Page 131 of Cursed Shadows 3

I finish up with Aleana’s preening. A few more strokes of the powder over her face, some rogue to blot along her sharp cheekbones, then colour to paint on her lips, and it’s done.

Tris frowns at me, an unspoken question well out of her role as a slave here, and so I ignore it.

Whatever Aleana decides to tell Tris is her own business.

And I find I am tired of intruding on the business of others.

So I take my leave.

I fill the rest of my Quiet with honeywine in the gardens.

Eamon and Ridge murmur softly to each other on the creaky swing opposite me.

I spare them a glance before I return to watching Kalice over the fence. She sprawls out on a blanket and reads from an old, weathered book I suspect is from the human realm.

Later, I soak away the aches and pains in my muscles (courtesy of Dare kicking my ass in training) in the washtub.

Despite my looming fate, despite the fear that eats at me from the inside, that constant twist and coil of my gut, I’m starting to feel lighter in the routine I’ve developed at Hemlock House.

Every phase, I train with Dare. He doesn’t thaw. Not until the lanterns flash blue with time-turning flames, and we sit to share some fruit. That’s when he polishes the ateralum dagger littered with gold flecks, and he uncoils the razored whip from his forearm. That’s when he switches over to a friend, not an instructor.

I visit Aleana before the lessons.

Sometimes the healer is there, fussing over her, a brewer set up at the desk and concocting all sorts of tonics. Often, Melantha is perched on the edge of the bed just to brush Aleana’s hair. Hair that’s more brittle than ever.

Mostly, Aleana finds sleep.

I’m learning that those tonics are to keep her strength up, enough to power the beats of her heart, even if it is rotting the rest of her insides. But without them, her heart will simply fail—she’s already dead.

All she wants is to make it through to the end of the Sacrament—to see her brothers survive it. And then, as she said it, the time will come to “let go of the tether I cling to.”

Now, she is in her bedchamber, likely with Rune.

Daxeel is gone from the home. I don’t know where. I never do. He’s just gone much of the time.

If he returns, I’ll have to distract him, snare him with my company, maybe a spat, anything to stop him from going to visit Aleana. Anything to avoid him walking in on his sister and Rune.

I shudder to think how that would go.

But out here, in the serene softness of the gardens, Kalice’s nose tucked into the pages of a book, Eamon and Ridge snuggledon the bench across from me, the hounds prowling as quietly as this phase’s air—no one speaks.

No one says a word about the ugly sorrows coiled all around us.

Nothing about Eamon’s impending honour duel; my fate in the Sacrament; Daxeel and I at complete odds; and that Aleana won’t make it to the close of the week—she won’t make it through the next two phases when the second passage of the Sacrament begins.

It’s a lovely time to lie.

And poor time to die.

Those thoughts linger as, some time later, I leave the gardens behind for the washroom tucked away on the sixth floor, the one whose tub is as large as a pond.

I soak. I soak until my fingers wrinkle and my toes prune.

Then some more.

It’s well into the Quiet when I find enough time has passed. Rune has probably left Aleana now, and I might be safe to return to my bed.

I take the staircase to the seventh floor.

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