The Empty Throne. Cayla Kluver

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      Another terrible thought entered my head. I had spitefully left the guard tied. What if he had struggled to free himself and tipped over the chair? Could the sash have tightened enough to choke him? Had his mother returned too late to give him aid?

      The bell tolled the half hour, and I again looked across the street. A group of Constabularies had just emerged from the house carrying a stretcher upon which was strapped a black-covered form the approximate shape and size of the guard I’d attacked. Remorse hit me like a lightning strike—there was no longer a chance the women were wrong about the man’s fate. A wave of trembling rolled through me, and I stared at my hands. Was there blood on them?

      Unable to bear the sight of the guard’s corpse being hauled out of the home, I bolted.

Chapter Seven

      THE PRIVATE COLLECTOR

      When my side hurt so badly I could run no farther, I halted and put a hand to my face. It was wet with tears. I stepped into the shadow of a building, struggling to stop the flow. But the more I tried to suppress my emotions, the more they insisted on release. Mortified by my loss of control, I was seized with a desire to bang my head against the stone wall behind me, believing pain might jolt me out of my fit. I had never felt so wretched in my life.

      What I needed was a friend. But it wasn’t Shea who came to mind, or even Tom. It was Fi. Whatever her limited means, I could count on her to give me assistance and comfort, and I was in greater need of both now more than ever before.

      A pair of Constabularies walked past me on the street, and I held my breath. When they were a safe distance from me, I straightened my cloak and hastened in the direction of the Fae-mily Home. The guard’s death had shaken me, but I couldn’t let it pitch me into stupidity and panic. Though my missing connection to Nature now felt like a gaping black hole, and the thought that I might be a killer made me sick to my stomach, no one could connect me to the crime. I was safe unless I gave people cause to suspect me. I was safe and, despite everything, could continue my search for the Anlace.

      When the Home came into view, I momentarily halted, then slunk down a side road and approached the alley from the other end. I groped in my pack for the key Fi had provided to the back entrance, excavating it from the bottom with a handful of dirt and lint, and let myself inside. Grateful for the warmth that rolled over me, I entered the room I had been given and softly closed the door. The accommodations were exactly as I’d left them. Nature bless Fi.

      I abandoned my things, quickly washed up, then decided to chance breakfast. I was light-headed and heavyhearted, and I hadn’t eaten anything since the meal Fi had provided the last time I’d been here. I padded down the hallway to the dining room and peered past the buffet tables into the kitchen, craning my neck to see into the near-empty entryway. Nothing looked or felt abnormal—definitely no apparent signs that Luka Ivanova or his men were here. The tension left my neck and shoulders, and I followed a few insouciant Fae stragglers into the dining hall. There wasn’t a lot of food left, but I grabbed a few muffins from a fresh supply the cooks had added to a serving plate.

      Tairmor published a newspaper—several, actually, thanks to a human invention called the printing press—and a copy of one of them had been left on a breakfast table. With a nervous glance about the room, I picked it up and went to take a seat in a corner, aware that as journalistic competition had grown, so had the outrageousness of the opinions committed to ink.

      The front page bore the chronicle’s handle: The Dragon’s Blood Meridian. I scanned the bold-faced headlines, none of which reflected the news that should have been there—news of an investigation into the barbaric experiments conducted on humans and Fae alike on Evernook Island. Though information about the destructive fire itself could hardly have been suppressed, the activities taking place on the island remained shrouded in mystery. Had the government contained the incident and wiped the facility clean, knowing how damaging it would be to official Fae relationships? Or had most of the evidence burned? Regardless of the reasons, the Meridian was left to report—not without risk I was sure—on the political mutterings in the streets.

      The most prominent of the newspaper’s headlines was: Stuffing the Boxes—How the Rich Man Gets Both His Vote and Yours.

      When we’d first met, Shea had mentioned that although the Warckum Territory supposedly elected its officials by popular vote, Ivanova blood had held the governorship for longer than anyone could remember. Whether or not tampering with the elections occurred, I did not doubt friends of the Ivanova regime benefitted from the Governor’s good fortune, fueling their desire to maintain the status quo.

      I skimmed the article; then my eye was caught by another, smaller headline in the bottom-left corner of the page. It read: Child Disappearances Still Rampant; Still Unsolved. See page 4.

      My heart lodged in my throat, and I practically ripped my way to the middle of the paper. The first paragraph told me all I needed to know.

      A new form of population control may have emerged among the impoverished residents of Sheness. As if disease, starvation, and crime-related deaths weren’t enough, child disappearances are occurring in record numbers. The skeptical among us are questioning law enforcement’s devotion to unraveling the cause. Does the loss of infants and toddlers living in squalor really matter to those in power?

      I crunched the page in my fist, a single word thrumming in my brain: Sepulchres. Whether humans knew it or not, the timing of the disappearances and the nature of the victims pointed to that conclusion and no other.

      I pressed my palms against my temples, compressing the memories of Evernook Island into a coherent whole. There had been Sepulchres on that accursed chunk of rock, once-beautiful beings who had been trapped on the human side of the Bloody Road when the Faerie race had been driven from the Territory; Sepulchres who had survived their separation from magic by feeding on children, the younger the better, because they were so pure; Sepulchres who had been made even more dangerous to humans by torture and abuse. I didn’t know how many of the creatures might have been imprisoned in that fortress, but it was possible some of them had survived the fighting and fire and gone to Sheness.

      Pushing back my chair, I dashed to my room and locked the door, images of Shea’s younger sisters, Marissa and Magdalene, springing to mind. They and many other innocent children crawled into their beds safe and sound at nightfall, but some awoke to spindly white fingers and mouths scarred shut. I didn’t know how Sepulchres killed, but no child who gazed upon one would die without screams.

      I began to pace, fighting the tide of emotions the memories generated. The human world was gray and black and soiled, full of ugliness and pain—pain that the humans caused themselves and others. And now the masterminds of Evernook had unleashed a horde of monsters. While it seemed clear that Fae-haters were behind the experiments on the island, it wasn’t Fae they were hurting now. I would have reveled in the irony of this fate, except the lives being lost weren’t the right ones. If the creatures would only hunt their tormentors...but then the words I had twice heard from the Sepulchres themselves spilled forth.

      “Save us—save us all,” I muttered, repeating their mantra. “But what does that mean?”

      Frustrated, I dug my hands into the base of my long hair and tugged, unable to attach any more meaning to the words than on the occasion I’d first heard them. The only certainty was that they were a plea for help. Legend told me Sepulchres weren’t predatory by nature. They needed help, and so did the people of the Warckum Territory.

      With a groan of misery, I sank down on my bed. Did I have a СКАЧАТЬ