I try to move with Alistair's quick stride and nearly stumble. My back seizes. My knuckles burn with a stiff, arthritic throb when I make a fist.
The rapping continues, harder now. Urgent.
"Father? Are you in there? The tavern should've been open hours ago!"
The office is a disaster. Splintered wood from the overturned desk litters the floor. Shards of glass from shattered bottles glimmer among dark, sticky patches of Derrick's blood.
I clear my throat, forcing out Derrick's gruff speech, the words thick and unfamiliar on my new tongue. "Just a minute!"
My hand flies to my neck, covering the jagged tear from the broken bottle. The wound is still tacky beneath my fingers. I drag a dusty sleeve across it, and then use my shoulder to shove the heavy desk just enough to clear the door.
I wrench the door open.
Belladonna stands there, arms crossed, an impatient frown on her face. The frown vanishes as she takes in my appearance.
I sag against the doorframe. Panic threatens to break my expression. I reach for Derrick's authority, but the muscles in this face have a fragmented memory. They try to find their old, hard lines, but spasm. One side of my mouth pulls into a grimace while an eyelid twitches. The face I present to her is a tangle of conflicting states. Composure wrestles with fear.
"Something terrible has happened," I say, the muscles under my left eye bunching into a tight knot.
My jaw goes slack on one side. The two halves of my face seem to belong to different men, one stern, the other stunned.
"Alistair. He's gone."
Her reply is a sharp, disbelieving hiss of air. "Gone?"
I nod, the motion sending a fresh spike of pain through my neck.
I let it crack my voice. "He came to me last night. Said he'd discovered something about the Collectors." My throat closes around the lie. I force the words out. "He took his own life. Said he couldn't bear to be taken, couldn't risk what they might do to him."
Her fingers press against her lips, muffling her gasp. "Gods." She stumbles back. "Where's the body? The Collectors will need proof."
I rake a hand through Derrick's thinning hair, forcing a tremor into it. "That's the thing, Bella. He jumped." The words feel like broken glass in my mouth. "From Weepingstone."
Her fingers, pressed to her lips, are a knot of white bones. A line between her brows deepens.
"I followed him when he left here, tried to talk him down. By the time I made it down the cliffside, the tide had come in. The sea took him."
Her eyes drift past me, toward the window, as if she can see the cliffs from here. "He didn't seem the type."
Then her focus snaps back to me, hard and sharp. "So what did you see, then? You were there. Did you watch him jump?"
"I was too late," I say.
"You didn't raise the alarm?"
The only answer is the drip of water from the eaves.
"You came back here instead. And smashed things."
Her stare is a force, pinning me to the doorframe. "Did you search the shoreline?"
I manage a slow, heavy nod, the movement feeling alien on this thick neck. "For hours. The currents there are strong, you know that. His body could be miles out to sea by now."
My knees buckle, and I catch myself on the splintered leg of the desk. "I couldn't control myself after what happened," I say, my hand still gripping the ruined wood. "It broke me."
Her eyes narrow, concern shifting to something harder.
"Broke you?"
Her voice is quiet. Firm.
"Father, I saw you carry a full cask of ale up from the cellar with three broken ribs after that brawl with the loggers. I've never seen anything break you. Not like this."
She glances down at my hands where they grip the doorframe. Her frown deepens. "Your hands are shaking." Her eyes fix on my fingers. "I've never seen your hands shake."
I dredge up the gnawing fear for Belladonna that bunches in Derrick's gut every waking moment. I funnel it into a raw, ragged sob that tears from my throat.
"He wasn't just a stranger, Bella," I choke out. "He was hope. Hope from Blackthorn. And he told me it was all for nothing."
My hand lands on her arm. Her skin is warm. A stark contrast to my touch.
She freezes under my grip, her focus falling to where my fingers rest against her skin. Something clicks behind her eyes.
I snatch my hand back, the stolen sob dying in my throat. "Now go," I force out, the words a ruin. "I need a moment."
Her posture softens, but it's the forced, careful gentleness of someone trying not to startle a wounded, unpredictable animal. She takes a shaky breath, her eyes jumping from my face to the wreckage behind me.
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"This is bad. Really bad. We need to inform the Elders immediately. They need to know before the Collectors arrive tomorrow."
She scrambles away, a frantic patter on the wooden floorboards, leaving me alone in the doorway.
A pain rips through me. My hand flies to my chest, expecting the sickening pulse of the Blight. But the agony isn't in my body. It's in his. Derrick's.
It's his heart.
And it's breaking.
The strength drains from me. I slide down the doorframe, a heap on the floor. The air feels too thick to breathe. For a wild, insane moment, I want to run after her, to scream the truth, to confess everything. To be caught, to be torn apart by the villagers. It would be a relief. A clean ending.
But I do nothing. I just sit there, a murderer wearing a dead man's skin, waiting for the next performance.
Every trace of violence must be erased, or
The command is a jolt through my new bones, shattering the paralysis. Every muscle in this body screams as I force it into motion. I heave the heavy desk back into place, the wood groaning, my back spasming with a fiery protest.
I kneel, the floorboards hard against Derrick's stiff knees. The shards of glass can stay. They fit the story.
The dark stains are the real problem. I grab a half-empty bottle of ale from a shelf, uncap it, and pour the liquid over the worst of them. Foam sizzles, engulfing the patches of drying blood. The yeasty stench smothers the iron tang of murder as I grind the filth into the floorboards with my heel, transforming a killing floor into a drunken tantrum.
I look at my new hands. Derrick's hands. These were the hands that poured drinks, that fixed a loose shutter, that wiped his daughter's tears.
The path is true. The Echo of Derrick strengthens.
