Dahlia Falz's Arc

Chapter 5 of 7

The bone still lay scattered across the great hall floor. Dahlia knelt beside Phyllis, holding her, when her daughter's knees buckled. Phyllis had held fifty corpses upright for hours. Now the price came due. Her white eyes rolled back. Her breath came in short pulls. She slid against the wall and could not stand. Dahlia caught her before she hit the floor. Phyllis felt cold and light, like a thing already half gone. "Mother," Phyllis whispered. It was the first soft word she had spoken in centuries. She spoke to the dead by habit, not to the living. Hearing her say that word broke something in Dahlia. "I gave them everything I had. There is nothing left in me." "Then we stop," Dahlia said. "You hold nothing more tonight." Cynder crouched by the open stairwell, still watching the dark below. Black blood dried on her jacket. "The way down is open," she said. "Whatever they wanted is still there. We should take it before they come back." "Look at her." Dahlia nodded at Phyllis. Her daughter's head lolled against her shoulder. "She cannot walk. She cannot fight. If we go down now, we go down blind and short a witch." Cynder's jaw tightened. She hated waiting. But she looked at Phyllis and the fire in her eyes dropped low. "Fine," she said. "But not here. Not by the front door." Luna came in from the ruined entrance, hood down, silver eyes sweeping the room. She had tracked Phyllis by scent to this house. Now she read the air again. "Their smell is fading," Luna said. "The hooded ones ran. They will not return before dawn." She knelt and pressed two fingers to Phyllis's wrist. "But she needs somewhere dark and closed. Somewhere warded, so nothing finds us while she mends." Dahlia made the call. "The upper floor. One room. We seal the door and the stair to it. Nothing gets in, nothing gets down to the lower levels behind our backs." They moved together. Cynder lifted Phyllis and carried her up the wide staircase. Luna walked ahead, checking each landing, ears turned to the dark. Dahlia followed last. She reached a small room with one narrow window and a bare bed frame. Cynder laid Phyllis down. Dahlia pressed her palms to the doorway. She poured her sorrow into the wood and stone, the same grief that had built the wall on the back stair. A gray barrier bloomed across the door and held. She sealed the room shut. Phyllis slept. Her breathing slowed and steadied. For the first time in three centuries, Dahlia sat beside her daughter and watched her rest, safe. But safe was not found. The thing they came for still waited beneath the house. The attackers would return the next night. Dahlia looked at the sealed door and knew this room bought them hours, not the manor. When Phyllis woke, they would have to go down.