Dread settled cold and heavy in his stomach. Marina never made idle threats. If he didn't go with her, she would bring her crew here. They would burn the Tusk & Tail to the ground. They would hurt everyone he cared about, and Marina would make him watch.
Three days. Three days to break an unbreakable bond, or three days to say goodbye to the only real home he'd ever known.
He pressed a hand to his arm and the scorching marks. He believed Marina that the pain would become unbearable. But that wasn't what terrified him.
What terrified him was the thought of Marina's new crew descending on Wayside like crimson locusts, destroying everything beautiful and good.
The snow continued to drift down, the wet flakes covering Marina's footprints as if she'd never been there. But the marks on his skin throbbed with every beat of his heart, counting down until he lost Wayside or Wayside lost everything.
Fifteen
Vaskel pausedoutside the apothecary the next morning, glancing first one way and then the other. No one else was walking around in the faint dawn light, and not even the scent of yeast and sugar from Pip’s bakery laced the breeze. The hellkin knew it was too early to be pestering Iris, but he’d already been up for hours and he could wait no longer.
Sleep had been impossible. Between the marks spreading like dragon fire across his skin and Marina's threats echoing in his mind, Vaskel had spent the night staring at the ceiling of his small room at the inn, counting down the hours until the sun broke through the darkness. He absently touched the hilt of the blade he’d tucked into his belt and then scraped at his arm before he slowly tested the door. Releasing a breath when the handle gave way, the hellkin opened the door slow enough that he could catch the bell overhead before it jangled.
Once he was inside, he was consumed by the silence of the dark shop. For a moment, the silence stretched, and worry crept up his spine. He’d assumed that Iris had left the door open for him,but maybe he’d been wrong. Had she forgotten to lock up? Had something happened? Had Marina?—?
The heavy curtain leading to the back room flew aside, and Iris's head popped out, her face splitting into a grin. "Oh, good! I hoped it was you. Anyone else, and I was going to have a lot of explaining to do."
The curtain dropped back into place, then her head appeared again almost immediately. “Come on in and lock the door behind you. We don't want any surprise visitors."
He clicked the bolt into place with a definitive snap, then made his way around the counter and pushed through the heavy velvet into Iris's private domain.
Although shadows had shrouded the front of the shop, the back room glowed from lit lanterns and flickering candles. The bookwyrms were in full flutter overhead, their iridescent wings catching the lamplight as they darted between the towering shelves. But it was the state of the room that gave him pause. Books lay open on every available surface—the round table, the chairs, even stacked on the floor in precarious towers. Half-drunk cups of tea perched on the edge of the table, balanced on top of open tomes, and one teetered dangerously on the arm of an overstuffed chair.
"Have you been working on this all night?” he asked, picking his way carefully around the books.
She nodded, pushing a wayward curl behind her ear only for it to spring free immediately. "What else would I be doing? We might not have much time."
Vaskel swallowed hard, the marks pulsing beneath his shirt. She didn't know how right she was. "Iris, I need to tell you something."
She looked up from the massive tome she'd been studying, her green eyes sharp despite the exhaustion etched into her features. "What is it?"
"Marina found me. Last night, after I left the tavern." The words tumbled out. "She's alive, and she's given me three days—well, a little over two days now—to honor our soul bind and join her new crew. If I don't..." He couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't voice the threat against everyone he loved.
Iris listened without interrupting, her brow furrowing and her half-moon glasses sliding down her nose. When his words drifted off, she nodded resolutely as if his news changed nothing. "Like I said, not much time."
Vaskel squared his shoulders, encouraged because the woman’s determination to help him hadn’t wavered.
She turned back to the books, gesturing for him to join her. "I've found several possibilities. Some are more extreme than others, but desperate times and all that."
They bent over the ancient texts together, shoulders nearly touching as they read. Iris explained each potential remedy she'd found—a cleansing ritual that required moonwater and fur from an extinct species, a counter-curse that might break the bond but would probably kill them both, and a potion made from ingredients so rare they might as well be mythical.
Vaskel found it increasingly difficult to concentrate. This close to the apothecary, he could see the way she bit her lower lip when she was thinking hard. An errant curl had escaped again, fallingacross her face as she read, and his fingers itched to brush it back, to tangle in those dark waves and?—
"Vaskel?"
He blinked. Furrows bunched her brow, and he realized she'd been saying his name.
"Vaskel, are you all right?"
He snapped back to attention, heat crawling up his neck that had nothing to do with the soul bind. "Sorry, my mind wandered."
Iris studied him for a moment, and something in her expression softened. "Don't worry," she breathed. "We'll figure this out. We have to."
She placed her hand over his where it rested on the table, and the simple touch sent a jolt through him that made the soul bind's burning seem like nothing more than a sunbeam. Her hand was soft and warm and steady, and it brought to mind the feeling of coming home after a long, dangerous quest. It was safety and belonging and everything he'd been searching for without knowing it.
This was torture of an entirely different kind than what Marina had inflicted. The soul bind might consume him, but being this close to Iris, feeling her touch and knowing he couldn't act on these feelings—not now, not with Marina's threat hanging over them, not when pursuing anything with Iris might paint an even bigger target on her back—thatmight destroy him faster than any curse ever could.
