Page 126 of Secrets of Graves and Gold

We lead the horses inside, past clumps of rubble from the partly collapsed ceiling. A pungent earthy scent fills my nose.

I rest my hand against one of the gritty walls. A pang shoots through my palm where the place I stabbed it has sealed over.

Rheave touches my back more carefully than usual. “Ivy? Are you injured anywhere else?”

I turn to face him. The worry on his face breaks my heart.

My voice comes out hoarse. “No. You got me away before anyone could hurt me. You see? It’s a good thing you were there.”

He beams at me so brightly that an answering rush of affection wells up in my chest. “It was.” He tips his head toward the other men. “Casimir stabbed someone who tried to lunge at you. And Alek grabbed another horse so we could get away quickly.”

Giving them credit too. When I look around at the others, I’m met with smiles so tender I can’t doubt they’re genuine.

They really do accept our daimon-man. He’s become a vital part of our group so gradually I didn’t totally recognize it.

And maybe I can accept that this man who isn’t totally a man fits into a piece of my heart I didn’t know was still empty. But that’s hardly my biggest concern right now.

How many people did I injure in the past hour? How horrible a fate did I consign my lovers to?

My legs wobble. I drop to a crouch, and Casimir is there, wrapping his arm around me from the other side.

“It’ll be all right, Kindness,” he says.

The gentleness of his voice that I don’t deserve cracks through the dam inside me. I sob, and tears flood my eyes.

“Ivy!” Alek drops to his knees in front of me. Rheave makes an anguished sound and tightens his own grip on my body.

All I can do is gasp and press my hands against my face in a futile attempt to stem the deluge of tears.

Have they ever seen me cry before? I can’t remember the last time I did—really wept, like this—since even before I met them.

My chest hitches, and more tears gush out.

Julita squirms in the back of my skull. Oh, Ivy. Whatever’s gone wrong, I’m sure we’ll work out a new plan. We’ll still stop the scourge sorcerers. They haven’t won yet.

They haven’t, no. But I’ve already lost.

I gulp a few breaths and manage to get a hold of myself. Stavros looms over us, peering down at me, his mouth twisted at an agonized angle.

“Tell us what you need, Ivy,” he demands. “Tell me whose blood I need to spill for what happened to you back there.”

Gods smite me. They all still think I was the one in trouble when the truth is, I was the cause of it.

I push my hands against my closed eyes as if I can force back the next wave of tears that way. When I’m sure they’re not going to burst out of me just yet, I lower my arms and gaze blankly at my knees, encircled by the men I’ve failed.

The words fall dully from my lips. “Mine. I needed to spill mine. But I didn’t do it soon enough.”

I can hear Rheave’s frown in his voice. “What do you mean?”

“It was me.” My voice breaks.

I close my eyes again, and shadows waver past my eyelids. Distant voices no one else can hear screech in fury.

I gird myself and make myself keep going. “I thought I could do something good with my magic. I thought as long as I balanced everything out, no one had to get hurt, and it would all work out. But… I’m going mad. I’m seeing things, hearing things. It was small enough that I thought I could push through until we’d dealt with the scourge sorcerers; I had to. Except I can’t. It almost took me over tonight.”

Casimir and Rheave press closer in their combined embrace. Alek’s hand comes to rest on my cheek.

The scholar’s voice turns rough. “That’s why you stabbed your hand.”

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