Melaine looked away with a little shake of her head. Clearly, it had been her imagination making shapes from clouds. Then she heard a small whisper that shivered along her skin.
“Down.”
Melaine stiffened. The whisper was so soft, it could have been as insubstantial as the woman she’d imagined on the balcony. But she shot her eyes down to the courtyard below the parapet where she stood. Her frown deepened. She may have imagined the woman and whisper, but what she saw leaning against the wall of the building below was far more concrete. She let out a breath when she deciphered what it was.
A body.
Melaine’s stomach turned. It was a human body; there was no mistake. Soaked, ragged clothes clung to four limbs, and a sopping head of hair was plastered to a bowed skull. The poor individual was dead, their bones twisted at odd angles. The half-prone position suggested that they had either fallen, jumped, or been tossed from the roof’s railed pathway.
Melaine inhaled a sharp breath. Was the body the Overlord’s? Surely, not. Karina? She knew it wasn’t Serj because she had heard his singing only moments before.
From what she could see through the rain, it appeared that there was too much flesh on the body’s bones for it to have been there long. Even with Highstrong’s walls, vultures would at least have access to the body’s fresh meat. Or those damn crows that flocked everywhere.
She had to find out whose body that was and why they were there. She swallowed and called upon her magic. Once, when she was a young child and all of her magic had still been her own, she had cushioned a fall from a shop roof when running from a person she had just pickpocketed. She’d never learned the spell from an Insight, nor was it taught to her, but somehow, she had landed safe and sound. Though it had been many years since she had retained enough magic to pull off such a feat, she believed it was time to try.
Despite the grim purpose, she couldn’t help but feel a fresh thrill as she prepared to test the potential of her magic. She set down her dormant candle—enough moonlight shone through the clouds to light her way. So, she focused all of her magic on the wind around her. She inhaled the cold air, tiny mist droplets entering her nose. When she exhaled, all the rain around her splashed away as if knocked by an opposing wind. She focused on keeping the rain off her skin so nothing would hinder her careful leap from the high castle roof.
She jumped.
She maintained a cloak of dry air around herself to steady her course as she fell but channeled most of her energy into pushing air down to her feet. The blurry ground rushed at her, but she slowed as the wind under her feet built up resistance. She landed, and wet, frigid mud sucked at the soles of her bare feet. She lifted the hem of her dressing gown and raised one foot from the muck, then the other. Rain continued to bounce off of a dry aura of air around her skin and hair, but the damp cold of the autumn night still infused her bones.
She considered using her magic to agitate the air around her, to make its infinitesimal particles dance so quickly that it would warm. She glanced back up at the roof, high above her head. She still wasn’t sure of the extent of her magic. She didn’t know a spell to propel herself back up the wall, and there was likely a ward on the keep’s door. Better not waste any magic on comforts until she was sure she was as powerful as she felt.
So, shivering with an uneasy turn of her stomach, Melaine walked toward the body she had seen from the rooftop. The pouring rain made it difficult to make out anything beyond blurred mud and stone, but after a few paces, she deciphered a mud-spattered shoe lying on its side.
She stopped and followed the line of the shoe up to a shin clothed in tattered rags, then up to a bare knee and froze. The leg was torn clean off from the rest of the body just above the knee. The bone inside was splintered, its jagged edges protruding from the inner flesh like a shattered icicle.
Melaine stepped back with a grimace, but she slowly forced herself to view the body as a whole.
It was in pieces. The body’s clothes were shredded, revealing dark, sticky blood that the streaming rain couldn’t thin. Most of the flesh had been flayed from the bones but sat in tatters beside the body, uneaten by any animal that Melaine would have suspected could be responsible for this amount of carnage. The bones’ surfaces were cracked and split like white birch branches. Their marrow was raw and open in the mud.
Melaine stood still for a moment, staring at the grisly sight. She felt a nauseating flip in her stomach but lifted her eyes to see the body’s face.
“No,” she whispered, but couldn’t hear her own voice over the beating rain.
