It was just past midnight when the paranoia set in.
Leonzio paced the length of the room, heartbeat so vigorous it was a foreign sensation in his chest. He was hyperaware of the cool air against his skin. The way his tongue—too dry, too dry—sat all wrong behind the cage of his teeth.
Unable to stand it any longer, he crossed over to the door, opened it, and peered into the corridor. It stretched out before him like an infinite passage, all but the first few steps consumed by oppressive shadow.
The guard who should have been standing there was gone.
And yet the disciple couldn’t bring himself to leave his room, unwilling to navigate the dark Palazzo.
The building had eyes. He’d felt their weight all week: first in the place where he prayed to the saints, then in the council chambers where he met with the other representatives of the blessed guilds. They tracked his every step, and not even the light of the stars could drive them away.
As he slipped back into his room, frustration nagged at the edges of his mind. What had he been doing prior to the fear taking hold? He’d been looking for the chief magistrate—that was it. Had needed to tell the man something crucially important. But what?
Leonzio swept a hand across his perspiring brow. The candle he’d lit cast slanting shadows up the walls, soft lines shifting as the flame quivered in the breeze from the cracked window. Staggering to the other side of the room, he shoved the glass pane open wider, letting the wind caress his face as he stared into the night-shrouded gardens below.
They stared back.
Pulse ricocheting higher, the disciple stumbled in his haste to yank the curtain closed. Something was out there. Something ghastly and inhuman prowled the Palazzo grounds. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel the wrongness, the slimy, shifting weight of it a pressure at his throat.
He twisted his sweat-slick fingers together, muttering a prayer to the patron saint of Death. His saint. The one from whom his family was descended, blessing them with the gift of magic. And yet tonight his fervent murmurings brought little comfort, for the more he questioned Death’s power, the less he felt the saint’s presence.
Help me was the central request of his current plea, though he only grew hotter and felt sicker. Perhaps it was not enough, the disciple thought, to request protection with mere words. Compulsion gripped him as suddenly as the nausea had, firm and unrelenting. He let it carry him. He was a distant spectator, two eyes in a flesh prison.
Vision beginning to blur, he dragged himself to the room adjacent, using the wall as an aid. He imagined he left handprints against the gilded paint, swipes of rusted crimson that would draw the saints to him. As if they were no longer deities, but slavering beasts seeking a fresh carcass.
The saints were merciful. All the stories said so.
But the stories also said they craved blood.
Leonzio dropped to his knees beside an incoherent arrangement of debris he’d collected from the Palazzo grounds. He didn’t quite know when or why he’d begun stuffing rocks into his pockets and snapping twigs off bushes like some kind of compulsive pruner. The process had simply felt . . . necessary.
His hands shook as he knelt on the floor, redistributing the debris into a different shape. The stone beneath his knees grounded him slightly. As the disciple aligned the sticks, he whispered not only to Death but to all the faceless saints.
Then he picked up the knife.
When the first drops of blood fell, it was almost a relief. Stark fear gave way to welcome inertia.
By the time he realized he was dying, it was far too late.