Meredy’s pale skin turns mottled gray. Her arms grow long and skeletal. Peeling, decaying flesh bubbles on her cheeks, and her mouth, opening in surprise, is full of sharp teeth.
I shut my eyes and lean against the wall of my room, willing the hallucination to stop. But when I crack an eye open, Shade Meredy is still standing there, watching me with dark holes for eyes, snarling with her jaw unhinged and her pointy teeth exposed. Looking hungry.
“Odessa?” Her usually cool voice is tinged with concern despite her vicious appearance. “What’s going on?”
“M-monster,” I grit out, keeping my eyes shut tight. My whole skull hurts worse than it did the time Simeon and I rolled down a giant hill and he accidentally kicked me in the back of the head.
“What did you just call me?” Meredy’s too-sharp voice crashes into my aching head.
“No, I mean—because—” I won’t tell her about the potions. I can’t.
“You don’t get to judge me for trying to bring Firiel back when I didn’t know she’d refuse to come. How could I have known that, after all the things we promised each other?” A sob escapes her. “I never should have come here!”
She slams the door behind her, and the moment her rapid footsteps in the hallway fade, I crawl toward the stash of calming potions under my bed. With the bitter liquid trickling down my throat, the pain in my head starts to recede, and I can see the trampled flowers on the floor clearly again.
I doubt Meredy will ever come back here. And I’m glad. I don’t want anyone to see me like this, especially not her, a girl who’s lost more than I have. Evander wouldn’t recognize me right now, and that alone makes me wish I could stop needing the potion—but I’m even more afraid of what I’ll feel without it.
I’m afraid of so many things.
Like a rogue necromancer who can control Shades.
After what I witnessed when I rescued Meredy, I wonder if Evander’s death or Master Nicanor’s were the random violent acts of a Shade. I wonder if their killer had a master and was following orders. A rogue necromancer guiding the giant Shade and feeding it corpses would explain why it was so much stronger than the usual monsters lurking in the Deadlands.
“Sparrow?” Simeon’s voice cuts into my thoughts, carrying from the hallway through the closed door. “We just saw Meredy come out of your room, and she looked madder than a wet cat. Is everything all right?”
I push myself up off the floor and run my fingers through my hair, trying to look more like myself. I don’t need anyone realizing I haven’t stopped taking the calming potions.
“Everything’s fine,” I lie. “Let’s get this over with.”
*
The morning after our unsuccessful search in the Ashes, the faint sound of smashing glass draws me from a restless sleep. I open my eyes to a misty autumn morning and gaze around my empty room, where the piles of clothes and my sword are exactly as I left them. I must’ve imagined the noise. After closing my eyes for another moment and realizing sleep won’t return, I wonder whether I’ll need three or four potions to help me out of bed this morning.
But when I try to push back my blankets, my hands won’t cooperate, and I glance down to see they’re bound in iron. I blink, struggling to make sense of things. The heavy shackles on my wrists look like the ones reserved for the most violent lawbreakers.
My mind jumps to Vane, the powerful rogue necromancer, but I can’t imagine how he got through the palace guards and figured out which room was mine. And if he wanted to tie me up and hurt me, he wouldn’t have left me cozily tucked in bed.
There’s only one thing I know for certain right now: I’ve got to get to the hallway and call for help before whoever did this returns.
Heart tapping out a mad beat, I stagger from my bed with the sheets wrapped around my ankles and trip as I reach the edge of my tether—I’m chained to my own bedpost. I try to catch myself, but I’m not quick enough. I land hard on my back, knocking the breath out of me. Still, whatever bruises I’ve just given myself don’t sting nearly as badly as the sight beneath my bed.
All my calming potions are gone. The once-sticky floorboards where they sat are clean and dry, as though the potions were never there at all.
My scream of frustration doesn’t feel as good as I hoped it might.
“Oh good,” says a cool, slightly bored voice I never thought I’d hear again. My door creaks open, and the voice grows louder. “You’re awake. How’s your head today?”
As Meredy sweeps into the room, my face burns. I struggle to push myself up from the floor, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of towering over me while I’m sprawled on my back, helpless as a fish out of water.
“What is this? Some kind of revenge?” I growl, holding up my shackled hands. The chain binding me to the bed rattles as I push myself to my feet and glare at Meredy. “You realize I can still hurt you with my hands chained, right?”
Her lips twitch, but she quickly forces her face into its usual smooth mask. “I don’t see why you’d want to, when I’m here to help you. Besides, your hands aren’t bound for my protection.” Meredy takes a deep breath. “Your potions are gone, and you’ll be tied up and locked in this room for the next seven days, with the exception of necessities.” She pauses, her eyes searching my stunned face. “That’s how long the healers say it takes for the potion to leave your blood entirely and stop the cravings.”
“Do you . . . do you have any idea how much those tonics cost?” I’m so furious, I can barely form words. “Or how much I need them?”
I may not want to kill her, but I would like to slap her. Really, really hard.
“Look, you know what Evander meant to me. So you should understand better than anyone why I need this one thing.” I edge as close to Meredy as my blasted tether allows. “Without the potion, I’ll be—”
“Alive and miserable,” Meredy finishes. A flash of triumph lights her eyes. “Like me. I realized it when I got home yesterday. There’s no better way to repay what you did than by giving you exactly what you gave me. Life, when I wanted to die. Did you know that if you were to keep taking that potion, it would eventually kill you?”
I press my lips together, a trickle of cold snaking down my back. I didn’t know that, but even if she’s telling the truth, it’s none of her business. “If you really wanted to die,” I mutter out of spite, “you wouldn’t be here talking to me.”
To my satisfaction, her lips open, but no sound comes out. She gives a terse nod.
“I could say the same of you,” she murmurs at last, her voice crisp as winter’s first frost. “You’re drinking far too much of that potion for someone who plainly isn’t ready to give up on life, no matter what wretched things it’s forced on you lately.”
My voice, unlike hers, crackles with heat. “Why do you care, anyway?”
Meredy’s face reveals nothing, even when it’s so close her nose is almost touching mine. “Misery loves company. And Evander would turn over in his grave if I let you keep destroying yourself.”