Page 52 of Give the Dark My Love

Not this time. Just this once, just this one time, I needed a win. I needed to know that what I’d been doing at the hospital wasn’t futile. That leaving my family behind had been worth it. I needed to know that I could make a difference.

I needed Dilada to live.

Power surged from me and into the rim of the crucible, flowing into my body like a wave, filling me up and draining back into the crucible’s well, over and over again.

I could still feel Dilada. Not her life force—no, that was gone. Cold. But there was something, some small spark of Dilada still there. I reached for it blindly.

I saw into the black behind my eyelids. I saw past the veil between life and death. I saw past myself and into the depleting shell of Dilada’s body.

I saw Death itself.

It was a feral thing, made of smoke and shadow. It was hollow and empty.

And hungry.

Starving.

It turned on me as my soul seeped past my own body and into the connection between Dilada and me. Death swam and slid and crept and glided, its black formless being splattering darkness over my essence. It licked at my life force, and I shuddered involuntarily, feeling Death crawl inside me, slithering into the depths of my being.

“Nedra!” Master Ostrum’s voice was concerned now, pitched high with worry, and he forced me to break the bond, shoving me away from the body and the crucible, severing the connection I’d had with both Dilada and Death. The crucible clattered to the ground, and I followed behind it, crashing against the floor. For a moment, all I could do was stare straight up at the flickering lights of the oil lamps hanging from the ceiling. My entire being was repulsed by the feeling of Death taking up residence in my body, gnawing at me.

And yet... I craved it. It had infected me with its insatiable hunger. I wanted more.

“Are you all right?” Master Ostrum asked, dropping to his knees beside me. He reached for my arm, feeling my pulse. It seemed like it should be strong; my heart wanted to race and rollick out of my body, but I could tell by Master Ostrum’s frown that he could barely find its beat.

I pushed him away and sat up on my own. Dilada’s body still lay on the table, but her normally olive skin looked bleached, abnormally pale, like a layer of ash had been rubbed all over her.

“What have you done?” Master Ostrum said in a low voice, meant only for my ears. He did not try to hide the morbid fascination welling in his eyes.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Nedra

Master ostrum trieda couple of times to get me to tell him what I had experienced in that last alchemical transfer with Dilada, but I wasn’t ready to speak about it.

“Tonight,” he said as we passed through the gates to Yugen, “we will discuss what transpired.” His tone brooked no argument, but he allowed me to head off on my own.

I started for the library, but it wasn’t books I wanted. Instead, I veered in the other direction, toward the small chapel.

I had discovered the chapel on my first weekend at Yugen when I heard its bells ringing in the morning. I’d thought it would be filled to the brim with students, but instead, I was one of the few people who visited it. There was no Elder. I hadn’t quite expected one, as the chapel wasn’t a full church hall, but I’d thought perhaps someone would lead the prayers or give a sermon. For all of this school’s famous lecturers, none of the professors came to teach religion.

But there were prayer candles. And it was quiet. And I needed both of those things now.

I stepped into the small chapel with my head down, not inviting any engagement, but there was no one else there this early on a weekday. I supposed most of the people on campus were in the cafeteria, eating breakfast, chatting, completely ignorant that another factory by the docks had closed to plague, that these endless mini tragedies unfolded around them just outside the academy’s gates.

In the center of the chapel was the eternal flame, a candle as tall as me and as thick as my arm, set into the floor. The round glass inset in the roof was supposed to symbolize the eye of Oryous watching us at all times, never blinking. I took my small prayer candle from the basket by the door and lit it on the eternal flame.

As I stared at the flickering light, I was overwhelmed with nostalgia and then fear as I remembered Ernesta’s letter. In a way, I was glad that this chapel was different from the church hall back home, smaller, neater, less used. It would have been too much like saying goodbye all over again if it had the warm familiarity of my village but didn’t have the people I loved inside.

The walls were painted with various holy scenes, but I was drawn to the mural opposite the door. In it, Oryous stood before an image of Death, ghostly white and draped in black, the cloth billowing from an unearthly wind that did not bend the blades of painted grass or shake the trees in the background. The lesser gods stood behind Oryous, all of them rebuking Death, who stood alone. Oryous held his hand out, his palm in front of Death, stopping him. It was supposed to symbolize how we do not truly die when we believe in the gods.

The prayer candle shook in my hand as I approached the mural, the small flame dancing. Cushions were laid on the floor in front of each mural, but I did not kneel. We never knelt or sat at the church hall in the village. We were supposed to stand before our gods, not crouch.

I stepped over the cushions to get closer to the mural. My eyes were not on Oryous, but instead on Death itself. This was not the Death I had seen when I reached into Dilada, trying to pull her back to life. That Death had no shape, nothing as clear as this.

I blew my candle out. I did not need it to pray.

I was not sure who I wanted to pray to.

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