The gaunt face was frozen in time in an expression of dark triumph, caught mid-laugh in the moment of dying. Melaine recognized that expression, that face. It had haunted her since her first night in Highstrong.
Talem.
Melaine fell to her knees beside the broken body. How had he wound up here? Was the Overlord so callous that he had tossed the body over the wall without thought of burial? But then, had Talem deserved burial? The Overlord must have imprisoned and tortured him for a reason. He must have had Melaine…knock him down…for a reason.
Melaine closed her eyes, almost unable to think past the chill in her bones in the wet night. Talem must have deserved death. He must have done something terrible. If he hadn’t, did she bear more guilt than he?
She opened her eyes and again took in the unsightly body. On Talem’s emaciated chest, the ragged symbol of the Luxian Order peeked through a smear of blood. His crime must have been related to the harsh religion. Melaine had been afraid that the Overlord wasn’t aware of its resurgence in Centara, but it seemed he was still bent on stamping the Luxians out. Their unforgiving, closed-minded, and violent practices held no place in his secular reign.
Though she wasn’t sure why, she reached out and laid a hand upon the corpse’s shattered arm as if Talem was still around to feel her comfort. Perhaps, her apology.
She jerked her hand back. She looked down at her fingers, and then eyed the body with sudden caution. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
She looked closer at Talem’s exposed bones. She could see the spongy marrow inside, but some of it was missing, hollowed, as if sucked out by a carnivore. But what animal would only go for the bones and leave the meat?
Even if an animal were to suck every ounce of marrow from a body’s bones, magic would still linger on the bones themselves, on the flesh, in the tiny strands of hair, under a corpse’s blue fingernails. Magic was always present in a human’s body, whether in copious amounts or only a little. It was essential to human life. A corpse retained that magic until it dissolved into the earth forevermore.
Melaine had seen a body like this once before, drained utterly of magic. It had rooted her to the spot in horror when she was a child. It was the reason she was here now, in the Overlord’s castle.
The body of the old stone-peddling woman in Stakeside had lacked all magic when Melaine had found her curled up on the street one day, lifeless and still. Her palm had been open, her knotty, wrinkled fingers spread as if offering something, though her hand was empty. Melaine had easily guessed what happened.
The old woman had created her final lodestone. She had emptied all of her magic trying to make a sale. The buyer had obviously grabbed the stone without a thought, leaving the dead woman’s body to stiffen in the cold. They were probably glad they didn’t have to pay for the weak pebble the woman had offered.
Melaine had realized, then, that her death was going to be the same if she let it. As she had told the Overlord, she had resolved to change her life after the woman died. What she hadn’t admitted was that she had taken pity on the woman that day. She had buried the body in an old soil plot behind a tannery. She surrounded the woman with the offal and rancid discards from the skinned carcasses, so no graverobbers would try to dig the woman up. Melaine had forgone eating that day so that she would have the magical strength to lift the soil and cover the body before she was seen by others.
As she’d witnessed that day, the only way a person’s body could be completely drained of magic was to offer it freely. It was something so bound to their bones that it could not be torn from them by another, though Melaine was certain that plenty of dark sorcerers had tried to devise methods and failed.
So Talem must have given his magic away freely before he died. But who had he given it to? Serj acted like he didn’t know what had happened to Talem, so unless he was lying, Talem hadn’t had a chance to bestow his magic onto his brother. And Talem wouldn’t have given it to the Overlord. Unless the Overlord had tortured him enough, persuading Talem to hand over his magic to create a lodestone, just as Melaine was doing for the Overlord now.
Or maybe the Overlord’s darkest, rumored experiments had included spells to steal magic, and he’d succeeded where all others had failed.
Melaine’s mind raced. Was she in danger? Did the Overlord intend to take her lodestones, use her up, and dump her body as he may have done to Talem? Fear started to grow, and a sense of betrayal crept at the edges of her mind. But then logic took over. Why would the Overlord ever persuade her to empty her magic for him? He had no reason to torture or punish her as he had done with Talem. Keeping her alive would allow her to give him unlimited lodestones for years, so long as he continued to only require a few or less per day. Draining her magic and killing her would help no one.
