Page 28 of Deadly Maiden (Dragons and Darkthings #1)

Wyntre

The killer drop has mail.

Finally. It’s been too many days.

“It’s well over a week since I sent a letter, and this is the only reply?”

Rorsyd has the terrace door open on the third story of the library, and it’s far too windy. I shouldn’t be reading up here, but after finding a letter in the killer drop, finally, it has made me impatient. “I should go inside to read this!”

He nods and stays where he is, staring out across the lake and the grounds. Birds are wheeling about squawking at each other. Crows are arguing with a heron.

Since I get no answer from him, I return to the table nearest the door. Rorsyd has not budged. His hands are in his pants pockets, the veins on his neck visibly bulge, even from here. He’s been distant and drinking like a fish since we made the move to his old rooms.

I sigh and unfold the letter.

Dearest Cassandra

I was told to use that.

Your father will have your letter by now. I’m sure he will say yes but you must make certain any meeting place is safe. I would suggest Darsum itself, but I gather the master there is worried regarding the Aos Sin having some disagreement with such a meeting on his town property.

And so, again, be careful wherever it is you meet.

Yours,

Thander Munk, stoneborn and Golem Master of Bollingham

“Right. Well. This doesn’t advance me much further.” I tuck the letter into my pocket.

More waiting, and the blasted books here are mostly useless. I cannot learn anything from them. Will Saphora be any better since she is not actually a necromancer?

Necromancers are rare and apparently allergic to writing their magik down in an actual book.

Rorsyd has removed his hands from his pockets and has stretched out both arms, as if they were wings. As if he might launch himself into the sky at any moment.

I feel immensely sad watching this. We may be lovers and in love, but this is tearing at me.

For night after night, I have resisted joining him in drinking huge quantities of wine and suchlike, though Rorsyd seems determined to swallow much of his cellar.

At supper, I decide to goad him to try to change his behavior. “And here I was imagining collecting things meant not using them.”

He ignores my cutting remark, apart from making some unintelligible grumble, and chugs down a glassful. Then he forks some of the stew into his mouth. Trying to shame him does not work. After the meal is finished, and we barely speak, I end up playing cards by myself.

He is pining, sorrowing over his inability to shift and take to the skies, and I cannot help but feel his pain. When we go to bed, he sleeps on the floor while I sit up in bed with a throbbing ache in the center of my chest. It’s not a heart attack, but it may as well be one.

“I can’t stand this,” I whisper to myself. I’ll be awake half the night worrying anyway.

I dress quietly, summon Anathema, and take the pistol—which has one charge left—my sword, and a dagger. The nearest graveyard is within a ten-minute walk.

I stick to the shadows, morose, and prepared to shove steel into anyone who bothers me. I’m angry at Rorsyd, even though this is almost fore-ordained. Why wouldn’t he be depressed at his problem?

I would be.

I’m just as angry at myself.

A drunk propping up a wall focuses, realizes I am a lone woman, staggers toward me. I hiss at him and tell Anathema to have fun.

Do not actually hurt him!

The last I hear of the man is his screaming as he sprints away, falling over his own feet.

Anathema is more than a pretty cat-thing.

The graveyard proves to be locked at night, but I climb the brick wall with ease then dodge between shadows, checking out the graves that draw me toward them—this adventure is nothing compared to descending into the underbelly of my golem town, Bollingham.

A crop of freshly dead and disturbed people has left me many spots to choose from. A gang war? A plague? I don’t know the cause. I don’t care.

I know what to do this time. Convincing the ghosts they need to leave their unlives is easy when you’re a determined and somewhat peeved necromancer. I silently gather gheist into the ampoules then sit between a tomb and the outer brick wall and convert it to etharum and charge up the crystals. Rinse and repeat, since I have only two ampoules.

Morning brings me awake, if groggy, and sprawled behind that tomb in the graveyard.

No one looks as I slink back to the inn, mostly because the streets are empty.

Rorsyd is still asleep and has not even noticed my absence. Grumpily, I swap out the crystals in our pendants then wait an hour for him open his eyes.

The next night, I jerk wake in the middle, sometime around midnight, gasping, heart thumping. I’m terrified and not due to my visit to the dead people. It’s him. I had a nightmare of Rorsyd falling into an abyss, screaming, with his wings useless bloody stumps.

I eventually summon the courage to roll over and check that nothing has happened to him. He’s flat on his back on the floor, snoring. Have I ever heard him snore before?

I sit up and bite my forefinger, watching him, thinking hard, hurting myself. I need my dragonshifter how he once was. I must do something.

Then…I rise. I let my feet touch the moon-silvered floor ever so softly, and tiptoe to him. I kneel there.

And I think some more.

This cannot continue.

I should have asked if I could do this, but I am afraid he will say no. This, possibly, involves me using dark skills and darkthing matter. Will he regard me as evil for doing this?

I don’t know. All I know is that I cannot bear to see him suffer so horribly any longer.

I shut my eyes as I place my hand on the bare skin of his shoulder.

I’m scared of what I’m doing, partly because I might make a mistake and do something that will hurt him more than the old injury that stops him from shifting. Mostly, it’s because we were not soulmates before.

If I lie from now on, this could break us.

There is no guarantee this will work, and if I tell him what I’ve done, it could, equally, destroy us.

As I did on the day the enforcers died, I let my mind and my presence sink into his flesh, searching for what I once repaired. I find it deep and hidden near where an etharum store seems to float, bulging with unleashed power, then I almost give in, for everything has returned. The damage is there. The dead matter is there. Mentally, I take a breath, steeling myself for what I am about to do, then I set to work knitting him back together.

When I’m finished and have returned to my own body, I stay there, kneeling beside him with my head bowed. I’m tired.

What if I have to do this over and over forever? There must be another way, a better way to heal him?

Assuming I have healed him, this time. I’ll go to bed, try to sleep, and hope to all the gods that he wakes whole.