Grave Destiny

by Kalayna Price

  “Should I question the shades before we return the bodies?” I asked as Falin knelt beside Lunabella, examining the snow around her.

  “You shouldn’t raise either shade,” Falin said. “In fact, you shouldn’t be using any magic.” He turned and nodded to the hand still gripped around my dagger.

  I glanced down. The entire tip of my index finger was slightly blue, and a thin trail of discoloration ran from the darkened tip to the first joint. It was only a small area, but it hadn’t been that long since I’d purged all the fouled magic. All I’d done magically since was use one charm, and it was one I’d already crafted and only had to activate.

  “We need to get these bodies out of here,” Dugan said, glancing deeper into the woods. “I have no idea what happens to this space after a revelry ends, but I’m fairly certain there were trees over there a few moments ago.” He pointed.

  Several yards past where the bodies were lying, a thick gray wall of mist had formed. As I watched, another tree disappeared. Something told me this wasn’t a normal fog rolling in.

  Our location had an expiration date.

  “Right. I vote we get out of here. Fast.” Of course, that left one huge problem. “How do we get the bodies out?”

  Dugan and Falin exchanged glances. Without a word, they abandoned any precautions about disturbing the scene and ran to the bodies. Falin lifted Jurin’s body, slinging it over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Blood oozed from the stump of neck, running down the front of Falin’s dark shirt. Dugan grabbed Lunabella, mirroring Falin.

  The heads.

  The bodies didn’t necessarily need their heads, but considering we couldn’t come back and claim them later, someone should probably grab them.

  And I was the only someone left.

  My stomach roiled at the idea, but I didn’t give it a chance to protest. Darting forward, I dodged around Lunabella’s heeled feet where they dangled over Dugan’s shoulder and ran for where I’d seen her head. It lay near the base of a tree. Jurin’s wasn’t far from it. The encroaching gray mist was only a yard beyond, moving in fast. If it reached the heads, we would lose them.

  I grabbed a fistful of hair close to the scalp and lifted. The head was heavier than I would have thought just a head would be. I tried not to think about it. Then I turned and grabbed Jurin’s head.

  Trails of mist reached out, encircling the tree directly in front of me. With a decapitated head in each hand, I turned and ran.

  Chapter 16

  The only good thing about my earlier passage through the woods was that I’d left a very easy path to follow on the way out. We ran as fast as we could, Dugan and Falin with corpses slung over their shoulders, and me with a head in each fist. Lunabella’s long hair tangled in a fallen branch. I jerked it free without slowing, leaving a clump of hair behind. This is so not the proper way to treat a corpse. But I couldn’t afford to stop.

  I tripped on a raised root and fell hard, my teeth chinking with the impact. What little air I had rushed out, and I gasped. I managed not to lose the heads in the fall but lost precious time scrambling back to my feet. Dugan and Falin stopped, and Falin urged me ahead of them. Apparently if I was going to get sucked into the mist, they planned to go with me. I put on as much speed as I could, knowing I was slowing them down. Maybe I needed to take up running regularly, because I was in no shape for this.

  We emerged into the festival clearing with the gray mist on our heels.

  The clearing was empty, no trace of the throngs of fae who had been there less than an hour earlier. I didn’t waste time looking around but ran right for the hawthorns and the door out. My chest burned, my throat was raw, and my head was pounding from the running. I tried not to think about what I was carrying, but how do you carry severed heads and not think about that? I could feel them bumping into my aching legs as I pushed for more speed. I just wanted to go home. To not have severed body parts be something I had to entertain thoughts about.

  Every part of me trembled. My body throbbed, begging me to stop and at least catch my breath. I was almost to the hawthorns. I pushed harder, driving myself under the overhanging branches. Into the door.

  “Alex. Where—” Whatever Falin wanted to ask me cut off as I dove into the magical doorway. His hand landed on my arm just before the colors of the world swirled.

