Page 31 of Silver in the Bone

And as for the venom ... the pain, fever, hallucinations, and blindness I’d known about, and I wasn’t afraid of any of them. Of course, all of that was only if the venom didn’t kill me. Not even Nash had been willing to tempt those odds.

There’s nothing wrong with the way you are, Tamsy, he’d said when I’d suggested the venom. If you aren’t born with the sight, that’s the way of it.

Clearly there was something wrong with me, otherwise he wouldn’t have left me behind, time and time again.

“You’ve never been a coward before,” I said, curling my fingers around the vial. “And you’re not about to start now.”

I picked up Ignatius by his candlestick holder and blew out his wicks, then wrapped him in his length of silk. “Time for bed.”

With him safely secured in the bag, its straps double-knotted, I lay back on the sleeping bag again. Just unscrewing the dropper was enough to release a truly evil smell into the air.

Thinking twice, I reached for my traveling pack’s thick leather strap. I bit down on it as I brought the dropper above my right eye.

A single bead of crimson liquid clung to the end of it, shivering as my hand shook.

Then it fell.

I groaned around the strap, my free hand clawing at my sleeping bag as my body twisted and curled, absorbing the agonizing burn of the venom.

I couldn’t do a drop in the other eye—I couldn’t do it—

You have to, you have to, you have to, my mind chanted. For Cabell.

I lifted the vial again, pulling the last bead of venom into the dropper. Willpower and courage weren’t enough. I had to hold my left eye open to keep my body from instinctively blinking the poison away.

My legs kicked up and my teeth tore down into the strap, breaking it. The poison worked through my mind, darkening the roots of my thoughts before setting it all on fire.

The air went black around me. I clawed at my face, biting the inside of my mouth to keep from moaning.

Can’t see, I thought desperately, even as a voice, calm and low, whispered, It’s a side effect. It’ll pass.

Did I say that out loud? Was someone in my tent?

My blood rose to a boil in my veins, drawing up things I didn’t want to see but couldn’t forget. Other fires. Places near and far and nowhere now. Faces long gone.

Faces of the dead.

Nash’s voice rolled through my mind, unbidden.

Come on now, Tamsy, it’s not so bad.

There was something there in memory, surfacing. Golden light. Sand. Then it was gone, chased by the shadowy monsters gathering outside my tent. I tried to drag myself away as the entrance to the tent fluttered, unzipping slowly. Eyes flashed gold in the dark, burning with hunger, only to burst in showers of sparks.

My breath came as quick as my thundering heartbeat, and I couldn’t get enough oxygen, couldn’t cool the fire in my chest. Sweat poured down my face, stinging my dry lips. Once I started vomiting, I couldn’t stop, even as my stomach knotted with agony. I clawed at my eyelids, desperate to remove the burning glass shards slicing into my eyes and hollow the sockets. Heat billowed within me, until I was sure my skin would blister from the inside.

There was no sleep, there was no waking, there was only this. Hours passed in seconds, seconds like hours. The visions came in a dark prism, each making less sense than the last. Vaults. Curse sigils. A sword cutting through bone. A hound running across the sky. A hooded figure walking into unknowable depths of black water.

But they slowed, the torrent of images merging into one. I saw myself at the ocean’s edge, two swords crossed against my shoulders, a growing stain of crimson at the hem of my white gown as the tide tore at it again and again.

“Bird?”

I turned my head toward the shadow at the entrance to my tent. Its shape quivered as it moved into the pool of a single lantern’s light. Something heavy and freezing cold pressed against my forehead, and I squirmed away.

“What in hellfire did you take?” There was a sound like rummaging, and he swore again.

Thief, I thought. He was a thief. No—not real. A hallucination like the rest of them. A memory of something that would never happen.

The heat inside me was suffocating, moving through my muscles like a razor. I twisted, trying to release it.

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