Page 170 of Bitten & Burned
He looked down at the tub. The blood still curling from my leg.
“Calling to what?” Anton asked, jaw tense.
I already knew the answer.
“To your blood,” I said.
Quil’s eyes met mine.
“To my blood,” he confirmed. “To their blood. Ashborne blood.”
“Is that why you smell so good right now?” I whispered, alarmed.
Quil shrugged. “I dunno. Never asked the steer if it made us smell better. But I imagine it has something to do with it.”
“So… what in the hells does that mean?” Anton asked, his voice sharp. “How do we stop it?”
Quil shrugged. “I don’t know. Whoever controls it would have to stop it.”
“Or die?” Anton murmured.
“That’d do it,” Quil replied evenly.
Anton’s jaw clenched. “That can certainly be arranged.”
“I don’t want him to just stop it,” I said softly, fingerscurling around the edge of the tub. “I want him to remove it. I want it gone.”
Anton turned to Quil. “Is that possible?”
Again, Quil shrugged. “I never learned how to make them. I don’t know what all goes into it. I saw them do it before… They made this… dust… ground with glass? That was so it’d tear the skin and open the bloodstream. They’d put it on these big blankets and flap them at the livestock in the field. All of them would fall. And when they got up, they’d have…thoseon their haunches.”
I frowned. “Right before it appeared on my leg… I accepted a book from Silas. One that he was checking for curses. He told me to go to a specific page. That there’d be something there that interested me. I did, and I remember sneezing right after… My nose hurt… like a sinus infection.”
Quil sighed. “Yeah, that’d be it.”
Silence settled between us—thick, wet, heavy with truth.
I leaned my head back against the rim of the tub, eyes closing as warmth crept up my neck.
“I’m going to find out,” I said. “I want it gone.”
The words came out low, ragged.
“Even so, it’s still… calling,” Quil mumbled, his eyes dropped to the water. Still tinged pink. Drops of blood still curling like smoke in the water. “You’re not safe here,” he whispered.
“I know.”
“So what do we do?” Anton asked, “Take her away from here? I have that apartment in Serpentine Bay, I could take her there.”
“No,” Quil said roughly. “She needs a bigger city. Caer Voss.”
“So I’ll go with her back to Caer Voss,” Anton said, looking between us. “I do well in the city. I do well everywhere.”
“Can you do well here while I go with her to Caer Voss?” asked Quil. “Because Cassian will need you here.”
“Cassian will do fine without me.”
“I’mgoing with her,” Quil hissed.
