‘You think you are safe here cowering in the temple?’
There is a deathly silence.
‘What are you talking about?’ Nusi snaps, not even trying to disguise her disgust.
‘I know you have no reason to listen to me after everything. But this will be everyone’s terror eventually. She will burn through those girls she has taken because none of them are strong enough to give her what she needs.’
‘And you are?’ Mother Joca bristles.
‘I helped her. She will take not only from the living but also from the dead.’
chapter sixty
ris
I never thought Iwould be tending Salvacion’s wounds, applying salve to her busted lip and a cold compress to her black eye. There’s no revelling in her pain like I thought there might be. I survey the tinctures on the counter and Biba, Finlyr, and Isagani raiding the remaining unopened cupboards, unstoppering bottles and sniffing their contents.
‘Ryla, Kopiro, and Vullis did this for me after the last time we spoke.’
Salvacion looks at me and winces, only half from the pain. ‘You know I didn’t like to do it.’
‘Let me see your side,’ I insist and we labour to lift her uniform jacket, to examine the skin. It’s bruised an angry red and deep plum, but there is no wound. ‘I can’t see an injury, but you may be bleeding internally.’
She runs her free hand through her short hair, grown shaggy in the months since I last saw her.
‘So you rode the bird?’ Salvacion asks, face incredulous.
‘Adarna,’ Isagani says. ‘It was in the cave in the Maelstrom.’
‘The queen, that’s what she wanted recovered?’
I nod grimly.
Biba puts down the tonic she’s been identifying. ‘Let me try to see.’ She places her hand on Salvacion’s side and looks pensive,eyebrows furrowing and mouth pursing. ‘You have thick blood. It’s good for now.’
Salvacion brushes Biba’s hair from her face. My daughter looks uncertain for a moment and examines Salvacion, studying her features.
‘You look so much like him,’ Salvacion says. Her voice is thin and her eyes begin to water. ‘Fuck!’ she yells, jumping back. Biba startles in alarm. ‘Sorry, it stings to cry.’
I watch her laughing through the tears, smiling at her niece, trying to reassure her that it will be all right. She deserves to know.
‘Salvacion, I saw him,’ I say slowly. She looks up, and her face drops. ‘I saw Larkin. He made it into the Maelstrom.’
She begins to stand. ‘What do you mean? He’s alive?’
I shake my head and place a hand on her shoulder. ‘No, it... changed him.’
‘What changed him? What happened?’
‘It takes from you, kills you slowly,’ Finlyr says, looking grim. ‘Turns your flesh to stone.’
Hanan appears in the doorway, looking gaunt and pale. ‘How are you, Salvacion?’ she asks.
‘Holding up.’ She shrugs. ‘Did you speak to them?’
Hanan nods, stepping reluctantly into the kitchen. ‘Some of them understand the magnitude of what could happen. The ruin any more power in the queen’s hands could bring.’
‘But not all?’ Salvacion asks, her voice resigned.
