Page 262 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

With another grim smile, I pull back. I have to slink well clear of the wagon before the merchant sets off.

I’m just drawing my body around when something spooks the horse.

At the gelding’s squeal, my head jerks around. He rears, and a brief twinkle of light darts beneath his flailing forelegs.

It could be a trick of the eye—or it could be a daimon making mischief, as they so enjoy doing.

I don’t have time to contemplate the possibilities, because as the horse’s hooves hit the ground, he springs forward, dragging the wagon.

My stomach lurches. In a second, I’ll be exposed.

An urge punches me from the inside out, as if an impatient hand has wrenched through me from gut to sternum. It thrusts toward the world outside, determined to fling forth the supernatural power coiled within my body and latch on to the fastest way to save my skin.

No!

I slam down on the impulse with all the self-control I’ve spent years honing and whip myself around. My back jars against the hard-packed dirt with a pang of my scars, but I’m already heaving upward.

My fingers and the toes of my boots snag on the nooks in the underside of the wagon. Every muscle strains as I cling to the shaky handholds I’ve caught.

My right forefinger that’s cut off at the first knuckle wavers in the air. I’ve never missed that fraction of a digit more.

The wagon jolts with the gelding’s next yank. He hurtles forward with a frantic whinny, leaving the charms clattering on their shelves and the merchant cursing. Someone shouts advice from the crowd while a child bursts out laughing.

An ache spreads through my limbs with the effort to hold myself off the ground—and a sharper pain lances through my chest. I clamp my lips against a gasp of agony.

Gods, no, not again…

The pain ignores my silent plea. It sears up to my shoulders and down to my pelvis, lashing this way and that like a bonfire in the wind.

Fuck, this is even worse than the last time.

I squeeze my eyes shut against the burn of unbidden tears and clutch at the wagon with every ounce of my will. If I can tolerate the agony for a few seconds… a few seconds more…

The wagon careens onward. The magic I refused to use rails at my body, punishing me for my defiance.

One of my feet slips and bounces off the dirt with a fresh burst of pain through my heel. I fling it back upward?—

And the wheels on either side of me grind to a halt.

The biting fire of my magic’s resentment gradually fades away while the merchant berates his gelding. The horse stomps his hooves before finally settling.

An ache lingers in my muscles, my fingers throbbing in their desperate hold. I count out several more thumps of my pulse before deciding it’s safe to lower myself.

The conman’s voice sweetens as he offers apologies to the prospective customers who’ve followed him down the road. While he beckons the curious over again, I release a shaky breath and scan my surroundings for a viable escape route.

There: a narrow lane between two of the shabby wooden buildings. I roll out on the opposite side of the wagon and dart away before my luck runs out.

When you’ve been living on the city’s streets as long as I have, you can always find your way. The lane leads to an alley which ends at a rubbish heap which connects to another alley.

My heel twinges whenever I set the foot I banged down, but I manage to walk steadily and silently. The tight fabric of my hidden pockets squeezes my bounty close and keeps the coins from jingling.

The sooner I can unload my loot, the less chance someone who doesn’t deserve it will make a try for it.

It won’t go straight back into the hands of the people the merchant duped today. I have a cycle of rounds throughout the outer wards so that I’m distributing my spoils evenly. Everyone who needs it gets a share in the end.

I dodge a pool of piss at one corner and skirt a pile of poisoned rat corpses at another. A pungent stink seeps through the rest of the awful smells, welcoming me to my destination.

The neighborhood of Slaughterwell got its name from the slaughterhouses where the farmers bring their livestock, which stand just beyond the nearby city wall. Even at night, the reek never quite fades.

No one lives here unless they can’t find a way to live anywhere else.

As I walk on, the power inside me nibbles at the edges of my awareness with a cajoling tone that reminds me of the fraud merchant.

If I let the magic out, it could wash away the stench. It could carry me straight to my destination without my taking another step.

That might be true , I retort. But what will you ruin in the meantime?

It doesn’t have an answer to that.

Brief nips of pain quiver through my nerves, but nothing I can’t tune out. The magic only really lashes out when I’ve refused a particularly good reason to use it.

The fits of agony only started a year ago… and they’ve become more frequent and intense by the month. I don’t want to think too hard about what that might mean for my future.

I have to keep going forward, one foot at a time, making the most of the days I have.

Around me, the taller wooden buildings give way to smaller but equally lopsided shacks. Here and there, twists of stems and errant leaves poke from gaps where vegetation has merged with the frames.

Every neighborhood has a few eager gardeners who’ve sacrificed a bit of themselves in exchange for a gift of encouraging plants.

Trading favors so they’ll coax a sapling or a shrub into patching up a deteriorating building is often cheaper than buying the supplies and skills for a more traditional fix.

Half of these buildings would be heaps of debris if not for the intertwined plants holding them steady.

When I reach the row of houses I’m aiming for, I veer into the dingy back gardens. I’d rather no one can ever identify the person behind my anonymous donations.

At each home, I leave a small stack of coins on a window ledge. Here and there, I glance through the ragged curtains at the signs of life within.

At Marta’s house with the drooping shingles and the tufts of thistledown protruding along the edge of the roof, I hear a familiar grunt. Beyond the bedroom window, the avid lover rocks with some new man. He ruts into her as she arches back against the sheets.

