Mask of Poison (Fall of Under Book 1) by Kathryn Kingsley (great novels to read txt) 📕

happy to avoid small talk, as well. Ember, meanwhile, wasn’t used to having people to talk to.

So, she stayed silent.

She was nervous. She kept reaching for the strap to her spear, but it wasn’t there. Instead, she shoved her hands into her pockets, or fiddled with the zippers of her new leather coat.

“Oh.” She blinked. “Thank you, Aon.”

“Hum?” He turned his head slightly to glance at her. “For what?”

“The clothes.” She smiled faintly. “Thanks.”

“Trust me, it was as much for my benefit as it was for yours.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. She knew it was meant as an insult, but it was also a little funny. “New clothes are hard to come by when you spend every day fighting for your life. I’m sorry for any inconvenience my appearance caused you.”

“It wasn’t so much the appearance as it was the smell. There is a reason I do not spend time at the House of Flames.” Aon grunted.

“Well, anyway. Thank you. The clothes are appreciated, no matter the reason.” She smirked up at Lyon. The tall, pale blood-drinker looked worried, his usually doleful expression drawn tight.

“You are welcome. Ah. Here we are.” Aon pushed open a large wooden door. It creaked a little on its hinges. “Forgive me, I have not used the doors in my home in a long time. I fear I’ve forgotten where some of my rooms actually are.” He chuckled. “This impediment upon my magic is both amusing and irritating at the same time.”

The room Aon led them into was large. The walls were carved out of huge, smooth stone blocks stacked upon each other. The mortar was thick and grayed with age. There were tables in rows along the walls and in the center of the room. And on all the surfaces were…things. Gadgets. Copper tubes, brass pipes, glass vials. Wires and strange blinking lights.

And where there weren’t gadgets, there were paper and books, piled on top of each other, covered in the same strange esoteric writing that she saw everywhere else. It wasn’t a scientific laboratory, however. Or at least…not purely. Strange symbols were drawn on the floors, walls, and ceilings. They gave her a strange feeling simply by looking at them.

“Your magic has suffered?” Lyon asked. “I am unable to pass through the fold, but my powers remain otherwise untouched.”

“The magic I own that derives from the creations made by the Ancient for whom I am a royal remains untouched. But most of my more complicated spells come not from the shadows that reign in Under, but from weaving together an intricate web of strings that I pull from each of the Ancients’ sources. From blood, and moons, and the like. What is black, if not the combination of all colors?”

“The absence of all the colors,” Ember muttered. “Depends on if you’re talking about light or paint.”

“Indeed. Clever child. And I am both the absence of all, and the combination of all, all at the same time.” He motioned for them to follow him farther into the room. “Once that contradiction is understood, a great many doors open to the mind.”

“I’ll work on that,” Ember muttered again. “Don’t think I’ll live long enough to figure it out, though.”

Aon chuckled. “Ah. Yes. This is what I need.” He pulled a large muslin cloth off a leather chair. One side had an odd-looking armrest with straps on it. “Please take a seat, Ember.”

She swallowed thickly.

A hand fell on her shoulder. Lyon. He looked down at her with a tender, if sorrowful, expression. “Aon will not kill you. He has promised this.”

“A lot can be done to somebody without killing them.” Ember sighed. “But I agreed to this. It’s fine.”

“Remove your coat, roll up your sleeve, and take a seat, please.” Aon gestured to the chair. “This might sting.”

She did as he asked and watched as the man in all black strapped her left arm into the armrest. “I’m used to pain.”

“Are you?” Aon paused, his masked face turning to her. “I suppose by your standards.” He turned to a table nearby and began to tinker with various bottles and devices.

Ember thought it was better not to watch. She turned her head away and found something else to look at. Jars of colored liquid that caught the amber light. “When we train to be hunters as children, we’re taught to withstand pain. The weak are culled, the strong survive. That is the way of Gioll. And every weak soul left to turn into a drengil is just one more body that needs to be put down.”

Lyon frowned down at her. “Are you implying…”

“The weak were put out of their misery. Yeah.” Ember shut her eyes. “I lost a lot of friends when I was little. But it was the only way to survive.”

She jerked in surprise as something cold touched the crook of her elbow. She looked down to see Aon rubbing a small, damp cotton swab on her elbow. Alcohol, maybe?

He produced a needle attached to a thin plastic tube. She watched, curious now, as he fed the needle under her skin. She watched the tube fill with crimson as her blood ran down the short length into a vial.

He filled one vial with her blood before capping it with a cork and replacing it with a second empty glass vial. He repeated the pattern with a third. Then a fourth. A fifth. A sixth.

With another ball of cotton in his clawed hand, he removed the needle with his flesh and blood one and pressed the ball to the wound. “Hold that there.”

She did once more as she was told.

Aon turned back to the table, placed the six corked vials of blood into a wooden rack. He came back with a piece of medical tape and stuck the cotton ball to the needle wound on her arm and undid the leather straps.

“You are free to go. You may be a bit lightheaded, but you will be fine after you rest. Lyon can show you back upstairs