Melaine continued to stare at Talem’s body until she could no longer stand the pervasive cold through her bones. She squinted through the beating rain around the courtyard. In one isolated corner, a tangle of wild roses rioted against the wall. Their scrabbling thorns were formidable, but their bowed, petaled heads were yet another beautiful luxury the Overlord possessed but didn’t tend to or seem to appreciate.
Melaine summoned magic from within her bones, kept whole and safe within her flesh, and brought it to the surface of her fingertips. She lifted Talem’s broken body without touching him, as if by invisible strings. His shattered limbs dangled in the air like a disjointed puppet. She grimaced and tightened her magic’s hold, wrapping him as a spider would its prey so that his limbs joined together in a bundle instead.
Her mouth set in a hard line as she walked toward the rose bushes, magically coaxing Talem’s body to follow. She looked up at the walls of the keep, eyeing the windows in particular for any watching eyes. The rain made it nearly impossible to see them. She hoped she was obscured in the same manner.
When she reached the thicket of roses, she stopped. Concentrating on keeping Talem aboveground, she swept her hands in an open motion toward the bushes. Tingling magic flowed from her fingers and caught the branches and thorns in its binding grasp. Melaine widened her arms and pulled the branches apart. Then she eased the roots themselves away from a patch of soil, careful not to disturb the plants’ abilities to flourish. She would never have paid attention to such details before she had imbibed the Insight on botanical magic, but now it felt like innate knowledge that she had always carried with her.
Rain poured down into a bare patch of soil. She pushed her magic into the earth, feeling every small grain and every living insect and worm creeping within. She made a lifting motion with her hands, and the soil rose in a heap. She set the heap down to the side and then repeated the motion several times. Soon, a hole formed, long enough for a man, deep enough to discourage animals from tampering with the body, though she hoped the thorns would also work toward that end. And, hopefully, they would dissuade any searching human eyes if Karina or the Overlord realized the body of their former prisoner was no longer where one of them had dumped him.
She exhaled through her nostrils against the rotting stench and brought the hovering body of Talem toward the hole. She was surprised that she could keep him aloft so easily while pouring so much magic into the task of digging his grave.
Her shoulders fell, and her enjoyment of enlightened power drained as she watched the broken, magic-less body hover over the hole in the ground. The hole was already filling with rainwater. It seemed like such a cold, dismal place to rest.
The roses would blossom and glimmer in the sunlight, at least. Hopefully, Talem would know peace.
The Overlord must have had her kill Talem for a reason, but that thought wasn’t as bracing as it had once been.
She let the body of Talem fall into the grave. It crumpled in a pile of bones and matted hair and blood-sticky flesh. The tattered rags and the skin of his face barely covered everything else that was raw death. His death felt so much more final when the body was empty of magic. Even Talem’s purest essence had abandoned him. Or been stripped from him.
Tears stung Melaine’s eyes. She wiped a hand roughly across them. Crying was not something she ever allowed herself to do. It was weak, and it would be seen as weak to any onlookers, anyone who wished to prey on a sad, vulnerable, pretty young woman in Stakeside.
Melaine gathered more magic, and straining a little, lifted the large pile of soil from beside the grave in one heave. She dumped it into the hole, hiding Talem forever from sight. The soil settled into place, churning into mud under the rain. But the hole was filled. The grave was finished. Melaine swept her hand across the scene. The rose bushes’ thorns dragged like sharp fingernails across the opening. Melaine sensed the roots infiltrating the grave, though none touched Talem’s body—she made sure of that.
Nothing but a large row of wild roses met her sight, the grave forever hidden within the tangled mass. The roses’ heads still bowed under the heavy rain, showing respect for the man buried in their midst.
