almost made me fall apart.
“It works,” I said. “Guard it. Don’t destroy it. Don’t let anything happen to it.”
Farrow’s brow furrowed. “Are you sure?”
Sometimes, those three words coming from someone else would be an admonishment. From Farrow, it was an actual question, spoken with the understanding that he would accept whatever answer I gave him.
I wasn’t sure. And I was a terrible liar. But I still replied, with as much confidence as I could muster, “Yes. I am.”
For decades, this town had thrown its faith blindly into gods that had done nothing for them but curse them. Now I’d give anything to cast that faith into those little glass vials.
“Go,” I said to Farrow. “Be quick. You don’t have much time.”
“What about him?”
Vale lay listless on the floor. Strange, how none of this—the dead bodies, the blood on my hands—terrified me as much as the sight of him in this state.
“I’ll take care of him. And the bodies.”
I heard all the judgment in Farrow’s silence.
“No arguing,” I said, before he could protest.
But it wasn’t Farrow that argued.
“Go.”
The voice that came from behind me sounded nothing like the deep, smooth sound that had greeted me when I first walked through these doors months ago. Still, my heart leapt to hear it.
Vale’s eyes were slitted, like he had to fight to keep them open.
“Go, mouse,” he rasped out.
No. The word was immediate, definitive. If there had been any shred of doubt within me, the sight of Vale, struggling to even speak, destroyed it. I would not leave him like this.
I forced a smirk. “I owe you roses,” I said. “We had a deal.”
The spasm of muscles around Vale’s mouth could barely be called a smile.
I led Farrow to the door before either of them could argue with me more. Farrow knew he couldn’t change my mind about this, either. Before he left, he reached out and took my hand. Squeezed it. I had to close my eyes. The emotion on his face made me uncomfortable.
“Thank you.” My voice was strangled and choked.
“Good luck, Lilith,” he said, in a tone that sounded a lot like a goodbye.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
When Farrow was gone, I dropped to my knees beside Vale.
“I—I don’t know how to help you. Do you have medicine, or—”
“Burn them first,” he wheezed.
“Not with you like this.”
“Burn. Them.” His gaze slipped to the parted curtains—to the sky. No sign of a god’s anger now, but the longer we waited, the greater chance there was it would come.
I knew what he meant: we don’t have time.
So, reluctantly, I did as he asked. It took longer than I’d hoped. The bodies were heavy. I struggled to drag them far enough from the house to keep the flames from spreading to the building. There were many of them.
By the time I was done, the red cast from the fire doused the entire estate. It was dusk, the sky pink as scar tissue, gritty with smoke. I rushed my work and hurried back into the library the minute I was sure the fire wouldn’t take the house with it. Sooty sweat plastered my shirt to my skin. I was panting. I had worked so, so fast. But when I saw Vale lying there, right where I had left him, I thought, I made a mistake. I should have healed him first.
Still, I breathed a sigh of relief when he turned his head laboriously to look at me.
Did he look a little better? A little?
“Medicine,” I demanded. “Where?”
“Study,” he said, in a thick, scratchy voice. “Third drawer.”
The drawer, of course, was a mess—I could barely get it open for all the clutter. I cursed him for it as I rummaged. I didn’t even know what Obitraen medicine looked like. Finally, at the bottom, I came across several glass bottles. Most held blue-white liquid that glowed faintly. When I touched them, I shivered a little, like the magic was calling to some dark part of myself.
I wasn’t sure if there was a difference between them, so I filled my arms and brought all of them back, dumping them on the coffee table beside Vale.
“Which?”