Chapter 100 Sacrifices
He turned his head.
He could see Grace's legs from where he lay if he turned at the right angle. The veins had begun moving again. He watched them and they were not moving at the pace they had been, they were faster now, climbing with a directional urgency that had not been present before as though whatever was casting the curse had felt the counter and was responding by accelerating.
He watched the veins move and had increased his fight against the binding to get to her, he heard growling, snarling, and whining knowing it came from his own throat, he felt the ceiling spin and felt himself becoming less dense from the inside.
Bastian's chanting was loud now. It was insistent and sharper. His voice filled the room and the room seemed to respond to it, the temperature dropping slightly, the moonlight through the circular window brightening without the source changing.
Maddox watched the veins reach Grace's stomach.
He turned his head back to the ceiling and thought about Matteo.
Not about the end of Matteo. About earlier than that, about the specific morning when Matteo had found him at the grave of a woman who had been a better mother than the world had allowed her to be for very long, and had crouched beside him with a sleeping baby in his arms and said things that a five-year-old could not fully process.
The best revenge was becoming a man who belonged to himself.
He belonged to himself. He had built that, had built it deliberately and at cost and over years, and it was the thing he was most certain of about his own life. His reason for being alive was not finished. There were things he had not done, a promise that still needed keeping, a truth about himself that he had not yet found the courage to name in daylight.
He thought about Grace in the shop looking at the necklace before she knew what it was.
He thought about the way she had put herself between him and Bastian without thinking about it, just moved, just stood in the gap.
He thought about the island, his uncle, about Khan and his people, and the things they were trying to reclaim, he thought about how things were for them now he was missing, he was sure with his uncle and the others it wouldn’t be good.
None of it was finished. There was too much unfinished and his will to remain for the unfinished of it had to be larger than whatever was being sent against Grace through the curse, had to be larger and more rooted and more real, and he held onto all of it and held onto it and held onto it.
The veins on Grace's legs suddenly moved at a pace that made Maddox's head turn despite the dizziness, his roaring louder, the veins climbed toward her chest, the fastest they had moved, a last surge.
Bastian's voice was at its loudest.
A hair's breadth from her heart, Maddox could see it from where he lay, the veins at the edge of her chest, reaching, the curse almost complete.
They stopped.
He watched them stop and the stopping was absolute and total, not a pause but a cessation, like they had hit a wall and couldn’t move any further.
And then they began to go back.
Slowly at first. Then faster as they retreated down her stomach and toward her hips and down her thighs, reversing the path they had taken, pulling back the darkness they had laid across her skin with the speed of something being recalled by a force stronger than the one that had sent it.
Bastian's voice dropped.
The veins reached her feet and disappeared into her skin entirely and the skin where they had been was clear, unmarked, as though nothing had been there.
From somewhere near Grace's feet, a shadow separated from the platform surface. It moved with the directionless panic of something that had been operating through a host and no longer had one, and Bastian was already moving. He had a small glass jar in his hand, already uncorked, already positioned, and he held it toward the shadow, his lips moved once and the shadow compressed and entered the jar and Bastian corked it and held it still.
He looked at it for a moment. The shadow was crashing against each wall of the jar in a panic.
Then he said something quietly that Maddox's depleted hearing could only partially catch, something that carried the tone of surprise, the specific surprise of a person whose expectations have been exceeded.
He looked at the jar and then at Maddox's platform.
"Stronger indeed," he said quietly. "Colour me impressed." And then, to himself, lower, "Wolves. Naturally."
He set the jar down and moved around the platform to Grace and placed both hands on her face, he closed his eyes briefly and opened them, and seemed satisfied with what he found.
"Grace," he said. "Can you hear me?"
Grace made a sound.
It was low and rough, the sound of someone coming back from a significant distance, Bastian said her name again and her eyes opened and she looked at the circular window and the moonlight coming through it and then at Bastian's face above hers.
"What happened?" she said. Her voice was rough.
"You lost consciousness," Bastian said. He helped her upright, one hand behind her shoulders, and she sat up slowly on the platform and pressed the back of her hand to her temple. "How do you feel?”
"Like I was asleep for a long time." She looked around the room. "Where are we?"
"My back room." Bastian set her hands in her lap and checked her eyes. "You're going to be unsteady for a few minutes. The body takes time to reorient after something like that."
"After something like what?" She looked at him. "What happened to me?"
Bastian straightened up. "Your mate saved your life," he said simply.
Grace’s eyes narrowed. She looked around the room and Bastian was between her and the second platform, blocking her view, she eyed him skeptically as she frowned and leaned to look past him, stretching her neck to find Maddox.
She saw him.
She sucked in a sharp breath as her hand came up to her mouth and she stared.
Maddox lay on the platform with his eyes closed and his chest moving in the shallow, irregular rhythm of someone who was breathing but not by much, and his skin, the skin of his hands and his arms and his face and every visible part of him, had changed. It was grey. Not the grey of illness or blood loss but the grey of something stone-like, ashy and dry, and across the surface of it, running in patterns that mirrored the veins that had been on Grace's legs, were cracks. Fine, visible cracks, ran across his skin like lines in old clay that had been subjected to too much heat and had begun to fracture.
Grace stared at him and could not find words for several seconds.
Her eyes were wide and her hand was still over her mouth and she stared at the cracks in his skin and she saw the slight smile he had on his face. His expression looked relieved.