Chapter 30 #2
‘I’ll be taking that back now.’ With a twist of his fingers, Jasper tweaked fate, faster than Thea could comprehend. The sword vanished from Zofka’s hand, reappearing in Jasper’s instead.
Hurrying to unpick the remaining knots, Thea’s fingers shook. A web of red threads encircled the box, keeping it hidden from sight.
‘Fine. I don’t need a weapon when I am a weapon.’ Zofka summoned a ball of witch light in her emptied palm.
The heart-shaped box materialised, visible once more.
Thea’s heart-spell trilled, as if threatened, on seeing it.
She pulled it out of the dresser. ‘I found it,’ she whispered, staring at the dark red velvet box.
Zofka and Talibah turned to her, responses dying on their lips as they watched Thea reach out a trembling hand to open the box, to reclaim her own heart.
‘No!’ Jasper cried out, leaping across the room before she could blink. ‘I beg of you . . .’ Jasper’s eyes met Thea’s with the power of a hundred storms whipping through the woods. ‘Do not open that box.’ His voice cracked and blistered.
‘Stay back,’ Zofka commanded, raising her witch light.
‘Open it,’ Talibah whispered. ‘Open it and take your heart back.’
Her head swimming, her nails digging into the velvet after Jasper had half scared the life out of her, Thea opened the heart-shaped box.
Inside, on a bed of plush satin, lay a golden ring.
It was old, evident from the warp of the metal, worn lace-thin in places.
Simple, too. Seeing it brought a lump to her throat, at the woman who must have been married for so long to have worn her ring thin.
She lifted it to show Talibah and Zofka.
Disappointment rushed over Thea, so acute it was like being back in that cursed lake, her lungs filling with water. She could have drowned in it.
Talibah’s expression cleared, murky confusion giving way to comprehension. ‘Oh,’ she said softly.
‘Oh, what?’ Zofka frowned at her, but Talibah gave her a small shake of her head, her amber gaze softening with concern as she glanced at Thea.
‘I don’t understand.’ Thea gave a dry laugh. ‘Where is my heart?’ She licked her lips as if that would make the words come easier. ‘Why wouldn’t you want me to open this box? Have you . . . Have you lost my heart?’
‘Yes,’ Jasper whispered, giving her an anguished look. ‘I lost your heart.’
Thea breathed in sharply. ‘What? How could you—’
‘You need to tell her the truth,’ Talibah broke in. ‘If what I suspect is true, you need to tell her the truth. Now.’
Jasper ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. ‘I never knew loneliness could cut so deep,’ he admitted, looking at Thea again.
Frowning, Thea stepped back, afraid to hear whatever came next.
‘Each night I go to bed alone. Each morning, I wake alone. I am living a cold and meaningless existence without . . .’ His voice roughened. ‘Without you.’
The box dropped from Thea’s hands, sending the ring rolling across the polished floorboards, onto the Persian carpet, where Jasper stood at the foot of his bed.
Meeting his boot, it stopped; Jasper bent to pick it up.
‘The one thing that has brought me some semblance of life, of light, has been visiting you. Allowing myself to see you again. The person I would die a thousand deaths for. My twin soul. My everything.’ His voice rubbed the words raw.
‘Even if you look at me with distrust, with dislike, the love lost from your eyes, the memories stolen by my own hand, it is worth it all just to spend a heartbeat in your presence.’
‘My dreams of you,’ Thea whispered.
Jasper looked like a lost man. Like he’d fallen into a pit of grief he could not claw himself free from. ‘Fragments of the past clinging on.’
Zofka was still staring at the ring Jasper was holding like a delicate wild flower. ‘Do you mean to say that that’s Thea’s wedding ring?’
‘No. No,’ Thea whispered, shaking her head. ‘I thought you were a widower.’
Jasper’s hands tensed at his sides, as if he yearned to reach out and catch her, to stop her free-falling through time and space. ‘I mentioned losing my wife to Rose, once. She took it to mean my wife had died, but you were just lost to me. Unreachable.’
Thea reeled. ‘No. I don’t want . . . whatever this is. I have a beautiful life, even if it’s a little lonely sometimes, and I’ve made some mistakes.’
Pain bled across Jasper’s face. His eyes were soft and sad, a lighter blue than Thea had seen before.
As they rippled like a shallow pool, she realised why; they were filled with unshed tears.
‘I never intended you to find out this way,’ he said hoarsely.
‘I never thought I’d have to be the one to tell you, not like this. ’
‘Did you ever mean to tell me at all?’ Thea demanded.
His silence was answer enough.
She nodded bitterly. ‘That’s what I thought.’
‘I want you to know that I do not expect anything from you; you do not need to fear me, nor my involvement in your life,’ Jasper told her. ‘If you are . . . happy as you are, then I have no wish to change that.’
He seemed genuine. Though Thea could not trust Jasper, let alone picture herself wed to him, she could not deny the depth of emotion playing through his face, the truth searing his words. ‘Return my heart and memories,’ she said. ‘I deserve to know the entire truth, and I need to know it now.’
