Chapter Forty-Five #2
“Why ask me to solve a murder which you had committed?” I questioned. Bastian wrinkled his nose.
“Well,” he replied, “I hoped you might find me a scapegoat. Lucie Dabos’s attacks have been most tiresome to bear—I wasn’t lying about that. And, of course, I still need my key back.”
He cast me a look like he expected me to hand it to him. I returned his stare, frowning.
“Adélard’s silkwitch has your key,” I said. I’d assumed he’d put it together himself. “Bernard glimpsed her with it, after she exited the tunnels during the Midway Ball. If the Cloister Master has not given it to you yet, perhaps he is not as loyal of an ally as you believe.”
Bastian’s smile was pitying. “No, dear,” he said. “Bernard glimpsed her with a key. Specifically, a key which allowed her access to my tunnel network—not everyone can simply stroll through locked doors as you can. It was not the key.” He clicked his tongue. “Did you overlook that detail?”
My stomach emptied out. Was he bluffing? If Adélard didn’t have the key to the moonless door…did that mean I’d failed?
I felt my hackles rise. “I found your killer,” I stated. “I did what you asked of me.”
“So you did. So you did.” Bastian nodded, then made a dismissive motion with his hands. “Oh, calm yourself,” he said. “Do you think I have any desire to waste you on the cloisters? That I would not have put an end to your and my son’s scheming by now, if that were the case?”
I went very still. Watching me, Bastian chuckled.
“My dear,” he went on. “You think I cannot sense that my own child wants me dead?”
My stomach fell. I swallowed. “Why?” Why am I still alive?
He seemed to understand my question. “Because, dear Lovett Tamerlane, the two of you are not my enemies,” Bastian replied.
“I am your enemy, to be true. But there are many things in this house that wish me harm. Mice. Ill-tempered servants. Do I hunt every one of them down and smite them?” He shook his head, laying his hands in his lap.
“My son is young and rebellious,” the Weaver King continued.
“He hates me because he has not been able to please me, but he has never been a threat. You, on the other hand…Well, you are not an enemy yet, but you could grow to be one. If Noé were not so dreadfully in love with you, I would have rid myself of you after the competition.”
He laughed when I paled.
“Oh yes,” Bastian said. “Did you think his affection for you was shallow, or new? My darling, he has loved you for months—since the end of the Vainglory, perhaps even before that.
“I thought you would have realized it,” Bastian remarked, wagging his chin. I had given no reply to his previous statement; I could not. The flesh on my arms was buzzing as though with bitter cold. “He admitted as much to you, after all, during our journey home after the opera.”
My heart stopped. For a second, I did not believe him—then there was a shift, and a memory unfurled in my mind: Noé, slouched against the carriage window as we drove. Father, you know I find her the most fascinating creature I have ever encountered.
My mouth dried out. Father, you know I find her. Not know in the offhand, sarcastic way I’d originally interpreted it, but know, sincerely, because Noé understood that his father could read his emotions. Because he’d realized, even though I had not, that Bastian had already seen the truth.
I love her, he’d said then. I chose her.
“His love is the sole reason you are still alive,” Bastain said.
I snapped back to attention. My body felt odd, like my bones were held together by strings.
“Because he cares for you, and I, contrary to whatever you might believe, care for him. It would have been a simple task to pin Sybil’s murder on you and send you to the cloisters following the Vainglory’s conclusion, but I had already taken one paramour from him, with Miss Lear.
I wished to see if I could…reform you instead.
” He tilted his head, as if evaluating his work.
“And have I been reformed?” I managed.
Bastian chuckled, low in his throat. “Not at all,” he said. “But I have grown to appreciate your quirks.”
He hesitated. As if coming to a decision, he laid his elbows on the desktop. I struggled not to flinch as he shifted toward me, his ring glinting, the candlelight draping half his face in shadow.
“Do you remember when we first met?” Bastian asked.
“It was in this very room, during the Vainglory’s second trial.
I told you then that my son required a helpmate, but I did not disclose just how desperate I’ve been to find such a person.
” He pressed his lips together. “Noé is an artist,” the Weaver King said.
“He…aspires to things. Ideals. Beauty. People, above all.” He cast me a meaningful look.
“I have tried to shape him as best I could, but he seems doomed to be a follower. A historian, waxing poetic over the works of great men—not a great man himself. But you…You are active. You break the world around you in order to advance your own agenda—you care nothing for how pretty it looks.”
He sighed, slouching lower in his chair.
“I have seen in your mind that you were raised alone,” Bastian said.
I tensed, my cheeks heating with embarrassment.
“Your parents did not care for you, yes? Even your lover, Eliot Lear, forsook you at the first opportunity for a girl less than half your worth.” He pitched forward.
“Forget them,” he whispered fervently. “Come and be my daughter. I am loyal to few, but for those whom I choose, and who choose me, I would fight until my death.”
Daughter. The term sank into my skin. How long had it been since anyone had called me that? Since someone had claimed me without any semblance of shame?
Your parents did not care for you. Your lover, Eliot Lear, forsook you. Though I wished to deny it, it was true. Eliot had told me long ago that I was far too interesting to be good.
He hadn’t mentioned that he would never find me good enough to keep.
“Morality is a tonic made for lesser men, so that they will not think to topple those above them,” Bastian went on.
“Right and wrong…Those are merely terms meant to bind you. Is it wrong that we Weavers steal your kind’s powers, as I know you are aware we do?
Is it right that by wedding you, we save you from being abused by women like Lucie Dabos?
Or is it all just strategy—games won and games lost?
” His mouth twitched, his gaze drifting toward his desktop.
“Eliot Lear has told you that the only way to defend yourself against powerful men like me is to destroy us, but there is another way. You could become a powerful man, too.”
Again, he raised his eyes to mine. They glowed in the candlelight, silver burning orange.
“The question is really quite a simple one,” Bastian said. “Do you want a cause…or do you want a family?”