Page 8 of Antiletum
The urge to peel back the makeshift bandage Val provided to stop the bleeding is strong. The cloth my husband wrapped around my withering hand was pointless, as he very well knew.
Still, the gesture…
It was enough for me to lower my walls. Just slightly. A mistake. But it’s getting harder and harder every day, warring with my gut and myown fantastical mind, harboring a decade old grief that tries to warp my reality.
With utmost practice, I push those images to the back of my mind. Right where they belong. Where they can’t hurt me.
Grand ebony doors are already open for us. Physical pain from my poor decision is a wonderfully welcome distraction from my own mind beneath the ribbed vaults of the foyer. From all the unfamiliar faces surrounding me after a life of being cooped up and quieted.
I constantly feel like I’m being watched here.
Already, the short-lived profuse bleeding from my offering in thespirlinaryhas begun to crust, to fester, the exposed tissue on my hand drying and rotting towards necrosis. My price has been rapidly increasing since the Ellden clock’s minute hand first twitched backwards and I’m eternally grateful that my trek to the infirmary is almost at an end.
Another thing I blissfully ignore (a skill that I have honed well): wondering what it will take to restore the upended balance, recalling the flow of blood from the priestesses at my wedding. Wondering if the balm ofantiletumI’m about to receive will right the Ellden clocks, as it once did. Or if perhaps the newly reinvigorated thump of the Heartstone in theStrigiForest might complicate matters.
It was foolish, calling on my necromancy today. I knew it was. But I couldn’t resist, as I so often can’t. Even with all the hardships and heartache it’s caused me. Necromancy is a part of who I am.
The dream I had of Rainah the night of my wedding, waking me from the comforting cage of my new husband’s arms, has haunted me, flipping my world upside down. Yet again.
In the last few months I feel as if my life is nothing but an hourglass, constantly being turned by a cruel hand at random intervals, shaking my sands and making everything start anew in a drift of disorientation.
Don’t trust him.
That death rasp of Rainah’s voice was like a pick of ice plunging into my heart, doing more than just literally waking me from sleep, but pulling me from a reality that now feels like it was the dream—too good to be true. A short one, lasting only hours after setting eyes on my new husband, the full definition of tall, dark, and handsome. The intensity of our wedding; of all that I saw and felt upon first seeing Val; of the ritual binding us and settling us as Lord and Lady, the heads of theNoctuafaction,was a magic all its own.
I was a naive girl that night, lost in grief and longing, grasping for bright possibilities.
But Rainah’s warning from death immediately turned my skin cold where before it was warm in the embrace of the man I am bonded to. Forever. No escape. The dream of my departed sister was so much deeper than just a night time vision, crafted by the chemicals of my sleeping brain.
It was a premonition.
Somehow, Rainah’s clairvoyance found a way to connect with my necromancy from the beyond, two magicks that don’t often touch brushing together in warning.
Don’t trust him.
Slowly, I crawled from Val’s bed, spotlighted in silver moonlight. I had to fight against my newly wed instincts, my desperation to believe that what I wanted wasreal. I had to fight the urge to bring my lips to Val’s, freshly healed like mine from the salve we used; to wake him from his slumber in order for us to truly take each other for the first time, outside of a ritual and what was required of us. Connecting our bodies, souls, and magic.
I wanted to keep living in my short lived delusions.
Scurrying quietly away from him, I looked back once to find a furrow between Val’s brow, sensing in sleep that my warm body was no longer molded into his. Leaving him cold and alone, I crept away into the night.
I had in mind to trek to thespirlinary, to find solace in the presence of theNocturne. Soak in the rose windows. Trace my hands over porous stone and engravings in the walls, the statues lining them. Arc my fingers over bumps and lines and etchings of the owl, fox, and caracal: the breathers of life.
Thespirlinaryback at home was a place of peace and comfort for me. The only one I often found. The only place I could bring myself to use my necromancy, expressly forbidden from doing so elsewhere. Bare feet cold and soaking in the spring dew, that whisper from my sister came to me again as I was halfway across the grounds.
Fainter.
Farther away as the sky shifted from indigo to a harsh purple bruise.
But still…
Don’t trust him.
Breath halted in my lungs, fine hairs prickling in my pores. And I turned heel and ran straight to a spare chamber I saw on my tour of the manor on the opposite wing from Val’s, high up in a tower. Far away from anyone at all. I decided in the dawn hours to make it my own until we would go to Omnitas, to our true home at The Citadel.
Rainah’s gnarled whisper grates at me even now, hurrying through Greystone to see Nelda the physician.
The same one following me day in and day out, nearly driving me to madness. That madness is what pushed me to fully practice my necromancy alone, hoping that the housing of thespirlinaryand use of moonwater and flesh would help suppress my price. A silly notion. My magic is tied to my husband now. And the price is high for anypaired wed person who dares to practice their gifts without the balance of their spouse.
