It was a cruel thing to do to Adra, who must be watching me care for another woman from the afterlife in Vidalena.
She deserved better than me, but I owe Arlet a debt.
“I need to put you back to sleep,” I say, my voice gentler this time. “But you can rest easy knowing you are watched.”
Her jaw clenches, and for a moment, I think she’ll fight me.
“I don’t want to go to sleep again, Vann.”
The way she says my name makes me pause. I reach down to the only binding I didn’t loosen—the one securing her hand with scarred fingers. As I had done in the salt room, I hook our weakest fingers together.
“I promise to take careof you.”
Her eyes fill with tears and her lower lip wobbles. “All right.”
I don’t move my hand as I press the amethyst against her temple, watching as she inhales sharply. Her lips part, and for the briefest second, I see something raw in how she looks at me.
“Thank you,” she breathes, the words barely a whisper. “For being here.”
I ignore what those words do to me. Instead, I focus on humming a soft tune, letting the melody connect with the crystal.
“Don’t leave,” she says just before her eyes flutter closed. The strain marring her face eases as she rests fully against the table bed.
I stand there, frozen.
Of course I would stay. I wish I could promise her this would be the last time she’d have to fall asleep in fear.
Instead, I let go of her finger and sit back down. I pick up a covered paint pot from beside my brushes, along with one of the obsidian cards. Before applying the paint, I reach for a bottle of alcohol to clean the surface and ensure adhesion.
I inhale deeply, letting the scent of oils and minerals fill my lungs, grounding me.
“This will be all right in time,” I murmur into the open air, my voice quiet. I’m not sure who I’m saying it to. Her… or myself.
Chapter 17
ARLET
My dreams are less foggy than before. The suffocating, immobilizing darkness no longer holds me captive, but a swirling gray mist still infiltrates my mind, billowing around me like an unspoken warning. I walk forward, compelled by something I can’t name—an itch at the back of my thoughts pushing me on.
I pass through the city in my dream, moving through Enduvida’s familiar tunnels. I see them—the successful mates from the Mating journey sharing their blood and promising their lives before Mother Liana, their forms flickering through the haze like ghosts.
Both laughter and the smell of roasted meat spill from Hammerhead Hall and the songs of celebration echo down the corridors. I hear the clash of weapons, the rhythmic whir of a whetting stone grinding against golden enduar metal as the warriors train in the newly renovated practice barracks.
I hear the songs of death from a funeral I would never attend.
The city moves on without me. My students play and chant and sing. Sweet Miti from class. Heat spreads over my skin I promised her a gift, and then didn’t go back. Feli, my teaching assistant, stands over her. The young girl is leaning over a large sheet of stone paper, painting.
Enduvida doesn’t need my teaching or my weaving.
I follow the paths downward, deeper into the Fuegorra caverns. The air hums with the songs of the crystals—thousands of them, vibrating, alive, and ancient.
I wonder—not for the first time—what it must be like to speak through the stones to the gods. To be heard.
But then the mists reveal my bedroom.
The blood stains the bed. Diego’s body is mangled beyond recognition. A knife appears in my hand.
I stand over the corpse. I’d stabbed him so many times that his flesh was pulled apart in strips. So much blood has spilled over the bed that it’s soaked the floor beneath in red.