Melaine swallowed and backed away. Now that her task was done, her shivering reached a violent level. She was close to the side entrance of the castle now, so she darted toward the innocuous arched door and pulled the iron handle. It stuck for a moment, but with a burst of magic from Melaine, the door opened.
A wave of dark magic swelled over her, making her stumble into the keep. She braced herself on the cold stone wall and kicked the door closed. The dark magic slammed back into the door and clung to the wood.
She stared at the door. It had been locked and sealed by dark magic, but she had burst through without a thought. Either the Overlord was so confident in the towering, outer walls of Highstrong that he had only installed weak magic to bar the door, or Melaine was more powerful than she thought. She was wary to believe the latter, but the idea was tantalizing. She had used magic to shove rain away from her body and maintain it throughout her evening. She had leapt from a rooftop and magically cushioned her fall. She had lifted a heavy, disjointed body from the ground and held it aloft while she’d used even more magic to shift plants and dig a grave. Then she’d used magic to drive away a locking curse upon a door.
And she wasn’t tired at all.
No matter how much magical strength she felt, her spirit felt weary. All her excitement about going to the library was gone. Talem’s grotesque remains and the haunting lack of magic in his bones submerged Melaine’s mind in anxiety. She didn’t understand how all of the pieces fit into a larger puzzle. She didn’t understand the Overlord’s motivations in killing Talem—in having Melaine kill him. She didn’t understand how Talem’s body was devoid of magic, and she wasn’t sure if the Overlord was to blame.
Melaine continued to shiver as she wandered down a brief corridor and into the first inner courtyard. She repelled rain from her body as she ran across the stone pavement to the door Karina had used the first time she’d escorted Melaine to her chambers. She climbed a set of stairs, feeling her way in the dark corridor beyond because she’d left her candle behind. She was fairly confident she knew the way.
She could see the glimmer of a green everflame torch in a sconce ahead, and she knew she was close. All she wanted was to get out of her wet clothes and crawl under the blankets and furs she knew waited in her luxurious bed.
The sound of heavy, slow footsteps stopped her trek. She tried to stifle her shivering breaths, her mind leaping to the image of the hulking, terrifying guard statue, but
she had restrained it before her venture tonight. Had it broken free?
She turned around. A shadowed form met her eyes, but it stood straighter and was thinner than the menacing statue. Its footsteps weren’t caused by grating stone but by the soles of supple leather shoes that she recognized. She stepped to the side to let the green light of the everflame torch behind her illuminate the shadow enough to see a familiar face. A face that was pale and gaunt with bright blue eyes that gleamed in the light.
She took a breath of relief, but her heart pattered faster as she let out a bracing exhale. She had the urge to smile, but she bit her lip and waited with taut muscles. The Overlord stopped ten feet away.
“My lord,” she whispered. The man was dressed for bed, wearing a long, black, silken robe embroidered with subtle, shimmering threads along the lapels and cuffs. The garment closed over his black nightshirt with silver frog fasteners. Given his casual attire, she found it odd that he had bothered to put on his shoes rather than slippers or simply going barefoot.
“I-I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
The Overlord said nothing. He didn’t even move.
“I’ll go straight to bed, my lord,” Melaine said a little louder. “If you wish?”
The Overlord’s eyes flickered over her shoulder toward her quarters. He looked back at her. Then, he tilted his head with a strange glint in his eye as if he was seeing her for the first time. He scanned her body up and down, and the glint turned hungry.
“My lord?” Melaine asked, her voice shaky. Had he seen her burying Talem? Was he about to unleash his powerful wrath?
The Overlord took a step toward her, but then his body shuddered. He looked down at his hand as if he had never seen it before, and then he turned around and started to walk away.
Melaine opened her mouth to question him but stopped herself as he melded into the dark.
Her spooked nerves made her bolt in the other direction. The vines around the menacing statue outside her bedchamber lay broken and shriveled at its feet, but it hadn’t moved so far as she could tell. She darted past the statue and into her room. She placed a barricade spell upon the door and curled into her bed, fear and confusion rolling over her in deep waves as her mind replayed everything she’d seen.
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