“Give me that contraption,” Lux demanded, holding out her hand.
Aline relinquished it to Lux’s palm without preamble. “Pull back on this here. Don’t squeeze that until you’re sure.”
“Simple enough. Will you help the families you brought? Someone will need to round up the staff before I free the lastpieces of their souls. I don’t want to keep finding their bodies after—” She let the sentence hang.
“We’ll get started.”
“Thank you. Take Cecily; she’s surprisingly fine in a crisis. Leave Alix with Sven.”
Aline nodded, and Lux settled the weight of the weapon against her hip. She ran up the steps and into Mothlock.
Chapter fifty-six
TheruinedframeofRiselda’s portrait had been tossed to the ground, revealing the hidden staircase behind it, but it was the newly painted door Lux went through. When she reached the top, she found Shaw with his knife drawn and circling Corvin, attempting to pin the collector’s monstrous form against blackened walls.
The Society’s Overlord looked worse than ever before. His skin sagged from his cheekbones, and his lips were a necrotic black. He’d bled from multiple cuts along his head; they’d dried in grotesque streaks.
His rabid eyes roved about the room, searching for an escape without success.
He held onto a narrow spear of glass.
Lux looked down at Aline’s invention and pulled back where she’d been told. She held it away from her body.
“It’s over, Corvin,” she announced from across the room. “Your society is finished. Picked apart by crows and the garden and its own greed.”
Shaw spun to face her, doing a double take at what she held in her hands; he retreated ever so slightly.
“I think you’ve misunderstood your own curse,” she told the rotting collector. “I can’t feel love anymore, you’re right. But that doesn’t mean I don’trememberit. And if there was anything I would to fight to get back, it’d be that. I’m sorry you don’t remember.” Her shaking settled as her arms grew accustomed to the weight of the weapon. She leveled it with both hands at Corvin’s robed chest.
“Nothing will ever make me turn as cold as you. You stole my blood. Now give me yours.”
Corvin edged backward, his front facing her fully and his back to the shattered window. His cheeks deepened to purple; he shouted at her in heavy silence.
“It’s honestly pitiful,” drawled Shaw. “Seeing you hang on like you have any power still. You have none. Do one decent thing before your spirit rots away.”
This, of all things, seemed to give Corvin pause. His features slackened and his head bowed. His hands rose in supplication. Lux did not trust him, and she drew a hesitant breath, waiting for him to spring.
Which he did.
Backwards.
Through the window.
And Lux didn’t fire the weapon after all—but dropped it as she lunged.
As a knife, thrown, sank into Corvin’s thigh. Though that neither stopped him nor stuck.
She didn’t reach him in time—she knew she wouldn’t. Corvin tumbled out of the tower. Down to the raging sea below.
“No!” she cried. “Shaw! Hurry. We have to find his body. I have to revive him, get his blood. I can’t live like—”
Shaw spun her around so quickly, she faltered.
A knife filled her vision, its end glistening crimson and wet. “I hate to say it, Lux,” he said, voice rough with disgust and regret. “But open your mouth.”
Her stomach immediately resisted; her palms slicked with sweat. But Shaw’s hand came up to cradle her head. He gently drew it back. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” she murmured, staring up into his ruined eye and feeling nothing at all but sick. “It was mine for being so desperate to fix myself.”
