Chapter 14
“Don’t go,” he said again, pulling himself to his feet. “Please, don’t go. I can fix it. I can heal…Uh-oh.” He leaned heavily on the stable door, swamped with vertigo. Black spots like flies clouded his vision.
Tarquin sank back to the straw-covered dirt, but the floor had stopped being solid somehow and he just kept sinking. There was a thumpsomewhere. Maybe Tea had come back, but Tarquin couldn’t speak to ask. Then his last little hearth magic light went out, and he slid completely into darkness. 3: The Bowl and the Gold Bear
The bowl was stone and as wide across as a grown man’s shoulders, but not deep. Carved out of a natural rise in the stone floor of the chamber, it had been the same gray once. That had been a long time ago. Now the bowl was stained brown with the remains of the blood it had collected for centuries. More blood, dried brown, stained the outside of the bowl. It was easy to imagine how the knife might’ve slipped, how their hands might’ve been shaking.