Whit sent a quick glance toward Zora, but she lay as motionless as before. Only her hair and clothing stirred in the wild wind.
He turned back to Livia. The priestess continued her chanting above the shrieking wind. Her eyes opened. They burned with silver light, nearly blinding him with their radiance.
The mixture within the cup glowed, as well. It shone as brightly as Livia’s blazing eyes.
Then, as her chanting reached a crescendo and the wind screamed, the light in the priestess’s eyes flared, as did the light within the cup. The cup itself burned him. Whit could barely stay upright, buffeted by the force of the wind and the ghost’s power.
Keep standing. Do not loosen your grip. This one chance ...
Silence. Stillness. As abrupt and forceful as the tempest that had preceded them.
The light from Livia’s eyes and within the cup faded away. The silver cup cooled in his palms.
“Tell me what to do with this.” He held up the silver vessel. “Put it on her wounds? Make her drink it?”
“Into her mouth.”
He eyed the mixture in the cup. “And this will work.”
The ghost offered a noncommittal wave of her hands. “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps?” He gritted his teeth, fighting for calm. “I do not need
perhaps
. I need certainties.”
“Either it will heal her, or be her final push into death.” The priestess sounded mildly concerned, as if she were discussing the outcome of a child’s game.
“I won’t gamble her life,” snarled Whit.
This snared her attention. “Would you gamble your own?”
“Of course,” he said immediately.
A small, edged smile curved her mouth. “Then drink. A sip only, and you will know. If you survive, then she shall, as well. If you do not ...” She gave a fatalistic shrug. “It may be that you will meet again in the next world. However, as the Dark One has your soul, the greater possibility is that you will journey one place, and the girl will go elsewhere. Many likely outcomes. Who knows how fortune will favor you.”
Fortune.
He delved into the patterns of probability, only to find himself rebuffed, thrown back into the world as others knew it. Arbitrary, uncontrollable.
“The Dark One’s power will not help you here,” tutted Livia. “This hazard is all your own. What will it be, gamester? Will you gamble your life to save hers?”
He did not waste a moment. Whit lifted the cup and drank.
Everything hurt.
Her arms, her legs. Skin. Tongue. Her eyes were a merciless weight pressing into her skull. Her
hair
ached.
In slow increments, Zora tested every part of her, cataloging, measuring. She could find nothing that did not cause her pain. It inhabited her completely, and she wondered if she had ever known life without this unending hurt, or if she ever would know it again. It did not seem likely.
She drew a breath. Her throat ached and more pain spread in branches through her lungs.
This could not be death, could it? Death meant the end of pain. Death also meant that one didn’t need to breathe. Yet she did.
Alive, then. Vividly alive, if this agony tied her to life.
Her eyes opened. She bit back a cry, from both the torment of opening her eyes and the brightness of the sun.
The sun ...
She stared at it. The sky was a brilliant blue, cloudless, hard and cold as glass. Framed by crumbling stone walls. The sun glazed her with chill light. It seemed uninterested in giving off warmth, an unwanted habit it had discarded like drinking or gambling.
Whit. Where is he?
Turning her head sent swords of anguish through her entire body. She could not stop her moan, then, and to her own ears her voice was a weak and piteous thing.
Yet it was strong enough, for suddenly Whit was there, filling her vision. His face was taut, ashen, and deep lines bracketed his mouth. But he was alive, as was she, and to her eyes, no sight could be more welcome.
He knelt beside her. His gaze moved across her face. Fierce joy gleamed in his eyes, eyes that were warmer and more blue than the sky overhead. His lashes were spiked. Wet.
“Whit,” she said, yet it came out barely a whisper, and the effort of speaking cost her. Sound moved in painful ripples through her muscles.
“Zora. Oh, God, Zora.” He bent forward, his forehead touching hers as his eyes closed. The feel of his skin against hers was agony. She did not want him to leave.
Warm drops trickled onto her face. Not from her. Him. Salty against her lips. His hands caressed her hair, face, arms. This was too much, and she cried out in pain.
He snatched his hands away.
“Forgive me, forgive me,” he murmured.
“Nothing to ... forgive.” She tried to look around, but to move meant a fresh wave of anguish. “What ... ?”
His hands hovered above her, as if, being unable to actually touch her, he dared allow his hands as close as possible.
“We escaped the demons. You were injured. Poisoned.”
It came back to her in pieces, shards of a broken nightmare. His estate. Demons. Fire. Flight. And the venom that spread through her body, dragging her into a half-world of darkness, neither dead nor living. She should not have survived. Yet she did.
Whit saw the question in her eyes. “Livia. Her doing.”
“And yours,” Zora whispered.
He looked away. That was when she noticed it. Dried blood in the corners of his eyes.
Slowly, her hand came up. She felt it in piercing darts through her arm, but she pushed herself on, until the tip of her finger touched the outer corner of his right eye. He started at her touch, and his own hand came up to rub away the dark flecks collected there.
“Had to test the antidote,” he explained after a moment. And that was all he would say.
But she read people, just as he did. She saw in his silence what had transpired. The bodily suffering he had endured to make sure the antidote was safe. Blood crusted beneath his fingernails, dark crescents proving that whatever he had borne had been beyond understanding.
