Look through the iris and you’ll see
The life I left behind
The northern lights had faded and the sky was black once more, dusted with endless stars. The night had reached its peak and the first grey hints of dawn had started in the east.
“Shall we bury him?” Winter asked, gazing with pity toward Tancredi’s lifeless body. He had attacked her, too, back on her native Islay. How helpless he looked now, his almond eyes closed forever, his face gaunt, his limbs tightening. She thought she could see blood staining his lips and feathers. Clearly, in life he’d been very ill. Compassion filled Winter’s heart.
“No time,” Sean answered.
Winter’s throat constricted at the thought of leaving this dead man alone to decay, with no one to give him a burial. What if he’d been Mike? Or her? “We can’t leave him like this. He’ll be eaten by animals . . . and demons.” She shuddered. “We can’t.”
“We have no time,” Nicholas intervened. “We need to keep moving. We’re two days’ walk away from my father.”
Sarah closed her eyes briefly. Behind her controlled exterior she felt physically ill. She hated the thought of leaving the Falco heir like that, but she knew they were right. She knew that they couldn’t waste any time digging a grave when they might be attacked any second, and then they’d join Tancredi in the hole they’d just dug for him. She steeled herself.
“Let’s go,” she whispered, feeling like she’d left yet another little piece of the old Sarah behind. The girl who’d been left helpless by her parents, who’d been sheltered from the knowledge and skills of the Secret Families – the child who’d been lying alone at night, terrified, listening for her parents’ footsteps up the stairs, back from their nightly hunt – was now capable of things that would have horrified her old self.
“We can cover him with those stones,” Winter insisted, pointing at some flat grey rocks that covered the ground like a natural pavement, ferns growing between them. “It really won’t take long,” she nearly begged.
“He’s an heir. We can’t leave him here,” Niall said in his gentle way, speaking for the first time since Tancredi appeared. Sarah could read the abhorrence on his face, his shock at the suggestion of leaving Tancredi unburied, and trembled inside. Maybe he despised her because she’d killed an heir, and he’d be right to, she thought, drowning in a wave of self-hatred. Well, there was nothing she could do.
“Never mind being an heir! He’s a human being!” whispered Winter, looking around her as if she couldn’t believe what was happening. “His spirit might go wandering, like those lost at sea,” she added.
At Winter’s words, Sarah felt a sudden disquiet. “Fine then. Let’s cover him with stones.” Sean gazed at her, surprised by her change of mind. Her eyes were haunted, and he understood. They’d take what little time they had to bury Tancredi. They’d run the risk.
“We can’t—” Nicholas began.
“It’s been decided,” Sean interjected. “Elodie, keep watch,” he said. He didn’t want her to be lifting heavy stones; he’d spotted blood on her back during the fight with the moon-demons. The wounds she’d suffered at the petrol station were far from healed.
In perfect silence, Winter composed Tancredi’s body, folding his arms in his lap and covering him with his cape, the feathery headdress resting on his face. She thought of the little sister he’d been talking about, and her heart went out to the unknown girl. Sarah looked on, eyes dry and no expression on her face. Only her pursed lips betrayed her inner turmoil. Together, she and Winter began to pile stones on top of him.
Sean threw a glance at Elodie. She was standing a few yards away, sgian-dubh in hand, lips black. There was something about her that ate away at him. She looked weak somehow. She acted weak, like everything was too heavy, too tiring – even breathing. Sean was afraid to think what the reason might be.
“Nicholas,” he whispered while everyone was gathering stones. “What is this thing, this . . . Azasti?”
“What? Do you not know? None of you knows what the Azasti is? The ailment, some call it. It’s an illness of the Secret heirs. Rotten blood,” he said. “It kills you slowly, painfully. That’s how my father got the Sabha to work for him in the first place. He had his Valaya there offer a cure.”
“That’s how he corrupted the Sabha? They wanted a cure for this thing?”
“Yes. A cure he couldn’t give. But the Secret Council were desperate. They collaborated.”
“And Harry knew,” Sean said. “He tried to stop it.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. He certainly knew the Sabha were working with my father, otherwise he would have entrusted Sarah to them and not to you.” Nicholas replied. “But I don’t know if he was aware that my father had offered a cure for the Azasti.”
“So Sarah is in danger too? Of getting ill, I mean?” Sean forced himself to ask.
“For some reason, there has been no trace of the Azasti in Scotland or Ireland. Maybe it’s because they’re on the edge of Europe, remote, by our standards. That’s one of the reasons why Sarah was chosen as my bride.”
Niall had overhead Nicholas’ words. “I’m glad you didn’t choose me,” he joked. He was his usual self, ready to smile when things were far from funny, but his eyes were hard.
Sean felt sick to the pit of his stomach. “So that’s what you meant when you said that Sarah’s blood was strong.” His hands were shaking. How he would have loved breaking his nose and a bone or two for good measure right now. He tried to steady his heart, beating too hard. His fury had nowhere to go for now. It would just consume him.
Sarah placed another moss-covered stone on Tancredi’s body, the last one. It was done. She closed her eyes for a moment, still on her knees, recovering herself.
May your little sister be safe, she prayed silently. They were now a few yards from the makeshift grave, which they’d hidden among ferns and stones.
Suddenly, the whole world exploded in a golden light, blinding them all. Sarah covered her face with her hands but peered between her fingers, squinting through the glare. A spiral had appeared in front of them, twirling and tearing a hole in reality. It looked like the Gate they’d used to step into the Shadow World, but golden, and more violent – like a gash in the air, one that hurt and bled, one that wasn’t supposed to exist, but somehow had come to be.