Page 74 of This Dark Descent
“The prince will not be pleased if I return without his horse, Miss Rusel,” he said, not unkindly.
She bit her lip, glancing between the horse and man. He had a thick beard that framed a hard-planed face. From what she’d learned about him, he was a respected enchant breeder from Izir who’d recently taken a position at the castle. Her father would have dug further, but she didn’t have the time or the luxury to be so fastidious. He seemed kind enough.
But Iri…
He was all she had left of Lochlyn. She couldn’t just… She wouldn’t…She dug her nails into her palms, focusing on the sharp pain rather than her welling emotion.
“Listen, lass.” His voice softened. “I’m going to be honest with you. The prince wants this horse. If you think times are tough now, the last thing you want is Prince Darius as an enemy to boot.”
Rezek had nearly destroyed her family. They could not survive the wrath of a prince.
“I can see you have an attachment to him,” he said. “So I’ll double the prince’s offer.”
No.
The word was a solid weight in her throat. She tried to force it out, to tell him to leave, but she knew she couldn’t. Without that money, Ailene might never walk again.
And though it was like tearing out a piece of her heart, she said, “Okay.”
MIKIRA WRAPPED HERarms around Iri’s neck and held him as tightly as she could. The stable master had given her privacy to say goodbye, but alone with him now in his stall, she didn’t know how she could. If only she’d been here when Ailene needed her, if only she hadn’t been so wrapped up in the machinations that had consumed her life, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.
“Miss Rusel?” called the stable master from outside the barn. “I have to be getting back.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and squeezed Iri one last time. Then she led him out of the stall to the stable master’s trailer. She couldn’t bring herself to walk him up the ramp, so she handed over the lead and watched as the stable master secured him inside, closing the gate behind him. Itbarely even registered when he set a pouch of coin in her outstretched hand.
“You take care,” he said solemnly, and climbed into the motortruck.
Mikira’s hand closed around the pouch as the trailer trundled forward, thankful she couldn’t see Iri inside. It was like losing the last piece of her brother, like watching him be taken away all over again. She wanted to chase down the truck and tell him she’d changed her mind. Wanted to fling the coin back into his hands and rip open the trailer.
But she didn’t move.
A breeze tickled the back of her neck. The storm had blown over, leaving pure blue skies and clean, crisp air that betrayed nothing of what’d happened. It felt like a slap in the face. Starling was dead, her sister might never run again, and Iri—oh, Iri. Everything was coming crashing down around her, but the world didn’t slow. It broke and broke and broke, but it never stopped to witness its destruction.
Mikira didn’t move until the trailer was out of sight, then she pocketed the coin and gathered a bag of tools, setting out for the fence. If she stood still, she wouldn’t be able to take it. If she stood still, she would fall apart.
She slowed as she approached the fence. The edges were blackened from the fire, but in the light of day, she saw something she hadn’t before: hatchet marks. Dropping her bag, she knelt before the lowest rung, running her finger along the sharp break.
This fence hadn’t been struck by lightning. It’d been hacked apart and set on fire to cover the evidence.
Someone had sabotaged her.
“Rezek.” His name felt poisonous on her tongue. Who else would have done this? He must have been trying to prevent the prince’s purchase.
This too was her fault.
If she’d never gotten involved with Damien, if she hadn’t angered Rezek, none of this would have happened. Ailene wouldn’t have gotten hurt, and Iri wouldn’t have been sacrificed to the prince in Starling’s place.
Staggering to her feet, she stepped over the fence’s remains. Below, the rush of the river echoed. She released a small prayer that Starling’s body had been washed away and glanced down.
It wasn’t Starling’s body she found.
A corpse lay on the nearest riverbank, tangled in the roots of a tree. The skin was pink and rubbery, the face bloated and distorted from days of decomposition. Its chest was a gaping red maw from where a bullet had torn through it. Bile rose in Mikira’s throat, and she heaved her meager breakfast into the grass. It took her several moments before the nausea passed.
Using the exposed root of a nearby tree as a handhold, she climbed carefully down the muddy bank. The stench struck her as she neared the corpse, and she nearly retched again. Holding her breath, she grabbed the corpse beneath the arms and pulled, dragging it up the bank. The skin felt slimy and squelched beneath her touch.
Letting the body drop to the ground, she rushed to the river’s edge and plunged her hands into the freezing water, leaving them there until the feeling of crawling flesh turned to icy numbness.
When she turned back to the corpse, something glinted. She lifted her shirt over her nose and crouched beside the body, a silver object clutched in its hand. It must have had it in its grasp when it died, long enough for rigor mortis to set in before the storm came, washing it downstream.
