Rebekah pressed a hand against her cheek, feeling the pulse throb beneath her palm, blood slipping between her fingers. The Duke’s daughter ran from the room, leaving nothing but her panting into the silence, staring at Harrison as he knelt over the man’s body.

  She ought to kill him.

  She ought to leave.

  She didn’t, sinking until she was eye level with the man, sitting on the ground.

  Harrison stared at her, all the hunger gone from his gaze. She’d thought it was anger. Maybe it had been, but it was also that curse, whatever dark magic was keeping his body running. If she tried to kill him, would she even be able?

  “Why?” she asked, the question coming to her lips unbidden. “Why do all this?”

  “He took my life from me.”

  “Why my son?” She was a normal woman, or she had been. Her husband died from a plague she’d survived as a child, leaving her alone with an infant. He was such a bright thing, always smiling. She’d just gotten him to sleep through the night.

  “I needed to get to Clefton.” He said the words so simply, as if they weren’t the most ridiculous reason she could imagine for killing a child. “My body… it couldn’t keep going.”

  “Right.”

  The blood stopped flowing. Was this death, then?

  She let her hand fall to her side, then moved it into her lap. Pressing two fingers to her wrist, she made out the pulsing beneath it. Not death, then. What am I supposed to do now?

  “For what it’s worth,” Harrison rasped. “I’m sorry.”

  He shifted to his feet, staring down at the body. His face twisted, then blanked, and he stepped over Clyde. He moved toward the knife, and Rebekah leapt up, putting her body between himself and the cursed blade.

  She wouldn’t let this continue.

  “You’re not going to kill anyone else,” she said.

  “I wasn’t planning on it.” He rolled his eyes. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Probably, yes,” Rebekah said, shifting in place.

  “Then get it over with.” He shut his eyes, tipping his head back toward the ceiling. “I’m ready.”

  She stared at him, fingers twitching. Did he, what? Expect her to kill him?

  Rebekah took a step back, not quite willing to put him out of her sight as she leaned down to scoop up the blade. It flared in her mind again, its presence immediate.

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  She shuddered. She wouldn’t use this on him. What if it turned her into a monster like that?

  Rebekah tucked the dagger into her belt. She needed to figure out what to do with this, but she wouldn’t use it.

  “What are you waiting for?” His voice rose, eyes popping open and locking on her as she took a step toward the front door. Could she even go home now? She hadn’t killed Duke Clyde Slate, but she’d shot him.

  Do I even want to go home?

  There was nothing waiting for her there. An empty house, empty rooms. Empty life. What did she have waiting for her, if she wasn’t a mother?

  “Where is my son?” She lifted her eyes, staring at the man she’d thought would lead him to answers. He had, but not the ones she wanted.

  “You don’t want to see him.”

  “I do,” Rebekah said, the words hard. It didn’t matter how much it hurt. She hadn’t seen her son since she laid him to rest the night everything went wrong, and she needed to hold him in her arms one last time. Even if he was gone. “Bring me to him.”

  Harrison opened his mouth, then deflated. “If that’s what you want. Follow me.”

  He limped out the door, tucking his injured hand beneath the folds of his cloak. It didn’t bleed, but the wound gaped. She followed behind him, head spinning as she began to walk. She pushed through the sensation, unwilling to stop. She was going to bury her son.

  And then…

  Then she was going to make sure this monster never hurt anyone ever again.

  They walked through the day, circumventing Clefton and avoiding the road. They hiked into the night, Harrison never stopping, while Rebekah stumbled and tripped in her exhaustion. She caught herself against a tree, breathing hard as her body trembled. Then she pushed off, forcing the exhaustion down to keep up with the undead.

  Sometime in the night, Rebekah began to recognize the forests around them. The trees split apart, growing fewer and far between as her eyes landed on the tiny village of Khul. It wasn’t much, hardly enough to qualify a dot on the map. When she’d left the village, she never intended on going back, assuming—at least in the back of her mind—that she would die somewhere along the way.

  I’m still not certain I haven’t, she thought.

  “Where did you put my son?” The words were hoarse, the first words she’d spoken in… she wasn’t certain how long. More than a day, at the least.

  “We’re almost there.”

  He led them out of the town, through quiet, barren streets and back into the forest that coated much of the land. She’d always been told there were monsters among the trees, something she’d never quite believed. Perhaps she should have.

  He stopped amid a small clump of trees, vines forming a curtain between low branches, and turned to face her. In the time since he’d killed Clyde, his face had grown sunken and yellow. He was no longer the exhausted, anger-torn man she’d mistaken him to be in that tavern. He was now a shell, a corpse on feet, somehow still moving despite dying long ago.

  “He’s there,” Harrison said, nodding to the bushes.

  Rebekah moved around him, careful to keep distance between their bodies, and knelt in the grass. Her hands trembled, something she decided was from exhaustion, not fear, as they hovered over the mound of grass.

  She almost stood up and walked away. This was as good a place as any to remain, surrounded by trees and a curtain of vines, flowers blooming in the moonlight. But that was her son.

  Steadying herself, Rebekah reached into the grass and felt him. Skin cold, hard against her touch.

  A sob broke in her throat as she scooped her hands beneath the small body, cradling him to her chest. Her breast throbbed, somehow knowing this was her boy, longing to feed him. Her body couldn’t understand that he was gone.

  Rebekah stumbled to her feet, shaking as she turned back to Harrison.

  “Dig,” she commanded.

  He turned and did as he was told.