“I didn’t claim anything,” I said. “I was blessed.” In all honesty, I cared more about the dirt on my shoes than I did about why Helen didn’t speak to me. But, trying to be smart about this, I conjured desperation, and asked the question he would’ve expected. “Whydoesn’tHelen speak to me?”
“For that,” Jaxan said, studying the grime beneath his nails, “you will have to agree to the Dark Deal. And make a Death Bond on it. Standard practice. A Deal means nothing to me without a life secured. Not yours. No, that would be a violation. ‘No Unselected witch shall be used as collateral.’ ” He paced aimlessly while I remained with my back to the washroom door, watching for the next thing he might pick up and toss around. “I’ll let you choose. I deliver the letter. Tell you all you want to know. In exchange, you work for me. If at any point you cease to do so, I will claim the life of the witch with the Death Bond on them.” Reaching the table, he abruptly stopped pacing. “Who do you prefer? Helen or Ash? Leland?”
“You want me to choose one of them?”
“I know no other witches you care about who haven’t already gone missing.”
I dug my nails into my palms to channel my rage where he wouldn’t notice it. “Can I think on it?” I asked, relatively calm, or as calm as I could fake in the midst of my blood driving me mad.
From his coat pocket, Jaxan removed a flask —myflask — and laid it flat on the table. Then he removed the Everblade.
“I was afraid it would come to this,” he said. “I warned you you wouldn’t outwit me. I wanted to work with you. But it’s clear you desire a harder path.”
Time slowed and overwhelmed me as he slashed through the air with the Everblade. In one quick stab, he gutted my flask, breaking it apart into splinters. Alcohol stung my nose as a flask’s worth of moonale spilled from it, puddling under the text on the table, rolling off the table’s rounded edge, leaking onto the floor.
My blood pounded as I watched the table bleed with the only thing keeping me from deteriorating. It took everything —everything— to suppress the overwhelming urge to jam my fingers in Jaxan’s eyes and roar.
But I listened to thedrip drip dripas the last of it drained, pretending to be calm, refusing to let Jaxan know how badly I needed the moonale, how much I’d come to depend on it. How everything — every sound and sight and smell that was new or sudden or unpredictable — made me want to axe-throw his knife into the window above his head, shattering it, roaring laughter as glass rained down.
Jaxan returned the Everblade to his coat pocket and paced the room again, stopping in front of the couch to pull a loose thread. “More than a few Aspirants have drowned themselves in the Sundering Sea to relieve the burn of it. Withdrawal. Terrible symptom of being so blessed. It’s time you start getting used to it.”
He whirled his shadows into a thick, black cloak, covering himself to the neck. “I’ve left a book on the table for you, the subject matter being what I would’ve asked for your help with. But you’ve chosen to be at odds, so I suppose I’ll fix itwithoutyour cooperation. I wouldn’t count on me managing it without breaking you. Have a nice night, Ember Blackburn. I hear Leland is — two-for-one night at the Silverstone brothel. Then again, it always is with him.”
My fingers curled with rage.
The thought of Leland at a brothel . . .
In the time it took me to resist the urge to shred my throat on a long, hard scream, Jaxan was gone.
Disembodied, I walked to the kitchen table and picked up the gold.
* * *
The edge of the dustpan banged the garbage bin as I discarded the last of the letterbox. I didn’t want to. But it was necessary to keep moving to burn off the restlessness in my legs. It had taken three taverns before I found a witch who would sell me a cask of moonale. A gold coin for a hundred liters. Fifty liters, if I needed a Creator for pocket-to-porch delivery, which I did. I stowed the dustpan, then went to the cask on the porch to fill a fifth mug. I headed back inside, rinsed the dishes, threw out wrappers, and washed my clothes in the tub.
It was no longer withdrawal making my blood pound with rage but Jaxan. For the first time since arriving in Everden — for the first time since I was a child — I wished for spells, magic to make me powerful and satisfy my blood.
I was up late, peeling apart sodden pages of the text he’d thrown on the table.The Witch’s Limit. I tired my eyes out trying to make out what meaning I could. The letters were runny, and the intensity of the scent of alcohol — on the pages and in my mug — stung my nose and made my stomach turn. But I was learning things. Learning what he wanted.
The last Curse on Everden was three hundred years ago, not long after the Sundering. It was the last time a Dark Witch cast a Curse. It was also the last time any witch could birth more than one child by the same witch father. That’s what the Curse was — an attack on a male’s seed, so they could only impregnate one witch once. A single, once-in-a-lifetime instance. The timing of it couldn’t be controlled; it could happen in their teen years or when they were elderly, entirely up to the Goddess. But once amale witch got a witch pregnant, that was it. No more children. They were done.
Before coming to Everden, I’d known witches couldn’t have full siblings. It was why Helen went to the human realm to mate, to see if it was easier to conceive half witches. I didn’t know it was a Curse — that, at one time, things had been different.
Whoever had Cursed Everden hadn’t accounted for what would happen to the Goddess’s magic when the population shrank. When Her followers dwindled, the magic in the Circle of Seven waned in response. Magic that sustained witches, magic needed to survive the delivery of a healthy witch baby, was no longer enough to maintain the population, compounding the problem. Witches were dying. In childbirth and as a species. And Jaxan, I guessed, wanted me to be a model human, like my sister was. Someone to advocate for the human realm because the only way to save Everden was to combine us. If the realms could ever open their minds to it.
I blew out the lanterns with a sigh. My wet clothes drying on the porch for the night, I wandered to the couch and messaged Leland. I didn’t need him to Refresh my things in the morning — or want him to — so I told him not to come and then turned off my transmitter.
A child when he’d made his Dark Deal.Standard practice, Jaxan had said, to cast a Death Bond to secure it. I remembered the desperation in Leland’s voice when he’d said, “Iwantyou here,” and I wondered whose life Leland had pledged, whose life would end if he failed to keep me alive until Selection on August 1.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
LELAND
Case and I trudge through the Gnarlton catacombs, the series of long and narrow underground tunnels fifty feet below Highgrave Avenue.
“I hate the catacombs,” Case says, not at all worried about his loud voice echoing through the corridor. His gift will take care of it, doesn’t matter what he says. No one remembers him.