  * * *

  • • •

  I emerged from the door on a grassy hillside. A warm wind blew through the grass, and rows of moonflowers created a glowing path starting at the door and winding lazily down the hill.

  Falin, with his hand on my arm, emerged directly after me. Dugan, his fingers clutching the back of Falin’s shirt, followed him out. Doors in Faerie were odd. The revelry door, because it opened to absolutely everywhere, was even stranger than most. It was supposed to put fae back where they belonged, sending each to their own court or territory. I was independent. Falin was winter. Dugan was shadow. We hadn’t discussed where we were going—we’d been in too much of a panicked hurry. So had we not been touching, we likely would have all ended up in different places.

  I should have ended up outside the Eternal Bloom. That was the revelry door for independents in Nekros. Maybe I could have ended up in winter. But I’d been thinking about home.

  So the door took me home.

  I hadn’t even known it could do that.

  I dropped to my knees in the grass, releasing the heads as I fell. They rolled several feet in opposite directions. Even if they’d been murderers, dead bodies deserved more respect, but I couldn’t take one more step.

  I doubled over, dragging in air. I couldn’t get enough. My body was shaking. My lungs burned. My throat ached.

  I was breathing too fast. I knew that. It wouldn’t help anything if I hyperventilated. I tried to hold the air I sucked in. Couldn’t. It burst back and I scrambled for more, not getting enough.

  “Alex?” Falin let the body he was carrying slide to the ground before moving closer to me. “Breathe, Alex.”

  I was trying.

  Damn it, I was going to pass out at this rate. The world grew fuzzy. It was more than just panic and adrenaline—though I sure as hell had more than enough of both buzzing through my body. I physically couldn’t get enough air.

  “Get this”—gasp—“damn”—gasp—“corset off me!”

  Falin didn’t ask any questions. His dagger materialized in his hand and he cut the laces. The thick, boned material sprang apart, and I sucked in a deep breath. My diaphragm expanded for the first time in over twenty-four hours and I swear I could feel my ribs moving back where they belonged. I sucked in another deep breath. Held it. Did it again. Released and drew in more air. Deeper. Slower.

  Ever so slowly, the world began to firm up again, and my body stopped shaking. I focused on my breathing until it was under my control—not calm exactly, but better.

  I pushed back from my knees to sit on the hillside on my butt. Jurin’s head had rolled directly in front of me only a few feet away. His eyes were open, as if he were staring. I shuddered, ripping my gaze away, and looking up, toward the sky.

  Falin had stayed close by, concern written across his face. Now that I was breathing right, he sat back as well. He was shoulder to shoulder with me, his hands behind him, bracing some of his weight.

  I leaned into him, and he wrapped an arm around me without a word. We stared up at the stars for a moment, ignoring the dead bodies on the hill around us. Then a laugh escaped me. It wasn’t an amused laugh, and even I could hear the edge of hysteria in it. But I laughed, because otherwise it was going to come out as a scream. I laughed because our best lead was dead. I laughed because I’d fled from a devouring mist with two heads dangling from my hands. Because the horrible wasting disease that killed my mother was now killing me. Because I might be able to survive it if I was willing to kill other living things. And apparently I was willing, because I
already had. I laughed until tears ran down my face. And then I wasn’t laughing alone; Falin’s deep chuckle vibrated up out of his chest, into me.

  “Well, that was certainly a first for me,” he said when his laughter faded.

  “Fleeing from a devouring mist? I sure hope it wasn’t just normal fog, or I’m going to feel really stupid,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes.

  We both laughed one more time as Dugan stared at us like we’d lost our minds. I didn’t care.

  I was home. We were safe. I had a moment to breathe. Literally.

  The wind blew my hair and carried the scent of flowers across the hill. I drank it down, enjoying the warmth of the air. It was always warm here because this place was mine. I hadn’t wanted it originally. Hadn’t meant to inherit an entire Faerie castle. It had been self-defense that had forced me to kill the body thief. But as well as the blood on my hands, Faerie had given me the castle. And when I became independent, Faerie had moved it from Faerie proper to this folded space that was a mix of Faerie and mortal reality.

