Corvin swiped out with her dagger. She dodged. And Shaw… Shaw knelt on the flagstones, his hands propping him from collapse. When he surged upright, she hardly recognized him.
His right eye bled so profusely, she couldn’t tell if he even had one anymore. Corvin swiped at her again, a snarl on his lips and a rake of scarlet across his face. But his swing was blocked partway.
Shaw tackled him to the floor.
The sanctum descended into chaos.
Artemis knelt beside Kent while another collector stooped to offer his shoulder. “Silas,” gasped the large man. “End them.”
Sucking his teeth with morbid glee, Silas moved upon Lux. “This has gone on long enough, hasn’t it?”
Aline backed into her. Lux gripped her arm and said, “Please tell me that thing can go another round.”
“One more for now,” muttered Aline out the corner of her mouth.
“We’ll have to run after.”
“We should have run awhileago. What’s wrong with his eyes?”
“Your lord and master has lost,” Lux hissed. She shifted. Her boot met an object. Bending quickly, she snatched up her dagger. “Leave us be, or end up with a hole somewhere worse than Kent’s.”
Silas’s smile drew wider. “Corvin Alistair Alesso is notmymaster.”
She leveled the dagger at his chest when he continued to advance. Lux noted Aline didn’t lower her weapon—though her arms looked unsteady.
“Lord Kent has long been the true ruler of Mothlock. Consuming lifeblood while the Alesso boys were just that—boys.It was he who taught Corvin how to mutate his brilliance for torture. How to drive each of the Grimrooks mad. Where Corvin too often shied from murder, Kent and I—we saw the vision. We understood that necessity overrules wrongs, and we will not be stifled. Corvin—as useful as his thirst is—was always just a lure for weak souls with strong brilliances. A charismatic monster.” Lux did not think his grin could stretch any wider, but it did. “You’ve been lured here, Necromancer. How does it feel to besucha little fool?”
A second crack wracked the chamber. Silas flew backward with an agonized groan, his hand clawing for his shoulder.
“I hate men,” said Aline. “Why do they always talk about themselves for ages?”
Lux whipped around to see what had become of Shaw. She found him lashing Corvin to his throne with a pair of blood-red shackles. The collector’s head lolled, his face bleeding from multiple lacerations. Her gaze lifted to Alix. Without further direction from his brother, he stood like a silent sentry beside them. Lastly, she noted the syringe, its glinting end fallen to settle upon the dais.
She darted toward it.
“Go, Aline! We’ll be after you.”
“But…Lux?”
Lux ignored her. She hadn’t meant to, only there was too much else clawing for her attention. Death’s near constant embrace. Shaw’s mutilated eye. The syringe perfectly positioned and her own new ideas forming. She ran at Shaw. When he raised his face, she ignored the blood, and said, “Is your eye—”
“I don’t know,” he interrupted, his voice rough and his features fraught. “But it doesn’t matter. Go.” He gestured ahead of him with the tip of his knife, and Lux saw his fingers were each dipped in red.
He’d painted Corvin in blood.
“Not yet. I’ve got one more thing to do.” She leapt onto the dais and snatched the syringe. To Corvin, his eyes finally focused on her, she said, “You don’t deserve his soul.”
Lux plunged the needle into the corner of Corvin’s eye, relishing the satisfaction.You deserve this,she thought, and her mind filled with every face of every attendant she’d met.
Though, while she’d felt the essence of each body she’d revived, she’d never experienced lifeblood like this. For one, there was somuchof it. It was little wonder Corvin’s eyes were sometimes bloodshot with strain.
How did someone sort through such a vat?
“One dark, with a brilliance of dreams,”Riselda had said.
…a dreamer’s soul.
This. This, perhaps, she could find. And so Lux cast herself once more on a trail only she could see.
