The deathly regents

Chapter Nine

Feel you later

Hope

Remember: if something bad happens, blame the Reunification Cult. It always works. And it'd worked out the day Ralody Brine and I, being covered with blood, mud, and dust, had stormed into the smelling like iodine and bandages halls of the Healer's Abode.

The rumor had it the leader of Calire and the widow of the Nordery University rector had been kidnapped by the sectarians to finish the job the previous ones hadn't done. Thanks to luck and a weak heart of one of the followers, the two women had managed to escape and to get the medical care.

My injury hadn't been that bad, in contrast to Ralody's one. Initially, the surgery to remove the bullet from her thigh the healers had conducted had appeared to be a success, but she'd got an infection while we'd been winding through the corridors of the damned slaughterhouse in search of the exit to outside, what had caused complications. Three days ago, they'd amputated Ralody's left leg not to let the infection spread all over her body. She'd fallen into a coma without having regained consciousness and still was motionlessly lying on the couch in the abode ward with no permission to be visited by anyone.

I never let phone slip, knowing they could call me anytime to inform about Ralody's state. Ranita, these days were so hard to live. I had no idea how to distract myself from thinking of the leader and her grave but stable condition. My feet polished the laminated floor till the slick surface, what wasn't so surprisingly because I paced back and forth nervously at least five times a day. I'd checked the documents from the box which I'd received from the notary the day Frost and Snow had driven sleeping me to the notorious slaughterhouse outside the town for the presence of any papers with the special embossed font for unable to read people, but all my efforts, as it'd turned out, had been fruitless. I was eager to find out the content, but the only person who had eyes and my trust to see the papers was now in a coma.

A person...

What if I asked not a person?

There was only one problem–I hadn't heard from the deathly regent since we'd escaped and didn't know how to summon him. Did a special spell for it exist? Or a ritual? A ceremony?

Or you need to stop complicating your life and just call him by his name? It is worth a shot. The worst that might happen is your neighbors will call the healer's carriage to take you to the asylum.

I took a deep breath and, before I could realize what I was doing, cried out his name groggily, "Letum?"

Nothing.

I toyed the thin strap of my knit jumpsuit which I wore at home only.

"Letum?" I repeated more steadily.

The hair on my hands stood on ends.

"I heard from the first time," he remarked, what caught me out of guard, and I jumped out of the kitchen table, pouring the cold white coffee I'd forgot to drink up because the decision to summon the regent had come to my mind.

"Fuck."

"Is it how you fleshy welcome your guests? Nice," Letum said ironically.

I passed him, feeling the freezing touch of cold air, to grab the rag to wipe the liquid off. "Don't creep up on people, especially blind ones, not to be greeted like that, or even worse."

"I have no flesh to knock or pace, Hope."

Indeed. A neither alive nor dead guide to the transcendental world.

"What did you call me for? What happened?"

The sweet liquid left sticky spots on my palms. I took the soaked with the coffee rag to the sink and washed it under cold running water. "Nothing bad. I... Ralody is in the abode. She's still in coma."