Page 92 of The Heartless One
She could have been kind. She could be benevolent. But when had Fortuna ever been benevolent toward her?
Jessamine lifted her hand and twisted her fingers, pinching the shadows and then sending them to her cousin again. They writhed over Fortuna’s body, and the woman shrieked as they tunneled back into her mouth. She couldn’t even close her jaw to prevent it from happening.
A splash of blood speared the air before her cousin, and then a small bit of meat splattered onto the floor.
Fortuna’s tongue.
“Let’s go,” Jessamine whispered, holding on to Sybil’s hands.
“You want to leave her alive?” Sybil asked.
“Leon is vain. He won’t want a consort who cannot stand by him as a trophy wife. And everyone else? They’ll look at her with pity… and then they’ll forget her entirely.” She leaned on Sybil until the doorway, pausing to look back at Fortuna one last time.
She saw the moment Fortuna caught her own reflection. The scream of horror was ragged and raw before her cousin turned to her and shouted. Jessamine could understand Fortuna’s words, even missing her tongue. “Kill me! Kill me!”
She shook her head. “I used up all my mercy for you long ago, cousin. Do it yourself if you seek death.”
And then she walked out of the house, Sybil supporting her, as she contemplated just how horrific the future could and would be.
Something was wrong. Elric couldn’t explain the sensation, only that his stomach twisted and his blood boiled. The sacrifices to him were public and very hard to forget. The amount of blood that coated the town square had shocked even him. But he was bloated now, flush with power even as he stood with his coven to provide the protection they so desperately needed.
It wouldn’t be smart to stay here much longer. There were more men with muskets. More regular citizens who had emerged from their homes with swords and knives and pickaxes, anything they could fight with. His time was running out.
Even Agnes had looked over her shoulder at him, deep hollows under her eyes. Casting spells like this wasn’t easy on anyone’s body, even worse for those who were unused to it. Jessamine needed to hurry.
But then Hugo shifted at the edge of the shield Elric had summoned, and the entire crowd turned to look down a street that was cast in dark shadows. He could feel her there. His Jessamine. His nightmare walked toward him, shuffling her feet as though she had aged a hundred years in the time since he’d seen her.
And something loosened in his chest. He hadn’t been afraid she would die, not really. But there was always the fear that he would miss her in the realm beyond. That she would slip through his fingers and move through death when he wasn’t ready for her to do so. He hated the thought of her in that darkness alone, or worse, banished to wander the realms without a soul for the rest of her life.
Because he couldn’t help himself, because she deserved to be honored, he allowed his shadows to part above her. There was no sunlight streaming in through the hole he made above her head. Time had passed faster than he’d thought. Instead, moonlight illuminated his gravesinger, who straightened the moment she realized people could see her.
Sybil released her hold on Jessamine’s waist, allowing her to walk on her own. Elric watched with pride as the princess pieced herself back together. Like armor, she forced her spine pin straight, clenched her hands at her sides, then released them in graceful, delicate lines. Only then, ever so slowly, did Jessamine pull back her hood.
The moonlight played over her pale features, highlighting the stunning beauty of her dark hair and the sharp peaks of her cheekbones. But it was the wound at her throat that glowed with power. A silver scar sealed by magic, a scar that marked her as someone they all knew.
One person in the crowd whispered her name with the reverence she deserved. “Lady Jessamine?”
Then another. “Is that the princess?”
“Surely not. She died!”
“There were rumors, though. Rumors that she was back.”
And then they all looked at him. Some of them were piecing it together. He could see the moment they realized Princess Jessamine Harmsworth had found herself a god.
She walked up to him with her shoulders held straight and strong. Not an inch of her looked like she had just been in battle, but there was a shadow in her eyes and a weight on her shoulders that hadn’t been there before. It turned his stomach to see her like this. To know that there was something desperately wrong. Worse than ever before.
And still, she kept her eyes on him. She didn’t even look at the crowd with torches and weapons who could so easily attack her. Because she didn’t have to.
Her history preceded her. They all knew who she was, and they had loved her when she was alive. Yet some of them now feared her, because they knew she was dead.
“A ghost?” someone whispered to his left.
“No, surely she wouldn’t wander her kingdom as one of the undead, unless…”
A young woman watched him through the shadow shield he had created. Not Jessamine, but him. He could feel the hollow in her, just waiting to be filled with magic like all trueborn witches were.
Then the woman’s lips quirked in a half smile. “The Deathless One returned when someone prayed to him, saying this kingdom was broken. Perhaps he is here to fix things.”
