“Where all dead and riddled secrets lie.”
“Jez! Jezzie!”I held her, trying to stop her shaking as we stood outside the pleasure house.
She was frantic, eyes whipping between the shadowed corners of the quiet street and the stairs leading back inside, like she expected someone to follow her.
“Jezebel!” I said firmly. “Look at me!”
Her eyes found mine—wide and something tortured in them—and I held her cheeks before she could look away again.
I softened my voice. “What happened?”
Tolek and Santorina stood around us, watching carefully while also monitoring our surroundings. Tears tracked down Jezebel’s cheeks. Up the stairs, Malakai, Mila, and Lyria were emerging from the pleasure house.
“I heard—I heard something die,” she said. “A Storyteller, I think. But I don’t know—I couldn’t see, didn’t get to hear their thoughts fully?—”
My heart cracked at the tremor in her voice.
“I’m sorry, Jezzie,” I whispered, kissing her forehead and tucking her close to me.
I met Rina’s eyes over Jezebel’s shaking frame as the others joined us, and Tolek whispered an explanation to them.
“It felt like someone was following us. There was some odd sense in the air.” Santorina shivered, eyes on her crimson-stained hands. The back of my neck prickled at her tone. “Then, a scream came from another room. And it cut off abruptly. I tried to go help, but I was too late. It was a weapon I didn’t recognize.”
Something within Jezebel crumbled.
There was something that didn’t line up here, though. As torturous as it was, Jezebel had been hearing the dying her entire life. More horrifically during the Battle of Damenal. Why had one transitioning spirit caused her to melt down like this?
My own heart raced as I held my sister tighter and whispered, “What else, Jez?”
And she took one huge, shuddering breath, stealing herself. “I think I killed her.”
I couldn’t feel my limbs at those words. At the utter terror lacing them.
I think I killed her.
“What do you mean?” Tolek asked, bracing a hand on my back.
Imbued these two with the powers of life and death.
Jezebel gathered herself. “When I heard—my power reached out. I didn’t realize it was doing it, it justdid.”
I met Tolek’s eyes, and it was clear we were thinking of the same thing. Not only what Aimee had said, but of that day in Valyn when my magic had acted of its own accord as Jezebel’s had tonight. Rage tunneled through me, singeing my panic and fear to ash—anger at the control I lacked that day, at what Jezebel was suffering right now.
“Normally, it only listens to them. It doesn’t speed up or delay the dying.” Jez’s tears stopped, but she leaned on me. “This time, though…I don’t know how it did it. But it felt like it ripped her spirit from her body. Like I did. LikeIwiped that life from Ambrisk.”
“How…” Rina trailed off.
“I don’t know.” Jezebel shook her head and looked up at me. “Can we go home, please?”
“Of course.” I smoothed her hair and tucked her into my side, starting down the dark street. As we made our way back to the inn in the creeping quiet of Lendelli, I couldn’t fight the feeling that more had unraveled in the pleasure house than we saw.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Vale
Cypherion wassound asleep when I slipped out of our bed. I kissed his forehead, and his hand flexed over where he’d held me only a moment ago. But he’d been under so much pressure recently, I didn’t want to wake him for my own restlessness.
Instead, I slipped one of his tunics over my head, grabbed the bag of tinctures I’d purchased in the Lendelli Market last night, and crept out of the room.
