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Chapter 18

The scream had already died.

Idonea froze, every instinct in her body screaming to move, but her blood had turned to ice.

Lysander’s hand clamped around her arm, firm and unyielding. “Stay behind me,” he said. He was already pulling her forward, towards the sound.

She wished he hadn’t. The sight hit her like a blow.

The girl, the one with the amber-ringed eyes, lay sprawled across the chapel steps, her frame twisted unnaturally, a fan of red spreading beneath her. The snow had turned pink where it touched her skin. Her throat was gone. Her chest, opened like a page no one should ever read. One hand raised to ward something off, frozen mid-plea. Her mouth had fallen open, the lower lip slack against the chapel stone.

Lidiya stood nearby in the arms of a Templar, the man's gauntlet at her elbow holding her up rather than holding her in place. Her arms hung loose, and her hands were dark with damp earth, the cold reddening the skin around her knuckles. Her mouth was closed and very tight, but she wasn't weeping.

Idonea’s knees buckled, gripping Lysander’s wrist, fingers numb. All she saw was blood. Red in the snow, red on the chapel stone, red beneath a child's hand.

She couldn’t have been over fifteen. Snowflakes fell soft and silent onto the girl’s cheek, melting instantly against still-warm skin. Then the sleet came, washing thin rivulets of red down the chapel steps.

Idonea followed the trail up to the door. Her gaze found it beside the body in dirt and death: the sigil of Vinea.

Lysander hadn’t released her. His grip on her arm was steady, grounding. For once, she didn’t try to pull free. Without that grip, she thought her legs might give out entirely.

Above them, Lance broke from the shadows with a shriek that split the cold air. His wings cut across the sleet like black flame. He circled once, twice, and on the third pass he came down low, hovering close enough to the body that the wind from his wings stirred the strands of her hair across her cheek. His tongue flickered out. Not at the sigil. Not at the wound. He held there, breath-close to her face, for a count that was longer than Idonea expected. Then he hissed and darted upward, vanishing into the dark.

Idonea's brow creased. She couldn't hold the question; whatever he'd found was for later.

Footsteps crunched through the snow. Alcaeus approached, his heavy cloak dragging frost in its wake. The Magistrate trailed close behind.

The sleet had turned to a fine, slanting rain, blurring the world into silver and red and shadow.

Idonea broke from Lysander's grip.

She hadn't decided to do it. Her body did it. Three short steps and she was at the girl's side, kneeling. The Templar around Lidiya jerked but didn't let go of her. Lysander whispered her name, but she didn't turn.

She laid two fingertips against the girl's jaw. The skin was still warm, and Idonea's fingers came away wet. She closed the girl's eyes with the side of her thumb, her breath shuddering.

Then Lysander's hand was at her elbow, drawing her up, and she let him. But before she rose, her eyebrows furrowed. The angle of Arina's jaw was wrong. The lower jaw sat off, as though pressed sideways after the fact. Idonea's thumb hovered above the corner of the mouth. She didn't lift the lip. The sleet was washing pink down the chapel stone, and she told herself it was the cold setting the muscles.

Alcaeus took in the scene with a single, cold glance. His gaze brushed Idonea, and hesitated.

“Take her,” he said. “Confine her.”

The words landed like a sentence, not an order.

Lysander moved without hesitation.

His hand tightened around her arm, and he pulled her back. Away from the blood, away from the sigil.

She didn’t fight. The world had narrowed to numbness.

Behind them, more footsteps. Idonea half-turned. Elzhbeta was coming from the direction of the Magistrate's house, her cloak drawn closed, her steps unhurried. She arrived at her husband's shoulder several heartbeats after he'd already stopped and surveyed the dead. Her face, when Idonea caught it, was composed.

She wore gloves. Heavy leather, dark, gauntleted at the wrist. The leather was wet at the cuffs that didn't match the snow. Lysander, beside Idonea, had pulled one of his own gloves off at some point. The Templar holding Lidiya had bared his right hand. The Magistrate, when he crouched briefly to look at the wound, was bare-handed too. The cold was bad enough to want gloves; handling the dead was bad enough that one took them off.

Elzhbeta did not. She glanced once at Idonea, the look unreadable, and then turned her attention to her husband.

But Lysander didn’t speak for her.

As he led her away through the sleet, Idonea looked once more over her shoulder. The girl’s hand was still raised towards the chapel door, reaching for something that had never come.