A Poison Dark and Drowning (Kingdom on Fire #2)(79)

Until I went back inside the house and found Magnus sitting on the floor, his mother’s body cradled in his arms. The candles and lanterns had flickered back to life, illuminating the garish scene. Crimson blood had spattered everywhere, most of it pooling in the center of the room. People had tracked through the gore, leaving red footprints in wild zigzags. Five sorcerer bodies lay upon the tile, gazing vacantly at the ceiling. The ashed corpses of Familiars littered the staircase. Magnus rocked Fanny back and forth, sobbing into her hair. She looked so small now, so fragile. Eliza clutched the banister, weeping openly. Her and Magnus’s cries blended in gruesome harmony.

My legs gave out, and I slumped to the floor. I was useless to them, as useless as I was cruel.

Cruel and useless: the Howel family motto.





Sorcerer funerals are held as soon as possible. The magic of the earth clamors for its own, so they say. A day after they had taken Fanny’s body from her son, washed her, tended the horrible gashes in her neck, and dressed her in her best black gown, we were at the churchyard saying goodbye. The men who had fallen last night would have a grander ceremony tomorrow, with the queen’s blessing. It was a miserable morning, the sky an oppressive gray and the air thick with bone-chilling mist. Rain would have at least been something.

Blackwood, Eliza, and I listened to the minister’s promise of everlasting life. Eliza crushed a handkerchief and wept as the final blessings were said over the casket. Then, one by one, the mourners left, stealing away as awkwardly as dinner guests who’ve overstayed their welcome. The undertakers lifted Fanny’s shrouded body from the coffin. Sorcerers were never buried in wooden boxes—caskets were for the funeral service. A sorcerer was wrapped in black silk, head to toe, and placed directly into the ground, to be absorbed by the earth that much faster. Though Fanny had never had a sorcerer’s powers nor wielded a stave, she had been a sorcerer’s daughter and had given birth to a sorcerer son.

I thought about the laughing, happy woman I had met only a few weeks earlier. I could not understand how such a lady now lay under the earth, her body called back into the dirt and the darkness. I thought of the way she’d greeted me when I’d come into her home that first time, as though I were already a friend. As though she could trust me.

Even in my numb state, tears began to fill my eyes. I had allowed Rook to transform and damn himself with her murder. I whimpered so softly only Blackwood noticed.

Magnus stood by the grave’s edge, his face pale against his mourning clothes. I had never seen him in black before. His rich auburn hair stood out starkly against his bleak garments and the gray of the day. He dropped the first handful of dirt onto the body, then stayed staring into the grave. There was no flicker of life in his face.

“We’ll stop by the house to pay our respects,” Blackwood murmured to Eliza. “Since you are his fiancée.”

He didn’t have to say it so cruelly, I thought.

At the house, black-garbed sorcerers moved silent as shadows. Only the occasional hushed whisper, or the creak of a floorboard, indicated that anyone walked these rooms at all. Sheets had been hung over all the mirrors. On the dining room table, someone had laid out a circle of candles. They were all lit, save one in the very center.

“The unlit candle signifies the sorcerer’s extinguished life.” Blackwood stood beside me in the doorway and spoke low. “After sunset, they’ll light it and leave it burning the entire night. It’s to represent her soul as she moves from this world to the next.”

In the parlor, Eliza was sitting beside Magnus, her cheeks stained from crying as she spoke to him gently. He was hunched over with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.

Eventually, people drifted out the door. The house grew even quieter, until there was only the ticking of a clock and the muffled sobs of Polly in the kitchen. I looked in to find her sitting down, her apron over her face, wailing bitterly. Through the front window, I saw Dee standing by the side of the house, near a cherry tree. He was leaning his forehead against the trunk and biting on his fist. He would not share his tears with anyone.

I wanted to go to them and offer what comfort I could, but it was as if my voice had been stolen away. The words would not come.

Returning to the parlor, I watched Blackwood collect his sister. They went to gather their hats and cloaks while I sat with Magnus for a moment.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, finding my voice at last.

It seemed he had not heard me. Then he said, “I could’ve seen them all safely outside, but I had to go back. I wanted to see what all the excitement was about.” He laughed bitterly.

“You can’t blame yourself.”

“I wanted to speak with you before the announcement.” He looked up at me finally. His eyes were clear but cold. The laughing, carefree part of him had been buried back in the churchyard.

“Why?”

“To explain. Our engagement was only to protect Eliza from marrying Foxglove. We planned to end it once a suitable period of time had passed.”

My stomach clenched. “Why did you want to tell me?”

“Can you not guess?” He truly looked at me. “You forbade me to speak of my feelings ever again, and I agreed,” he growled. “But I couldn’t bear to have you think I’d regressed to being a fortune hunter.”

“I wouldn’t think that,” I whispered.