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The next morning, I woke, my back stiff. I went to the room I shared with my sister.

She wasn’t there.

I went to the kitchen. Empty.

There was only one other room in the house.

When I pushed open the door to the front room, I was hit with the rotting smell of my parents. I gagged, but I turned my focus to Ernesta, who sat in the chair by the door, cradling her severed arm in her lap.

“Nessie?” I whispered.

She rocked in the chair. Her eyes were on my parents. The doors were barred and the windows covered, but flies had come anyway, buzzing around my parents’ corpses. My mother’s face was slack and shiny, a thin film of wax building on the surface. Papa’s body was bloated, pale on top, stained purple on the bottom. We’d weighed their eyelids down with buttons when we placed their bodies in the room, but one had slid away from Papa’s face. He had a strange, empty wink.

“We should go,” I said.

Nessie held out her arm to me. I’d wrapped the wound in thin bands of ripped cloth, but she had unwound it. And even though the room was dark, I could see the black creeping up her skin, swirling toward her heart.

FORTY-FIVE

Nedra

I dragged Ernestafrom the room and shut the door again.

“We can fix this,” I said.

“Are you going to hack more of me away?” Her voice was cold, emotionless. Tired.

I ripped her shirt as I pulled it back, examining her as quickly as I could. My eyes traced the stain under her skin. One thin line reached all the way from her wound up her shoulder, swirling over her chest, sinking into her heart.

“No,” I whispered. “No more amputation.”

“I’m dead, aren’t I?” Her calm voice cut me to the core.

“There’s a chance—”

But I knew she didn’t believe me.

“Go back to bed,” I demanded. “Rest. Thereisa chance. Not everyone dies from the plague.”

She turned her glassy eyes to me. “You work with people who are sick every day in the city, don’t you?” she said. “And you don’t get sick.” Her gaze dropped to her arm.

She didn’t say it, but we were both thinking it:It’s not fair.

“Rest,” I said again. “I’ll find a way to help you.”

I led her back to her bed, tucked her in. She was so weak she just shut her eyes, and in moments, her soft huffing breath told me she was truly asleep.

I took a deep breath. I went back to the kitchen and fetched my golden crucible.

I couldn’t take all her pain, but I could take some.

My hands trembled, after. My skin felt like it was vibrating, shaking loose from my body. My bones felt too heavy, like they would sink into my muscle, like they would weigh down my bed, crack through the frame, sink into the earth.

As soon as I was able, I stood. I paced.

I knew what I had to do.

I lit the oil lamps and candles we had left and I stared at the alchemy texts, flipping the pages so urgently they tore. I didn’t care. The books were only valuable if they could help me save her. Papa’s book was of no use. It had confirmed what Master Ostrum and I suspected—the plague was made by necromancy. But it gave no solution.