Chapter 50

“You look so much better,” Clara said with a smile. “I’m very glad.”

Lilitha gave a strained smile back. A gray-freckled mare nudged at her hip as she bent over to muck out her stall. Lilitha patted her nose.

“I love horses now,” Clara said, smiling more broadly as she watched them. Her blonde hair was knotted at the back of her neck, and there was a streak of filth down her cheek.

“Me too.” Lilitha had come to learn that not all horses had a brutish Champion attached. Thinking of Mandalay, she continued with her job with a sniff.

One good thing about hard work was that it kept her mind busy. No more thinking about things. No more worrying. Just mindlessly working through the aches and pains. As long as she was strong enough, as long as she wasn’t hungry, she could get through the day.

The horse nickered and butted her shoulder. Lilitha laughed.

Once she had filled her cart, Lilitha gave the horse another quick pet on her nose and left the stall. As she hauled away the muck, she passed an ox, and her heart skipped a beat. It peered up at her with its big watery eyes as it munched on grass, a heavy iron ring hanging from its snout. It rippled with muscle. Two giant horns sprang from the sides of its head. Quickly, she hurried away with her cart.

The day wore on as much as it had the day before, and by the time darkness fell, she was swaying on her feet, the weight of her own shoulders heavy. But it was normal fatigue. Endurable pain. She could do this.

She could ~do~ this.

She managed well enough for the next few days, though bit by bit Lilitha felt herself sinking. It felt like at every passing minute, another little part of her was stripped away, until, by the third night, all she knew was the agony of her hunger and a weakness so extreme it felt like it was crushing the blood out of her heart and the air out of her lungs.

Clara had not discovered her kill. ~Her kill~. Lilitha bit her trembling lip. She was a killer now. Nobody in the town was speaking about it. As far as she knew there was no one searching for the culprit. There were no pictures of her face up on the walls. Had they even found the body? Apparently, nobody cared about the poor man either way. It was both a relief and terribly sad.

“I did him a favor,” she told herself.

Again, while Clara awaited her return, Lilitha made her way through the streets, angling directly to the slums. It had worked before. It could work again.

She combed the alleys, the roads, the gutters as quietly as a shadow. Lilitha spun around, something moving in the corner of her eye.

“Who’s there?” she called.

She gazed into the darkness. No one. She shook herself and went on. There were a few possibilities: a drunken man passed out on the corner, a bony young woman alone and crying, an old woman with a limp who kept falling over.

“Could you help me?” the old woman said, leg curled awkwardly beneath her, her palm grazed and bleeding as she held it out to Lilitha.

Lilitha blinked, rubbed at her cheek, then took her hand. Slinging a heavy arm around Lilitha’s neck, the old woman hobbled at her side.

“Thank you, my sweet,” she said, kissing her on the cheek. Her breath was foul.

“Where are you going?” Lilitha asked.

“Wherever you’re going.”

Lilitha looked down the dark alleyways, peered under shadowy eaves, before finally taking the woman to a group of people huddled around a small fire, their cloaks drawn, their eyes glittering with unease, as though they could sense the danger. Could they tell they had a devil in their midst?

“Here, she’s alone,” Lilitha said. “Can you keep her safe?”

They made space for her, and the old woman sagged to the ground amid them. As she walked away, Lilitha hung her head. She couldn’t do it. Not again. She was hungry but not starving. She was in pain but wouldn’t die. She would just have to hunt every night for an animal and endure the agony. That was all there was to it.

She turned a corner into a quieter section of the streets. She jerked her head at a flash of movement. There came the sound of a scuff, like a boot scraping against pavement. Lilitha froze but heard nothing more, the darkness empty. Pulling her hood farther over her head, she hurried back home as fast as she could.

It sounded like such a simple task—hunting animals. But she was weak, and they were fast. How Clara had been lucky enough to ensnare that cat, Lilitha didn’t know. The inn had a cat. A fat, slow cat that had been sleeping out in a patch of sunlight when Lilitha had descended upon it. Each night thereafter the innkeeper would leave out a saucer of milk, but it didn’t appear.

“What can I do to help you?” Clara said when Lilitha had returned after another night of fruitless searching.

“Nothing. There is absolutely ~nothing~ you can do.” Lilitha gritted her teeth.

“Things will work out.”

Lilitha snapped around her head. “Will they? Since when? When have they ever worked out for me? Or for you?”

Clara reeled away like she’d been slapped. “God will make it so.”

“~God~.” Lilitha suddenly thought of Laymond. She shook her head. “If there is proof there is no God, I am it, Clara. I am ~it~.”

“Lilitha!” she called.

But Lilitha was already out of the door and racing down the steps. She had no destination in mind as she walked the streets. She should search for food but what was the point? It was a waste of time. A waste of energy. It would be more constructive to lay down in the street, give up and die already.

She was lost in her thoughts and rage and grief, when her boot slipped off the edge of the gutter and she stumbled. Lilitha cried out as her knees hit the pavement hard. She tried to push herself back up, but her arms didn’t have the strength, and she simply rolled over and stretched herself out on the road.

Tears were dripping out of her eyes as she stared up at the sky, the stars twinkling brightly between the rooftops. She hardly saw them anymore. Not since she’d left the forest. Too busy. Too tired. Always sleeping when she should be awake.

For the hundredth time, she wondered where Damon was. She pondered what Mateus, Carmella, and Silus were doing.

As the days passed, their brief time together seemed more and more unreal. If it wasn’t for her “hunger” problem, she could have almost believed she’d simply imagined it all.

If Mateus were here and still loved her, he’d simply pick her up and carry her back into the forest in his big, warm arms. She wished he would. She wished he was here right now.

“Mateus.” A tear coursed down her cheek.

Somebody walked past her with barely a glance. She was just another body lying in the street, like the old woman or the drunken man she’d killed.

She turned over, pressed her face into the pavement, and curled into a ball. Maybe if she were lucky, she ~would~ die here.

She closed her eyes, only to open them again at the sound of a slippery voice.

“Hello, my lovely.”