Page 111

And why could I still not give her the life she deserved?

I stared into her face. Identical to mine. Same gold-flecked eyes. Same high cheekbones. Same large forehead and black hair and big ears and pointy collarbones.

And yet, now we didn’t look alike at all.

“I’m sorry,” I told her blank face. I said it like a prayer.

I pulled up the crucible from the chain around my neck, and I held it in the palm of my shadow hand. I closed my eyes.

I could still feel her soul. There were whispers of my parents, too, deep in the blood iron. My family was not quite past my reach. Their souls echoed in the crucible, whispers, reminding me of who I was, of love that was true. I couldn’t hear words in the echoes, just... just feelings. Of calm. Of love. Of peace.

I opened my eyes and my vision filled with the empty stare of the thing that looked like my sister. I had only this pale imitation of Nessie, a soulless, lifeless puppet that shared her name and that stood in the corner of my workroom, watching me, waiting for me to command it.

Her. Waiting for me to commandher.

She stepped forward.

“Get me a cloak,” I told her. “I’m cold.”

Ernesta silently moved across the metal floor to the crate I used as storage, rifling through the contents and emerging with my cloak. She walked back to me, holding it out. I took it from her hand, and she lowered her arm. She stood there. Waiting. For my next command.

Rage pricked at my eyes, and I slammed my fist into the face that looked like my twin sister. I felt her nose crunch; her flesh gave way beneath my pummeling. She didn’t move to defend herself. She stood there until my force knocked her over, and then she fell to the ground, and still I raged, kicking her viciously in the ribs, stomping her weak body, crouching over her and driving my knuckles straight into her face.

I stopped when I grew exhausted. Her body was bent and broken, bruised and bleeding.

I touched the crucible, spoke the runes. White light encased Ernesta’s body, and, in a moment, she was healed and whole again.

She stood up. She looked at me.

She waited for her next command.

SIXTY-TWO

Grey

Kill the necromancer,kill the necromancy.The words moved my feet forward, filling me with determination. It didn’t matter that the necromancer was the most powerful person in the world.

He had to be stopped.

I went to Blackdocks. The factories loomed along the bay like hulking giants, blocking out the stars on the horizon.

“Come on.” A man’s voice carried through the night. “You have to take me.”

“Not for just a silver,” another man said.

The fog thinned as I reached the water’s edge. Usually there was a large cluster of flat-bottomed boats that ferried people up and down the coast. But tonight there was only one.

“Where you going?” the skipper called to me. His accent was thick and heavy, making it all sound like one word:waryougwan?

“The quarantine hospital,” I said, looking past him. The tall brick building was barely visible in the dark, only identifiable by the illuminated clockface.

The skipper spit a stream of blackleaf juice into the bay. “Toldhim,” he said, jerking his head to the other man. “Ain’t going there. Not without proper gold.”

“Please,” the first man begged, his voice cracking. He stank of alcohol, but he seemed sober. My eyes drifted down to the large lumpat his feet. I gasped—it was a woman, her body covered by a cloak but clearly dead.

“That place is cursed!” the skipper said. “I ain’t gonna—”

“Ten gold,” I said.