Guilt surfaced, the taste of it sour in the back of my throat. “I’m so selfish.”
Tawny blinked, bewildered. “What makes you say that?”
“I’ve most likely tarnished your excitement with all my doom and gloom,” I told her. “I haven’t really thought about how excited you must be.”
“Well, when you put it that way,” she said and then laughed, the sound soft and warm. “Honestly, Poppy, you haven’t. How you feel about the Ascension hasn’t affected how I feel.”
“I’m relieved to hear that, but still, I should be more excited for you. That’s what…”—I took a thin breath—“that’s what friends do.”
“Have you been excited for me? Happy?” she asked. “Even though you’re worried for yourself?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“Then you have done what a friend does.”
Maybe that was true, but I promised myself I would be better, starting with no longer risking her Ascension by involving her in my escapades. I could live with the dire consequences of being found unworthy because it would be my life and my own actions that led to it, but I wouldn’t do that to Tawny.
I couldn’t live with that.
After I took supper in my room later that day, Vikter knocked on my door. When I looked up at his face, golden and weathered by life on the Rise and years in the sun, I didn’t think about knowing where he was the night before and the subsequent awkwardness. I saw his expression and knew something had occurred.
“What’s happened?” I whispered.
“We’ve been summoned,” he said, and my heart lurched in my chest. There were only two reasons why we’d be summoned. One would be the Duke, and the other was equally terrible, but for far different reasons. “There’s a cursed.”
Chapter 4
Without wasting one unnecessary second, we left my room and the Castle through the old servants’ access. We then moved like ghosts through the city until we found ourselves standing before an old, battered door.
The white handkerchief tacked just below the handle was the only reason the home in the Lower Ward of Masadonia was distinguishable from the other squat, narrow houses stacked on top of one another.
Glancing over his shoulder to where two City Guards chatted under the yellow glow of a streetlamp, Vikter quickly pulled the handkerchief off the door and slipped it into a pocket inside his dark cloak. The small, white cloth was a symbol of the network of people who believed death, no matter how violent or destructive, deserved dignity.
It was also evidence of high treason and disloyalty to the Crown.
I’d accidentally discovered what Vikter took part in when I was fifteen. He’d left one of our training sessions in a hurry one morning, and sensing that something was going on based on the mental pain the messenger had been throwing off, I’d followed.
Obviously, Vikter hadn’t been pleased. What he was doing was considered treasonous, and being caught wasn’t the only danger. However, I’d always been disturbed by how these things were typically handled. I demanded he allow me to help. He had said no—repeated it probably a hundred times—but I had been relentless, and besides, I was uniquely suited to assist in such matters. Vikter knew what I could do, and his empathy for others had aided my desire to help.
We’d been doing this for about three years now.
We weren’t the only ones. There were others. Some were guards. A few were citizens. I never met any. For all I knew, Hawke could be one.
My stomach dipped and then rolled before I shoved any thoughts of Hawke out of my mind.
Vikter quietly rapped his knuckles on the door and then returned his gloved hand to the hilt of his broadsword. A couple of seconds later, hinges creaked as the old battered door shuddered open, revealing the pale, round face, and red, puffy eyes of a woman. She might’ve been in her mid to late twenties, but the tense pinch to her brow and the lines bracketing her mouth made her appear decades older. The cause of her worn appearance had everything to do with the kind of pain that cut deeper than the physical and was caused by the smell wafting out of the building from behind her. Under the thick, cloying smoke of earthy incense, was the unmistakable sour and sickeningly sweet scent of rot and decay.
Of a curse.
“You’re in need of aid?” Vikter spoke low.
The woman fiddled with the button on her wrinkled blouse, her weary gaze darting from Vikter to me.
I opened my senses to her. Soul-deep pain radiated from her in waves I couldn’t see, but it was so heavy, it was almost a tangible entity surrounding her. I could feel it slicing through my cloak and clothing and scraping against my skin like rusty, icy nails. She felt like someone who was dying but hadn’t suffered a single injury or disease. That was how raw and potent her pain was.
Fighting the urge to take a step back, I shuddered inside my heavy cloak. Every instinct in me demanded that I put distance between us, get as far away as possible. Her grief formed iron shackles around my ankles, weighing me down as it tightened around my neck. Emotion clogged my throat, tasting like…like bitter desperation and sour hopelessness.
I pulled back my senses, but I had opened myself up for too long. I was tuned into her anguish now.
“Who is that?” she rasped, her voice hoarse with the tears I knew had swelled her eyes.
“Someone who can help you,” Vikter answered in a way I was all too familiar with. He used that calm tone whenever I was seconds away from acting out in anger and doing something entirely reckless—which, according to Vikter, was way too often. “Please. Allow us to enter.”
Fingers stilling around the button below her throat, she gave a curt nod and then stepped back. I followed Vikter inside, scanning the dimly lit room, which turned out to be a combined kitchen and living space. There was no electricity in the home, only oil lamps and fat, waxy candles. That wasn’t exactly surprising to see, even though electricity had been provided to the area of the Lower Ward, to light the streets and some of the businesses. Only the wealthy had it inside their homes, and they would not be found in the Lower Ward. They’d be closer to the center of Masadonia, near Castle Teerman and as far from the Rise as possible.
But here, the Rise loomed.
Drawing in a shallow breath, I tried not to focus on how the woman’s grief painted the walls and floors an oily black. Her pain had gathered here, among the knick-knacks and clay plates, quilted blankets with frayed edges and tired furniture. Clasping my hands together under the cloak, I took another breath, this one deeper, and looked around.
A lantern sat on a wooden table, next to several sticks of burning incense. Surrounding the brick hearth were several chairs. I zeroed in on the closed door on the other side of the fireplace. My hooded head tilted as I squinted. On the mantel, closest to the door, was a narrow spike of a blade the color of burgundy in the low light.
Bloodstone.
This woman had been prepared to handle this herself, and with the way she felt, that would be disastrous.
“What is your name?” Vikter asked as he reached up to lower the hood of his cloak. He always did this. Showed his face to comfort family or friends, to put them at ease. A lock of blond hair fell across his forehead as he turned to the woman.