“Who?”
“I don’t know—either a Bron Assembly member or the wraiths. But those monsters are too hard for me to read.” She shudders. “It’s like they don’t have souls to decide things on their own. And the way those murders were done . . .”
I nod. “Do you think . . .?” But I stall at the grief plaguing her face. Unable to bring myself to ask if perhaps the wraiths were in need of more body parts . . . “What about Draewulf or Isobel?” I say instead.
“Possibly. Although I didn’t see it in Isobel, nor do I see how it would suit their needs.”
“Except that we don’t actually know what their needs are. On the roof with Myles, Draewulf, Isobel, and a commanding wraith said they were waiting for Draewulf’s vessel to be prepared. And Eogan kept saying that he and Sir Gowon were wrong—that Draewulf is taking the blood of kings in order. That he needed Eogan’s blood and block to protect Draewulf. He keeps talking about Elegy 96. Do you know of it?”
No answer.
When I look down, she’s curled up, eyes shut, as if attempting to block out all thought.
I slide up to sit beside her and tug the blanket higher on her shoulder. Patting her arm, I listen to her breathing slow.
After our silence has melted in with the room’s atmosphere, her gentle snoring picks up, and her bodyguards quietly begin discussing the murders. I listen in for a bit but they’re no further in understanding them than Rasha is.
Soon the men switch to discussing the larger predicament we’re all in. Their accented words all seem to boil down to the same question:
Will we make it out of here alive?
Slowly, eventually, Rasha’s snoring settles into a deep rhythm, like the patter of rain lessening into a steady, comforting drip.
I pull my arm from around her shoulder and rest my head against the wall.
And eventually doze off too.
CHAPTER 29
Enormous paisley designs stare back at me from the wallpaper. Black with thousands of tiny glittery eyes. Moist eyes. One shifts. Then another. I watch their legs pop up from the white wall, followed by their bodies, and they’re no longer decorative paisleys but spiders. Hundreds of them. Covering the room, watching, waiting.
For what?
I twitch my hand into a fist. Maybe I can create a wind tunnel to destroy them, to make them leave—but my body freezes in place. I glance down at my chest and at the vortex swirling there. It’s dark, powerful. It’s sealing me down, anchoring me into a whirling pool of grief and anger and hope.
The spiders’ sound picks up and blends into the hissing outside. Clack, clack, clack. They’re coming for me. Oozing down the walls like mugplant to land in blobs on the floor. They pop up again and scramble toward the bed, the blankets, clawing beneath them, crawling for my skin, and I can’t move, oh hulls I can’t move as their teeth find me.
They chew into my flesh and force the last of their venom into the very roots of my veins, until my blood is pooling around me in red circles, spreading to join that stain in the carpet as the hissing from the hall grows louder. The hissing that for whatever reason sounds eerily like words. “Come closer, closer, closerrr,” they’re whispering.
Closer to what? I look down at my body that is being eaten alive by spiders. Except it’s not me anymore. It’s Draewulf.
Morning sunbeams flutter against the wall, dousing the crisp black-and-white paper in yellow light, dissolving all dreams of spiders. I squint. I’m huddled, shivering at the foot of Rasha’s bed, and she’s sprawled out across the rest like a giant moth with silken-robed wings.
Jolting up, I flex my hands, my toes. And exhale relief to discover they are my own skin, pale and real. I am not a wraith. I am not Draewulf.
In fact, aside from the dull throb in my head and the chill clamped like an iron sheet to my bones, the rest of me feels normal.
I shudder. Please let everything be normal.
Sitting up, I scoot over and lean against the warm wall to absorb some of its heat into my bones. When that doesn’t work, I wrap my thick cloak around my shaky body and get up just as one of the guards nods to a pot of tea and a platter of food on the desk.
“It’s safe.”
I nod and walk over to pour the tea and poke at the tiny fruit and purple-fleshed meat. I sniff them. No subtle scent of almond or rind.
A quick bite tells me it tastes fine as well, and abruptly my stomach is reacting to the awareness that I’ve not eaten in far too long. I’m shoving food in my mouth when Rasha stirs and looks over at me. She raises a brow, only to utter a real, true, Rasha-style giggle.
I resist mentioning that she looks even more like a moth the way her hair is standing on end, and by the time she’s up and taming it, I’ve finished my food and am giving her an account of last night’s roof encounter.