Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,180

This life, this end, my gift to you. Hold him close.”

The old woman smiled.

The boy whimpered.

Mia took a deep, shuddering breath. Naev’s warning echoing in her head. And to her horror, she finally understood. Finally heard it. Just as she’d heard it above the forum on the battlements where her father hung.

Music.

The dirge of the ghostly choir. The thunder of her own pulse. The gentle sobbing of this poor boy cut through with the memory of applause from a holy brigand and a beautiful consul and the world gone wrong and rotten. And she knew, then. As she’d always known. For all the miles, all the years, all the dusty tomes and bleeding hands and noxious gloom. Iron or glass or steel, what she was made of now made no difference at all. It was what she would become when she killed this boy that would truly matter.

Scaeva deserved to die. Duomo. Remus. Diamo. Those Luminatii at the Basilica Grande were tools of the Senate’s war machine. Even the men and women in the Stone were hardened criminals. In the dark of her bedchamber, she might convince herself their deaths were justified if she tried hard enough. Might find herself believing that everyone she’d killed to this point, the countless endings she’d gifted, the orchestra of screams, and she, the scarlet maestro … all of them deserved it.

But this boy?

This nameless, blameless child?

If she killed him, truth was she deserved it too. And for all the miles and all the years, vengeance wasn’t a good enough reason to become the monster she hunted.

Mia withdrew the knife from the boy’s throat.

Slowly climbed off her knees.

“Not for this,” she said.

Drusilla searched her face, gaze becoming iron-hard.

“We warned you, Mia Corvere. Marked by the Mother, or no. If you fail in this, you fail utterly. All Mercurio’s work, all the turns you have studied at his feet, within these walls. The blood, the death, all of it will be for nothing.”

She looked down into the boy’s eyes. Someone’s brother. Someone’s son.

Her hands were shaking. Tears in her eyes. Ashes on her tongue.

But still …

“Not for nothing,” she said.

And she handed back the blade.

She lay on her bed in the dark. A shadow beside her, not saying a word.

The last of her cigarillos in her hand. A long, broken finger of ash hanging from the smoldering tip. Fringe in her eyes. Black in her head.

What would they do with her? Relegate her to the role of a Hand?

Scourge her?

Kill her?

It didn’t matter, either way. She’d never become a Blade now. Never learn the deeper mysteries of the Church, or the mysteries of who and what she was. Never become as sharp as she’d need to be to stand a chance of ending Scaeva. He was untouchable to her now, just as Mercurio had—

Mercurio …

What would he do?

What would he say?

Keys at her door. She couldn’t even be bothered reaching for her stiletto. Whoever it was, she didn’t care. Placing the cigarillo at her lips, she stared at the ceiling, watching the shadows writhe.

Soft footsteps. The click-clack of a walking stick on cold stone.

A bent and tired figure standing at the foot of her bed.

“Let’s go home, little Crow.”

She looked at the old man. Tears in her eyes.

O, Daughters, how she hated herself, then …

“Yes, Shahiid,” she said.

A handful of possessions was all she left with. Her gravebone dagger. The ironwood brooch she’d worked so hard for. A tightly bound oilskin containing her books, Lotti’s bloodstained notes. Nothing else would make the Blood Walk. Nothing else she could carry.

Naev walked with them, Mia and the old man, down the spiral path to the speaker’s chambers. But the woman refused to step inside Adonai’s domain.

“Think on it for a turn or two,” Naev said from the threshold. “Hurts mend in time. Naev will be glad to see her back here. Naev can speak to Mother Drusilla on her behalf while she is gone. She can accompany Naev on the Last Hope runs. It is good country. A good life. Perhaps not what she wanted”—she looked to the chamber and the speaker beyond—“… but life is seldom that.”

Mia nodded. Squeezed the woman’s hand. “Thank you, Naev.”

They stepped into Adonai’s chambers. The smell of blood thick in the air. The speaker knelt at the pool’s apex, smeared in gore. He actually bowed to Mercurio, eyes to the floor.

The old man looked more tired than Mia had ever seen him. The walk down the stairs had been slow and