Then she was gone, leaving Vaskel alone in the tavern with the dying fire and the spreading marks on his arm. He looked down at his wrist where her fingers had traced above the dark lines, and he could still feel the warmth of her touch, the spark that had passed between them.
When he finally doused all the candles, smothered the fire, and stepped from the darkened tavern into the cold, the spark he’d felt at Iris’s touch hadn’t faded.
Five
Vaskel stoodoutside the apothecary as dawn broke the next morning, eyeing its black-and-white striped awning that sagged with snow. The windows were dark, but Iris had told him to come early, before the village stirred, and he trusted she’d be waiting. Besides, he’d spent a restless night tormented by the spreading marks and his own worry.
The hellkin held his breath as he tried the door, but it gave way with a barely audible creak, the bell above the door chiming softly as he entered. Immediately, the familiar aroma of oils and herbs enveloped him, but he also detected the whiff of toasted bread.
“Back here,” Iris’s voice was muffled from behind the velvet curtains.
Vaskel ducked through and into the book-lined room that was chaos given form. Books topped on every surface, empty teacups bobbled atop teetering stacks, and a massive, gilded cage held hundreds of tiny bookwyrms on swinging perches.
“Don’t want them disturbing us,” Iris said as she followed his gaze to the towering ceiling above them, usually filled with the tiny creatures that looked like a cross between hummingbirds and baby dragons. “Not today.”
That’s when Vaskel noticed what sat on the round table in the center of the room. Lira’s grandmother’s spell book lay open, its pages yellowed with spidery, faded script spooled out across them. But more startling was the cauldron hunched beside it, small and black.
“Is that...?” Vaskel gestured at the cauldron, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.
Iris mustered a smile. “The biggest container I could find. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways, even if they’re a touch theatrical.” She moved to the table, her flowered skirt swishing. “I may have borrowed this from Lira’s kitchen last night when she wasn’t looking.” She tapped the open spellbook. “She won’t mind. Probably.”
Vaskel raised an eyebrow. “Probably?”
“If she knew it was for a good cause, Lira wouldn’t hesitate to lend me the book. But since you’d rather keep this between us, I thought it better to ask forgiveness instead of permission.” Iris began adding ingredients to the cauldron from various bottles and pouches arranged on the table. A pinch of something that sparkled, three drops of liquid that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, and a handful of dried leaves that released a burst of rose perfume.
“You know what you’re doing?” Vaskel asked as he stepped closer and peered into the cauldron.
Iris didn’t even glance up. “This is the same revealing spell that Erindil used on Sass’s amulet.” She stirred the mixture with a silver spoon that left trails of light in the liquid. “Now then, push up your sleeve and hold your arm over the cauldron. Don’t touch the liquid. It won’t hurt you, but it might tingle unpleasantly.”
Vaskel did as instructed, shoving his sleeve past his elbow to reveal the full extent of the marks. In the pale sunrise peeking through the skylight, they were sinewy ribbons roiling beneath his skin.
Iris murmured words in what might have been Elvish, her voice taking on a rhythm that seemed to hum in Vaskel’s bones. The liquid in the cauldron glowed, first amber like firelight, then shifting to deep purple. Then the marks on his arm glowed in response.
They lit up like lines of blue ice edged with silver, the spirals and curves writhing under his skin, and despite how cold they appeared, they burned like fiery flames. Vaskel jerked his arm back, rubbing the skin to stop the scorch.
Iris went still as the light faded from the cauldron. Then she turned to the spell book, flipping through several pages one way, then reversing and flipping many more pages the other. She ran a finger down a list, finally tapping it and sighing. “That’s not what I expected.”
“What? What is it?”
“It’s not dark magic residue,” Iris said slowly, looking up from the pages. “If the book is right, what you’re carrying is an infernal soul bind.”
The words almost made Vaskel stagger back. He knew what a soul bind was—every hellkin did. They were contracts written inflesh and spirit, bonds that tied one infernal being to another until death or a promise fulfilled.
“It can’t be,” he said, though even as the words left his mouth, he knew they were hollow.
Iris tilted her head, studying him with sharp eyes that seemed to see too much. “Are you sure? A soul bind has to be agreed upon. This couldn’t have been placed on you like a curse.”
Vaskel groaned, rubbing a hand over his face and the bunched wrinkles of his brow. Of course. Of bloody course. He’d been a fool to think he could outrun the mistakes of his past. Even if he’d changed his ways, his past clearly wasn’t done with him.
“Goblin’s spawn,” he muttered, remembering precisely who he’d made a deal with all those years ago.
He looked down at the marks, no longer glowing but still visible, still spreading, still claiming more of him with each passing hour.
One thing he knew with gut-churning certainty. This was only the beginning.
Six
Twenty yearsearlier
