Page 80 of Brimstone

Foley nodded. “Make sure you get that sleep . . .Saeris,” he said, trying out my name for the first time. “I’ll know you’re lying if you don’t.”

19

I’LL LIVE

KINGFISHER

VORATH SHAH’S SHOPwas a disaster. Or . . . there was a strong chance that maybe I was hallucinating. Had it been like this before? I couldn’t remember. Either way, glass bulbs and shattered wooden crates cluttered the floor. The shelves were hanging off the walls, lopsided, the contents spilled onto the ground. A strange, musky scent filled the shop, too, pungent and sour. Carrion and I had both wrinkled our noses when we’d entered, and we were now breathing through our noses as we combed through the debris, searching for an alembic still that hadn’t been smashed to pieces.

“I swear I know that smell.” Carrion swayed, pressing his hand against the wall for support. “It’ssofamiliar.” He wasn’t far from passing out. It was a miracle, really, that he hadn’t toppled like a fallen tree with all the demon venom chugging through his veins. He’d thrown up multiple times on our way back through the tunnels across the Third, but then again so had I. Now, we were both running on empty, and much as I didn’t want to admit it, it wouldn’t be long before consciousness slipped away from both of us.

“Worry less about the smell and more about that still,” I told him.

My arms were tired. My thigh was screaming with pain. The puncture wound from Joshin’s stinger was deep and burned like someone had poured acid into it. Putting weight on the leg was excruciating, but I could baby the wound later. For now, the anti-venom was . . . was our only priority.

“Don’t we need . . . Oh, gods . . .” Carrion stiffened, his face turning gray. He closed his eyes, and I knew what he was experiencing: the rolling nausea, the spinning vision. I regretted thinking about it immediately as the same sensations passed over me. “Don’t we need a healer to make this for us?” he gritted out. “This anti-venom?”

I kicked a plank of rotting wood out of my way, scattering shards of glass and a pile of fine blueish powder, frustration building as my eyes didn’t alight upon a still. “No. All warriors know how to make anti-venom. We learn basic healing skills before we even learn how to wield a sword. There are plenty of things that want to poison a person in your kingdom,Your Highness. A warrior needs to know how to reverse a toxin when they find themselves in the frozen woods of Yvelia. They won’t get very far if they don’t.”

“I don’t like that,” the smuggler groused.

“Really? I’d say it’s really fucking handy that I’m trained in plant medicines.”

“No, not . . . that.” He had to take a breath between words. “Your Highness.I don’t like it when you call me . . . Your Highness.”

I snorted. “Youarethe true heir to the Winter Throne, are you not?”

“All right. I’ll start calling you Lord Cahlish, then, shall I?”

“Not if you want to keep your fucking tongue,” I growled.

Carrion straightened, looking up at the ceiling as he thought about this. “Umm. Yeah, I kinda need my tongue.” He took a deep breath and then sighed it back out. “Peopledoseem to like it.”

I almost laughed.Almost.Gods, I was losing my mind. The male was ridiculous. “Just keep searching for the still, Swift.”

For the first time since we’d arrived in Zilvaren, luck decided to favor us. We didn’t find a still, but we did find a shallow crucible in the back of Shah’s store that would suffice. The black-market trader had a full distiller constructed back there, out of sight from prying eyes, where he had clearly been up to no good. I broke down most of his setup, lit a taper beneath the burner, and got to work.

“You’re too late. Why even bother?” My mother was back. She sat on the end of Vorath Shah’s bench, swinging her legs beneath her long skirts, eating an apple. Her long black hair swirled around her head like she was underwater. “You’re just like your father, aren’t you, darling. Always too late.” She took a huge bite of the apple, offering it out to me.

“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t want it.”

“Is a dead person talking to you right now?” Carrion asked. He was bent over by the door with his hands on his knees again; it was probably the only position that helped with his nausea.

“Yes,” I told him.

“Oh, good,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “I thought that was just me.”

Whatever phantoms were haunting Carrion, he chose not to share, and I chose not to pry. A male’s ghosts were his own business, and I was having enough problems with my own.

“Well, look at you. Putting people in the line of danger.Again.”

I cut the palm of my broken hand—two inches long, at least half an inch deep—and clenched my hand into a fist as best Icould, grunting through the pain. Blood welled in the crucible’s bowl, gathering quickly.

I didn’t look at the other, sandy-haired female who had joined us and was leaning against the bench next to me. I couldn’t bear to see her face. Not now. Not here. Not after so many years of mourning her. I hadn’t heard her voice in centuries. The sound of it now, familiar, knocked the wind out of me. It hurt more than everything else I’d endured today combined.

“It’s not that you’re evil. You’re not unkind, either. You’re justcareless,” she said. “You promise to look out for people, and they put their trust in you. And then you let them down, don’t you? Too concerned about covering yourself in glory to pay attention to what’s happening to those around you.”

I took a pinch of salt from an open bowl on Shah’s bench and dropped it into the crucible. My chest felt like it was being cleaved wide open.