‘I never took your heart.’ A tear escaped Jasper’s eye, but he ignored it. ‘I could never have done that to you. It is only a trick of fate, a looped thread, that makes you believe so.’
Thea clamped a hand to her chest. ‘I’ve spent seven years believing it wasn’t there.
Not being able to feel it.’ She still couldn’t feel it, wasn’t sure what to think.
‘My memories, then. Give me back my memories. Heloise is coming for me, and I must know if her other claims are true. If she is indeed . . . my sister.’ Her head whirled.
All the past seven years, she would have died to know a single relation.
Now she’d gained a sister and a husband in a single night . . . if she believed either of them.
Jasper sat heavily on the end of his bed, lowering his gaze to the floor. ‘I cannot.’
‘You cannot? You cannot?’
Jasper did not raise his eyes. ‘No.’
Thea’s chest spasmed. ‘How convenient,’ she said.
Jasper’s head jerked up in confusion. ‘That you never intended to give my memories back, that you’ve ensured I will never know when you are lying, never know the truth for myself.
’ Her thoughts darted to and fro like a flock of frenzied birds, the noise in her head intolerable.
She needed to leave, couldn’t stay here a second longer – even the sound of the fire sputtering in the grate was too loud, too much.
She backed towards the door. ‘You can’t keep my memories hostage forever.
One day, I will find a way to reclaim them myself, and then I’ll find out exactly what you’re hiding from me.
’ If anything he had told her was true, or if they were lies stacked on top of lies, like Thea’s impossibly high piles of books, destined to topple over.
Jasper lurched up. ‘Thea, wait! It’s not safe out there, Heloise—’
But Thea refused to hear another word. Flinging his door open, she ran downstairs, through the foyer and out into the street, where she kept running, towards the river.
Thea fled back over Prague Bridge and through the gaping entrance cleaved straight through St John of Nepomuk, who no longer guarded the Quarter, though what was left of his face seemed to give her a concerned look, just as Zofka and Talibah came skidding into view as she glanced back.
‘Wait!’ Zofka cried out, battling her mourning gown as Thea bolted down the spiral stairs leading to the Quarter. The Hunters left guarding it were long gone, as was any sign of Wojslav. Perhaps he was sleeping off his feast.
She skirted the edges of the void, which was now rumbling hungrily, refusing to stop until she reached the apothecary, where she hesitated, glancing up at the gilded sign swinging outside.
The one with Jasper’s name on it: Stiltskin’s Apothecary.
How could he be her husband? She refused to believe it, even as something niggled deep down that there was something between them, had been all along.
That their kisses had been their most truthful exchanges.
The weathervane creaked a sorrowful tune, cut in the shape of a solitary magpie, the falling snow lending it a white nightcap that looked uncannily like Rose’s.
Zofka and Talibah caught up.
‘I appreciate you both coming with me last night, but I am not ready to discuss this yet,’ she told them before they could speak.
‘No,’ protested Zofka, gasping for breath. ‘Don’t shut us out, let us be here for you.’
‘It’s all right.’ Talibah rested a hand on Zofka’s arm. ‘This has been a big shock, she needs time to process it all.’
‘Fine.’ Zofka eyed Thea speculatively. ‘But I will be making sure that you’re eating enough,’ she threatened, bringing the faintest smile to Thea’s lips.
Zofka launched forwards, wrapping her shorter frame around Thea’s and holding her fiercely.
‘I’ll be back to leave breakfast on your doorstep,’ she promised.
‘Make sure that you eat every last bite of it; you need to keep your strength up if we’re to battle this fate-weaver. ’
‘My sister, you mean?’ Thea said darkly.
‘We don’t know that yet,’ Talibah pointed out. ‘Something tells me she would say anything if she knew it would disturb you. Keep you wrong-footed. Muddling up truths and untruths is a good tactic to unnerve you. Keep you unsure. And Jasper did not confirm it.’
‘That’s true.’ Zofka added. ‘She was a conniving one. Can’t trust a word out of her mouth.
I’ll make you something special to eat and you’ll feel more like yourself again.
Then we’ll all be ready to take on whatever that fate-weaver flings at us next.
She didn’t know what she was taking on when she targeted us, but we’ll make her regret it. ’
Thea already knew that breakfast would be bursting with magic.
There was nothing like someone in distress to coax out Zofka’s best kitchen-witchery.
Even if nothing would stop that roar in Thea’s head drowning out everything else, as if she’d had too many glasses of sva?àk and the world was twisting around her.
When Zofka reluctantly relinquished her hold on Thea, Talibah swept in. ‘We will be here for you the moment you need us,’ she vowed.
Thea nodded, supressing a sudden burst of tears.
When her friends, her true sisterhood, had prised themselves away to return to their respective homes, she locked the apothecary door behind them.
Then she closed the shutters. The folk residing in the Magic Quarter were a curious lot and she didn’t want anyone peering in at her with accusing eyes as the void still rumbled and smoked outside.
As the Hunters waited somewhere out there, as Heloise bided her time.
But first, tea.