Assassin's Heart (Assassin's Heart, #1)(21)

The dead plains were dotted with shrines and monasteries dedicated to Safraella. If I could reach one, I’d find sanctuary.

I remembered the stack of paper on my father’s desk, the bids for our new Family priest. I scanned my memory of the one I’d examined, searching for the location of the monastery. Northwest of Genoni.

Mounting Butters with a single arm was difficult, but after much swearing and kicking, I managed to climb into the saddle. I rested, then nudged Butters forward. We headed northwest. I kept my eyes peeled, watching the dark landscape for movement.

Everything was wrong. Nothing was the way it was supposed to be. Why had this happened to me? How had my life come to this? Fleeing in the night, injured and alone.

My fault. All my fault.

But, also, the Da Vias’. I tightened my fist on the reins. Butters flicked his ears. It was their fault, too. Don’t forget that. Don’t forget this feeling, the rage flowing in your blood.

Val. His actions had condemned me to this fate. If I could just speak to him, hear his side of things—no. Don’t be dumb, Lea. Nothing he could say would fix what had happened. Even if, more than anything, I wanted to feel his arms around me, telling me everything would be all right. That no one would find out about us. That we’d be safe together. But now I was alone and I’d never be safe again.

Ahead, something lay in the tall grass. Butters snorted, and we approached cautiously. Nothing moved other than the grass in the wind.

I knew it would be a body. I looked down as we passed. A man, dressed in cheap silks that fluttered around him in the night breeze. He lay facedown, his head turned to the side, dirt pressed against his mouth and open eyes. Nothing marked him, as if he’d dropped dead from a failed heart. It wasn’t his heart, though, that had brought his death.

Anyone could become a ghost. People who died out of favor with their gods, people who didn’t worship a god, even people of good faith who died with too much rage or despair in their hearts. It was why we left the coins on people we clipped. It acted as a balm to ease their rage, to signal to Safraella that they’d been murdered for holy reasons and deserved a chance at a new life.

Movement to my left. I turned slowly, trying not to draw attention.

A wisp of white, a figure floating in the night across the field. An angry ghost. The dead plains were full of them.

Many gods had their own personal hells they could damn their followers to, but Safraella did not. If someone was devoted to Safraella but died out of favor, they entered a sort of purgatory. Ghosts congregated on the dead plains, waiting for a person to stumble upon them so they could steal the body and turn that person into a ghost.

But a ghost could never again be a person, and after a day or so it would abandon its stolen body—often on the dead plains, like the body in the tall grass—and begin its search anew, endlessly looking for the life that had been taken from it.

I shivered. The angry ghosts were dangerous. They could use their rage to move objects, or they could rip your soul from your body. No one would ever willingly face a ghost. The ghosts were why the Addamos had let me go.

I ducked my head and asked Butters to speed up. So far the ghost hadn’t noticed me. Sunrise was only an hour or two away. If I could pass through unmolested until then, I could travel to Yvain and find my uncle. Luckily, the Addamos didn’t know where I was headed, but there were only so many places one could go to from the plains.

Butters huffed, his breath steaming in a puff of white in the cool spring night.

To the right, more movement. Another ghost, heading south toward the river.

I hunched in my cloak. My shoulder burned and my vision faded. I bit my lip until my sight cleared. I needed to stay in control or I wouldn’t make it out of the dead plains.

But maybe . . . maybe it would be okay to not make it out. Maybe it was what I deserved for the deaths of my Family, an afterlife spent wandering the dead plains as a ghost. . . .

No. If the ghosts took me, then no one would make the Da Vias pay for what they’d done.

Butters shook his head, the metal buckles on his bridle tinkling quietly. I held my breath as the closer ghost paused, then turned toward me.

Oh gods . . .

The ghost shrieked—a guttural screech that echoed across the field. It rushed my way, its white, glowing form spread out behind it like morning mist.

I kicked Butters. He jumped into a canter.

Ghosts were dead. They never tired; they would keep coming until the sun rose or I could find safety.

The angry ghost caught up to me. My voice evaporated in my throat and my fingers clutched the reins until pain rushed through my fingers. I stared at the ghost as it kept pace with us, the rage on its face, the darkness in its mouth as it howled at me. It had been human, once. A woman. A faint outline glowed where her throat had been slashed. Someone had taken her life, but not someone in my Family. We marked our kills to avoid creating angry ghosts. But ghosts didn’t follow logic, or mercy. They followed their rage until it led them to a person.

The ghost reached for me. I jerked Butters away, my shoulder stretching with fresh, hot pain. Her fingers passed through the saddle. She shrieked louder, her screams reverberating in my skull.

More ghosts appeared; she’d called them in her rage. They raced to us and Butters flattened his ears, snorting, his eyes wide and white. Every hoofbeat pounded through my shoulder until my body was awash with agony.

Their screeches deafened me. They seeped into my body until I clenched my eyes shut and screamed at them, trying anything to get them to stop their terrible cries.