Bone Palace, The - Amanda Downum Page 0,107

ribbons, scraps of lace. I asked him once if he stole them—not from anyone who missed them, he said. I guessed then that they were grave-goods. I suppose it should have repulsed me.” She shrugged defensively. “But no one else brought me gifts like that, for the joy of something beautiful.”

Dahlia stirred, hugging her knees to her chest. “Was he kind to you?” she asked softly.

“Yes.” Forsythia shifted in the chair; the upholstery buttons were no longer visible behind her. “He was a monster—I knew that. But he was always polite. He always asked. And he was so cold, so clean. I couldn’t stand the stink of men—sweat and beer and onions, foul breath. Sometimes I dreamt their stench soaked into me and I could never scrub it off.” Her hands closed in her skirts convulsively. “The blood was nothing compared to that.”

She shook herself and sat up straighter. There was color in her cheeks now; she might have passed for a living woman to anyone who didn’t know better. “I’m sorry. You asked me about the ring. He talked about a woman—a sorceress, I think. He and his friends worked for her, or with her. He could be… vague. I never wanted to press him—I didn’t think it was any of my business. He said—” She frowned in concentration. “He said she would help them change things, to walk in the streets again. And once he said… they had to find her a body. I didn’t want to know anything else about that.”

Even after Azarné’s warning, the reminder chilled her. Why was Kiril protecting a demon? She had freed a demon once herself, a little voice reminded her—but, she argued back, he hadn’t been in the habit of murdering women for their blood.

“Did he say her name, or the names of any of his friends?”

Forsythia shook her head. “Not the woman’s. He mentioned the other vampires, though—they all had false names, like us flowers. It made me laugh. Myca, I think one was. And Spider. Something like that, anyway.”

She knew better than to be angry, but it simmered beneath her breastbone anyway. That he had played her from the start she might forgive—it was, after all, a danger of her work—but the ease with which he’d betrayed his fellow vrykoloi galled.

“Does that help you?” Forsythia asked. Her black eyes robbed her face of expression, but her hands plucked nervously at her sleeves.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“You’ll find them? The ones who killed me? The ones who killed Whisper?”

“I will.” Satisfaction or not, this was a promise she meant to keep.

That night, Kiril sought Phaedra out.

She made her home in ruins, which was sensible in spite of her flair for the theatric. No one trespassed beyond the ironbound wall that guarded the ruined palace, and stray whispers of magic would not be remarked upon. If anyone marked her coming or going, it would be just one more ghost story to scare children in Elysia.

Not all such stories were false; spirits watched him as soon as he set foot beyond the gate. Tiny, hungry things clustered at the edges of the path, dark tangles at the edge of his vision. None were brave enough to challenge him, but had he been weak or injured or merely blind to them they might have dared.

The miasma of the ruin scraped like sharkskin against his senses—where the wind touched him he expected to bleed. The magic was no longer strong enough for that, but the pain and rawness still wore on his nerves. Did Phaedra’s madness leave her immune to the effect, he wondered, or exacerbate it?

He followed the scent of her magic to a tower, one of the few structures that hadn’t yet succumbed to time and the elements. It bore their marks, however, delicate redents and figures worn soft and faceless, once-white sandstone now stained yellow as bone. Perhaps it was this tower in which Tsetsilya Konstantin had purportedly died. That would appeal to Phaedra. The spirits that lingered here were stronger, fattened on scraps of magic.

She set no guard upon the stairs, but he felt her wards acknowledge him and let him pass. His chest and knees ached by the time he reached the top, which only strengthened his resolve to be done with this.

She had settled in the topmost floor. Scavenged rugs covered cold stone, and books were stacked against the walls. Notes and pens lay scattered across a table beside tangles of jewelry and crumpled playbills. A plum-red gown and matching