A Poison Dark and Drowning (Kingdom on Fire #2)(65)

“Rook?” I whispered. He was sprawled upon his bed, asleep. Moving into the room, I shut the door behind me and lit a candle. By the light, I could see that he’d not got out of his clothes yet. His coat was off, and his shirt half-unbuttoned down the front, exposing his chest and a few swollen scars. He lay on top of the covers and gave a soft moan as I drew closer. Sweat stood out on his brow, matting his hair. When I sat down beside him on the bed, I reached out and touched his face…and my hand came away slick with blood.

Blood was smeared along his cheek, coating his arms up to the elbow. He moaned again, his eyes fluttering open. He looked up at me, no pain in his expression. I pulled the blankets back and looked frantically over his body to find the source of the wound, only to find him unharmed.

God, the blood wasn’t his.

“What happened?” I whispered, smoothing his damp brow. He was a banked coal beneath my hand.

“I’m so tired.” His eyes closed again.

Lighting more candles, I poured some cold water into his washbasin and sat beside him again, wiping the blood off his face. Rook sat up, the glazed light of fever in his eyes.

“Henrietta.” He kissed my neck. I froze as his lips brushed my skin. Rook was pulling me back to lie down with him. I didn’t let myself go with him—God, there was the blood still to clean up, which made my skin crawl. And Maria said I had to keep him calm. And Rook…This wasn’t like him. That night in the garden, he’d been so shy and gentle. Now he was more aggressive, his hands and lips greedily exploring my body.

“Wait,” he said, stopping. “We’re not married yet, are we?” He sounded disappointed. I placed my hand over his heart. The skin of his chest was smooth, but the scars throbbed with infection. My face flushed to think of his question. No, we weren’t married.

“Not yet,” I said. “You need to wake…and clean yourself. Something’s…happened.”

Now that he was more awake, Rook took over from me, washing his face, his neck, cleaning out the half-moons of dark blood trapped beneath his fingernails. He stripped out of his shirt. His body was lean and sculpted, even with the scars. I hastened to get him something clean to wear, nervously helping him slide into it. After a few minutes, his hair was damp, his face scrubbed, his shirt unsoiled. He looked all right, yes, but he radiated disease.

This couldn’t be the night he turned. No. No.

“What’s happening to me, Nettie?” The sincere confusion in his voice killed me. Biting my lip to hold in a sob, I rinsed a sliver of soap in the red-tinged water. So much blood, and none of it his. There wasn’t a mark on him.

Rook, what have you been doing?

“You’re having a terrible dream,” I said.

His hands caught my waist and spun me around. Our lips met, the kiss deepening quickly. With a swift move, we were lying on the bed.

“It’s become a good dream, then,” he whispered in my ear.

My whole body seemed to vibrate as Rook gathered me to him. But it was all too fast. My mind screamed to stop even as I kissed him. Finally, I put my hands against his chest, holding him back. Slowly, very slowly, our breathing calmed, and I pulled away. I still had to learn the truth.

“What happened in the dream? Do you remember?” I asked carefully.

“A man was attacking people.” Rook sounded distant, as if he were falling asleep once more. “He deserved what he got for attacking that woman.”

He deserved what he got. I did not speak, only moved my head to his chest and listened as his breathing deepened, until finally he was truly asleep. I looked at his face in the candlelight. He looked peaceful now. No one would ever picture this normal, beautiful boy with someone else’s blood all over his hands. That wasn’t him. That was the thing inside him.

But he’d had someone else’s blood all over his hands, and now he smiled in his sleep.

“Do you remember Christmas Eve when we were eight?” I whispered, lifting my head to see his face. His eyelids fluttered, but he didn’t wake. “I still missed my aunt in those days. I was crying at bedtime, and one of the teachers smacked me and told me to be quiet. After everyone had fallen asleep, I snuck down to the kitchen. You used to sleep near the stove on winter nights, remember?” I traced a finger across his cheek. “You let me crawl into bed next to you. You didn’t care that I was crying. You just put your arm around me and let me blubber on and on.” Holding back a sob, I kissed his forehead. “I think that was when I knew I loved you.”

I laid my head on the pillow beside Rook’s, listened to his soft breathing, and tried to collect my thoughts.

R’hlem—I wasn’t going to start calling him my father, not even in my head—was the true reason that Rook was transforming. If R’hlem hadn’t come back from that alien world, if he hadn’t brought the Ancients, if he hadn’t brought Korozoth, if Korozoth hadn’t marked Rook…On and on my thoughts spun in a painful whirl.

If I had to go to R’hlem to save Rook, I would. Finally, fitfully, I slept.

I woke a few hours later to find Maria standing over the bed, looking shocked.





“What are you doing here?” Maria said, putting down the cloth and medicine she’d been carrying as I hastened to sit upright. Rook shifted beside me, caught in the grip of an actual bad dream. Maria’s eyes flicked to him, her expression now inscrutable. Finding the two of us asleep with our arms about each other was compromising beyond belief.