Lux had moved to the center of the room, her hand fisted around the dagger at her back. The mayor studied her, searching.
He wasn’t going to find anything.
“As you wish. Mylastfavor to you.” And louder, “Now, I’ll kindly ask to be referred to as Magnanimous Mayor from this day henceforth.” He laughed. The captain guffawed so loudly he choked. The healer smiled politely. Morana did not turn her scrutinizing gaze from Lux. “But mend that arm first. You’re no good to me without the means to perform your skill.”
Chapter forty-five
“You’re alive.”
“So are you.”
The carriage continued on in silence once more. There was so much to say, Lux wasn’t sure how to begin. A part of her remained in disbelief that her thrown together plan had even worked at all. That Shaw was beside her. Every dirty, tattered bit of him.
“How did you break bones this time?” His voice sounded less like his own now that they were alone, hoarse and broken.
As if he’d spent hours screaming.
She rolled the shoulder, sore but pain-free at last. The healer had examined it quickly, speaking in low tones all the while. Every muscle had gone slack in her body by the time he’d snapped the shoulder back into place.
She’d still screamed. And she’d cried out again after drinking the tonic he’d given her. One to mend the fracture hidden in the joint of her elbow.
I can’t make it without pain. He had sounded almost sorry. Whether it was toward the agony he would inevitably cause her or toward his own shortcomings, she didn’t know. What she had known was if Riselda had created it, she would have been whole without so much as a wince. Clearly, he dabbled in what he didn’t understand, and his brilliance lay elsewhere. She had a feeling he knew it, too.
“Piercing a tree.” She pulled the dagger into her lap, allowing morning light to caress its blade even as the coal-black wood of the handle absorbed all that remained. Shaw’s eyes followed. “There’s something strange about it. Branches don’t break there. Leaves don’t fall. But they do beneath this.”
His fingers brushed across her hand and hers uncurled on instinct. He took the dagger, turning it over. “Has a tree ever been felled?”
“Of course n—”
An image. An axe, its handle coal black in Riselda’s grip. And—maybe—an answer for a long-ago question:
What need for an axe could her aunt have had?
“I suppose I don’t know,” she finished.
He handed it back to her. “Why did he release me, Lux?”
She lied so often…but his eyes were on hers, and they weren’t letting go. “Morana was kidnapped by the phantom. I levied her life with yours. And mine. I’m to move into the mayor’s mansion.”
One eyebrow raised. “Will you?”
“Never, of course.” The dried blood on the torn cloth of his knee jostled as they traveled over cobblestones. “Shaw… What happened down there?” She steeled herself for his reply, unsure if she would be able to stomach it.
“They wanted answers. My accomplices, how I’d learned of the lifeblood stores, how I managed to get in to begin with… I wouldn’t reveal anything, and so they resorted to theirtraditional methods of extracting them.” He lifted his ruined shirt.
Bile rose in her throat. She sucked in a breath, so loud now in the heavy quiet. Her fingers quivered and still, she forced them to reach forward. To touch each bloodied bandage.
“The physician—” Her voice broke, and she cleared her burning throat. “The one that set my ankle. You have to go to him.”
He lowered his shirt. “We’ll see. I’m not particularly keen on him after listening to your screams.”
“I refused his sedatives, and he did what needed to be done. If what they did to you didn’t kill you, the infection that I’m sure is brewing in there will.”
“What about Riselda?”
Lux swallowed. “Absolutely not.”
The carriage ride toShaw’s home was some distance, made longer by the bustling bodies carousing in excitement for the Festival of Light. Lux woke, bleary-eyed and with her head nestled against the crook of Shaw’s arm, her body flush against his.
