Rummy held her head high and stepped even closer to the woman, slapping her hands down on the table.
“I’m not interested in riddles,” she barked. “Just tell us what you know! We want to help, but we can’t do that unless we know what the hells is going on!”
The lines around the woman’s eyes deepened as she glared back. “The darkness in you is fighting,” she said. “Have you felt it yet? Have you felt it since that day, knocking to escape?”
“Stop,” Rummy demanded through gritted teeth.
I didn’t dare move. A heavy weight pressed down on my lungs, making it impossible to breathe.
“If you’re here now, if he’s met you already, then it’s already begun. There’s no stopping it.”
“What does that mean?” Rummy gripped the edge of the desk, her knuckles turning white. “Are you talking about the king?”
The woman took a breath and leaned back in her chair. “You see this chaos raging outside? The death? The destruction? This is only the beginning. And if I were you, I’d mind the company you keep.”
“This is the beginning of what? What’s the king doing here?”
The woman lifted her chin, her lips pressed into a line.
She wasn’t going to give us more.
So I reached for Rummy, eager to get out of this tent and forget the nonsense this woman was spewing. But before I could make contact, the woman spoke again.
And her words chilled me to the bone.
“He’s going to raise the dead.”
Chapter 17
Rummy
Sleep did not come. Every time I closed my eyes, visions of death and decay crashed through my mind.
I was no stranger to death. Midgrave had been a fucking graveyard in itself. Especially when the vampyre attacks were so rampant.
I had known poverty. I had known illness. Starvation. I’d witnessed apathy in those who refused to help.
But what I’d seen in the streets of Pericius?
Those people were fighting for their lives. And they were terrified.
We’d now been given two sides to this damn story.
King Cornelius’s side—the letter requesting aid. Where we were asked to send our army to help settle the uprising.
Then there was the side the people of this kingdom were on. Those on the streets who were starving and begging for help. Those who were terrified, who fled if they had the means.
Jessiah was right to be suspicious. We had to uncover what King Cornelius was doing to these people and what he had planned. He seemed a little intense, maybe, but to use some sort of mighty dark power? To wield literal death over his own kingdom?
To raise the dead?
What was the point of that? What would he gain from forcing his people into starvation and sickness?
The healer was no help. The riddles and vague answers got us nowhere. I still wasn’t even sure we could trust her about the king.
Raising the dead was insane. And for what?
It made no damn sense.
