Page 92 of Brimstone

“The kind you get from doing dumb stuff with your dick.”

He looked horror-stricken.

“Don’t worry. They’ll fade in a couple of days. In the meantime, don’t scratch at them.”

“They weren’t even itching until you said that! Why the hell aren’tyoucovered in hives? And, yes, while we’re at it, how the hellisyour hand fixed? Your knuckles were the size of Gollish nuts when we got back here earlier.”

I didn’t know what a Gollish nut was or how big they usually were, but my knuckleshadbeen grotesquely swollen before I’d fallen asleep. A bouquet of black and purple bruises had flowered beneath my skin, and now the bruises were gone. My hand was healed.

Hmm. How was I supposed to explain this, when I had no real clue what had happened myself? “I think Saeris might have healed me. In my sleep.”

Carrion arched an eyebrow, angling himself in the doorway, as if that might help him see me better. “Is that why you reek of sex?” he asked flatly.

I rolled my eyes, hauling myself up and out of the chair. “And with that, this conversation is officially over.”

Carrion threw the cloth he was holding onto the table beside him. “The injustice! You dream of your girlfriend, you’re healed by her, getlaid, and wake up brand-spanking-new. Meanwhile, I dream that I’d been turned into a goat, and I wake up with a mouth drier than the glass flats, covered in suspect pox marks!”

“She isn’t mygirlfriend, Carrion.”

He gave me a pointed, very unimpressed look. “Your relationship status with Saeris Fane was theleastimportant thing I just said, Kingfisher.”

I rocked my head from side to side, trying not to crack a smile. “Was it, though? I beg to differ.”

He stomped from the room, muttering under his breath. When he came back, he had a pile of folded clothes in his hands. “We may be glamored, but we have to move aboveground today, and you’re covered in blood. Here. You should change into these.”

I eyed the stack of clothes Carrion held out to me with healthy suspicion. They were an off-white, gray color. Loose-fitting, by the looks of things. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn anything other than black or maybe dark green. “I could just magic the blood away,” I said dubiously. “Or conjure up a new set of clothes.”

Swift gave me a look that suggested I was stupid. “We might have to deal with a bunch of guardians today, and you’re willing to deplete your magic for a fresh outfit? Wow.” He tapped hischin annoyingly with his index finger. “I didn’t know you were sovain. And after you refused to give yourself a tan yesterday, too.”

My top lip twitched, but I refrained from showing my teeth. He was infuriating . . . but he was right. I took the clothes from him reluctantly. “Fine.”

“Use the room through there to change. I don’t need to see you half naked after you apparently went on a sexcapade last night, thanks oh so much. God knows what kind of teeth mar—” Carrion saw my face. Carrion stopped talking. He smirked, as if he knew how close he’d come to losing his life. “Never mind,” he said. “Just go and get changed. I’ll wait for you out here.”

I passed him and entered what turned out to be his bedroom. The space was small in the grand scheme of things, but it was comfortable. There was a bed large enough to fit at least three humans in it shoved up against the wall by the window. A chipped dresser was placed on the adjacent wall, with a few knickknacks lined up neatly on top of it. A small mirror hung on the opposite wall, surrounded by sheets of paper, tacked to the stonework. I got changed quickly, pleased to note that Saeris’s blood had also healed the gaping wound in my leg and the other, smaller sting sites that had covered my body, too. I spent a full second feeling sorry for Carrion, knowing how uncomfortable he must be, but then I remembered how annoying he was, and my pity went away.

I was on my way to the door, leathers folded in my hands, when one of the sheets of paper on the wall caught my attention. It was a drawing, the style similar to the way my mother had loved to sketch when I was a child. A woman stared out of the yellowed piece of paper, eyes intense and bright. She had high cheekbones and full lips, and a heart-shaped face that stirred a flurry of memories in the back of my mind.

Amelia Daianthus.

The former queen of the Yvelian Fae.

Belikon had found her in the bathhouses in the lower levels of the Winter Palace. He’d been carrying her husband Rurik’s god sword, Bitterbane, in his hands. The blade had dripped with blood. The queen had taken one look at the sword and the blood and known her husband was dead.

I had seen her fleeing through the palace, robes billowing around her as she ran. I hadn’t witnessed her handing the child over to my father, whispering for him to take him, to hide him, to keep him safe. My mother had told me about that later, after we’d fled the palace in the night and escaped south to Cahlish.

Carrion had drawn his mother with surprising precision. The image of his father, pinned next to Amelia, was less exact. Only half of Rurik Daianthus’s face had been captured on the paper, only one of his eyes sketched out. But the old king’s kindness was there, a familiar warmth radiating from that one eye.

There were other people trapped on the sheets of paper. Members of the Fae I didn’t recognize. Females wearing renegade armor with bows slung across their backs. Males wearing fierce expressions, long hair tied back into war braids, mighty swords held aloft over their heads. Faelings, fire sprites, dragons, and all manner of other creatures, drawn in exacting detail everywhere I looked.

Over by the window, landscapes covered the wall—scenes with snowcapped mountains, raging rivers, and ships out at sea, sailing along a tropical coast that bore a startling resemblance to the Shield—the chain of islands that guarded the beaches of Lissia. It was all here. Pieces of Yvelia, caught on paper like insects trapped in amber. There were so many drawings, layered one on top of the other on top of the other. It must have taken Carrion a long time to create all of this.Years.There were more illustrations of his mother, though those pictures were less faithful renderings. Her eyes were slightly too wide apart, perhaps. The end of her nose was a little too upturned. She—

“I know what you’re thinking.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding, still staring at the wall. I didn’t look at Carrion, though I could feel him hovering there in the doorway behind me. “And what’s that?” I asked.

“You think I’m pathetic. Obsessive. You think I was stupid, sitting here every night, copying all this out of a book like some kind of heartsick moron. It’s okay. You can say it. I have very thick skin these days. It doesn’t bother me. Not anymore.”

Slowly, I shook my head. Scanning the images, my eyes landed on a surprisingly accurate illustration of the Winter Palace, its soaring towers scraping a clear night sky, and I couldn’t help it: I reached out and I plucked it from the wall. “That’s not what I’m thinking at all,” I said quietly.