Chapter Twenty-Four
I hardly slept over the following days, and when I did, I was plagued by nightmares of ships lost at sea, of Finlay leaning in to kiss me only to see the truth behind my eyes.
More than once, I woke up screaming. Bri had come to check on me, finding me sweating and unable to relay why I was so upset.
Instead of getting frustrated, though, she’d gone ahead and baked me the best damn cake I’d ever eaten, vanilla bean with lavender frosting.
When Finlay and Bri sang happy birthday and clapped as I blew out my candles, I lied and told them I wished for more cake.
For the most part, Finlay was busy with work and his mother, so I hardly saw him, which was exactly how I wanted it.
If he tried to talk to me again, or worse, kiss me, I might lose my mind and tell him everything.
As it was, my guilt was eating at me like worms in an apple, hollowing me from the inside out.
On Monday afternoon, I told Bri I had a few errands to run before I left for my trip, secretly planning to visit Mr. Wexley and receive my final instructions.
I’d spent the past few days making sure Bri knew everything about the shoppe, since she’d have no way to reach me once I left.
I’d never been away from it for more than a day or two, and it felt almost like leaving Da behind.
“I’ll walk with you,” Bri said. “I promised Mrs. Barrow I’d visit today.”
I pretended to be grateful for the company as we left the shoppe and headed down the street. I was grateful. I only wished everything could stay as it had been these past few weeks.
“Are you nervous?” she asked as we walked.
“No.” The lie came as easily as breathing. But this was one thing I didn’t have to lie about. “Yes,” I amended. “Terrified, actually.”
“I understand. Coming here, I felt the same way. But I knew it was what I needed to do.” She was quiet for a moment. “Thank you for doing this for me, Willow. I’ve never had someone willing to take a chance on me, other than my grandmother. It means more than you know.”
I wished I could take such a thoughtful compliment at face value, wished that my heart matched what she believed to be in it. “It’s all right,” I said instead.
“No, it’s … I didn’t tell you before because saying it out loud was too painful. I’m not telling you this to put pressure on you. I just want to be honest.”
Saints alive, what was it going to be now?
“I told you my parents are expecting me home for Yule, because that’s when the university break is. But it’s more than that.” She cleared her throat, avoiding my eyes. “My father actually told me to come home by Yule with the curse broken … or not to come back at all.”
If I’d thought I couldn’t feel any lower, I was wrong. “What? Ever?”
The detachment in her voice was almost worse than tears. “My mother is dying from her heart condition. The one I gave her. My father doesn’t want her last day with me to be tainted by the curse. He thinks it’s better if she never sees me again.”
For Pete’s sake, no pressure? What was I meant to say to that? If I didn’t manage to steal this item and get it back to Wexley, Bri’s chance to reunite with her parents was ruined forever. “Have I mentioned before how much I despise your parents?”
Bri gave a half-hearted shrug. “Family is family.”
“Family can be bloody awful.”
“I won’t disagree with you there.”
“So,” she said after a few minutes of silence had passed. “You and Fin.”
I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. “That’s the worst change of subject I ever heard. What about us?”
“He likes you, Willow. Before you deny it, I know you like him. How long are you going to string him along?”
I exhaled through my nose. To be honest, I’d been expecting her to mention our moment in the storeroom all week, but she must have been hoping I’d bring it up myself. “It’s complicated.”
She stopped and turned to face me. “Is it?”
“He’s my best friend, Bri. If something went wrong between us, I’d lose his friendship, and as you well know, I don’t have many friends to spare.”
“It’s more than that, Willow. Why can’t you admit it?”
Why couldn’t I admit it? For starters, that would have required me to interrogate my own feelings, something I was not particularly keen on.
Besides, all my focus lately had been on getting to and from the Sapphire Isles with my head still attached to my shoulders.
Once I had The Oxblood Book, I could come clean about everything.
Or not. Would it be so horrible to let Finlay and Bri go on thinking the best of me?
I scowled and continued walking. “You said it yourself. We’re like brother and sister at this point. We bicker half the time, and the other half we’re arguing.”
She pursed her lips. “For the record, I said you fought like siblings. If that’s how you think brothers look at sisters, we need to be having a different conversation.”
