Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
I bow low.
Then, fists clenched, I turn and force my body through the forest.
Every step, my spirit flickers, my form distorting, breaking apart, trying to drag me under.
No.
Anything I consume in here will strengthen me.
I drag myself up the mountain, chewing bitter herbs, ignoring the burn of my weakening limbs.
I press forward, the fortress ruins looming ahead.
I stagger through the door.
The violet oak shudders before me.
The ground rumbles beneath my feet—
Something—or someone—is shaking the dromveske itself.
I throw myself at the exit rune, chest heaving, heart pounding.
The dromveske cracks apart around me, a rush of violet light collapsing inward.
I fling myself into the darkness.
Wake, Cael. You have his people to help.
You are his man.
Asharp sting lances through my forearm, and my eyes snap open to a familiar room and bed. For a moment, I think I’ve woken into a memory of my own, where Quin lay during the first Kastoria outbreak, prone, unconscious. But now it’s me on that bed. I turn my stiff neck and my vision slowly sharpens on Olyn beside me, pulling needles from my arm.
“I thought I’d lost you there,” she whispers, sagging onto her haunches in relief.
I push myself into a sitting position, my limbs heavy, the skin of my inner arms shiny with thin scales. My nails dig into the blankets to stop from scratching. I murmur, “Where’s his dromveske?”
“I just put it there.” She gestures towards the shelf and frowns. “What’s so special about it that you wouldn’t even let me treat you until I chalked them last night?”
I sag back to my pillow with a rush of warm relief. It was real. That rune door, the memory behind it, happened.
Including the fragile grip on my life, making it back through the darkness. I pull myself clumsily out of bed, Olyn rushing to catch me. “Rest. You’re not out of the woods yet. Second-day fevers can be worse.”
I gulp over a parched throat and murmur for water.
She hands me a cup and I sip, clearing my throat. “As long as I’m breathing, I owe him. We’re going back up the mountain.”
Olyn exhales sharply. “Your stubbornness is something else.” A pause. “But . . . I admire it.”
She doesn’t stop me. Instead, she decocts a scription I dictate, and I drink it down. No cure, but enough to keep me on my feet. When the medicine’s hum settles in my blood, we hurry toward the luminarium. I brace myself to relinquish my belongings once again in exchange for leaving Kastoria.
But the moment we step outside, chaos meets us.
A half-dozen men stand guard, the clasps pinned on their shoulders unmistakable. Vespertine insignia. Bastion’s men.
I scan their faces. “What happened? I thought they were holding you hostage?”
The nearest meets my gaze, his expression grave. “All but one of them succumbed to the plague overnight. We escaped.”
A chill snakes down my spine.
Smoke curls into the sky in thin, dark ribbons. Beside me, Olyn murmurs, “Seven more died yesterday.”
My pulse slams against my ribs. I grab her arm and steer her toward the boat, ignoring the fire burning through my limbs. We don’t have time.
When we land at the fortress, Nicostratus doesn’t ask questions. At my word, he shields me and summons the wind, and we soar toward the mountain farm. The night air is a sharp whip against my skin, the ground a blur beneath us. I barely register the ache in my joints, the exhaustion clawing up my spine. My thoughts oscillate between two things: the pigs, and the broken rune door. Nicostratus did that. He’d seen his brother gift me his one and only lovelight; he’d torn down that door in hurt and frustration. He still held those feelings in his bones.
When we land, I push those thoughts aside and stumble forward, boots sinking into the damp grass. My breath catches—there, in the pen, the pigs are moving. Alive. The ones we marked, the ones that survived the horse pus, are trotting around. None have been reinfected.
Relief crashes over me so violently my knees buckle. Pegus is nodding, speaking rapidly about how he pulled twelve dead pigs away through the night—but none of the ones we treated. My hands tremble as I ask for ink and paper.
I have to write it down. The scription, the method, the proof. Pegus must convince the village to do the same. His hands tighten on the parchment. “Some won’t take the risk,” he says, voice uncertain.
I stare at the ink bleeding into the fibres of the page. Neither will my father.
The thought clenches around my ribs like a fist. I reach for another sheet and begin to write, forcing my hand steady.
Father.
I tell him everything—the pigs, the illness, the cure. The truth. My throat is dry, every scratch of the pen against parchment tightening my lungs.
This healing—such warding—is forbidden.
It is built on Grandfather’s research.