Finally, just as she steeled herself to take another look through the window, Orley returned.
The demon held a brown package.
Seeing this, Leena started forward, desperate to get her hands on the antidote. Things would be better once Bram was healthy again. They would make a plan then.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Orley admonished. “A deal is a deal.”
He took out a glass vial filled with a red liquid from the package and gave it to her. “I am no longer in your debt. I havehandedyou the cure.”
Leena gripped the glass vial, hope rising in her chest.
Orley lunged toward her, striking her cheek with such force that she staggered backward.
Pain burst behind her eyelids. Her ears rang. The world spun.
In her disorientation, Orley tore the vial from her hands. She scrambled forward, but it was too late. Orley unlatched the window, throwing the vial out.
She heard it shatter on the cobbles below.
For a moment she could only stare at her empty hands before lurching for her pistol, but her pocket was empty. To her terror, she looked up to see Orley holding the weapon, twirling it in his hands.
“The Saint will hunt me down for what I know about you,” Orley said, turning the pistol toward Bram.
Leena flung herself at Orley, attempting to grapple for the gun, but he pushed her back. She slammed into the wall, shaking white dust from the ceiling.
“No,” Leena begged.“Please.”
He fired.
Once. Twice.
The chamber was empty.
In a rage, Orley flung the pistol to the side where it clattered against the mirror, shattering it to fragments.
Leena was too far away for any pieces to pierce her flesh, but she clawed on hands and knees to find a large shard. Gripping it sotightly that it drew a thin line of blood on her palm, she stepped between Orley and Bram.
Orley reared back, hands in the air. He licked his lips and grimaced at the taste.
Leena bitterly understood that Orley had fulfilled his end of the bargain—he’dhandedher the vial—and she had nothing else to trade with him for the poison’s antidote.
“Leave,” Leena yelled. “Out. Now. Before I slit your sniveling throat.”
Just before leaving, he turned back to her. “One day you will see, my dear, what happens to all the women who come into contact with the Avon men. You will soon understand that there is no limit to what they will sacrifice for Weavingshaw.” There was a promise in his voice—someone who had seen calamity once and now saw it again in her. “One day you will remember me, and you will wish that I had killed him.”
Leena spat at him.
The demon’s face twisted as he wiped his chin with a flounce of his sleeve, then left without a departing glance. Leena bolted the door after him.
Light crept into the room, and she dared to peek outside to see Orley’s huddled figure making his way up a long street.
Their safe place was in an attic, Leena realized, in a town.
It was snowing here too, but the snow looked like gray ash. The houses were built in rows, all made from black stone with towering spires and long thin roofs that stretched toward the sky. Walkways lined the canals, the water inky and fathomless.
A woman—a demon?—standing beside the canal held a naked baby by the ankles. Leena watched as she plunged the squirming babe into the dark waters, then held it for so long that Leena gasped before the screaming infant was wrenched out. The woman wrapped the baby in fur, but the infant’s wails didn’t diminish even as Leena withdrew from the window.
Forcing herself away, Leena turned to check Bram’s bandages.
