Page 66 of The Spark that Ignites
Emmery fought her knotting stomach, deciding to deal with this like everything else, as she studied the room closer. Masculine bottles of fragrance and an empty pot that once likely housed a plant, sat atop a chest of drawers and a glass shield with their wolf insignia hung above a cross hatched window. But it was the countless charcoal sketches of animals, eagle wings, silhouettes of shapely women, and strange dark creatures tacked to the wall with knives that tipped her off.
“I’m—this is your room, isn’t it?” she said, sheepishly.
Vesper gave her a cheeky nod. “But you should know, I’m breaking my rules. You’re the first woman I’ve allowed in my bed.”
She flushed and his eyes roamed over her reddened cheeks, replying with a sly smirk. She wanted to slap it off his face.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she muttered, admiring an intricate drawing of an elk bathing its calf in a river. Feeling afriend would, she commented, “Also, I didn’t know you could draw.”
He fidgeted with a dagger on his belt, looking anywhere but at her. “You never asked.”
She hadn’t asked about a lot. And her hazy memory from the fever wasn’t helping. She wasn’t sure how much was real and what was a twisted creation of her own mind from their trudge through the kingdom.
Emmery cast her gaze down. “So, I remember you carrying me. Walking through the streets. I passed out again when we entered the castle. You don’t still live here, do you?” He couldn’t, right? Not with the state of everything outside the walls.
“No, I haven’t been back since—” He sighed, tugging at his bloody tunic. “Well, since the fire. It’s complicated.”
“It’s a long story, I’m assuming?”
Vesper nodded, his eyes tired. “One for later. But ... welcome to Castle Dusk, I guess.”
“Also ...” Emmery blinked, remembering the four wise violet eyes. “You have a pet raven?”
At that, Vesper huffed a laugh. “That’s Quill. He’s my familiar.”
She arched her brow. “Like a pet?”
“Sort of. I can conjure him with magic, but not all familiars are so easily summoned.” He eyed Aera who rubbed herself affectionately on Emmery. “Kind of like your furry vermin here.”
Aera shot him a sneer, her snaggle tooth appearing, and Emmery bit back a grin. Maybe Aera was her familiar with the way they bonded. She sure followed her around like she was.
“Do you need anything else?” Vesper asked, fingering his bloody tunic. “I smell like the Sachrin Bog. Ugh, I need a wash.”
Emmery studied the dirt crusted under her fingernails, catching a whiff of her own ashen, sweaty odour. “I should bathe too.”
EMMERY LOUNGED IN THEebony claw foot tub, large enough for two or three people, and ignored the thick layer of dust coating everything. Curtains bound by silver ropes bordered the cross hatched window revealing the night sky. How long had she been asleep? Her internal clock was set to time on some other plane.
She toed the magical lever, adding more hot water to the sea of bubbles, as Aera perched on the edge, batting it with a curious paw. Emmery’s clothes lay in a soiled heap on the floor, the leg torn from the serpent's bite. But after calling forth her Hollow magic for the ugly, red wound, no silver threads responded. Emmery rolled her eyes. Of course she couldn’t heal herself. Typical. Ducking underwater one last time, pulse hammering, Emmery rose from the tub.
The woman staring back in the full-length mirror was nearly unrecognizable. The rosy birthmark blemishing the lower quarter of her face still remained, but the rest of her skin was a foreign healthy hue—her golden vestige, a gift from the gods, kissing her skin.
Like it was always meant to be there.
The jagged scar over her heart and lower abdomen, from that attack those years ago, never faded unlike the lost memories, lingering as a reminder of what she couldn't have.
She traced her pactum scar as she studied hercavaeandzvezda, the same hue as her birthmark, nestled below her collarbones. But what truly caught her eye, thrusting the air from her lungs, was the slithering black mark between her breasts.
A serpent squeezing a heart. The same as Vesper’s.
Shadowheart.
That’s what he’d called it.
Shit, that was new.
As if she needed any more nonsense or magical burdens.
Grabbing an oversized robe from a nearby hook, she cinched it, her hair soaking the back as she threw open the door.
