Page 72 of This Monster of Mine

Someone did.He had. Livia had. She nearly had. And it was all futile. There were no answers. There was no proof. Their deaths had faded into legend and conjecture and conspiracy. Everything she’d fought for, hoped for over four years of hell, had been for nothing.

Her records were gone.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A booted footstep by her head pulled her back to consciousness.

She cringed, fearing the return of the agony that had taken her under. But she felt … nothing. Opening her eyes, she stared at the armored man looming over the healers working on her. Another visitor, and, by the look of his burnished armor, an important one.

She frowned when he brought out an ornate pair of cuffs and fastened them around her wrists. Like she could go anywhere. She didn’t realize that she’d said it aloud, until the man crouched beside her in a disharmonious scrape of metal.

“Everyone wants to go somewhere at the end,” an ice-cold whisper entered her mind.

Her breath caught in recognition at his red irises. “Not me,” she said softly, surprised when her voice worked. Part of her understood why. “I’ve had enough. I’m happy to go.”

Death’s outline went hazy. “Your healers don’t want that.”

She gripped the cuff. “I want to go. There’s nothing waiting for me back there.”

Death looked curious. “How would you know?” His outline blurred once more. After a long look at the healers, he unbuckled the cuff from her. “Perhaps another day.”

“No,” she whispered, but his figure melted into the rain until it was only her and the healers. And the pain when they woke her.

Sarai dressed, utterly devoid of emotion. She didn’t care about the dream. She didn’t care if it was a memory—if so, it was a useless one without a single clue. She stayed wordless on the journey to another bazaar, ignored Kadra’s searching glances, and sat through a dozen trials, then a dozen more. She didn’t care about any of it. She had nothing.

After the Fall, she’d woken to a team of healers putting her back together, and a few vigiles she’d believed equally interested in her welfare. Fury, pain, fear, she’d cycled through it all, but the vigiles had promised that her assailant would pay. Until the third day.

They’d suddenly stopped allowing her food. The queries directed at her had grown blunt.

“Look, we don’t care how many you slept with, but this matter could besmirch the Academiae’s reputation so we’d like it settled. Did anyone push you off? Or did you jump?”

“Why would I jump?”Her voice had quavered.

He snorted.“A life like yours, on your back for everyone. Who wouldn’t jump? Who were you involved with? Why is he paying for your recovery?”

“Who’s paying for my recovery?”she’d asked only to be met with silence.

That day, the investigation had ended, and she’d been thrown on a wagon back to Arsamea. Had the plan she’d concocted back then worked, she’d have saved coin after coin, entered the Academiae at the likely age of thirty, spent four years training as a Petitor. And found that her records were gone. Playing by the system had gotten hernothing. The best part was that if it weren’t for her damned attacker having moved on to killing Petitors, she wouldn’t have gotten here this quickly. Life was a joke.

The climbing sun marked noon. She rubbed her aching temples, debating asking a vigile for a drink of water. To her left, Kadra’s eyes narrowed at the motion, lingering upon her features. After delivering his verdict, he raised a hand.

“We’re done,” he announced to the crowd, who groaned their dis-appointment.

She’d started packing when a sweat-streaked vigile shoved past her to bow before Kadra.

“I’ve just gotten word,” he gasped. “It’s Metals Guildmaster Helvus.”

She rubbed at where the vigile’s elbow had dug into her side. If only Kadra’s admirers had a fraction of regard for her. Feeling empty, she finished the judgment, squeezed through the crowd, and leaned against Caelum, wondering if it was fate or choice that she always ended up on the outside looking in.

It was a problem Kadra wouldn’t understand. His constituents adored him, and his vigiles clustered around him like a wolf pack daily. She couldn’t even mock their loyalty when she’d felt that icy strength. He radiated a charisma devoid of emotion that could still suck anyone into his orbit. PeoplewantedKadra as their leader. What right did she have to suspect him when her only proof of his evil was a half-formed memory from the same mind that had conjured her meeting with Death himself?

“Sarai.” The word, perfectly formed, brushed the back of her neck.

She started, clutching handfuls of Caelum’s mane. The horse gave her a baleful look as she spun to face Kadra.

“What?” she muttered.Wisdom and Wrath.To hear her name in that voice was enough to drive a Saint to lust.

“We’ve an incident at Decimus’s. I’ll need you.”

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