A Scourge Upon Them

Chapter 1

Lord Malthus of the Rose was dead, and that was all anyone really knew. Lena only learned that much through the grapevine. According to Ruby’s texts, the Orchid Veil was humming with excitement and victory. Lena hadn’t gone to the Veil in person to see for herself, of course. She’d been blanketed in the twin opiates of despair and wrath since their return from the seaboard. She’d spent the time since cocooned in the darkness of her own bedroom, barely venturing forth even for food.

It had been three days since their attempt to liberate Coral. Three days since she’d gambled her life against Gavin’s guilt, betting it all on a brighter future. Three days since the fight with Architeuthis. Three days since she’d found her fiancé Gavin dead on the docks. It had been foolish to conspire against Lady Leblanc. Because of that misstep, everything had fallen to pieces. What little Lena had, she’d lost yet again.

She knew who was responsible. And she knew he would come to her before long.

The sun had gone down, dyeing the living room’s carpet blood red and then black. The knocking was at first quiet, then rapid and jarring. Lena didn’t move from where she sat sobbing on her bed, knees wrapped in her arms. After the fourth gallop of knocks, she heard her brother Clive crossing the living room with creeping steps. “It’s Jase,” he called to her. “Should I answer it?”

“Do it,” she said, no hitch to her voice. Her fingernails dug into the skin of her arms. Cold metal pressed into the small of her back.

The door creaked ajar, and Clive’s tenuous greeting was cut off with a gasped question from their visitor: “I got Lena’s text. Is she in?”

Clive stuttered. He must still have been on edge after the disaster at the shipyard, for he couldn’t get a coherent answer out in time for Jase’s patience.

“Get out of my way. I have to see her.”

Heavy footsteps approached the bedroom’s threshold. Lena’s face hurt from sobbing, but her pulse was racing. Making a show of a sniff, she raised her face toward the cutting slash of light coming from the living room.

There he stood, tall, tan, disheveled. Tufts of snow clung to his shoulders and sleeves. Even in the dull light, the sheen of the scar across his nose was clear. So were the tear tracks beneath his eyes. “Lena,” he said, voice choked. “Are you alright?”

Lena shook her head pitifully and buried her head in her knees again. Another sob rumbled from her diaphragm. “Gavin’s dead.”

“Aye. He is.” For a long moment, the only sound was the stabbing of Lena’s sobs. “I’ve been waiting three days for you to show up at the Veil,” he said. “I didn’t realize… I wish you’d’ve texted me sooner, I could’ve come.” He drew a noisy breath through his nostrils. “May I sit?”

She forced herself to nod. The heat running down her face pulled her deeper toward despair. Shame. This was not a face the Queen of Swords should show anyone; only one person had seen her like this since she joined the Veil, and now he was dead.

The bed sank beneath Jase’s weight at the foot. His shoulders were slumped. Was it remorse? Not that Lena cared one way or another. For a long moment, the two just sat there. Lena focused on the hitching of her chest, the tearing of her breath.

“I doubt it will surprise you,” the man said softly, “but Lady Leblanc knows everything. But she’s willing to forgive us. She acknowledged that it was a dark matter that we got wrapped up in, but our hearts were in the right place. You don’t need to hide. If you come to the Veil, things can go back to how they were before.”

“Without Gavin.” Again she made the sorrow sing for her.

Jase hesitated. “I wish I could’ve gotten there in time to save him. He was my best friend. But, whatever happened in the end, the man died for something he believed in. What happened to Coral was a tragedy. But we did our best. With Architeuthis and the Rosarium against us, there’s nothing more we could’ve done.” His tone grew darkly candid. “I’d like to think that their deaths will make a difference in the grand scheme of things.”

Acid streamed from her eyes. Her jaw clenched. “I don’t give a shit about any of that. I just feel so alone.”

A moment of uncertainty vibrated through the air, magnetism between the wounded and the stalwart. With a small, mournful exhale, Jase slid closer to her. “Everything will be okay.” A comforting arm wrapped about her shoulders.

Her whole body tensed. Got you.

She became an explosion of movement. She twisted her trunk and moved into him. Her left hand found the knife concealed at her hip. With a pendulous motion, she thrust the blade up toward his throat with all her strength.

