maybe she’ll spare us both.”
“She let Herbert and his pack go,” I replied, trying to sound encouraging. My voice was weak, though. I knew that even Herbert might be at risk once Death was free. Her whims were cosmic and impossible to predict or avoid. All we could do was hope she’d keep her word, and that she’d leave Sidyan and Maya alone. But that was only wishful thinking at this point.
“I can’t tell Maya about this, though,” Sidyan said, his voice low. “If she hears about Death, she will run off and never come back. I will lose her, and she will lose herself, too. She’s too frightened of Death to understand the consequences of making the wrong choice in this.”
“I understand,” I murmured, giving him a sympathetic half-smile. “I’ll keep my mouth shut. Promise.”
“Anyway, I’m definitely screwed.” Sidyan chuckled bitterly. “Even if she takes some kind of mercy on Maya, I’m the responsible adult here. I’ve been feeding the ghoul souls, which is against every Reaper law out there. Surely, she knows about that, too.”
“Death isn’t free yet,” I said. “We can change her mind.”
The thought of something happening to Sidyan or Maya bothered me more than I’d thought it would. It didn’t seem fair, since both were trying to do the best they could with what they’d been given. But how important were good intentions to an entity that helped shape and move the very universe in which we existed? Even the Word wouldn’t have been able to see past Sidyan’s transgression, despite the fact that the Reaper had chosen irredeemable murderers to feed Maya.
It’s not his place to judge, the Word would say. The very Word I could barely feel here, on Visio, and I wasn’t sure why that was. My magic was intact, of course, but my connection to the Word felt weak. Almost nonexistent. That wasn’t even at the top of my list of concerns anymore, though.
We had one hell of a gargantuan fish to fry here.
“One day at a time,” I told Sidyan. “Let’s find the Darklings first and work our way up from there.”
“You have a knack for making it all sound much easier than it actually is,” Sidyan replied dryly. “It’s actually rather annoying.”
“I don’t care about how annoyed you are,” I shot back, nodding ahead. “We’re about to reach Astoria.”
The entire caravan had stopped, as they’d reached the top of a hill. I hadn’t even noticed the altitude change, my mind burrowed in this whole Death-and-Darklings bundle of awful. Beyond the hilltop, we could see the ruins of Astoria rising in the distance, a good fifty miles away.
It seemed abandoned, but what were the odds that everything was what it seemed, especially in a place like Visio?
“I smell trouble,” Sidyan muttered. “How about you?”
“We’ve been soaking in trouble since we first came to this place,” I said.
“Your optimism is refreshing.”
“Your sarcasm, on the other hand, is not.”
Despite our stings and jabs, Sidyan and I had only one another to rely on. Maya, too, though she depended on us more than we depended on her. So it was the three of us against a horde of death-magic-using Darklings with murderous agendas and ghouls at their behest.
Trouble, indeed.
Nethissis
Waiting for the right moment seemed to take forever.
I stayed within yards of Rudolph as the black guard guided him around the northern edge of Astoria. The closer we got to the ghouls’ pen, the more anxious I became. Restless, even, shifting around and checking every single black guard and Darkling in sight. To my surprise, I realized the ghouls had stopped snarling at me. As if they’d gotten used to my presence. As if I was no longer that delicious morsel they’d been pining for. I didn’t even notice when this change had happened. I merely understood that it had.
Perhaps Rudolph had had something to do with it. After all, the ghouls were able to communicate in their whispery language. Maybe he’d made them understand that I was not lunch, but rather a friend, trying to do the right thing.
The black guard was bored, his gaze wandering all over Astoria as he walked Rudolph. He’d done this before; I could tell. This wasn’t the first ghoul he’d taken on walks. But I hoped it would be the last.
Holding my breath, I locked gazes with Rudolph, who gave me a faint nod. Approaching the ghouls’ pen, he purred softly to his fellow creatures. As the black guard moved to affix his rune chain back to