It remains Faint, but its flame, once a cold ash, is now a lifeless ember.
||
I slump against the wall. A pain like a heated needle jabs my left side.
My hand goes to the source of the pain, and through the rough fabric of the tunic, my fingers trace a welt of scarred, unnaturally hot flesh.
I pull the fabric up.
A knot of angry, purple-red scar tissue marks the skin over my ribs. It radiates an unnatural heat that worms its way into my bones.
What in the hells is this?
My eyes rake the room.
Answers. I need them now.
I lunge for Derrick's desk. My focus settles on it. A white envelope, so clean it seems to repel the grime of the room. It is sealed with jet-black wax, stamped with the sigil of a spider, its fangs oddly prominent.
I reach for the letter, but my fingers stop, hovering over the hard wax of the seal. A detail, small and wrong, catches my eye. A floorboard beside the desk leg. The grain runs perpendicular to the others.
I set the letter aside, its mystery eclipsed by this new one. I pry up the loose board.
A safe.
Derrick's memories surface with the combination. Three clicks right, nine left, six right. The mechanisms fall into place. I pull the door open. Inside, on a bed of worn, dark wool, lies a black journal, placed with a care that feels out of place in this damp, rotting world.
It is his.
My fingers trace the worn leather cover. I open it to the last page. The final entry is a ragged, desperate scrawl:
Nora the alchemist is asking questions. They know. They want her silenced.
They want me to use the newcomer.
May the gods forgive me.
I turn back to the first page. The beginning is normal. Worries about leaky roofs and dwindling grain.
And Belladonna. Her name is on every other line, wrapped in a father's simple, fierce pride.
But a dozen pages in, the ink turns spidery, the letters cramped. The first entry after the change is just two words, repeated over and over:
Not me. Not me.
Then, a week later:
They came again.
They want to know about the discontent. They want names. And in return, a guarantee. Her name will never touch the bag.
I told them to go to hell. I spat in the leader's silver face. They only watched. They said they would be back.
I turn the page:
They want more than names. It's worse. So much worse. They want a story for the village to believe in. A fake Resistance.
My role? To gather the hopeful. The brave. The ones who would fight back, the people I should be protecting.
I am to give them pointless tasks and false hope. I am to work them until their fire turns to ash. Until the fight in their eyes goes quiet. Until they break.
They call it a necessity. I call it an abomination.
Derrick's words describe a plan to herd sheep. But Alistair's memory is of a wolf pit. The two stories do not align.
The answer forms, a quiet settling in my gut.
Alistair's team were too dangerous. They were a spark of genuine hope. And in a world this dark, you don't manage a spark. You stamp it out before it can catch.
The next few entries blur together. He chronicles three separate attempts to sever his ties to them. Each time, they answered with quiet observations. A comment on Belladonna walking home. The way her hair looks in the sun. That accidents happen.
He was a victim, in his own rotten way.
I see it now.
Derrick couldn't have stopped Alistair being chosen for the Flesh Tax. He was never in control. To defy the selection would have been to sign Belladonna's death warrant.
My fingers flip back through the pages, hunting. I need to find the moment he said yes. Then I find it. The handwriting is a catastrophe, the ink bled and smeared where tears have fallen:
Tonight, I meet them. I make the agreement. There is no other way to keep her safe. There is no other way. There is no other way.
I stare at the frantic repetition, and through Derrick's eyes, I see something other than surrender.
I see a great bear, snarling and bloody, its leg caught in a steel trap. It is no longer fighting the steel. It is looking down at its own leg, with the terrifying clarity of a creature about to chew off its own leg to get back to its cub.
I squint at the page. For a moment, the ink seems to lose its depth, the desperate scrawl becoming a series of flat, dead marks on the parchment.
I shake my head to clear it, but the smell of old, dusty paper is already fading, a new scent bleeding into it. Sweat. And under that, something metallic. Hot iron.
A phantom heat begins to burn on my ribs. The office around me wavers, the candlelight thinning as if consumed by a greater, more terrible furnace...
I am standing in the dead centre of my office.
Three of them. Silver masks.
The world seen through their polished faces is a nightmare of bent walls and a stupid, open mouth. My mouth.
The lead Collector holds out a scrap of parchment. "Your contract."
The word scrapes from the mask's filter. It is the noise of something grinding itself to dust just to form a single, terrible word. The vibration of it rattles in my teeth.
Another Collector steps from a shadow that seems too deep for the small room. It holds a tray, the coals pulsing with a sick, orange light that makes my eyes water.
It uses tongs to lift an iron from the heat. The end is a thick bar of glowing metal. A stark, vertical line. The whole shape glows a furious, cherry-red.
"No." The word tears from my throat, thin and useless.
I stumble back, my heel hitting the desk.
Trapped.
The lead Collector's head tilts. The gesture is almost gentle. It leans close. "Your daughter has your eyes."
My shoulders slump. The other two Collectors move in. They don't grab me. They don't need to.
I fall to my knees. One of them tears my shirt open. The sound is obscene in the quiet room.
The heat draws near.
Their masks will show me the coward screaming.
I close my eyes. I will not watch.
The iron touches my skin.
A scream tears itself from my throat.
The memory shatters. The ghost of that fire in my side remains. I look down. The brand is an angry, weeping knot of flesh. And it is pulsing. A slow, steady rhythm, like a heart beating where no heart should be.
I can't look away. My eyes burn, refusing to blink as the centre of the brand stretches. The scarred skin thins to a translucent film.
Something dark and wet writhes beneath.
The translucent film bulges outward, and then splits with a sound like tearing meat.
A thick, black tentacle erupts from the wound, whipping through the air.
I can feel it.
I feel the slick slide of its unnatural muscles, the strange, cool sensation of the air on its tip.
I feel it move.
And it feels like my own hand.