Lux smiled wide. “Let them come meet me by the sea. I’m more than happy to wait.”
“You’ll stay here?” snorted Silas. “Where I know to find you?”
“Find me? I’m going to keep you herewithme. Locked in a room with manacles on your ankles. I’ve a feeling with the number of souls you’ve taken,Mania Maluswill see you rotted away by next Hallowed Day.” She looked at Kent. “What about this”—she gestured widely at the gathering—“gave you the impression you would be free to go?”
“If we will not be free then you’ll not be either,” warned Artemis.
Of all things, this struck fear within her. Her attention snapped back to the healer with a snarl—in time to see his nod at something beyond her head.
Lux whirled back. To the doorway, empty. To the tower…
A bloodied, rotting boy—holding a burning torch aloft.
Corvin—
His opposite hand tipped into the flame, and Lux could make no effort in understanding it before she went entirely numb.
Lux didn’t move; she stood there, perplexed, as Corvin sneered from his lofty height. And only once Shaw’s hand met her elbow, his mouth at her ear, did she realize she couldn’t feel him. Not like before.
She turned to stare upon his face.
Nothing.
She feltnothing.
“And now you cannot love! What does it feel like, Ms. Thorn?” Artemis ran a grey tongue over matching gums in satisfaction. “I think we should have done it from the start. Let’s see where your ambitions take you, now that you’ve no anchors holding you still.”
Lux stumbled forward with the sudden loss of Shaw’s support. She heard his fast footfalls in the gravel, but nothing else.
They’dcursedher.
Kent’s laugh rumbled. “All that effort to save a dangerous little empath when the whole brilliance is better snuffed, and now you’re gone and numb. Poetry. Pure and simple.” His shoulder knocked Artemis’s. “I’d thought Alesso outlived his usefulness, but it seems he can still surprise me.”
“Do notspeakof our overlord in that way.”
Kent snorted. Silas laughed harshly.
And then they each began to choke.
Lux stared at each decaying face purpling before her eyes. Then at the deep-green vines extending from the bottomsof their robes. She tracked one between her feet—back to Mothlock.
“I’m sorry,” said an old voice. “But maybe the young lady is right, and some things are better off gone.”
Lux raised onto her toes and discovered Edgar among the gathered group. How he’d managed to come down from the mountain cabin and all the way to the sea with his arthritic joints, she’d no idea.
“Such a shame about your parts,” he continued. “I would have loved to keep them, but I’ve no use for diseased things. Those are better off burned.”
Artemis went to his knees first, followed by Silas. Kent kept her gaze ensnared with his own. He tried to speak, but a croaking noise was all he managed. Though that, too, was cut when he collapsed to the gravel.
The Collectors of Mothlock passed to the Beyond, and Lux knew for certain no saint-like existence awaited them.
She turned away from the scene. She spied Alix first, hovering in his coat that hardly covered anything important. Then Cecily on the stoop offering him comfort. She spotted the bandits, Sven and Viktar, their mirrored horrified expressions, before her glance slid to Aline having come up beside her. All these people arrived to help, and she felt—
Numb.
She was back in Ghadra, consumed by that dark space inside her, caring for nothing and no one.
And that, she could not stand to suffer again.
