A man’s skin.
“Fanciful fool,” she spat at last, and in a burst of speed she unhooked the buckle. Aeduan’s skin was warm. Surprisingly so, given the rain’s cold beat. Her fingers were certainly ice against him—
His breath hitched. She froze.
But he didn’t awaken, and after a moment of staring at his sleeping face, she resumed her work. Faster now, towing the leather strap out from beneath him.
Goddess, he was heavy.
One heave. A second. The leather snaked free in a twinkling melody of knife hilts and buckles. Iseult’s lips curved in triumph, and she rocked back onto her knees.
With the baldric removed, there was no missing the blood on Aeduan’s shirt. Not from a single wound, but from six small ones, each evenly spaced and an inch wide. Two below his collarbone, two on his chest, two on his abdomen.
Iseult slung the baldric over her shoulder and stole carefully away. She left the sack of coins where it was before walking all the way back to her campsite.
There she hid the Bloodwitch’s knives and waited for him to wake up.
NINE
The sixteenth chimes came and went with no Cam or food to show for it. Unable to sit still—for it was a quick path to madness, as Aunt Evrane always said—Merik forced himself to move, to clear away books from the kitchen table, the cupboard’s counter, the bed.
A knock. Merik spun around, dropping a book. His magic flared in …
It was just the window. The shutter outside was open, and it had cracked against the warped glass. Merik’s heart returned—albeit slowly—to his chest. His winds, though, didn’t settle until he had reached the glass.
Outside, rain drizzled. A gray mist atop a shadowy city. With the weak lamplight behind Merik, there was no missing his reflection.
The Fury stared back.
Though bulbous and misshapen from the flaws in the glass, the hairlessness and red splotches were entirely Merik’s own. Remnants from the explosion. Hurriedly, he screwed open the window, pinching his fingers on unfamiliar fastenings before latching tight the shutter.
But with the wooden shutters behind the window, the reflection—the similarities—grew more pronounced. Over the entire right side of Merik’s face, and over his right ear too, was a large patch of shiny red skin with the faintest line of black to circle around. Dirt, he assumed, since it had been days since he’d had a real bath.
The explosion had hit Merik on that side, so his right shoulder, his right arm, his right leg—they had taken all the flames, all the force.
Merik bent a cautious glance to the front door, but it remained locked. Cam couldn’t barge in when she returned, not without Merik to tap out the lock-spell. So with methodical care, he eased off his shirt. For eleven days, he’d examined these wounds, yet he’d witnessed only a fraction of the full picture. A sliver of the true monster that now stood before the window.
Eyes hooded, Merik scrutinized his body in the glassy glare. Dirt, if that was indeed what marked him, laced across the new pink flesh coating his right side. Down the black moved, gathering most densely at his chest. At his heart.
A bath was in order, he decided, once he had the time. Once the streets weren’t crawling with Royal Forces. Once he’d gotten what he needed from Pin’s Keep.
He stepped left, twisting to inspect his back. The dirt continued down his shoulder blades. The burns too, though far fewer.
“Destined for greatness?” he murmured as he slipped on his shirt. “I know you always said that, Kull, but look at me now. I should be dead, and you should still be alive.”
As the words fell from Merik’s mouth, a memory percolated to the surface. You should be dead, and Mother should still be alive.
Merik snorted humorlessly. Aunt Evrane always used to say that Vivia hadn’t meant what she’d muttered at the funeral. That the sight of their mother’s body, smashed from the force of her jump off the water-bridge, had simply driven Vivia to thoughtless cruelties.
But Merik had known the truth then—and he knew it now too. Vivia had always blamed Merik for their mother’s melancholy. With each new instance of Jana hiding in bed for days on end, of Jana bringing a knife to her own wrists, of Jana locking out her children for weeks at a time, Vivia had turned colder. And colder. For in her mind, their mother had descended into darkness only after Merik had been born.
Perhaps it was true, even if Aunt Evrane always insisted otherwise. Jana’s darkness awoke when she married my brother, Evrane always said. Not after she had you. Yet Merik wasn’t inclined to believe that claim. Particularly since Evrane’s relationship with her brother was no better than Merik’s was with Vivia.
Of course, Vivia had taken her hatred a step further than Serafin ever had: she had tried to eliminate Merik entirely. Not only would it clear the way for her to rule as she saw fit, but it also was revenge for the suicide Merik hadn’t caused.