Creusus's Arc

Chapter 25 of 43

Creusus pushed the door open with his shoulder. The little shack smelled of dried flowers and old wood. Ribbons on the porch still moved behind him. He carried Kallista across the room and laid her on the bed where they had sat the night before. Her head rolled once on the pillow and settled. He knew before he straightened up. He put two fingers to her throat. He held them there a long time. He moved them lower, then to her wrist. Nothing pushed back. Her chest did not lift. Her mouth stayed open a small amount, the way a person's mouth opens when sleep takes them fast. This was not sleep. He sat on the edge of the bed. His weight tipped her toward him and he caught her shoulder and steadied her. He wiped the blood from her lip with his thumb. He closed her eyes with the flat of two fingers, the way he had seen an old man close a fish's gills at the docks, gentle, not thinking about it. He bent and kissed her forehead. Her skin was already cooler than it should have been. He wept without sound. His shoulders shook once and then stopped. He was not a man who knew how to cry for long. "I will find him," he said into her hair. "Wherever he went. I will find him." He reached inside himself for the black wrappings on his knuckles. He pushed his will down into them, searching. He wanted the pull he had felt before, the thread that led to Diablo. There was nothing. No hum. No tug. The demon had gone somewhere the wrappings could not reach. Malachai's body had walked it out of range. Creusus lowered his hands. The promise sat in the room with no direction to travel. He stayed on the bed. He took her hand and put it between both of his. Her fingers were small and did not close. He watched her face. He watched it the way a man watches a door he expects to open. He waited for her to breathe in sharply, sit up, laugh at him, tell him it was a jester's trick. He waited for the joke. The candle on the shelf burned down a finger's width. Then another. Ribbons tapped the outside wall. No one came. She did not move.