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She lay down on the bed without undressing and stared up at the silver veins of Lodamante in the beams above her. They glinted dully in the dying lamplight, like cold stars.

She would read more in the morning, she thought, when she'd slept. When she could bear it.

Lysander, sometime in the early hours, banked the hearth and let himself out. Lance went with him.

She slept eventually. Not well.

Chapter 21

Idonea rubbed grit from her eyes, pushing sleep back with the heel of her palm. Her fingers fumbled along the bedside table until they found her glasses. The room sharpened painfully into focus.

Her sleep had been thin and full of voices she couldn't place by morning. The grimoire still lay open on the floor where she'd set it. She'd close it before he came back.

Her brow creased. A subtle sound tugged at her attention, water, gently lapping.

She padded towards the bathroom, the boards creaking underfoot. The door was closed.

She knocked once. “You in there?”

Silence. Her pulse ticked strangely in her throat.

“Lysander?” she tried again.

Nothing. A sick coil tightened in her gut. She pushed the door open a crack, the hinges whispering.

“Lys—”

She froze. Her stomach dropped so hard she nearly lost her footing.

She pushed the door fully open with numb fingers.

The tub was filled to the rim, water a cloudy, murky red. His throat had been opened nearly ear to ear. Blood clouded the water dark around him. His right arm dangled over the porcelain’s edge, flayed from the wrist to shoulder in long, precise gashes.

“L—”

No sound came out.

She took one staggering step closer before she saw his face.

Not Lysander.

Edik.

His head had fallen back against the tub. His mouth had come open. Not wide. Just enough that the inside of it showed dark, and one of the lower row of teeth was wrong in a way she couldn't name in the moment.

His eyes stared glassy and wide towards the ceiling, to the sigil scorched black above the tub. Vinea’s mark. Carved deep into the ceiling timbers.

She pressed a hand to her mouth, a sobless breath shaking through her.

Whoever did this wasn't warning her. They were laughing. A blatant disregard for the Lodamante’s stranglehold on Current in the cottage.

A daemon couldn't have entered this room. Couldn't have stood there. Couldn't have lifted a hand against a Lodamante-warded threshold. The thought arrived in her like a hook, snagging in her ribs before she had time to set it down somewhere safe.

Someone had been in this cottage. Someone had done this with hands. Not claws, or Current. Hands.

She tore her gaze from the sigil long enough to register the details.

Edik’s fingers were pruned. He’d been in the water long enough for the warmth to leave. His skin had the waxen pallor of true death.