But Jase must have tasted something sinister in the air. He pulled back abruptly. The glint of steel slit the darkness, and a red blur blossomed. Jase’s whole body contorted in slow motion, blood spilling from the underside of his chin. The knife had bitten deep, slicing up almost through to his tongue.

The man was on his feet, a curse and a livid question spoiling the air. She chased, unwilling to let a foot slip between them. As soon as she was up, she pulled back, shearing skin and soft tissue on the return, and plunged the knife toward Jase’s exposed chest.

He moved like lightning, bending obliquely away from the strike. One large hand found her wrist, bent it into a joint lock. A yelp escaped her lips as her grip was sprung, and the crimson-slick knife tumbled to the carpet.

“What the hell are you doing?!” The pain molded the outburst into a single wet word. Jase glared at her, the stream of blood from his jaw now under his control, his flesh already mending. Red smears teased his lips and filled the cracks in his teeth.

Lena clenched her molars tight and tried to pry her hand from his concrete-solid grip. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what you did,” she hissed. “I know you’re the one who killed Gavin. You betrayed him after he put all of his trust in you. In the name of Leblanc, you murdered him!”

Jase’s eyes peeled open in surprise. “No, it wasn’t—!”

Lena didn’t let him finish. Fighting the pain in her wrist, she turned her hips and launched a hard, arcing kick at his head. Pain radiated up and down her leg as the blade of her tibia crunched his face with a devastating impact. He staggered from the blow, and Lena rolled herself away from his core. His joint lock unraveled. A moment later, she had his arm barred at the elbow.

“Wait!” he gasped through a mouthful of blood.

She twisted her hips again. Knee met elbow. A sickening crunch filled the air, and then a howl of pain. Her hand sought the second knife from the holster under her belt. She spun it once in her hand, pulled back, and—

Jase’s free hand got her, a sledgehammer landing right in her solar plexus. She doubled over, lungs rebelling and punishing her for her overextension. The whole room went dark for a moment. She scrambled to right herself and catch her breath, but she’d lost her momentum.

Jase had slipped from her. The next thing she saw was his leg hurtling toward her. The blow landed in her sternum and knocked her from her feet. She crashed shoulder-first into the carpet and could no longer tell up from down. She was paralyzed. Her chest heaved and clenched with nauseating pangs. She couldn’t breathe. All she could do was curl into her chest and cough.

Through tear-streaked eyes, she saw Jase panting, anger steaming off him thick enough to taste. With the back of his hand, he wiped a smattering of blood from his chin. His right arm hung, hyperextended and useless, at his side. “Guess there’s no point hiding it, is there?” he said, words slurred with blood. “Yes. I killed Gavin. I murdered him. I wish things didn’t have to come to that. I wish there was another way. But that’s the world we live in.”

Lena’s coughing wouldn’t abate. Her chest tingled with vacancy. It didn’t matter how strong her body and hemomancy were; if she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t fight.

“I know you don’t care,” Jase continued, “but my wound is deeper than yours. He was the best friend I’ve ever had. We go back to childhood together in Arklow. It tears me apart to remember his face on the dock when he realized where we both stood. But he chose to stand with Malthus. He turned his back on the only hope this war had to end without more useless bloodshed. I couldn’t let him stand in the way of the future our race deserves, even if he was my best friend.” His last words rattled with a sob. “I’m not asking for your sympathy. You have every right to hate me for what I’ve done. But what I did, I did for the whole world.”

Save your crocodile tears, Lena would have yelled had her diaphragm been under her control.

Jase moved to tower over where she lay sprawled. His foot came to rest on her collarbone with just enough pressure to pin her in place. “You and I both know I could kill you right now. But I don’t have any ill-will toward you. And…” His chest trembled with a deep breath. “Gavin’s last request was that I take care of you. I won’t betray him a second time.”

He let his words permeate the moment. Then he removed his foot, turned, and walked to the door, pausing gravely at the threshold. “There’s going to be a party tomorrow at the Veil,” he said. “All the Veil branches are celebrating Malthus’s death and the end of the Rosarium. There’s going to be some big announcements. You’re welcome to come. But nobody would think less of you if you didn’t.”

Sharp words floated to the back of her throat, but she still couldn’t give them voice.

He hovered at the doorway for a long moment, hesitating, something sitting heavy on the tip of his wounded tongue. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “Whatever that’s worth to you.” With that, he started for the front door.

