Page 103 of The Business of Blood

I couldn’t lock gazes with Night Horse. I was afraid I’d find regret or pity in his regard.

I was afraid I wouldn’t.

Did I hate him for killing the man I loved? Even though he’d saved my life?

I closed my eyes, returning my knife to my pocket. I placed my hands beneath Aidan’s scalp, threading fingers through his golden locks as I lifted his upper body from my lap and extracted myself from beneath him.

Gently, so gently, I settled his heavy head on the white marble. No one helped me to my feet.

I stood on my own.

I skirted the growing pool of Aiden’s blood as I took an altar cloth from the sacristy beside the lectern. I might have floated rather than walked. I couldn’t feel a single limb.

As I covered Aidan’s face, I felt as if I should say something, but words failed me. Other elegies I’d read or heard flitted across the silence of my thoughts like errant, unwanted moths looking for light or warmth and finding none.

Goodnight, sweet prince.

Better to have loved and lost…

Today shalt thou be with me in paradise...

It all meant nothing.

Woodenly, I surveyed the scene, almost too weary to draw more breath.

I turned and addressed the Blade, though my gaze found nothing higher than his chin. I harbored no hatred for him, no real condemnation, but neither could I summon gratitude.

Not yet.

In a way, Aidan was the embodiment ofhisJack the Ripper. But infinitely worse. The scale of his loss was unimaginable, even now. All of this pain, all of this emptiness he carried in his heart, along with the ghosts of thousands.

“I’m not cleaning this up.” My declaration echoed through the cavernous cathedral like a celestial commandment. I wouldn’t survive it. If I were ever to remember Aidan fondly, I couldn’t look at his empty eyes again.

Night Horse’s chin dipped in acknowledgement.

I turned to go home, but Jorah stopped me with a grip on my elbow I’d not thought him capable of in his weakened state.

“I owe you a debt for what you did today. No one, not even Night Horse, has so fiercely protected my life with their own.” Overcome for a moment, he glanced at the floor, grappling with his emotions. “It is currency I’m not certain how to spend.”

I nodded politely and extracted myself from his grip, making my way down the long aisle toward the doors of the cathedral. I wasn’t sure how to spend it, either.

But I’d think of something.

22

Forgive me, for I have sinned. It’s been…

Lord, how heavy my soul must be if I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been driven to confession. Long enough to be laden with damnation, some would say.

I’d locked myself in my grand house for several weeks, waiting for the screams to come. Waiting for the tears to find me.

But my voice never rose above a hoarse murmur. My eyes remained eternally dry.

My body betrayed me in other ways. Guilt and shame became a cancer proliferating through every vestige of my awareness.

There was no corner of my mind safe from my pain.

I trembled at night. For no reason at all, my muscles erupted into cold shivers of bone-wracking weakness. I’d lose my breath upon climbing the stairs. I’d sleep the days away, waking occasionally to the sensation of a wrathful specter smothering me. I’d gasp in a few desperate breaths, willing my heart back into its place, hissing at shafts of unwelcome afternoon sunlight only to reject consciousness and force myself back into oblivion.