The bedroom door was shut.
My boots hit the corner as I threw them off, one after the other. “Mama?”
No answer. That was my answer.
I approached the bedroom door, leaned my ear against it. Silence. I rapped twice on the wood. “It’s me. Eury.”
The bed creaked. A sob broke out from the other side.
The knob turned slowly beneath my hand. She lay in the rumpled bed, fetal, her cheeks wet and hair mussed over her face.
Her brown eyes met mine. Then they shifted toward the uncovered window, toward a sight I couldn’t see even if I looked out that window myself.
No, no, no?—
I pulled the door shut, turned away. I didn’t know why days like this happened. I did, but not entirely. Something about fear. Something about grief. Something from her past she wouldn’t tell me.
In a few hours she would rise, and she would hate that I was dirty. Best to get clean before she woke up. Days like this, everything was fraught. Better not to undo the precarious peace.
I headed for the door. Outside, it had begun to rain.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Dorian
“She is pretty, isn’t she?”Caustrix’s eyes danced with the flames. “Almost prettier on the inside than the outside.”
I opened my eyes. My cloak lay bunched under my head. My hip hurt. How long had I slept? Impossible to know, except grogginess swept over me as I sat up.
Before me, the blue flames burned high. Eury stood inside them, unseeing.
I reached for my canteen and took a long swig. My only real marker of time: the canteen was nearly empty.
Caustrix’s tail swept across the ground. “She can’t live forever without food and water. Acid may lace her veins, but she’s no dragon.”
“She’ll escape.”
“You’re less certain now than you were. I can hear it in your wavering little vocal cords.”
“She’ll escape.”
Caustrix’s gaze flicked to me and narrowed. “You love her.”
The words hit me like a wall. “I?—”
“Desperately. More than the lastveyre.You wear it like that brand on your chest.” His head lowered, approaching. “Desperation is good. Desperation makes kingdoms rise.”
I corked the canteen. “I don’t want to raise a kingdom.”
“But she does. I’ve seen inside her head. See it now.”
I flicked a hand at him. “Eat me or leave me be.”
He let out a gravelly chuckle. “Would you like to make a deal,veyre?”
“Absolutely not.”
“If she escapes, she’ll face all three of them in the Killing Fields.” He’d already seen everything, plumbed the whole inside of Eury’s head. “No kneeling—it’s certain death. And you can’t save her. You’re but a male of your species.”