Page 29

The end of the Sacrament.

Morticia must be around the other side of the door, somewhere out of view, because I hear her voice like a snake slithering out of darkness, “And how long did you give her when she was born?”

The healer’s sharp face pinches. “Three years.”

Melantha steps into view, carrying a tray of phials and jars. The two largest phials are undeniably pure, unfiltered white powder.

Black powder is for cuts and broken bones. Wounds.

The white powder is used for a different sort of ailment, the sort of the soul or the mind or an eternal sickness that can’t be cured. Sickness.

Melantha sets the tray on the foot of the bed.

As she starts to scoop powder and pour milky substances into the mortar to grind a paste, perhaps a tonic, Morticia’s stern tone comes, “Three years to live, and yet here she is, nearing her third decade. So can your expertise be trusted, healer?”

“Sister,” Melantha’s tone sags with her shoulders and she turns to look at the wall beyond the door.

I don’t see Morticia, but I do recognize the dimness in Melantha’s bleak, black eyes. Sorrow.

“What?” Morticia snaps, and I hear a clatter, as though she’s smacked her hand down on a dresser, and some lotions and hairbrushes have toppled over. “A humandoctorcould do a better job—”

My face pales at the sharp insult.

The healer swerves his gaze across the room, yellow eyes flashing like canaries set alight. He draws back his hood to reveal a hairless head—and now I realise, he wears no eyebrows on his face, no lashes on his eyes.

I cringe at the sight of him, of his glaring rage, his unfiltered faeness.

But it’s Aleana who severs the spat when her wispy voice comes sheathed in breaths and whimpers, “I will slow down on the tonics. If I don’t take them every day, will that give me more time?”

The healer thins his lips and, slowly, drags his attention back to the wraith of a fae on the bed. “Yes. But how many days, I cannot estimate. My advice, stay in bed, prepare for passage, and say your goodbyes.”

No one flinches.

The healer drones the words like he’s said them before, Aleana just sighs something disappointed, and Melantha’s hands don’t falter as she prepares little phials of tonics.

I suspect she is only keeping her hands busy so she doesn’t break down.

My intrusion on this private moment is a storm dizzying my mind. I stagger back a step, a breath loosening from my lips, and choke on silence.

I’m to lose Aleana, too.

Aleana is to lose everything and everyone.

She’s to die soon.

I don’t know what I expected, or even what I hoped for. I simply thought she would… be here and stay.

I never considered that she was ruining her already ailing body with the tonics to keep up with us, to visit Comlar and to drink wines, maybe even to merely keep her eyes open.

Suddenly, whining about my terrible circumstances and Eamon’s abandonment of me doesn’t seem all that important. At least, it’s not a complaint I should be mentioning to Aleana.

Her concerns are greater than my own.

All Aleana wants is to make it to the end of the Sacrament, and I have no doubt that it’s to ensure her brothers survive before she can pass in peace.

I slink away from the door slowly, one step, another—and my spine connects with a solid, muscle-packed chest. The warmth ofa steady breath disturbs my loose waves, and I know it’s Daxeel before I turn to face him.

His eyes smoulder in the dark, the low set of his lashes adding a silent warning to the look he pins me with.