Her eager moan sets off an unwelcome pulse of heat between my legs. She sounds like she’s having a much more thrilling time than any of my hasty roll-abouts have given me.

Of course, I haven’t exactly had a broad selection of potential partners. It’s been a couple of years since the last time I dared get that close to anyone.

I slink on to the next house, shedding the pinch of longing the private image brought. One by one, I leave coins for Bogusi the cook, Anielle the seamstress, and Oska the butcher’s assistant.

These people have never properly met me, but I’ve spent years watching over them. Sharing their joys and sorrows in snippets of conversations overheard.

They’re the closest thing I have to a family now—a very large family, even if they barely know I exist.

At the last house in the row, two little girls scamper around the patchy yard. I crouch by the refuse bin, the previous pinching sensation expanding to squeeze my heart.

The younger girl trips and tumbles across the gritty soil. At her yelp, I sway forward and then catch myself.

It isn’t my place to jump in. I’m helping in my own way—the way that doesn’t risk anyone getting more hurt than they already are.

The older girl has already dashed to her sister’s side. “It’s okay. Let’s get a bit of water to wash the scrape.”

I remain frozen until they vanish through the back door. Then I breeze by as stealthily as a spirit, leaving an extra coin in the stack on their window.

I’ve only gone through half of my plunder. Not a bad take, considering how the theft nearly turned into disaster.

But as I pause at the crossroads, a hollow forms in the pit of my stomach. My hand lifts of its own accord to my left arm, where I keep the ivory ribbon tied just above my elbow.

Is anything I do now really enough?

I jerk my fingers to one of my still-full pockets, forcing a grin to chase away my unsettled emotions. I’m accomplishing more than nothing, anyway. I’ve seen the glimmers of happiness a few extra coins can spark.

I head across the street to the next row of houses. As I reach a low fence around a garden, a cry splits the air from farther up the road.

A rough, pained cry cut off an instant later with a gurgle.

My feet stall, my gut twisting. A shriek like that can’t mean anything short of horrific.

But I don’t get involved—not directly. If I try to step in…

I know how much horror I can bring about even when I want to do the right thing.

That thought—the thought that’s held me back a thousand times before—crosses my mind, and my gaze snags on the trickle of liquid seeping over the dirt road from an alleyway. The fading sun lights it crimson.

Blood.

My feet move without consulting the rest of me. I sprint toward the alley even as both my head and my heart tangle up with indecision.

I’m not supposed to intervene. Not like this—not when my control might slip?—

There has to be something I can do with just my hands and the skills I’ve learned. I know how to stop bleeding, how to bind a wound. I?—

I throw myself into the alley and skid to a halt just before I smack into the body slumped there.

It’s a woman, glossy chestnut hair scattered around her pale, blood-flecked face. Her dark cloak has fallen away from a violet silk dress that manages to shimmer even amid the grime of the alley. Gold glints at her wrist.

Someone like her doesn’t belong here . She?—

She’s bleeding out from a gash where a knife’s stabbed into the side of her neck.

Snapping out of my shock, I drop to my knees and press my fingers to the wound around the blade. Yanking the knife out will only make the blood flow faster.

Not that it’s flowing at all slowly as it is.

The woman’s eyelids flutter. She’s still alive, however many fleeting seconds she has left. Her life is gushing away in a pulsing torrent beneath my useless hands.

My magic resonates through my limbs, prickling into my bones. My posture stiffens against it.

No. The power inside me can’t save a life.

I know that better than I know anything in my whole damned existence.

The noblewoman’s lips part, but nothing comes out except another sputter of blood. Gods above, she doesn’t look any older than my twenty years.

My gaze locks with hers beneath her twitching eyelids. She stares back at me with desperate intensity.

I open my mouth to stammer some kind of apology, as if anything I can say would make up for the dire end she’s about to meet… and the whole world spins.

My vision grays. A whirl of images floods my consciousness.

Stone towers. Crumpled papers. Piles of books on a table.

Spinning dresses in a rainbow of colors. A reflection preening in a mirror.

Four men. Four men standing around a desk, each of them so striking I don’t know where to look first.

One impossibly tall and brawny, with hair the same dark red as the blood I’ve been trying to stanch.

Another warm and grinning wide as his tawny hair swoops over deep green eyes.

The third with a sharply bright gaze behind the polished mask that covers most of his bronze-brown face.

The last with a wry smirk curling his rosy lips beneath the fall of his sun-kissed waves.

All of them are gazing back at me, so avidly my nerves shiver as if a bolt of lightning has crackled through me.

The bolt blazes right through my skull, hazing my mind white and then black and then?—

I drag in a hitch of breath as I come back to myself, gaping down at the woman in the silk dress.

Her eyes have hazed. Her body lies motionless, her skin waxen. Even her eyelids have frozen in place.

What under the gods’ gaze just happened?

A shout travels from somewhere down the street. Footsteps pound toward me.

My pulse stutters. I glance over the noblewoman, but death emanates from every inch of her body.

She’s gone. There’s nothing I can do for her.

I can only make sure I don’t follow the same path.

I shove to my feet and run.

How has the encounter with the dying woman upended Ivy’s life—and who are the four men she saw in her strange vision? Find out in Thief of Silver and Souls - Grab your copy now!