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Chapter fifty-four

“An election? How intriguing.” Lux laughed at Shaw’s animated explanations over the new politics reshaping the town. She shouldered her pack.

“A massive adjustment is what it will be. A real mayor for once over a tyrant.” He smiled down at her. “Hopefully we’ll have all the bumps smoothed over by the time you return.”

“You’ll have to learn to compromise first. Both you and Morana.” Lux winced over the idea. “I may need to stay away longer than I thought.”

He cut her a sardonic look. “Wait here. I’ve got you something.”

Lux stared after him as he made his way down the ruined hall of his apartment. And as she waited, she thought over their relationship. From the first moment she’d met him, alive and warm, glaring at her over an armful of clothing, to the night she’d given in to his demands and abandoned him to his death. And to this moment. Their goodbye.

Her eyes stung.

Shaw reappeared before her with a grin that faltered. “What’s wrong?”

“Who will I argue with while I’m away?”

His gaze softened, his eyes delving into hers. “You’ve never struggled in that before. I’m sure you’ll find another to take my place.”

A tear blinked from her lashes. He brushed it away with the pad of his thumb. “It couldn’t be the same. The idea of losing you, of being alone again…”

“Try and lose me, love. See how well you do.” She couldn’t reply. If she did, a sob would escape instead. “Here.” A smooth frame pushed into her hands.

Lux gasped. She traced the miniature painting with a reverent touch, the crow soaring in flight across a cloudless sky. It was so blue, the sunshine so bright. It almost hurt her eyes in the best of ways. The wind beneath the bird’s wings whipped outward to rustle her hair, and not for the first time she wondered:

What could he do with a book like mine?

If it existed, she was determined to discover it. Lux hugged his gift to her chest, small and square and ideal for her journey. More tears followed the first’s path. “It’s perfect.”

Shaw leaned in, pressing a slow kiss to her brow. His next inhale drew deep from against her skin. Lux shut her eyes, trembling. It couldn’t be healthy for her breaths to be so uneven. She curled against him, but as his lips left her, she knew it would be awful, an absolute travesty, really, to not do more.

With only that thought, she grabbed hold of his neck and brought her mouth to his.

No wine this time, no whispering wood, and certainly no fear of death marked this kiss. And she gave him everything. Everything she felt, all she wished for. There was a hook in her heart, pulling her away from Ghadra. But she couldn’t deny that a second had driven itself just as deep, pulled just as tight. Maybe it pulled even more.

Please. Stay, his kiss begged, honey-sweet.

But she couldn’t, and oh, how she felt like breaking.

“When do you leave?”

“Hours yet,” she whispered, threadbare. “Why?”

His answer was to kiss her again, agonizingly slow and terribly unfair. Her balance tipped and he swept her up. One arm at her back, another beneath her knees.

She supposed the world could wait awhile more.

She left Ghadra’s walls that day with a promise shared between Morana, Shaw and herself. The knowledge of lifeblood’s use that night would never leave their lips. Morana swore another drop would never coat her tongue. Shaw swore he wouldn’t take justice into his own hands again, and Lux swore, if she happened to come across the mysterious buyers of the mayor’s blasphemous wares, she would destroy all in their possession.

The dead deserved peace. Ghadra deserved peace. And so did she.

She had walked through the Dark Market one last time, a handful of stalls filled with goods having reappeared once more. The rats had died out, the potion weakening their bodies from the moment it had entered them, and the plague vanished along with them. The crone had hacked at her, surviving the descent of the forest against all odds.

“You still have that dagger, girl?” she had asked.

“I do. It’s proved more useful than I’d thought.”

The old woman had cackled before turning her unseeing eyes onto her face. “You look different.”

Lux faltered. “I—”

“Not so dark around the edges, or there—in the middle. You finally decided to let it go then? About time is all I got to say. Grief, now, that’s inevitable. You take it, endure it, and keep looking ahead. It’s that poisonous guilt that’ll wither you away to dead inside. That, and wickedness. Nasty stuff—can’t be giving in to that.” She had puffed on her cigar, staring off over Lux’s shoulder. “You’re free to be a great necromancer now rather than settling for just a mediocre one.” Her cough was loud and deep. “Now, not many know my stories because they don’t care to ask, and I don’t have the time to sit here flapping my jaws when I could be selling, but I’ll tell you a little something if you want? Yes? Well, my family didn’t always live in this city. They were traveling merchants. For generations, first. You want to know a little secret?”

Lux had moved toward her without realizing.

“If you think we’re unique here, just you wait until you see what’s out there.” One blind eye had winked then. “A little soul-devouring forest is nothing.”

The navigator’s empty wagon offered the perfect perch from which to view the marshes as they faded into the background. As they gave way to meadows with bright flowers that Lux had only ever seen crop up bravely once or twice in her lifetime. She leaned back, closing her eyes, smelling their sweet scent, and relishing the sunlight kissing her skin.

Her black boots crossed at the ankles, and her black skirt spread across the wagon bed. It gave way to a black corset with a wicked knife, and only the sunshine-yellow fabric beneath, soft against her skin, shimmered, new.

She would return. Someday. As she was sure she left a piece of her heart tethered behind. But as a butterfly, the first she’d ever seen outside of a book, flitted onto her palm, she opened her eyes and smiled.

The world awaited her first.