Page 50 of Antiletum

My husband takes a slow step towards me. Another. Reaches past me to the pills and picks one up. “Theantiletumcaplets. For preventative measures, it works best if you crush it before swallowing. Otherwise, the effectiveness is”—his words cut off with a small, understanding smile, the flesh of my cheek filling back in—“delayed.” He throws the pill on the bed, his thumb gently tracing the freshly healed wound on my face with a tenderness that wants to tear me apart further. “Are you in pain?”

It’s disturbing—that Val appears genuinely endeared and worried, no trace of the cold brutality that he stared my sister down with right before he killed her. Not bothered in the slightest over what I just discovered. As kind as always when he looks at me, not even wearingany of the frustration he did not long ago, the last time I tried to contact Rainah.

Is it better or worse than if he was giving himself away through his expressions? Showing me the murderer within the man? I can’t rightly say.

I’m reeling. Freezing cold and about to be sick with a fresh wave of grief, utterly overwhelmed. The Ellden clocks make another screeching backwards trek before halting abruptly, the needles righting back to the thirteenth hour.

Val watches the clock undisturbed, walking over to a tray of food I hadn’t even noticed. Plucks up a tiny, pink iced cake. Pops it into his mouth. Repeats the process—twice. All the while watching me patiently. All the while the vein in his neck thrums with the pace of my own heart. All the while obsessively rubbing that mystery item in his fucking pocket like it’s grounding him to life.

“Why… why are you telling me this?” I finally ask. Unable to bring myself to voice anything else. I haven’t had a moment to accept what just came to light.

A foot shuffles backwards, just barely.

Val clocks the motion, going unnaturally still. With a shuddering breath, he meets my wide, horrified gaze. “I can’t stand to see you hurt any more.”

Offering me sound advice to keep learning about his wrongs safely. How courteous.

“I thought you went to see Parliament.” Another step back.

He follows, shoulders shifting ominously to push himself off the table. “I did.”

“How are you back so quickly?”

“I have my ways.”

I laugh. Unhinged and hysterical. “How long were you watching me?”

I back away from him a little more.

“Since you tossed theantiletumin your mouth.” Val’s words are gravelly and strained, his jaw incredibly tense.

Still retreating, I knock into a table, something crashing to the floor.

“Might as well get this all over with now,” he says softly, “so we may move on and have no regressions later.” Val takes a tentative step closer to me, trying not to spook me further. “My intention was never to hurt you, Delaney. Only to have you. To keep yousafe.” Those odd, black eyes bore into me with reverence. With the same light of adoration Valledyn offered me at our wedding, and it all makes sense.

A brief glimmer of my first visit to The Citadel flashes through me. The curious face of a man, explaining that his father—Llewellyn ven’Sol—was late because his other son took ill on the journey. Said brother being Val.

The way Val’s older brother Heath studied me curiously, offering me a secretive smile before being ushered through The Citadel to meet my punishment, to my parents who would decide to tuck me and my willfulness away for good.

“What was your father’s gift?” I whisper. Then, even quieter, “Your brothers?”

But I think a part of me already knows the answer. Most don’t openly share their gifts. As a general rule, that information is only passed within tight circles.

Val inhales deep, understanding fully the connections I’m making. He doesn’t try to deny. “My father and Heath were both trackers, Delaney.”

A strangled cry lurches up my throat. The ache in my chest is too harrowing. Blackened with grief and fear and too much treachery. “You knew. You knew what I was—before our wedding.” More wetness spurts from my eyes. “Your brother saw me, scented my necromancy, when I was fifteen. You were after me all along.”

My husband doesn’t falter. Doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even blink.

“Yes.”

A single, damning word. He’s unapologetic. The same as he was when he murdered Rainah. The same as he was after our wedding, holding me tight, kissing me desperately, telling me that I was safe and accepted and loved in his arms.

All for what I could do for him.

My flight or fight response is coming alive. Dread fuels my heartbeat, collecting my energy as my horrified stare pins on the man that I’m bound to for life and beyond, our souls intertwined. No escape.

Fear thickens further, a cloud of it plumes around me, pulse roaring in my ears.