Page 103 of This Dark Descent
“Shira,” she said.
“What?” The guard’s hand went to his revolver. She tracked the motion, burning verillion on instinct, but she’d used it all up in the fight with Kyvin, and all that replied was an empty echo.
“Shira.”
The other guard said something and disappeared into the pub. A moment later, Shira Adair returned with him. Without a word, she took Ari’s arm and led her inside.
Ari saw nothing of her surroundings. One moment she was standing in the dark of night, and the next she was sitting in a plush armchair by a crackling fire in a loft above the pub. She could still feel the squelchingsensation of the stake sliding between Kyvin’s ribs, the hot splash of blood against her cheek. It was still there. She could feel it dry and cracking against her skin.
Something soft and warm pressed against her hand, and she looked down to see Shira offering her a damp cloth. Ari took it, her movements mechanical as she wiped the blood first from her face, then her hands. It stained the cloth crimson.
For a moment, she simply stared at the stains.
Blood on her hands. Blood on the walls.
She sucked in a sharp, shuddering breath. Shira said nothing, only slid onto the wide arm of the chair and laid an arm about Ari’s shoulders. Ari didn’t even think, she just pressed her face into Shira’s side and cried.
Sunlight was trickling in through the wide windows of the loft by the time she stopped. Some part of her knew that she had to pull herself together. That the final Illinir race was that afternoon, and Damien was still in prison, and Mikira didn’t know what was happening, but her body felt hollow, nothing but a marionette with its strings cut.
She sat beside the fire now, a cup of tea going cold on the table. Shira had sent people to deal with the body, then brought fresh clothes that Ari had changed into like a ghost slipping out of its skin. The wound on her side had scabbed over thanks to the verillion, but it still smarted with every breath.
Shira didn’t ask her what happened. If Damien was a vault, his sister was the iron that formed it. She could have sworn the woman lent Ari her sheer force of will, and Ari clung to it like driftwood in a storming sea. Everything inside her turned and turned, flashing images through her mind: Rivkah screaming, her Saba’s cold, dead eyes.
Shira looked up from the book she’d been reading sprawled across the armchair. Ari felt the weight of her eyes, so much gentler than her brother’s, but just as strong.
“Do you feel up for a short walk?” she asked.
Ari followed Shira out a back entrance and onto a quiet street. The shops were still closed, windows shuttered against the night. A newsboy rode by on a bike, tossing papers at doorsteps. Mikira’s face stared up from them alongside images of the other Illinir finalists, the headline announcing the race’s conclusion to come that day.
They turned down a narrow side street that emptied into a tranquil courtyard wrapped in trees. A fountain trickled quietly at the center, surrounded by wooden benches, and a set of low steps led up to a white-stone building on their right.
A Kinnish temple.
Ari stopped walking. “I can’t go in there.” She felt dirty and coated in blood, though she’d washed the last of it away hours ago.
Shira looped her arm through Ari’s. “You have nothing to fear.”
Words twisted and stuck in Ari’s throat, but she didn’t fight as Shira led her up the stairs and into the temple.
Lacquered cherrywood benches gleamed in the morning light trickling in through the stained-glass windows, illuminating the high arched ceilings and delicate gold decorations of the ornamental ark housing the holy texts. It was by no means garish, but it was rich with life and care, the sort of place that felt like coming home.
It was empty, the morning service not yet begun. It was strange to step inside and recognize the significance of the paintings of the Harbingers on the walls, to see the individual Arkala gathered in the shelves by the door, their covers worn away by countless fingers. She knew more about her people than she ever had, and yet she felt farther away than ever before.
“Sit.” Shira slid onto one of the benches.
Ari followed, feeling lost and out of place. Sensing her discomfort, Shira laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to do anything, Ari. Just sit here.”
She did.
She sat and listened to the silence of a holy place. She let it weave through and around her, let it fill her up like a deep breath after a lifetime without air.
And when she let it out, the whispered words came with it. “I killed him.”
Shira let her talk.
“He told me to leave the book alone, but I didn’t listen.” Ari curled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms about them. “I just wanted to know what was inside. But once I opened it, I couldn’t stop. I would sneak out every night to read from its pages, though I had no idea what the words said. They still felt familiar, like a word that’s been misspelled, but you still know its meaning.”
The first day she’d opened the spellbook had been like stepping from shadows into the sunlight. Its touch had made her feel alive, and she’d craved the feeling ever since.
