Dance of Thieves by Mary E. Pearson

Author:Mary E. Pearson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

JASE

Kazi’s head rested against my chest, deep in sleep as I carried her back to her room, but troubled words tumbled from her lips, Don’t hurt me … I have nothing … Please … don’t. She had mumbled similar words in the drawing room as the healer sewed her up. Please don’t hurt me. Her words had brought a crashing hush to the room.

“Shhh,” I whispered as we turned down the last hallway, “no one’s going to hurt you.” By the time we reached her room, her expression had relaxed and she was silent, drawn into a deep, oblivious sleep. I still didn’t know how she hid the wounds from me for half the night. The bites alone had to be unbearable, but the poison—

My mother walked ahead of me and threw open the bedroom door. I carried Kazi inside and laid her on the bed. She didn’t stir an eyelash. I looked for a pulse at her neck. It was the only thing that told me she was alive at all.

“It’s the sleep elixir,” my mother said, as if she could read my mind.

We both stood there for long, quiet minutes, staring at her.

I knew what my mother was thinking too. Sylvey.

Their coloring wasn’t the same, but in sleep, Kazi still looked like her in many ways. Small, vulnerable, swallowed up in a sea of rumpled bedclothes. Sylvey was eleven when she died. I was the one who carried her from the ice bath back to her bed. She died in my arms.

Hold my hand, Jase. Promise me you won’t let go, she had cried with the last of her strength. Don’t let them put me in the tomb. I’m afraid. I had thought it was only delirious words brought on by her fever.

Stop talking like that, sister. You’re going to be fine.

Promise me, Jase, don’t put me there. Not the tomb. Please, promise me.

But I didn’t promise her. Her lips were peeling and pale, her eyes sunken, her skin clammy, her voice already a ghost, all signs that she was leaving this world. But I had refused to see. I wouldn’t accept that a Ballenger could die. Especially not Sylvey.

Go to sleep, sister. Sleep. You’ll be fine in the morning.

She had relaxed in my arms then. I thought she was sleeping. My mother had stepped out of the room for only a few minutes to check on my brothers and sister who were sick too. When she came back, Sylvey was dead in my arms.

My mother wiped Kazi’s brow with a cloth. “You were harsh with her,” she said.

“I was only trying to get answers.”

“I know.” She pulled a stool closer to the bed. “And you were frightened. I’ll sit with her. Go find your answers.”

* * *

The air was dank, as it always was here, as if the chilly breaths of the dead still hung here in the darkness, unable to escape. The tunnels were both sanctuary and prison, stuffy like the tombs that Sylvey had begged me to save her from.

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