Page 26

DAXEEL

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The fatigue of the black powder has returned. An unwelcome visitor at a time like this. It weighs his lashes down over his reddened eyes and tugs the corner of his mouth into a frown.

Behind him, his leather satchel is packed and clasped, perched on the foot of his bed.

He stands at the mirror too long.

It is time to leave, to take his steed and ride to Dorcha where he will meet with his unit. He is already a phase behind.

Agnar will be displeased.

Daxeel might face the whip for it, even if his reasons for tardiness are that his once-evate, the love that lingers in his heart, speared his neck with a knife. Jammed it so deep into his throat that it scraped his spinal cord.

Just a bit deeper , the healer said, and you would be paralysed . You are very lucky.

It doesn’t feel like luck.

It feels like punishment from Mother, torture from his sacrificed bond.

He wears the scar of it, the reminder of all his own wrongdoings that led him to that lane, knelt at Nari’s side, watching his cousin die—and to hear that final whisper from Mother herself.

Perhaps that is why he doesn’t blame Nari for what she did. Perhaps hearing Mother with his own ears, his own soul, means he can understand…

But he doesn’t chase her into her grief.

Daxeel considers the barbed scar that runs along his neck and disturbs the ink markings there, and he sees it for what it is.

Punishment, consequence, a reminder.

He wronged a vicious one.

It is his own fault for ever seeing her for anything less than that. Vicious.

Daxeel drops his gaze from his own changed reflection before he draws away from the mirror. His boots scuff on the rug as he advances on the bed. The weight of the black powder lingers, drawing down his lashes.

He grabs the satchel and pulls the strap over his head.

The weight hits the small of his back.

For a beat, he just stands there.

He stares at the bed, seeing the wispy ghost of memories in those very sheets, a love ruined by his own hand.

He was once callous with her.

Yet it surprised him, too many times it surprised him, just how callous Nari is at her core.

She has not been lying to him. Each time she declares that she does not love him anymore, it was the truth from a lying tongue.

He didn’t want to believe it.

So she showed him that truth.

Daxeel lets his chest deflate with a weary sigh, then turns his back on the past. He stalks out of the bedchamber into the dead hallway.

Hemlock House once bustled with life.

Now, not a single soul passes him on the staircases, no laughter reaches him in the corridors, and the only scent that carries is that of abandonment, of stale dust.

Morticia and her husband have left for the light lands. Tris has been taken with them, for the babe in her belly is their grandchild. They took Eamon’s body, too. They will have a Licht funeral.

Melantha left to join them early this phase.

She claimed it was to attend Eamon’s funeral, but Daxeel suspects she simply cannot be in Hemlock House as an empty graveyard, full of ghosts.

Rune, Dare, Samick, and Daxeel—all gone for months to the human lands. And no guarantee that they will return.

Caius and Aleana and Eamon, gone.

Tris, her favourite slave, gone.

Hemlock House is dead.

Daxeel leaves it to its silence, mounts his steed on the street, steals the reins into his grip, then turns his chin to his shoulder.

He looks back at Kithe, faint lights speckled in the distance, much too dim now that the Cursed Shadows have been released.

His throat swells.

Nari is there, somewhere, in that darkened town.

Just phases ago, it teemed with the same life that Hemlock House once did. A promise of purpose and joy that failed to deliver.

Now, she is there, alone.

She lies in her pitiful bed, Hedda in her arms, tear streaks staining her face. She doesn’t eat, not much.

He knows because, once he awoke from the powder, he went to see her.

He climbed onto the terrace and looked through the window at her sorrow.

Hedda stirred when he slipped inside; she watched him as he set down her treasure box, a small chest that once held a bracelet, but that he filled with gold pieces. Ten thousand of them.

Her tocher.

Then—he left.

No farewell spoken to Nari, no words or looks exchanged.

She slept.

He paid what he owed for stealing her life.

Now, he rides off into the darkness.