The door opened. A figure with pale-gold hair entered, wearing a tailored, cream-white dress and cream-white stilettos. A band of light blazed from her wrist, flashing sparkles across the room—the diamond bracelet Izar had given her on her twenty-seventh birthday. “Why did you ask me to come here, Saiph?” Ascella asked nervously, looking from Saiph to Izar.
Saiph did not turn around to look at her. Instead, he smiled at Izar. “The man in her shower that night was not Tarazed but me.” Removing the pistol from Izar’s forehead, he drew back his other arm and punched Izar in the gut. Izar would have doubled over, but the two lackeys were clasping his arms so tightly that his back remained as straight as an ironing board. His head, however, hung, his gaze coming to rest on the heels of Ascella’s stilettoes, each like the needle of a clock. The needles moved, as she came to stand directly behind Saiph.
“Don’t hurt him!” she cried. Izar’s gaze rose slowly to hers. “I’m sorry, Izar,” she said, her frost-blue eyes imploring.
It’s not your fault, Izar wanted to say, but he could not speak because of the burning sensation in his gut. The same way Saiph had fooled Izar, he must have fooled Ascella. Izar wondered whether she wore the diamond bracelet he’d given her not because of its thirty-thousand-dollar value but because she still cared a little about him. “Leave, Ascella!” he managed to croak.
Her hand wrapped around the doorknob, her face ashen, but Saiph whirled around. He pointed the pistol at her forehead and pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot made Izar jump. A drop of blood fell onto her stilettoes, then she folded to the floor like a ragdoll, her eyes wide open, blood trickling down her face, such that she looked like a mannequin crying tears of blood.
Shaking, muttering to himself, Izar thought of Bumble, the teddy bear from his childhood. As Saiph had given Bumble to Izar twenty-five years ago, he had given Ascella to Izar a year ago, introducing him to her. Now, he’d killed Ascella, just as he’d killed Bumble then.
The pistol arrived again on Izar’s forehead. Izar’s arms stopped straining in the grasp of the lackeys, and all tension drained from him. He succumbed to death.
“Serpens got a good look at Coralline,” Saiph said softly, “when she leapt out of the water to cut you out of the net. Black hair, bronze scales, turquoise eyes, young and pretty. I’ll kill her at her wedding. Thank you for telling me, Izar, that she’s getting married in a week at Kelp Cove in Urchin Grove. I’ll find a way to get the precise coordinates for the venue and kill her there.”
With every word Izar had uttered to Saiph about Coralline, he had cast a fishnet over her. If she died, it would be his fault. “I’ll do anything you want,” Izar pleaded. “You can keep Castor’s patent—I won’t fight you for it; I won’t fight you for anything. I’ll invent anything you want me to. Just don’t hurt Coralline.”
“I’m afraid that’s not an option.”
“Kill me, not her.”
“I’ll kill you both, brother. I’ll kill her at her wedding through you—through your Castor. Then I’ll hurl her dead body at your feet and watch as Castor torches you to death with that arm of his. You and Coralline will not be together in life, but you’ll be together in death, in the form of your ashes.”
Saiph laughed, his mirth echoing against the glass walls.
26
The Shadow of Death
"Will you read me a story?” Naiadum asked in his most persuasive voice.
He deposited The Bizarre Tale of the Barred Hamlet in the region of Coralline’s stomach, atop her blanket. He then smiled at her like a young salesman and bounced eagerly in his chair as he waited for the story.
Coralline looked at him as an apothecary: Though his cheeks were not yet full, and he was not nearly as pudgy as he had been, his face had, in the last four days, regained a healthy measure of its color. He was recovering well.
“I’m sorry, Naiadum,” Coralline said. “Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”
She’d said the same yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Before the Elixir Expedition, she had swum into his room every night to read him a story; now, he came to her room every night begging for a story and always left without one.
“Are you sick?” Naiadum asked, his chin quivering.
“No. I’m just tired.” Coralline tried to reassure him with a smile, but what appeared on her face was not so much a smile as the isolated movements of muscles near her mouth.
“Open the door!” a voice called. A slap sounded against the door, as though a tail was thumping against it.
Naiadum opened the door, and Trochid swam into the room. With a worried look at Coralline, Naiadum slipped outside, closing the door behind him.
Trochid was juggling four luciferin orbs in his arms, leading Coralline to think of a circus performer. Yesterday, he’d brought her three orbs; the day before, it had been two; and the day before that, it had been one. Like an apothecary increasing his daily dosage of medication for a patient, he might bring her five tomorrow, Coralline thought, though she could not imagine how he would carry five orbs in two arms, especially when one arm was missing a hand.
He released the white-blue spheres of light, and they floated up to the ceiling, bouncing against the others, turning her room even brighter. Coralline wanted to tell him she was practically squinting already, but it would hurt his feelings, for he was only trying to help, she knew, believing that the luciferin orbs would lift her spirits. Ordinarily, they would have, for they’d always made her think of traveling galaxies, but now she avoided looking at them because they reminded her of Mintaka’s cavern and her companion in the cavern—Izar. She hoped her father would glean of his own accord that the constellations in the orbs would not help her stars align.
Trochid assumed a seat on the chair Naiadum had vacated at her bedside. Coralline could not remember whether it was her mother, father, or brother who’d placed her desk chair there, just next to her bed. During her first two days in bed, whoever had used the chair had slid it back under her desk before leaving her room, but in the last two days, they seemed to have reached an unspoken consensus to leave the chair there. She wished they hadn’t, for the chair by the bedside made her room a sick room. She’d thought of returning the chair to its place, but she’d been unable to find the energy.
“My darling daughter, will you join me in the living room and read with me there, as we have on so many evenings?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
He frowned; she’d said the same over the last days. “You’re on house arrest, dear,” he said gently, “not room arrest.”
Coralline wished she were on room arrest rather than house arrest, so her family would not expect her to leave her room. It would have been better still, in fact, if Ecklon had not fought for her house arrest, and she were awaiting trial at the Wrongdoers’ Refinery. That way, at least her family would not have to suffer by watching her suffer. Her father’s eyes were ringed with thick black circles at the moment; since his retirement, he’d often found it difficult to sleep, she knew, but his insomnia was exacerbated now because of her.
“I’m sorry, Father,” Coralline said. “I’m just exhausted after the Elixir Expedition.”