Chapter thirty-five
Luxshookherheadon instinct.No. No, she is not.“She was swallowed by a tree, Shaw. I watched it happen.”
“I know. There were markings—all over the trunk. It looked to be from an axe, and once I could manage the light…they were done from the inside.”
An axe.
The wretched, black-handled axe.
Riselda had taken it with her. She’d cradled it to her chest.But the woman had just administered a killing blow to Bartleby Tamish, and Lux then assumed it was affection that caused Riselda to take it to her living grave.It shouldn’t be possible. But who knew the true meaning of impossible any longer? Lux certainly didn’t.
Shaw shifted underneath her, his hand settling at the base of her neck as if he would keep her in place. “I picked up her trail outside the marshes. When I first found her, she looked like she should be dead. But between one town and the next, she washealthy as ever. I followed her nearly all the way here, but in Loxlen I lost her. I think she’s looking for you.”
Lux’s body shook beneath his hand; her toes began to curl. A rage built within her, burning and burning. Shaw flinched when her nails relinquished her palms to dig instead into his thigh, but he didn’t pull away. Her vision blurred in her fury.
How dare she. How dare she not die.
“If she comes here,” she began, quiet as death. “If she thinks to touch me after all she’s done—sheruinedmylife!”
Lux shoved from the chair, abandoning Shaw. She was heated enough with the rage within her now. In all honesty, she wondered how she didn’t boil alive.
“Her death was my parents’ justice served. Now what? She is just to…befree?To live for a thousand years, destroying whomever she decides is unworthy to be beside her and using those she finds interesting?”
Unfair. That word beat a tempo she couldn’t outrun.
How was it Riselda could live two centuries having been turned a monster by her own vengeance, but Lux had gone mad before two decades?If anyone had done unforgivable things it was that imposter. She should be the one whose mind deteriorated. She should—
“Devil below.” Lux turned her back on the mirror, where she’d been staring into it, unseeing. “I’d forgotten. She’s mad.”
“Her morals are certainly torched.”
“It’s not only that. They’d told me the Grimrook family, Riselda’s family, all died because of thisMania Malus. That at its worst you can’t distinguish reality from your dreams. What if Riselda feels she is in a dream? When really she is acting in reality.” She shuddered, every fine hair standing on end. Sometimes in her dreams she did the most horrific things. Sometimes it wasn’t her parents she stabbed, but others.
Then she woke with silent screams.
“What would they know of her family?”
“They lived here. You would have walked by their portraits. This was their estate. Then it morphed into—” Lux waved her hand about the room. “If she thinks to return here, there will be a reckoning for her, and it might not be me who gets the chance to deliver it. They say she stole from them, and they hate her for it.” She glanced at the overturned pack, crumpled and deflated, and her heart felt like it must have done the same. She sniffed. “Now they’ve stolen it back.”
In the background, Shaw murmured, “Mania Malus?”
“I have to find that vault.”
“Lux.”
“And we have to find where they keep their prisoners.”
“Pardon?”
She caught his furrowed brow and parted lips and said, “Not like the mansion. Or…I don’t believe it is. There’s a girl they have chained somewhere. They diagnosed her with the salt-sick and say she can’t be trusted to work in the manor until she is—” Lux met Shaw’s intense stare.
He crossed his arms, the stained fabric straining against his shoulders. He outright glowered at her. “I’m rather good at discerning patterns, love. This is one. Tell me you see it? You’re whisked away to some obscure landmark and conveniently diagnosed with a disease to render you scared and disbelieving reality. Why? Have they offered you a position? A treatment? Were you to stay on staff as Mothlock’s own necromancer?”
“Except the girl has no real symptoms. None that she can discern, and I—” A flicker caught her attention. Lux turned fully toward the mirror. Her broken brilliance, manifested into a nightmare, hovered inside it.
“Wishes. Hope. Wishes. Hope. All die in the end. Same as you. Same as him.”It gnashed its teeth.“And they diepainfully.”
She couldn’t look away. The apparition’s fathomless eyes captured her own and would not blink.Maybe this is the true Devil, and it lives within me.