For her.
Her own eyes heated, and she could not blink fast enough to clear away their dampness.
He would not linger on the subject. “You must be hungry. Thirsty.”
The thought of eating anything sent a wave of stomach-churning pain through her. “Water,” she croaked.
He pressed a silver cup to her lips, and though the water was cold and sweet, she could barely swallow it. Most of the water dribbled from her mouth, but she was too exhausted and hurting to care how feeble she must look.
“There’s a spring not but a dozen yards from here.” He gently dabbed at her lips with a scrap of linen. “I think that’s why this church was first built. It must have been an ancient sacred spring. The church followed, supplanting the pagan.”
He spoke as if testing what it might be like to talk about meaningless things. His voice was hoarse, unused.
“How long ... ?”
“Two days.”
She absorbed this, shocked. For
two days
she had lain like this? And he had watched over her the whole time. As the
geminus
consumed how many souls?
“The
geminus
...”
“To hell with the
geminus
.”
His words were fierce, but they made her smile. As much as she could smile—which wasn’t a great deal.
“Either we’ll find the damned creature,” he said, holding her gaze, “or we won’t. But understand this:
I will never leave you.
”
Her body was filled with pain, yet it was distant, someone else’s suffering. “Never ... would I have ... guessed.”
“Guessed what?”
“You and I. This.” She clasped his hand with hers, ignoring the agony, feeling only him. “The odds ...”
Blue, his eyes. Impossibly blue. Impossibly warm. His hand, steady and strong. “Were great. They still are. Precisely how I like them.” He lightly pressed his lips to hers, profoundly tender.
She wanted more than a soft kiss, but her body would not allow it. “I need this ... sickness gone ... from me.”
She struggled to rise up, prop herself on her elbows. The lingering poison tore through her with razored claws. She fell back, shaking, as much from pain as from frustration and anger.
“
Rest
, My Lady Firebrand,” he said gently. “That is what you need.”
“Not rest ... but action,” she insisted. Summoning all her strength, she held up his hand. Upon his skin were images of flame, marking him as the Devil’s possession. “
Wafodu guero
... has something of mine. And I’m ... taking it back.”
Wanting
to be well and
getting
well were very different. Especially when one wasn’t recovering from a bout of catarrh but rather poison from the scales of a demon. Zora could not use horehound tea to cure herself of a venom born from Hell.
Her strength grew moment to moment, the pain receding in tiny increments, yet she couldn’t sit up unassisted, let alone stand or ride a horse. But they needed to move, and soon, for already two days had passed and the
geminus
was out there, somewhere, wreaking chaos.
“Doctoring wasn’t covered in my ‘gentleman’s education. ’” Whit sat beside her as she lay upon her cloak on the ground, giving her sips of cold spring water. Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the nave windows, gilding his face. With his hair unbound, his clothing disheveled, and several days’ worth of stubble darkening his jaw, he looked rough and untamed. Yet she suspected that this was more his true face than the one of the polished
gorgio
who haunted the gaming clubs of London.
“Drinking, gambling, idleness, and indulgence,” he continued. “That’s all I ever learned at Oxford. And even if I
had
bothered to study, Cicero and Heraclitus wouldn’t help us now. Long-dead chatterers. Prattling on about things that have no relevance in the modern eighteenth century.” He smiled wryly. “Though maybe my callow boy’s brain hadn’t the means to make sense of their wisdom. Heraclitus believed that we never step in the same river twice, for the river constantly changes, and so do we.”
That seemed sensible. “Maybe schooling is wasted on the young.”
“Maybe
everything
is wasted on the young. For they never place value where it’s most required.” He spoke as if from experience. A man who had transformed utterly from the boy he had been. A man who was not the same as he’d been only a few weeks earlier.
His gaze grew pensive, and she watched the play of thought across his face.
“Fire,” he said, breaking his musing. “What Heraclitus thought was the origin of all other elements. Through fire, everything comes into being or expires.”
“Fire changes things.” She knew this well. Fire had changed her profoundly.
“It’s the symbol of constant change. Transforms one thing into another. Burns away its old form.”
Understanding hit them both at the same time. Their gazes held, alight with possibility.
“Can you do it?” he asked.
“If it makes me recover faster so I may tear that
geminus
into rags, I’ll do anything.”
His expression darkened. “Should
anything
go awry, you must stop at once.”
“I will.” Yet she wasn’t certain if, once she’d begun the process, it could be stopped. She kept silent about her concern, knowing that he would attempt to prevent her from trying. As much as anyone could prevent her from doing anything.
She was resolved. He had risked himself for her. She would do the same for him.
“Tell me what to do,” he said.
“Stay close.” When he took her hand, she added, “But I wouldn’t do that.” Much as she savored his touch, she might hurt him unwittingly. “These need to come off, too.” She glanced down at her clothing. Flammable.
He raised a brow. “Presenting me with a hell of a lot of temptation.”
“Thank the heavens you’ve a strong will.”
“Not where you are concerned.” He brushed his lips across hers, and even weakened as she was, heat and need sped through her. “Irresistible.”
She wanted nothing more than to thread her fingers into his hair and pull him close, taste him, feel him. But she couldn’t, not in her current condition. Which made her break the kiss—reluctantly.