CHAPTER 6
IN WHICH THE FALLEN HEIR IS TRANSFORMED, THE FURNACE BURNS BRIGHT—AND WHY HASN’T THE LAUDANUM WORN OFF YET???
Disappointingly, the high dose of laudanum did not seem to kill me, nor the pain. It did, however, make meraginglydrunk.
Better drunk than dead, I say.
I wrench myself from the cold tile floor, where I appear to sit in a dark cell. My hands fly to my face; my teeth are still missing, and I’mfreezing. My cheeks feel like I’ve been standing in a draft, my chin and neck still crusted in blood.
My vision adjusts quickly in the dim light. A guard of some sort stands armed with a rifle outside the only barred exit, propped and snoring against the wall opposite the cell door just feet from me. Oil lamps flicker beyond, no sunlight to be seen.
Padded walls lined in copper mesh. A distant orange light, flickering around the corner.
In the long moment it takes me to realize I’ve been made prisoner, I notice the other swaying figures in the center of the room. Pale shapes, hollow-eyed. Their breathing wet, harsh, and shallow.
A woman, her face sunken, lips cracked and bloodied,shivers in a dress of chiffon and lace now black with soot. Her throat is torn, bleeding wounds in the shape of the collar I’d worn just minutes—hours?—ago.
I’m not wholly sure they’re alive, but their blood smells half sweet, half rotten. As if they’re not wholly edible, but would do in a pinch.
Wow, I think, licking my lips and shuffling away until I hit the padded wall.I am a jackass.
My stomach growls violently in response.
A ghostly child stands close to her, and next to him, is the figure of a man crumpled upon the floor. I’m positive he’s not breathing, because my pounding head has afforded me anewlevel of delirium: Whether or not I am imagining it, I can hear every sound in the room.
The whimpers of the child. The reassurances from his mother, laced in terror.
Grating metal against stone around the corner, from where the flickering orange light roars to life. Shifting stone or sediment of some sort. An iron door on poorly-oiled hinges, creaking open. Embers float into the dark after eachplopof stone.
Through the haze, fear grips me—albeit distantly. A fucking fire.
I’m about to be incinerated, aren’t I?
I begin to laugh. What else is there to do? But the sound is like sandpaper down my throat; I shove my hand into my pocket and pull out that last bag from Amah. I don’t know what those cooling herbs did for me, besides probably heighten the effects of the laudanum, now that I think about it.
To give you strength when the cold tries to break you.
I am, undoubtedly, a freezing and broken man. And if I have the choice to be warmed by herbs or flame charring skin, I’ll choose the first in every godforsaken lifetime.
Holding the dripping wad of fibrous herbs above my tongue, I prepare for the worst—when the child makes a ghastly noise of surprise. The man beside him has shifted a leg.
“He’s alive,” the boy croaks, despite his mother’s desperate shushing. The skin of his mouth has been ripped at the corners, and four of his top teeth are missing, too.
“Rigors, probably,” I comment, without a single thought.
As the woman cradles his head and shoots me a deadly glare, the shovelling sound around the corner stops abruptly. Terror fills her eyes, and she tugs her son closer.
“What’s that noise?” the unseen presence tending to the furnace growls.
Quickly, I shove the entire wad of herbs into my mouth and nearly choke, chewing twice before swallowing it whole. If I’m lucky enough, it’ll give me the fire—the strength to do something about the person approaching the strange, pale family across from me.
If I’m unlucky, it kills me. Then, none of this is my problem anymore, is it?
As soon as it’s down, my body roars to life, as if a torch is lit in my chest. I place one foot under me, just as he rounds the corner and grabs the leg of the stirring man despite the hoarse protests of his family.
But the newcomer doubles back upon seeing me rise to my feet, looking like he’s seen a ghost. He might as well have.
“You,” I growl, sauntering across the room, my steps awkward, like a sad revenant. “Put him?—”
