BooksBarbecue
Back We Are Blood and Thunder
Chapters (32)
  1. PROLOGUE
  2. ONE
  3. TWO
  4. THREE
  5. FOUR
  6. FIVE
  7. SIX
  8. SEVEN
  9. EIGHT
  10. NINE
  11. TEN
  12. ELEVEN
  13. TWELVE
  14. THIRTEEN
  15. FOURTEEN
  16. FIFTEEN
  17. SIXTEEN
  18. SEVENTEEN
  19. EIGHTEEN
  20. NINETEEN
  21. TWENTY
  22. TWENTY-ONE
  23. TWENTY-TWO
  24. TWENTY-THREE
  25. TWENTY-FOUR
  26. TWENTY-FIVE
  27. TWENTY-SIX
  28. TWENTY-SEVEN
  29. TWENTY-EIGHT
  30. TWENTY-NINE
  31. EPILOGUE
  32. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

After Lord Irvine had gone, Constance set the mask, pendant, and cane carefully on the dressing table. She shrugged off her cloak and turned the lock in the sturdy wooden door—trying the handle for good measure. Shut tight.

She walked toward the window seat and removed a blue velvet cushion. Beneath, a small compartment was hidden. She slipped her finger into the gap and lifted, smiling as she found the small pile of illicit books her mother had left behind. She ran her hands over the worn leather spines. The atlas of the world. The books of magic. The stories of the puppet theaters in the southern islands where her mother had been brought up. When Constance was a child, these books had been the closest thing she’d had to her mother’s voice.

She shut the seat and replaced the cushion, her eyes stinging slightly.

Unbuttoning her muddy dress, she let the silken material pool on the floor and lowered herself into the steaming bathwater. She’d taken her right glove off, but not her left. She kept her left arm raised, resting it on the copper lip of the bath. The trembling in it had quieted to a mild, unnatural vibration worrying at her fingers.

The black velvet glove reached three quarters of the way up her arm, but white scar tissue still peeked from the top. She shut her eyes. Every time she saw the scars, she remembered the cold blue flash of pain. Felt it, almost. The intensity of the memory was nearly unbearable.

She tried to clear her mind as the water warmed her to the core. She had to focus on the task ahead, not on the past. Constance felt the storm cloud churning outside, stuttering with electricity.

Flickers of light fell through the window as she allowed her body to relax—but no thunder sounded; the air filled instead with steam and quiet. After a time, she stepped out of the bath, wrapped herself in bath sheets, and lay on her mother’s bed. How long since Constance had rested here, her hair spilling across the pillows? Her childhood felt farther away than ever. She conjured the memory of her mother’s arms around her and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.