  And now, Faerie had apparently tied a door to it.

  That is unlikely to be good.

  I dismissed that thought to somewhere I could deal with later. Right now I just wanted to have my moment of peace. I hadn’t noticed while hyperventilating, but Falin had glamoured me a tank top to replace the corset, so I wasn’t sitting on the hill half naked. The skirt of my gown was the same, and considering how much banging about the heads had done on my dash, I made a point of not looking at the bloodstained material.

  Instead I sat staring up at the stars, on a grassy hillside filled with moonflowers, Falin’s arm warm and strong around me.

  With a couple dead bodies around us. Nothing is perfect.

  I almost laughed at the thought, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop again. I sighed. That moment was over. We needed to get back to what had to be done—like deal with Jurin and Lunabella. Now that we were in the mortal realm, I could feel the grave essence reaching out from them. That also meant decay would start catching up to them. They definitely weren’t going to get any easier to deal with, and there was a lot to do before we returned them to their courts.

  “Time to deal with the dead,” I whispered.

  Falin nodded and stood. Then he turned and offered me a hand. I accepted, letting him pull me to my feet.

  “We need to change. As you’ve so elegantly put it in the past, we look like we’ve just left the set of a horror movie,” he said, gesturing to both of our clothes.

  Yeah. Ew.

  “I think we’re still on that horror set. What do we do with the bodies?” I didn’t want them in the castle. I’d already let him take bodies to my office. I wasn’t allowing bodies in my home as well, case or no case. But, I didn’t know if my roommates had made it back from the revelry yet. They had to drive home from the Bloom, not take the unexpectedly expedited route we had. I wouldn’t want them to walk through the door to the folded space and trip over a dead body.

  I sighed and answered my own question before Falin had a chance. “Maybe I should just do the ritual right here and then we can take them back to Faerie.”

  “No,” Falin said at the same Dugan said, “You can’t.”

  I frowned. “Why?”

  “Look at them, Alex.” Falin said it gently.

  I frowned at him. I didn’t want to. Hadn’t it been enough that I carried the damn heads? I didn’t want to look at them. But I would. I let my gaze run over the grass until I spotted one of the heads. It was Lunabella.

  It was dark on the hillside. The moon was only half full, and while the glowing moonflowers supplied some light, it was still night. Also, mortal reality touched here, so my eyes suffered more than in pure Faerie. I walked over to the head and knelt next to it.

  She had landed facedown in the grass. I didn’t want to touch her, but I couldn’t just leave her head where it had rolled after I’d dropped it. The dead deserved better treatment than that, even if they were suspected of murder.

  Cringing, I lifted the head with both hands. My skin crawled at the contact, my stomach twisting. It hadn’t exactly been easy to touch her head at the revelry, but the threat of the devouring fog had been a pretty big distraction. Now I was very aware of the cold blood and cooling skin under my fingers. I just needed to carry it five feet to her body, and then I was calling us even for my dropping her head in the first place. I would have rather closed my eyes and not thought about what was in my hands, but Falin had told me to look at the bodies, so I turned her face upward as I moved.

  Lunabella’s eyes were closed, at least, but her mouth hung open, and her hair had tangled badly during either the first roll after her beheading, my rough run through the woods, or her second roll when I’d dropped her. It was matted to her face with drying blood. Around it her skin . . . I gasped, nearly dropping the head again.

  Dark purple lines webbed through her face; black lesions bubbled above her skin in places. I stared, trying to convince myself that what I was seeing was just more drying blood. But no, the black and purple lines were under the flesh. Basmoarte. As if in recognition, I felt the tips of my own infected fingers burn with the poison that would slowly kill me. I set her head down above the shoulders of her body where it lay on the hilltop. Then I scuttled back several feet from the corpse. She did not look like she was just sleeping.

