Page 41 of Give the Dark My Love

She seemed to have summed him up rather succinctly. “The latter, I think,” I said. “I’m not sure, but...”

Nedra nodded. “It’s more his style.” She paused. “I think I’ll go.”

“Are you sure?”

“I want to show him that he can’t intimidate me.”

I sat down beside her, and she read in silence for a few moments before turning the page.

“Why did you ask for me to stay with Master Ostrum?” I blurted out.

She didn’t try to deny it. “You have to ask?”

I looked down at my hands. I wanted to hear her say it.

“Tonight,” I said slowly. “Would you like to come with me? Together, I mean?”

Her eyes met mine, alight with hope. “Yes,” she said simply.

NINETEEN

Nedra

Grey’s invitation keptme warm as the ferry drew me across the bay—at least until the winds picked up. The days were getting colder; fall was almost as harsh as winter on Lunar Island, with all the wind and cold but none of the snow. I wrapped my cloak tighter around my frame, breathing into the cloth, my breath warming my face. My smile was hidden by my collar as I remembered the way Grey had saidtogether.

My boat docked, and everyone disembarked. I was halfway up the stone steps when I heard the sounds of another boat arriving. I turned, surprised; the ferry couldn’t have returned that soon.

It wasn’t the ferry to Blackdocks. This ferry had come from the north.

I rushed back down the steps. I didn’t recognize the skipper, but she was grateful for the help as I secured the mooring and then helped the people inside the ferry disembark. The ones who could walk got off first, then I called for stretchers for the dozen or so people whose legs were black and twisted. Potion makers and aides rushed down the steps toward me.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” one of the potion makers—Lufti—told me as I helped him load a middle-aged woman onto the stretcher. “We’re so backed up today.”

“Where did this ferry come from?” I asked, looking to the skipper.

“Hart,” she said.

“I’m from the village beyond the ivy gate,” the woman on the stretcher said.

“The ones that can, come to Hart. I take them here.” The skipper started pulling up the moorings now that her boat was empty of passengers.

I helped Lufti carry the woman from the village beyond the ivy gate up the stone steps. It was a perilous climb, and even thought she was strapped to the stretcher, the bindings pulled against her diseased leg. She moaned.

“It will be okay,” I promised her, trying not to jostle the stretcher too much.

Her laugh was bitter. “No, it won’t,” she said, and I didn’t have the heart to lie to her again.

When we reached the heavy mahogany doors, another aide took over for me. I was left in the foyer, my arms aching, trying to catch my breath. My mind swirled. The ivy gate was just a half day’s ride from my own village. Papa went there often.

I shook myself. There was no time to worry.

I had work to do.

I checked in with the front desk and was sent immediately to help process the new patients. They were sick and scared and overwhelmed and far from home, and at least my accent matched theirs. Mentally, I tracked the villages. None closer to home than the village beyond the ivy gate. I tried to tell them that they were safe now, that the best alchemists in the land were here.

The first person to die that day was a baby.

The mother had fallen sick when she was close to giving birth. She’d hoped it was late enough in the pregnancy to save her child, but the little girl had been born with black swirls over her heart. The mother had given birth just the day before, rushing straight from her labor bed to the boat in Hart. She was still bleeding from thepregnancy, her skin ashen, her eyes sunken. She held her baby with one arm—her other was dead and black and twisted, the fingers useless.

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