Give the Dark My Love(47)

As I stared at the flickering light, I was overwhelmed with nostalgia and then fear as I remembered Ernesta’s letter. In a way, I was glad that this chapel was different from the church hall back home, smaller, neater, less used. It would have been too much like saying goodbye all over again if it had the warm familiarity of my village but didn’t have the people I loved inside.

The walls were painted with various holy scenes, but I was drawn to the mural opposite the door. In it, Oryous stood before an image of Death, ghostly white and draped in black, the cloth billowing from an unearthly wind that did not bend the blades of painted grass or shake the trees in the background. The lesser gods stood behind Oryous, all of them rebuking Death, who stood alone. Oryous held his hand out, his palm in front of Death, stopping him. It was supposed to symbolize how we do not truly die when we believe in the gods.

The prayer candle shook in my hand as I approached the mural, the small flame dancing. Cushions were laid on the floor in front of each mural, but I did not kneel. We never knelt or sat at the church hall in the village. We were supposed to stand before our gods, not crouch.

I stepped over the cushions to get closer to the mural. My eyes were not on Oryous, but instead on Death itself. This was not the Death I had seen when I reached into Dilada, trying to pull her back to life. That Death had no shape, nothing as clear as this.

I blew my candle out. I did not need it to pray.

I was not sure who I wanted to pray to.

Instead, I turned to Oryous’s painting. But when I mimicked his stance, when I reached my arm out in front of me, I did not raise it in objection. I reached for Death like a friend.

“Nedra?”

The voice startled me, and I dropped my unlit candle, the hot wax spilling on my hand.

Grey stepped into the chapel, his eyes seeking me. He smiled when he saw me, and I was grateful that he hadn’t seen me a moment before, and that he couldn’t read my blasphemous thoughts.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

I held out the prayer candle as answer. “How did you know to find me here?”

“I checked the library first,” he said. “Then I went to Master Ostrum’s office. He suggested the chapel.” He looked around, drinking in the paintings. I realized this must be his first time here.

I stepped back over the kneeling pads and past the eternal flame, dropping my candle into the basket to be reused by other worshippers. It wasn’t until Grey had followed me out of the chapel that I turned to him. “I thought you were going to come with me this morning,” I said, not meeting his eyes.

“Are we not still going?” Grey asked.

I gaped at him. “Where have you been?”

“You’ve already gone down to the factory?” Grey asked.

“I told you last night,” I said. “Sunrise.”

Grey laughed, but cut himself short when he saw my look. “But the cafeteria doesn’t open until . . .” his voice trailed off. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You did say sunrise, but I just assumed . . .”

“The gods forbid you miss breakfast,” I said, not bothering to bite back my tone.

“It’s not like that,” Grey said.

I raised an eyebrow at him. He did not deserve my rage, but all I had within me now was anger boiling, steeping in sorrow.

“I messed up,” Grey confessed. “I’ll be ready tomorrow. I’ll meet you at sunrise, like you said.”

“Sure,” I said as if it didn’t matter.

I wondered what he would have thought of me if he’d seen me today, reaching past the limits of medicinal alchemy. Would he have tried to stop me?

And then I wondered: If he had been there, would I have even attempted it in the first place?





TWENTY-EIGHT


    Nedra



I looked askance at Master Ostrum’s cluttered laboratory, not willing to meet his intense gaze. We both knew what needed to be said.

“So,” Master Ostrum said. “Today.”

“Today,” I replied.

“Today you . . . crossed a line.”

I looked down at my hands in my lap. “I just . . . I wanted to help.”

“You realize,” Master Ostrum said slowly, considering each word, “that you were toying with necromancy.”

Something inside me ached with a hunger that mirrored the greedy maw of Death. And then I remembered the statue of Bennum Wellebourne in the center of the quad, and how people hated him so much they poured molten iron over his image.

“It wasn’t necromancy, though,” I said. “I used my golden crucible.”

Master Ostrum’s eyes were furrowed in concern. “If you had an iron crucible, would you have used it?”

I swallowed, hard. “I just wanted to help.”

He nodded grimly.

“It is good that there was no alchemist there but me,” he said. “Any other, and you might have been faced with an inquiry.”

The punishment for practicing—or even attempting to practice—necromancy was death.

“I’m sorry,” I stuttered. “I didn’t think—”

“That’s the problem,” Master Ostrum said. “You didn’t think.”

“But I’m not a necromancer—”