“Don’t be disgusting,” I said over my shoulder as she turned off toward the print shoppe.
“I’ll see you at home,” she called over her shoulder.
Home. Now there was a loaded word. If I’d known from the second I met Bri that the only way she’d see her family again was if I helped her, I’d have avoided her like the plague.
No doubt she’d have avoided me, too. I still couldn’t understand why she’d even want to see them again, considering how terribly they’d treated her.
But as I reached Wexley’s house, I reminded myself that it was her decision.
And it was up to me to give her the chance to make it.
Fromme answered the door before I could knock, grunting a greeting as I skulked past him.
Wexley waited for me in his cabinet of curiosities, sipping whisky from a cut-crystal glass. “Ah, Miss Stokes. I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”
“You did threaten the lives of my best friends,” I snarled, sitting down heavily in his stupid velvet chair. Maybe I’d spill some tea on it, just to spite him.
Unfortunately, he didn’t offer me any. “Aye, well, you left me little choice in the matter.”
I almost retorted that I was the one who had no options left, but I bit my tongue.
I wanted to get my instructions and get out of here as soon as possible.
I glanced at the grimoires again. The dark red one stood out, likely because I knew to look for it.
But I could still remember the way it had felt when I touched it, like it wanted me to find it.
Stealing the book had crossed my mind. I could break Bri’s curse and send her away before Mr. Wexley knew. But if I were caught, Bri and Finlay would be the ones who paid for it. Besides, I didn’t even know if this was The Oxblood Book. It was only a hunch.
Mr. Wexley handed me a notebook fastened with a long leather thong. Inside, the instructions were written in impossibly neat cursive, the kind I’d never managed to master in school.
I skimmed the words, but they meant little to me without any knowledge of the Isles.
“A map,” he said, once again reading my thoughts. He handed me a scroll tied with a black ribbon. “You’ll study it on your journey over and burn it when you’ve memorized it. Same with the notebook. Should you be caught, I don’t want any of this traced back to me.”
“Heaven forbid,” I muttered. “Were you planning to tell me what I’m stealing, or is that a surprise, too?”
He steepled his fingers below his chin. “You can hardly blame me for wanting to be sure you were on board before I divulged any secrets.”
I waved a hand at him, feigning boredom, though inside, I was burning with curiosity.
I’d spent the past week wondering what could possibly be worth giving up his entire collection for, when he seemed to delight in the vastness of it as much as the contents.
But nothing I came up with made any sense.
“There is a woman called Nora Monroe on Azure Cay. I purchased my dragon tooth from her. She inherited the last living dragon from her father. It passed away some years back, but not before leaving Nora with one final treasure.”
I sat up in the chair, hardly breathing. “Are you saying…?”
“A dragon egg. It can’t hatch, of course. Without a living dragon to nest on it, it has fossilized. But the power…” His gaze hardened, focused on something I couldn’t see.
“Mr. Wexley?”
He blinked, coming back to himself. “Do you know what a dragon egg is capable of?”
I shook my head. I knew, after overhearing the Sapphire Islander, that each part of the dragon held a power related to itself, but if a dragon egg held an entire baby dragon inside it, I could only begin to imagine what it could do.
“A dragon egg holds immortality. The ultimate power from the ultimate collectible.” He smiled at me, but it faltered when he noticed I didn’t seem particularly impressed.
“Of course, you’re just a child. What does immortality mean to you?
But believe me, a day will come when you’ll understand.
Life goes by in the blink of an eye. There’s still so much I want to see and do. ”
I rolled my eyes. This man had everything, and he was so caught up in his own nonsense that he couldn’t even see it. If it weren’t for Bri and Finlay, I would have walked out of his house that instant. If only I’d never let myself get close to anyone, I wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.
Then again, maybe I’d end up as self-absorbed as Wexley, and that option wasn’t appealing, either.
“Nora keeps the egg well guarded, naturally. I’ve provided instructions in the notebook for how you’ll get past most of the obstacles, but it will be up to you to figure out how to smuggle the egg out of her fortress.
” He reached into a satchel sitting on the floor next to his chair.
“This is the decoy,” he explained, pulling a large, polished egg from the bag.
It was heavy enough that I had to hold it with both hands.
I raised it to the light, the iridescent colors flashing from gray to blue to green.