leggings dark with blood, and her fingers limp, devoid of any golden leaf.
“Could she have put it inside her pockets?” Adrien asked.
I grazed both. Empty.
I wanted to accompany the firemen wherever they were taking Cadence, but Adrien tipped his head to the rubble of glass, snow, and stone. “We need to find it.”
We spent hours, Adrien and I, on our knees. At some point, Bastian and Alma joined, and even though I growled at them to get the fuck away, they didn’t.
The sun was rising when we finally gave up, my death warrant signed and sealed.
But, like I said, doesn’t matter.
As long as Cadence lives . . .
Rainier rolls up to me now, an odd gentleness to his voice. “There’s rooftop access in this building. Gives onto the rocks below.”
His blue eyes, so many shades darker than his daughter’s, stray to the bay window with a panorama of the mist-cloaked, icy lake. It’s such a different view than the one from his office. Perhaps because the clinic’s perched on Fourth, and his manor—Cadence’s manor—sits on the lowest circle of this town.
“If I were you, I’d go up there and jump.”
I take a serrated breath in. “The world will be rid of me soon enough, De Morel.”
His eyes flash. “Oh, it’s never soon enough.”
He’s not wrong.
His voice grows soft again, soothing. “I’d do it now, Roland, while you’re still in control. Because later, when the poison’s in your system, and you’re writhing in pain, you’ll wish you had.”
He’s got a point. There’s nothing worse than losing control.
I take the stairs, the slap of my boots echoing on the concrete, and push open the heavy door to the roof. Snow curls about in the wind, whirlpools of powdered sugar at my feet. The air whips through my hair as I make my way across the frozen tar. I hold my breath until I reach the edge.
The mist unspools like windblown clouds, offering a glimpse of the jagged rocks on the sandy shore below. It would be easy to step off. It would mean I decide what my last moments look like, not some evil poison in my blood. It would mean no more pain. No more anything.
I lean forward.
But then I step back, too much of a coward to take my own life. Or maybe I’m too much of a fighter. And I know Bastian will never forgive me if I don’t stick around until the very last second.
Bones cold as icicles, I return to Cadence’s side.
Rainier’s gone.
I sit in the transparent plastic chair next to her bed, accidentally banging the finger with the ring against the armrest. Pain lances up my arm from my newest injury. The one Bastian gave me yesterday.
The day after Cadence . . . after she . . . lost consciousness, Bastian, along with Adrien, Alma, and Gaëlle pored through the salvaged documents in the library. The temple had taken a beating, but it still stood, proud and cupola-less at the heart of Brume.
The following day, Bastian crawled around the astronomical clock like a bug, on the hunt for something. I wasn’t sure what. Maybe a bottle-opener made to pop Bloodstones off rings. He found nothing.
And yesterday, he came at me with industrial-sized bolt-cutters that didn’t even dent the golden band. In a last desperate attempt, he closed the cutters around my finger. Let’s just say it felt like the groac’h’s needle-sharp teeth had made babies with the guivre’s noxious fire. Blood had spewed everywhere. Bone had crunched like crispy crackers. And then, because even the nastiest messes need a cherry on top, Bastian had vomited. Definitely rated in the Top 5 Weirdest Moments of Slate Ardoin’s Miserable Life.
Anticlimactically, my goddamn finger didn’t come off.
Instead, before our very stunned eyes, my skin and bone knitted together. What should’ve been a savage amputation became nothing more than an ugly bruise.
The ring has cursed me, and cursed me good.
Gripping the handrail of her medicalized bed, I study Cadence’s beautiful face, so still, so pale. An angel’s face. I reach out and wrap my warm fingers around her frosty ones.
“Come back,” I whisper. “Please, princess, come back.”
The machines beep in the same constant rhythm they’ve done since she was plugged into them.
“Come back to me, Cadence.”
Her eyelids flutter but stay closed. They’ve done that a lot so I don’t hold my breath.
I tug on my sweater collar.
I need air.
I stride out of the room, almost smack into Nolwenn.
Her face is lined with a hundred more wrinkles than the last time