Cursed by the Light for Loving the Dark novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Two Days and a Half

Cassian learns the black veins mean she is dying and when; Connie stands in the doorway with a shotgun as the Abyss court's cars pour onto the lawn.

"It's nothing," I said. "Let go."

He didn't let go.

He turned my arm over in the sunlight and ran his thumb along the black line, from the wrist to the crook of the elbow.

The Wane burned under his thumb, and I hissed.

"This is not nothing," Cassian said. "This is a Light curse. I've seen one on a fallen soldier."

"Then you know what it is."

"I know it makes them gray and slow." His voice was very quiet. "That's what they told me. A mortal life, ugly and dull, as your reward."

"Who told you that?"

"The Light's court. When they read me your testimony."

My throat tightened, and I looked away from him until it eased.

"They lied about the reward," I said. "The Wane isn't dull."

"Then what is it?"

"It's slow." I made myself say it flat. "It starts at the wrists. When the lines reach your heart, you're gone."

His thumb stopped moving.

"How long?"

"Seven years from the day I fell. That was the sentence."

"And today is?"

I looked at the hay between us.

"Sunday morning. It ends at midnight on Tuesday."

For a moment he said nothing at all.

The rooster crowed again down in the yard, and a cow shifted in her stall below us.

Then every muscle in his arm went rigid, and the straw around him began to smoke.

"Cassian," I said.

"Two days and a half."

"Cassian, you're on fire."

"Two days and a half," he said, and the loft rafters creaked above us.

"You stood on that porch with that on your arms. I said it to you in front of your mother. I said you looked like something dug up."

"You were trying to hurt me. It worked."

His eyes were black from edge to edge.

"You didn't think to mention it?"

"You didn't ask."

I should not have said that.

He stared at me, and the hay at his knees caught, and I slapped it out with the quilt.

"What did you do," he said, very softly, "that the Light would put this on you?"

"I loved you."

That was easy. The oath had nothing to say about that.

"That's all?"

"That's all they ever said it was for."

I couldn't say anything else, because the next true thing was the one my throat wouldn't let out.

He let go of my arm and put both hands over his face.

Below us the barn door banged open.

"Linnet Ashgrove!"

It was Mom, and she was standing in the doorway with her late husband's old twelve-gauge pointed at the loft.

She had her work boots on and her nightgown tucked into them.

"Mom," I said.

"I heard a man's voice in my barn at sunup," she said. "I thought I'd give him till the coffee finished before I shot him."

"Mrs. Ashgrove."

"Don't you Mrs. Ashgrove me." She did not lower the barrel. "Whatever you've got on, it better be more than a quilt."

"I have nothing on."

"There's a pair of Dad's old overalls on the hook by the door. They'll cover what needs covering."

Cassian, who had commanded armies, climbed down the ladder with a quilt around his hips and took the overalls without a word.

I watched him pull them on in the half dark of the barn, and then I looked at the rafters.

Mom lowered the shotgun when he'd done up the last button.

"Now," she said, "what did you do to my daughter?"

"Nothing," Cassian said. "That's the whole trouble."

"Mom." I climbed down after him, slowly, one rung at a time. "He didn't know."

"Know what?"

"About Tuesday."

Her face didn't change, but her knuckles went white on the stock.

"He doesn't know," she said, "that you've had a funeral dress hanging in the closet for a month."

Cassian turned his head.

"I'm dying, Cassian," I said. "I'm not going to cry about it in a barn."

He opened his mouth.

Before he could say anything, an engine grumbled out on the road.

Then another, and another.

I stepped out of the barn into the morning, and the whole front lawn was filling with black cars.

They came in a line, one after another, bumper to bumper through the gate and over Mom's asters.

Doors opened, and tall men and women in dark coats climbed out and spread across the grass.

Every one of them was an Abyss lord, and every one of them looked at me.

Odile was already walking across the lawn toward us with a thermos in her hand.

"Darling," she called, smiling, "the court has come early."

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