As we entered the foyer, notes of wood and mint wafted from the wreath of pine and holly. I’d been told it was supposed to bring peace and longevity to the household.
“Everyone is on the third floor. In…” She cleared the hoarseness in her voice. “Their bedroom.” Damia rubbed her wrist, over the bones where swirls of ink blended with her skin. A few birch trees encircled her forearm, the blooming vegetation concealing the silhouette of a sparrow angling its wings in a landing position.
A leader’s tattoo.
Gedeon clutched the newel post, his knuckles as pale as the walls. Tension emanated from him like air blurring above a fire. His foot hovered above the first step of the staircase, the riser such a rich reddish shade it reminded me of poppies I’d seen a photograph of in a disintegrating book from Ilasall’s black market.
“Zion?” I pried his fingers off his bicep. He wouldn’t cease drumming a melody on the sheath strapped to his upper arm.
The habit seemed to steady him. Granted, usually it held him at bay only until he could wander into the training rings or find an enemy to play with, a new doll to beautify in streaks of scarlet, but now… He was looking everywhere but at the stairs and the two floors they led to.
His and Gedeon’s silence had become a poison disintegrating my airways. It’d escorted us the entire ride to Conall’s house and twined around my neck like vines of my tattoo did around my wrist.
Despite my begging, Zion had refused to tell us anything, insisting that we had to see it to believe it. Combined with Gedeon’s jaw verging on shattering, they’d imbued me with trepidation.
At least I could thank the gods Zion had covered his forearm. Already his blood had saturated the gauze concealing the path the lucky bullet had dug out.
Grimacing at the smears of mud we’d left on the mahogany floor, I took Zion’s hand in mine. “What is all this about?” I asked, masking my surprise at his clammy palm.
Something was terribly wrong.
He stared at a pair of large sneakers, the hue of seaweed thrown against the wall in the foyer, one shoe laying on its side, as if someone had kicked them off in a rush.
I gave Zion a short squeeze.
His vacant gaze dragged to mine, aimed at nothing. So empty that hollowness penetrated my chest, severed the tendons holding my heart, and sent it tumbling down to my heels.
“They’re expecting us,” Damia murmured. But her straight back resembled a veil of false strength. “We should go.”
With legs forged out of lead, Gedeon climbed up the stairs, not a glance at the three of us following his trail, Zion a walking statue beside me, Damia a guardian at our backs.
Two dozen steps, and we reached the second floor. Thin curtains fluttered in what looked like a spare room belonging to someone who loved to paint—an unfinished mural of daisies stretched across two walls.
Another round of twenty-four steps, and our hike came to an end—the third floor welcomed us with a hush. No one dared to speak a single syllable.
Leading us down the short hallway, Damia snapped the quiet. “Straight ahead. Their bedroom is the last one.”
Gedeon pushed the door handle down?—
Broken furniture littered the space. Chairs lay in pieces. Blocks of wood, which probably had once formed a desk, dotted the floor. Drawers hung half-ripped out of bedside tables. Sketches someone had made with a graphite pencil adorned the ruins. Bedsheets stained in…red formed a heap at the foot of the bed.
Zion’s palm in mine ceased feeling solid. The world rippled as if I was underwater. Pressure plugged my ears, the sound waves rebounding off my eardrums, and I missed whatever Damia was saying to Nissa and Dain standing by a window.
Trudging across the room, step by step, I registered my surroundings in a count, one, two, three, and five, and twenty-five, and fifty-five, number after number, on a scale from one to an infinity of…
Loss.
Because the body sprawled on the bed was Conall’s.
Three dark splotches marred his linen button-up shirt, part of the matching sandy outfits he and his partners had worn during their wedding celebration.
He gazed into nothing, his complexion as pasty as Aanya’s, her…corpse slumped on the floor. A blotch of crimson soiled her calm expression—a circular hole in the left side of her forehead, right where Nissa had kissed her during the binding ceremony.
Conall had been stabbed, exactly how the sight of Gedeon falling to his knees beside his dead friend pierced my chest.
Aanya had been shot, similar to how Zion’s refusal to leave the doorway burrowed through me like the bullet had done to Aanya.
“What happened to Kali?” Nissa’s question pulled me out of the daze dulling my senses. Leaning against the windowsill, arms crossed, her stiffness as edgy as the strands of her short blond hair tickling her temples, she scrutinized me.
