Lux stared at the engraved7until it blurred. “No, thank you.”
“I feel like this is my fault.”
Lux’s vision sharpened as she turned toward him.
“I gave you false hope, speaking of the condition’s rarity and praising Mothlock’s healer. I shouldn’t have. I know how much worse it is to raise your expectations only to have them dashed.”
She absorbed every distraught line of his face. “You didn’t give this to me. Someone else did.” Her fingers closed over the knob. “Thank you for trying.”
His hand settled atop hers before she could turn it. She stared at the contrast of dark leather against her pale skin. She didn’t look at him.
“Will you consider the treatment?”
Lux shook her head. “I feel hollow enough. There’d be nothing of me left if you took my brilliance from me.”
“I don’t believe that. Not even for a moment.”
Lux’s eyes scrunched closed. “If nothing else, I was finally able to meet the sea outside of a daydream. That’s something, at least.”
Then she turned the knob and left Corvin behind.
Chapter twenty-three
Shethoughtshewouldretch.
No, I won’t.
Yes, I will.
Saliva pooled. She swallowed it away.
No, I won’t!
She held a hand to her mouth, because maybe if she pressed hard enough, she wouldn’t vomit her anger, herdespair, over the bed’s dark furnishings. But nothing prevented it from building inside her head like an overzealous tumor.
She’d been numb before. She wasn’t any longer.
Feed.
Grow.
Madness.
“You’re free to be a great necromancer now. Rather than settling for a mediocre one.”
Her whole life was a string of betrayals. Except this time, she had betrayed herself.
Lux had witnessed the consequences of madness. Riselda’s voice, her laugh—they’d changed from one moment to the next. The effect had been chilling and jarring and Lux never wished to be in its presence again. But while lifeblood might have prolonged Riselda’s years beyond any members of her family, it never did bring about a cure. Like the mayor’s tumors, the disease began to eat again at once. The likelihood that the consumption of lifeblood hadn’t been in practice with the remainder of the Grimrooks spoke to Lux’s theory: It was not a family secret passed through the generations. It was knowledge Riselda had discovered all her own.
Knowledge she might have fled with.
Knowledge a burgeoning society might have wished to keep for themselves—
“Will you consider the treatment?”
Corvin’s words burrowed into her like a thorn, and every time she shifted, she felt its sharp bite. All her life, her brilliance had elicited strong reactions. Poor or positive, it never mattered. She was rare. Powerful. She could do a remarkable thing. And for many years, it remained the only part of herself she was proud of. Her one source of confidence. It still was.
It is all I have. Who will I be if it’s gone?
