“So then you know why it hurt so much when I put trust in you and you betrayed me to the man I hate the most. I know it wassmall and unimportant. I know I’m being immature about this. But it’s like there’s a part of my mind that knows better and a part that’s scared.” My words are as fragile as I feel, and Lucan accepts them as delicately as his hand rests on me. “Look, I—” The words are stuck in my throat, and I force them out. “I want to trust you again. I’m getting there.”
He nods and releases me.
I walk to where the saw landed, kicking up motes of dust with my oversized leather boots, all the while wondering when the last time anyone set foot on this particular chunk of stone was. Anything to run from my mess of thoughts and feelings surrounding Lucan. From my fear of giving someone my trust when it’s so possible that they might disappoint me. Or worse, that I might care enough about disappointing them.
I’m so focused on everything else that I don’t realize what’s happening until it’s right upon us.
I don’t notice the sudden drop in temperature until the chill passes through me. The cloying smell of rot accosts my senses—but not of dragon flesh. Instead, it’s of flowers and soil. Of stone crumbling to time. A rot that’s as sweet as it is acrid. A slight burning on the end of every inhale. It’s distinctly different from the green dragon’s acid. This is brighter. It burns my nose and sizzles across my skin. It’s a scent I last detected on the wind as I stood on the wall with Saipha.
I look overhead, and terror grabs me by the throat. A thin curl of rusty haze ripples across the ceiling. I stagger back.
“Isola?” Lucan asks, his voice sharp with concern.
Spinning, I lock eyes with him. “Scourge.”
27
I’m running back toward Lucan as he’s trying to formulate his next question. Grabbing his wrist, I charge toward the door. I’m about to scream for help when he flings a glove off and his bare hand clamps over my open mouth.
Releasing him, I turn and glare. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“What if it’s part of the challenge?”
“Have you lost your mind? They wouldn’t expose us to thescourgejust to see if we’re cursed.”
A shadow passes over his eyes as his chin tips downward, severity overtaking his gaze. I shake my head.
“No,” I whisper. “There’s no… There’s no way.”
“You know what the vicar is capable of. Dismantling a dragon to get it into the chute should’ve prevented the scourge.” Lucan speaks with such authority that all I can think is that he knows something I don’t. “And if we call for help, I’ve no doubt they’d use it against us, claiming we’re overly sensitive to Ethershade.”
“Everyone is ‘overly sensitive’ to literal death! What in the dragon-burned hells are we supposed to do?” Even if I’m not screaming for help, I can’t stop my voice from pitching up. “Die?”
“Even if it’s not a test, you know they won’t open that door. They won’t risk the scourge getting out.”
Disappointment and despair unlock every joint in my body, and I nearly collapse. They will let us die in here if they think opening the door would let the scourge spread farther. I stare up at him and wonder if his is going to be the last face I ever see. Is this it? My final moments are to be spent in a room filled with rot and blight, staring at a guy I’m not even sure Ilike?
He flings his other glove off and grabs my shoulders, holding them tightly. “You figured out the automatons; you can figure this out. Death isn’t ready for us yet. You’re going to get us out of here, Isola, and I’m going to help by doing whatever you tell me to.”
“I’m not—”
“Isola Thaz.Youare going to get us out of here.” There’s something familiar in the way he says my name that makes me realize it’s how he’s always called me. Isola. Not Valor Reborn. To him, I’ve always been Isola.
He’s telling me to save us. Not me as the vicar’s well-trained favorite. Not as Valor Reborn and whatever legendary powers I may or may not possess. As Isola. The girl who has been trained, not just by the Creed, but by her mother. Her father. As someone whocan.
Damn it. Why does that work on me? Why does him saying he’s putting his trust in me suddenly have my mind searching for a way out of a hopeless situation?
I drop low, speaking hastily. “We have ten minutes,maybe, before the scourge haze replaces the air in this room. Before that, our lungs will start burning. Our skin will itch and peel. We will go mad as we begin to rot from the inside out until we’re nothing but mindless, moving husks before we’re completely consumed.”And that’s all assuming neither of us is cursed, I don’t say, deeming it unnecessary and unhelpful.
“A great summary of a horrible death. Now, how do we stop it?”
“Well, if I knew how to do that, our world would be saved.”
“No time like the present to figure out how to save the world,” he quips far too easily when facing down near-certain death.
I glare at him. He just smiles in a way that says,Go on. And…I do. I look at the room, not with the eyes of the Creed but with the understanding of the scourge as my mum always taught.
To the masses, the scourge is a festering blight, a plague upon the earth itself. And that’s notwrong…but it’s also not completely accurate, either.
