"Look," I say harshly. "We don't have time to discuss it. Lewis, you want to keep your leg? Well, this is all we've got right now. You're a dead man walking without a healer's touch and, I'm sure you are already aware, but none of the medicinal plants we're familiar with grow in this forest. Without my help, at best you'll lose your leg. At worst? Maybe your life."
Lewis works his face into a gnarled frown.
Mira attempts a soft smile. "What harm could it do to try?"
His laugh is a humorless thing. "That's easy for you to say."
The fight in him is waning though, and so I don't move until he tells me to.
In his own time, he finally jerks his head, beckoning me forward. I squat beside him, unsure of what I'm doing, or even if it'll work.
There's only one way to know for sure though.
Reaching behind me, I grab a shard of glass from the ground. I drag its sharpest edge along my finger. Blood beads along the cut and I bring it over to the gash in his leg. He jerks as the droplets fall, seeping into his flesh.
And then we wait.
A handful of seconds is all it takes for the flesh to begin knitting itself back together before our eyes.
"Fuck-fuck-fuck!"Lewis jumps back like he's trying to get away from the leg attached to his own body.
A soft gasp escapes Mira's lips, but she holds her ground, the curiosity of a healer holding her in place. Rowland doesn't move either, but his is a stiff stance, one that makes me uneasy, makes me worry that he's judging me and my strange newfound ability.
Until he opens his mouth to say what's plaguing his mind. "Your blood has healing properties," he says, watching Lewis' leg but gazing somewhere far beyond it. "And the noctis we killed had your blood inside him—"
"Who fucking cares!" Lewis exclaims. He has his leg cradled up to his chest now, examining the new flesh like a small boy who's just discovered the wonders of fire. "So what if he healed after you gutted him like a pig. He's not our problem anymore! He's gone. And we will be soon now!"
But as Lewis springs to his feet to test his freshly healed leg, he makes me realize the gravity of his words.
Rowland realizes it at the same time. "Where did you say you killed the female noctis?"
My wide eyes are the only response I can give him before I snatch Sable out of his grasp and bolt up the stairs, Rowland hot on my heels.
I search everywhere. Every corner of the attic. Every shadow that could conceal a full-grown woman—and even the ones that couldn't. Her body is gone. All that I find where I left her corpse sprawled on the dusty floorboards is a pool of blood.
Rowland and I exchange a worried glance.
"Where is she?" he asks, each word a slow wheeze of wind through dingy shutters.
I shake my head. "She was here. She...she must be gone."
Downstairs, the double doors burst open. The scent of death putrefies the air and curdles my blood, and I can feel my pulse rattle my bones.
The noctis have risen. And I can only assume they're back for revenge.
28
MOUNTAIN
Rowland and I take the stairs two or three rungs at a time. It's still too slow.
The time it takes for each stride to land is filled with an eon of screams and hollering, of glass crunching beneath boots that shuffle from one side of the lower cathedral level to the other.
I just keep thinking about Mira, hoping she's okay. I never had a sister. I don't pretend to know what having one is like. But I feel a kinship toward her, one that I can't describe or explain.
As we reach the landing in the middle of the staircase before it loops around to the lower half of stairs, I'm finally able to see her. To see all of them.
The main entrance doors are wide open, and in the middle of the room cower Mira and Dunce.
