So, yeah, sure, venturing into Bedwyck at night for the slight possibility of a solution may not have been an ideal way to spend his eighteenth birthday, but neither was sulking in a decrepit cottage in the woods, waiting for the sickness to finish him off.
The anchored woman’s hollow voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Please. Help me.”
Go away, he pleaded silently. She was a distraction, and in this place, a distraction could cost him his life.
When the woman started to say something else, August let out an exasperated sigh and finally turned to face her.
Her grey eyes widened as hope bloomed in her expression.
She looked like a regular person—if that person had been completely drained of colour and shaded over in charcoal. A long nightgown hung loosely on her thin frame, untouched by the breeze.
“I can’t help you,” August said with a dispassionate shrug. “I’m dead, too.”
The woman’s brow creased. “You are not dead.”
“I am on the inside. Now leave me be. I have my own matters to attend to.” He turned and walked away, foolishly hoping that would be the end of it.
But of course, she followed.
“Mo Aesling—”
The word struck like a match, igniting a firestorm of images. A castle, a festival, a beautiful boy with a sharp smile. Anger flared, sudden and searing.
He whipped around so fast, it made his head spin. “Do not call me that.”
The woman stretched and twisted, her angles sharpening to points. Her eyes were black and bottomless, rot spreading from the sockets. The stench of decay burned August’s nose. A gash of a mouth split the peeling grey of her face, and as she lurched forward with unnatural speed, her plangent wail sliced through him like a blade.
His blood turned to ice, fear pinning him in place.
“Stop!” It was meant as an order, but it came out as a shaky plea.
August knew what came next. His hands shot up to cover his ears, trying to keep her out, but the whispers were already there, the sound like wind beneath a door.
He used to believe that seeing and hearing the dead was unbearable, that there couldn’t possibly be anything worse. This was a recent change, and it was, in fact,muchworse.
The whispers coalesced into a low voice inside his skull, rough like stone against stone; an eerie echo of someone else’s memories.
“I am sorry, my love,” the voice said, not sounding the slightest bit sorry. “But this is how it must be.”
Something twisted in August’s stomach, and the pain came on like a wave, stealing the air from his lungs. He collapsed to his knees, hands splayed on the damp cobblestones as panic tightened like a noose around his throat, tighter and tighter and tighter.
Please stop.The words were stuck in his throat, unable to make it to his raw and blistered mouth. The sharp tang of metal coated his tongue as his stomach clenched in an agonizing knot. Around him, the world spun viciously, and he pressed his forehead to the damp ground.
Just when he expected his heart to give out, the pain abruptly stopped.
For a long moment, he didn’t dare move.
Not dead, he assured himself.I’m not dead.
When he was sure it was over and his breathing finally settled, he dragged his gaze up. The anchored woman was gone.
“That was a splendid choice!” he shouted to the empty street, his voice ricocheting off the stone facades. “Now I’mtrulyeager to help.”
He cursed under his breath and struggled to his feet, legs unsteady from the phantom poison’s lingering effects. He pulledhis cloak tight, vision swimming and head throbbing, and pushed deeper into the city.
August liked change about as much as he’d like a dagger to the cornea.
