Rowan had stayed near the little iron gate, leaning against one of those oaks to keep passersby on the quiet city street behind them from noticing him. If they did, his black clothes and weapons painted him as a mere bodyguard.
She had planned to come alone. But this morning she’d awoken and just … needed him with her.
The new grass cushioned each step between the pale headstones bathed in the sunlight streaming down.
She picked up pebbles along the way, discarding the misshapen and rough ones, keeping those that gleamed with bits of quartz or color. She clutched a fistful of them by the time she approached the last line of graves at the edge of the large, muddy river flowing lazily past.
It was a lovely grave—simple, clean—and on the stone was written:
Sam Cortland
Beloved
Arobynn had left it blank—unmarked. But Wesley had explained in his letter how he’d asked the tombstone carver to come. She approached the grave, reading it over and over.
Beloved—not just by her, but by many.
Sam. Her Sam.
For a moment, she stared at that stretch of grass, at the white stone. For a moment she could see that beautiful face grinning at her, yelling at her, loving her. She opened her fist of pebbles and picked out the three loveliest—two for the years since he’d been taken from her, one for what they’d been together. Carefully, she placed them at the apex of the headstone’s curve.
Then she sat down against the stone, tucking her feet beneath her, and rested her head against the smooth, cool rock.
“Hello, Sam,” she breathed onto the river breeze.
She said nothing for a time, content to be near him, even in this form. The sun warmed her hair, a kiss of heat along her scalp. A trace of Mala, perhaps, even here.
She began talking, quietly and succinctly, telling Sam about what had happened to her ten years ago, telling him about these past nine months. When she was done, she stared up at the oak leaves rustling overhead and dragged her fingers through the soft grass.
“I miss you,” she said. “Every day, I miss you. And I wonder what you would have made of all this. Made of me. I think—I think you would have been a wonderful king. I think they would have liked you more than me, actually.” Her throat tightened. “I never told you—how I felt. But I loved you, and I think a part of me might always love you. Maybe you were my mate, and I never knew it. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering about that. Maybe I’ll see you again in the Afterworld, and then I’ll know for sure. But until then … until then I’ll miss you, and I’ll wish you were here.”
She would not apologize, nor say it was her fault. Because his death wasn’t her fault. And tonight … tonight she would settle that debt.
She wiped at her face with the back of her sleeve and got to her feet. The sun dried her tears. She smelled the pine and snow before she heard him, and when she turned, Rowan stood a few feet away, staring at the headstone behind her.
“He was—”
“I know who he was to you,” Rowan said softly, and held out his hand. Not to take hers, but for a stone.
She opened her fist, and he sorted through the pebbles until he found one—smooth and round, the size of a hummingbird’s egg. With a gentleness that cracked her heart, he set it on the headstone beside her own pebbles.
“You’re going to kill Arobynn tonight, aren’t you?” he said.
“After the dinner. When he’s gone to bed. I’m going back to the Keep and ending it.”
She’d come here to remind herself—remind herself why that grave before them existed, and why she had those scars on her back.
“And the Amulet of Orynth?”
“An endgame, but also a distraction.”
The sunlight danced on the Avery, nearly blinding. “You’re ready to do it?”
She looked back at the gravestone, and at the grass concealing the coffin beneath. “I have no choice but to be ready.”
40
Elide spent two days on voluntary kitchen duty, learning where and when the laundresses ate and who brought their food. By that point, the head cook trusted her enough that when she volunteered to bring the bread up to the dining hall, he didn’t think twice.
No one noticed when she sprinkled the poison onto a few rolls of bread. The Wing Leader had sworn it wouldn’t kill—just make the laundress sick for a few days. And maybe it made her selfish for placing her own survival first, but Elide didn’t hesitate as she dumped the pale powder onto some of the rolls, blending it into the flour that dusted them.
Elide marked one roll in particular to make sure she gave it to the laundress she’d noted days before, but the others would be given out at random to the other laundresses.
Hell—she was likely going to burn in Hellas’s realm forever for this.
But she could think about her damnation when she had escaped and was far, far away, beyond the Southern Continent.
Elide limped into the raucous dining hall, a quiet cripple with yet another platter of food. She made her way down the long table, trying to keep the weight off her leg as she leaned in again and again to deposit rolls onto plates. The laundress didn’t even bother to thank her.
The next day, the Keep was abuzz with the news that a third of the laundresses were sick. It must have been the chicken at dinner, they said. Or the mutton. Or the soup, since only some of them had had it. The cook apologized—and Elide had tried not to apologize to him when she saw the terror in his eyes.
The head laundress actually looked relieved when Elide limped in and volunteered to help. She told her to pick any station and get to work.
Perfect.
But guilt pushed down on her shoulders as she went right to that woman’s station.
She worked all day, and waited for the bloodied clothes to arrive.
When they finally did, there was not as much blood as before, but more of a substance that looked like vomit.
Elide almost vomited herself as she washed them all. And wrung them out. And dried them. And pressed them. It took hours.
Night was falling when she folded the last of them, trying to keep her fingers from shaking. But she went up to the head laundress and said softly, no more than a nervous girl, “Should—should I bring them back?”
The woman smirked. Elide wondered if the other laundress had been sent down there as a punishment.
“There’s a stairwell over that way that will take you to the subterranean levels. Tell the guards you’re Misty’s replacement. Bring the clothes to the second door on the left and drop them outside.” The woman looked at Elide’s chains. “Try to run out, if you can.”
Elide’s bowels had turned to water by the time she reached the guards.
But they didn’t so much as question her as she recited what the head laundress had said.
Down, down, down she walked, into the gloom of the spiral stairwell. The temperature plummeted the farther she descended.
And then she heard the moaning.
Moans of pain, of terror, of despair.
She held the basket of clothes to her chest. A torch flickered ahead.
Gods, it was so cold here.
The stairs widened toward the bottom, flaring out into a straight descent and revealing a broad hallway, lit with torches and lined with countless iron doors.
The moans were coming from behind them.
Second door on the left. It was gouged with what looked like claw marks, pushing out from within.
There were guards down here—guards and strange men, patrolling up and down, opening and closing the doors. Elide’s knees wobbled. No one stopped her.
She set the basket of laundry in front of the second door and rapped quietly. The iron was so cold that it burned. “Clean clothes,” she said against the metal. It was absurd. In this place, with these people, they still insisted on clean clothes.
Three of the guards had paused to watch. She pretended not to notice—pretended to back away slowly, a scared little rabbit.
Pretended to catch her mangled foot on something and slip.
But it was real pain that roared through her leg as she went down, her chains snapping and tugging at her. The floor was as cold as the iron door.
None of the guards made to help her up.
She hissed, clutching her ankle, buying as much time as she could, her heart thundering-thundering-thundering.
And then the door cracked open.
Manon watched Elide vomit again. And again.