  I wiped my hands on my skirt, rubbing my skin hard against the material, but the feeling of Lunabella’s blood on my fingers didn’t brush off. Nor did the burn of the infection in my magic as I turned and searched for Jurin’s head. I’d seen it earlier, near where I’d been sitting, but I hadn’t really looked at it. Now I forced myself to look, and I found similar markings of infection. I should have placed his head with his body as well. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. One of the guys would have to collect it before he was returned to the winter court. I was done.

  “They both have basmoarte.” I said the words very carefully, fighting back the panic bubbling in my throat. Of course that forced it to my stomach and I went still, unsure if I was going to be sick.

  “Yes. With extremely fast onset. Just like what hit you,” Falin said, looking from body to head. “We saw Lunabella less than twelve hours ago and she displayed no symptoms. At the time of her death, the infection was advanced. Her beheading might have been a mercy.”

  “Then that is an undeniable tie to the crime scene,” I said, still scrubbing at my hands. “Perhaps she was accidentally exposed. Or perhaps she was double-crossed. Either way, we need to question her and find out what she knows.”

  “Alexis, she has basmoarte,” Dugan said, and his tone implied we shouldn’t need to discuss it further.

  “So do I.” I yelled it. I couldn’t help it. But I’d already been exposed. What did it matter if I raised a few more shades with it?

  “Yes, but remember it is an infection from a wound, not a disease.” Dugan sounded like he was schooling a child, which irritated me. “Kordon was infected near or after death and showed no symptoms. You described feeling ‘a prick’ when your magic was injured. Imagine what would happen if you reached inside a body this badly infected. It would shred your magic, causing dozens of wounds. How fast would it spread through you then?”

  Oh.

  So raising the shades was out. “How do we confirm they were involved in Stiofan’s murder and not just easy scapegoats? If they were meant to simply disappear after it was known we were searching for Lunabella, it would have been simple to assume she’d run into hiding because she was guilty.”

  “Well, it won’t be definitive, but . . .” Falin walked to Jurin’s body and lifted one of his hands. He carefully removed the dress glove he wore and examined the man’s skin. Then he held the hand up, twisting it so moonlight trailed over the fae’s palm.

  His bloody palm.

  Jurin was winter court. Falin
was the only courtier in winter with sanctioned bloody hands. He hadn’t necessarily taken part in killing Stiofan, but he’d killed someone, and recently. So Stiofan was a damn good possibility. Falin approached Lunabella next, gently stripping off one of her bright yellow gloves. Blood stained her palm as well.

  I shivered, tearing my gaze away.

  Dugan frowned at me. “You really don’t like dead bodies, do you?”

  “No. I don’t. Does anyone?”

  He considered that, opened his mouth, likely to mention any number of disturbed conditions people might have, but at my glare he smiled. “It just seems quite detrimental to have such a strong aversion considering your profession.”

  I shrugged. “I work through it. And up until about six months ago, it wasn’t an issue. I never dealt with murder scenes, or weird unexplainable conditions with corpses, or having to carry bodies. I met with clients and the bodies were already nicely buried, or in coffins, or occasionally in body bags at the morgue.” I turned to Falin. “You know, it was the day I met you that things all went FUBAR.”

  “I hope you’re not blaming me,” he said, but he smiled. Yeah, he was flirting over a dead body. Because this was my life now.

  “I blame him,” a masculine voice said behind me, and I jumped.

  Whirling around, I found myself face-to-face with Death.

  My mouth went dry. It had been over a month since I’d last seen him. Our last good-bye had been mutual but painful. He was a soul collector and I was mortal and it just wasn’t a maintainable relationship. We both knew that. While the logical part of my brain had known it was for the best, my heart didn’t believe me. Also, he’d been my best friend long before he’d been my lover, and losing both in one stroke was the worst part. If I was honest with myself, I was angry with him for not being there to help me heal from the heart he’d broken.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, and then cringed because even I could hear the edge of hurt in my voice.