Give the Dark My Love(77)

“Nedra, we have to go,” Fare said firmly.

She pulled at my arm again, but I jerked away and made a dive for Ernesta. “Not,” I started as one of the larger aides grabbed me around my stomach, “Without. My. Sister!” I kicked at him, screaming in frustrated rage, angry tears springing to my eyes. Alric joined the fray, and Fare, and someone else, a potion maker who flirted with me sometimes during breaks. I bellowed, kicking out, scratching Fare across the face, making the potion maker wheeze when my foot connected with her stomach, but I didn’t care, they had to let me go, they couldn’t just expect me to leave my sister here to die.

Alone.

I was losing ground.

“Don’t drink that!” I shouted as Alric and Fare and the others pulled me to the door of the hospital. I lashed out, grabbing the heavy mahogany, holding on as long as I could, my fingers slipping on the smooth wood. “Nessie! You hear me? Don’t you drink that! I’m coming back for you!”

I lost my grip, and the others pulled me to the boat, holding me so tight that my bucking body never touched the stones. The alchemists already on board tutted at me, some sympathetically, but I didn’t care. “How could you?” I spat at them as the skipper pushed the boat away. “How could any of you?” I stood up, the boat wobbling. I think they thought I would dive over the side, swim back to the quarantine hospital. A few people even reached for me, aiming to hold me back, but I shook them off.

“The Emperor gave the order,” one of the alchemists said. It was Frugal Frue, the alchemist who had been stingy with potions. I wondered if he knew how much tincture of blue ivy had been left behind.

“The hospital is closing,” another alchemist said. “And besides”—she turned her head toward the huge castle-like building—“none of them would have made it anyway.”





FORTY-EIGHT


    Nedra



I refused to speak to any of the traitors on the boat.

As soon as we disembarked, I tried to board a ferry back.

None would go to the island.

Fine, I thought. I’ll steal a boat tonight. I’ll go back on my own.

But first there was something else I needed to steal.

I barely registered the walk up to Yūgen. Mentally, I stoked my rage, preparing to pry the iron gates apart myself to get to campus—but I didn’t need to.

The gates were already open.

School had resumed. Posters littered the gates detailing new methods to protect the students, including strictly enforced potion regimens, no off-campus activities allowed, screening for visitors, and no visitations to any hospital, even for medical students. I wondered how many parents kept their children at home regardless.

I marched onto campus, the feeling surreal. Everything felt so aggressively normal—students casually walking from the cafeteria, study groups gathering by the library. I wondered what day it was. How long had classes been back in session?

Didn’t they know that everything was different now? That the world had ended already?

I ignored the graveled paths that intersected with the lumpy iron statue of Bennum Wellebourne and went straight to the administration building. I stormed down the stairs to Master Ostrum’s office and grabbed the doorknob.

Locked.

I rattled the metal, pulling on it, but it didn’t budge. My open palm slammed into the frosted glass window on the door, and it shook so violently it nearly cracked. I kicked at the wood, cursing, and tried the handle again. As I pulled away, the door opened.

“Nedra?” Master Ostrum looked surprised to see me.

I pushed past him. “I need your crucible cage,” I said, heading straight to his laboratory. The office door slammed behind me.

He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me around. I spun away from him, but paused. My chest heaved with exertion.

I caught my reflection in one of Master Ostrum’s gleaming gold crucibles lined on the bookshelf.

Hair wild and unkempt, body dusted with white lice disinfectant, grimy dirt and soot streaking down my face. My eyes were wild and red-rimmed, my lips cracked with small spots of blood at each corner of my mouth. I looked down at my hands. My nails were jagged, caked in grime, the cuticles ripped. I didn’t remember the last time I changed clothes. The last time I bathed.

“I need your crucible cage,” I said. The voice reverberating throughout the office didn’t sound like my own. It sounded hoarse, cold, broken.

“What happened?” There was nothing but concern in Master Ostrum’s eyes, sincere worry at what I had become in the weeks since he’d seen me last.

What would Grey think if he saw me now?

It was with a numb heart that I realized I didn’t care. I didn’t care what Master Ostrum thought, what Grey would think. None of that mattered. None of it mattered at all.

“You’re right,” I told Master Ostrum. “The plague is necromantic. It will take a necromancer to stop it.”

Master Ostrum frowned, deep lines etched into his forehead. “I’ve thought that, too. But it will not be you.”

Didn’t he understand that it was already too late?

Clomping boots echoed throughout the hallway outside Master Ostrum’s office. He jerked around like an expectant dog on alert. “Go to the lab,” he ordered.

I went around his desk, stepping up into the lab. I closed the door behind me, but not all the way.