Page 90 of The World Undone

The room was adorned in golds and rich shades of green. The curtains around a large gold-framed bed were made of a heavy velvet-like material, and the knickknacks lining the shelves signaled a lifetime of meticulous curating and collecting.

Still, as lavish as the decor was, the air was rimmed with floating dust particles, like it hadn’t been cleaned in weeks.

A small cough pulled my attention back to the bed.

The bedding was so thick, piled high with blankets and more throw pillows than one piece of furniture could reasonably hold, that I’d almost missed the frail figure sitting amongst them.

Dark clumps of muddy-brown hair were gray at the roots and patchy, as if several sections had been ripped from the pale, blood-crusted skin of her scalp, and her blue eyes looked marled with black, as if someone had spilled a few drops of ink in their depths.

She coughed again, and sat straighter, squinting like she couldn’t properly see us, her nostrils flaring slightly as if to catch our scent.

“Who the fuck is that?” I whispered out the side of my mouth, but the woman clearly heard me.

Her head turned to me and she gripped the bedding, relying on its bulk to help lift her up.

One thin, pale leg appeared around the side of the bed, then another. After a few moments, she straightened herself up and took a few steps towards us.

“Amalia?” Evelyn’s expression was one of horror as she watched the frail woman move towards us. The closer she came, the more unwell she looked. Bruises and half-healed wounds covered nearly every inch of her, and dark veins bubbled against her papery skin, like every inch she moved pushed them closer to the edge of bursting. “What the hell happened to you?”

Amalia?

This was the scary council member we were here to shake down for powerful shadow magic?

She looked a breath away from passing out.

“Evelyn?” The woman winced, her voice little more than a soft croak, “You’re supposed to be dead.”

Levi shifted further in the room, standing between the frail woman and our mother.

I resisted the eye roll threatening to escape. This woman was not a threat.

“Well, obviously I’m not. What happened to you?” she asked again. I took a few steps forward while they shuffled awkwardly through small talk, searching amongst the cluttered shelves for anything that might possibly resemble the stone we were after. Amalia was clearly a pack rat, but of the fanciest variety. The place looked like a museum, like she’d surrounded her deathbed with a shrine—an attempt to carry the things that mattered most to her into the next life, perhaps. The result was just cluttered and gaudy. “Is this from the shadow magic?”

The woman’s lip curled at that. As she shifted, a sharp metallic clang rang through the room.

When I spun back towards her, I noticed something I’d missed initially. Her small, veiny ankle was clamped tight to a large, thick chain. She tugged and shifted against it, her eyes rolling back in her head slightly as some sort of fit took over.

Spit flew from her chapped lips as she hissed and struggled against the restraints, her arms outstretched as if she could pull Evelyn to her if she just reached far enough.

The effort did nothing but leave blood trailing down her foot. The floor was littered with slivers of skin that had shed away from her ankle being rubbed raw.

My stomach tightened and I dropped a small trinket I’d picked up off a shelf onto the floor. This scene was all too familiar now, all too hopeless.

“The shadow magic,” I whispered, leaning back until my eyes met Dec’s. “She’s been tainted by it,” I swallowed back the annoying rush of bile threatening to tear through my throat, “like my dad.”

“Oh Amalia,” Evelyn took a step back, her face a few shades paler than usual, “you reckless, reckless woman.”

The frame of the bed groaned and strained as Amalia pulled towards her.

Like Levi, I found myself inching closer to the woman, putting myself between her and Evelyn, who she so very clearly had a craving for…well, eating, probably.

I bit back my disgust and reached for Max’s fire. I wouldn’t use it unless I absolutely had to, because doing so meant the others wouldn’t be able to. But I kept my awareness of it clear in case Amalia got loose.

The bed was sturdy, reinforced with metal and bolted to the floor.

“Who tied you here?” Levi’s voice was metallic and harsh.

Amalia was beyond conversation, overcome with hunger at the temptation of so many of us. I’d watched Seamus get to this point more times than I could count. I knew we wouldn’t be getting a word out of her now. Not until she’d had something to eat.

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