Another shape appeared through the doorway, between Jase and the exit. “So it’s true,” Clive’s voice rang. “You really did sell Coral out.”

“I’m tired of explaining myself,” Jase said. “If you want to kill me, then just try. Otherwise, stop wasting my time.”

Clive stood silently for a few seconds. Through the blur of tears, Lena saw his nervous tremors. Finally, Jase reached out and swept him out of the way with the arm she hadn’t ruined. He threw the door open. When it slammed shut, he was gone.

The apartment vibrated in the aftermath, tense and electrical. Lena’s coughing at last began to subside. A thread of spittle connected her mouth to the carpet. God damn you, Jase.

“Lena? You alright?” Clive was at the threshold, looking in uncertainly.

She pushed herself into a sitting position, shoulders slumping. “Do I look alright to you?” she wheezed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shoulda been here tryin’ to help. I can’t believe I—”

She shook her head. “Forget it. You couldn’t’ve done anything.”

He didn’t object. They both knew it was true. Though Clive was a king, AB-negative like her, he was inexperienced. The closest he’d ever come to a life-or-death fight was when they tangled with Architeuthis at the docks, and he was dead weight then.

“So, what do we do now?” he asked, one hand nervously trailing through his shoulder-length blond hair.

Lena let her breath settle into a familiar rhythm. Heat still stung her eyes, mirroring the ache in her heart. “I think it’s time for me to leave.”

“Leave?”

“Ain’t nothin’ left for me here. The war’s over. And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna go begging for forgiveness from that witch Leblanc.”

“If you’re quitting,” Clive said, chest squared and proud, “then so am I.”

“You don’t need to do that. You’re allowed to make your own decisions.”

“The hell do ya think this is? I ain’t goin’ back after what she did to Coral.” She could feel that hate in his words, the loss. They’d both had something precious taken from them by the Veil, something that would never come back. The air was heavy with respect for the dead.

A cynical little laugh fluttered from her lips. “So, that’s it, huh?” She forced herself to stand, ignoring the throbbing in her lungs and the ringing in her leg. “So much for Saint Isabeau. Start packing your things, then. We’re hitting the road as soon as possible.”

The shadow of relief pooled in his slate-gray eyes. “Yeah. Let’s do that.” He took off toward his room, the only part of the apartment furnished with more than the barest of necessities.

Once she was alone, Lena cursed at how poorly her revenge plan had gone. Not only did Jase escape with his life, but he’d spared her. It was a deep wound to her pride. She sighed, felt the ache in her lungs, and shelved the thought. She could feel sorry for herself later, after she’d finished her packing. A duffel bag with half a million Dahlia scrip was waiting to be picked up in a coin locker downtown; packing the rest of her crap would be quick. There was, however, one other thing she couldn’t forget. Wincing, she hobbled over to her nightstand and pulled the top drawer open. Inside was a single item: a blocky old brick of a phone, one of the models that the advent of smartphones had almost entirely erased from public consciousness. It had been Coral’s.

She picked it up, felt the weight in it, and tucked it into her pocket. She should have just left it. It wasn’t like her to be taken by such sentimental rubbish. But the voice message left on it by that girl’s friend had ignited something long-moribund in Lena’s heart: the hope that one day the wounds between hemomancers and humans could be mended. Childish? Yeah, probably. But it wasn’t like she had much hope for anything else in this carcass of a world.

With the phone tucked away, she went about packing the rest of her things. There would still be some errands that required daylight, no matter how quickly she packed. Her Dahlia-held account would have to be drained and traded for United States currency. There were some automatic payments to cancel. And it couldn’t hurt to pick up a letter of recommendation from Jury’s Rig.

As she packed, she found herself fixating on her own weakness. What had gone wrong? Lena didn’t lose fights; she stacked the odds until victory was assured. Hell, she’d taken down a handful of aces in single combat before. But Jase had beaten her without even using hemomancy. Not that he’d needed it; she’d left herself wide open for that attack. It wasn’t like her. It was pure sloppiness on her part. It was like her body had been made physically heavier by the emotions weighing her heart.

Resentment bubbled through her as she packed. Resentment for Jase, Leblanc, for herself. Her thoughts soon turned to what Jase had told her about the party. Big announcement, huh? she thought. I don’t want to be within a hundred miles when Leblanc reveals whatever she’s planning next.