Chapter 33
B y the time we make it back to the ship.
Charlie and Maddox are waiting for us on deck.
They take one look at us, at the way we’re shivering despite a lack of rain, at the way Nolan is having to hold me up to keep me from stumbling, and it’s clear from the way their faces pale that we don’t have to communicate what we’ve found out from the Seer.
Charlie rushes to me and takes me by the shoulders, leading me with her arm around me down into the belly of the ship. Footsteps creak against the wooden floorboards as Nolan and Maddox follow behind.
I expect her to lead me to my and Nolan’s rooms, but instead she takes a turn and winds us down the hallways to the map room.
Once we’re all inside, Nolan shuts the door behind us.
There are already maps spread across the table, and I get the sense that Charlie and Maddox have been hard at work down here while Nolan and I went to see the Seer.
“We’re going to fix this,” says Charlie, echoing Nolan’s initial reaction as she squeezes my shoulders again.
If I had the energy to open my mouth, I would ask everyone why they’re so confident my mistakes can be fixed. But as I stare at the one of the maps spread across the table, the rendering of the vast world we live in, something else stirs within me.
It’s not quite hope. More like desperation, obsession, maybe.
But I don’t try to tamp it down, not when it fills my otherwise numb limbs with a manic energy.
I follow Charlie’s suit, scanning the maps, scouring through books, searching for something, anything, to help us. Some way that I can keep both of them.
“Do we know where the Nomad is right now?” I ask.
Maddox shakes his head. “The Gathers have been uncharted since we left Lady Whitaker’s. No one knows where the Nomad’s gotten off to.”
I can’t help but wonder if that has something to do with his intentions for Tink, but I have so much energy bursting through my veins now, I don’t let it deter me.
“Speaking of, what about Lady Whitaker?” says Charlie.
“She doesn’t place children,” I say. “Not in other homes. She only keeps them in that school of hers. Besides, I don’t know how willing she would be to help me, anyway. I can’t imagine she would look fondly on the bargain I made.”
No one argues with that. And though the guilt, the shame of it all threatens to take my breath away, I stay focused on the task at hand, tracing a trembling finger over the map.
There’s something about how big it is—how vast the world is—that makes me feel as if there has to be something, someone out there to help us. Something we could do.
“We’ll find a solution,” says Charlie.
“We already have,” says Nolan.
From my periphery, I can tell Charlie glances up at my husband. I don’t. I just continue staring at the map, ignoring what he’s about to tell her.
“When the time comes, I am going to give myself in his place,” he says.
Charlie lets out the smallest noise. It’s not quite a whimper, not quite a scoff. It lies somewhere in the in-between of disbelief and admiration.
She shakes her head. “No. No, we’ll find another way. We’ll find something else.”
Maddox joins us at the map table.
“There’s not another option. Not that I can see,” says Nolan.
Charlie sets her jaw. “That’s just because we haven’t looked hard enough.”
I don’t know if I’ve ever loved her more than I love her in this moment.
“We’re not separating your family. You’re not giving yourself over to that wretched creature.”
I squeeze her hand. When she nods at me, tears brimming in her eyes, it’s evident she still feels that this is her fault. I wish I could alleviate her of that guilt, but Charlie takes her mistakes personally, no matter how unintentional.
The best I can do is help her succeed in saving us.
Maddox stops, jaw slightly agape, as if he’s tasted a strange idea in the air.
“What is it?” I ask.
“It’s something Charlie said,” he says, staring far off. “About separating you.”
My heart sinks before it even has the time to lift.
“Go on,” I say.
He glances at Charlie.
“What about Kendra?”
Charlie goes stiff.
“I don’t think—” she starts, then something in her face shifts. A moment later, and she’s slapping Maddox on the back, looking relieved at first, but then her face pales to the faintest of greens. “No. But that would mean?—”
Maddox nods, and the two of them look at me, my eyes wide.
“What would that mean?” I ask.
“Kendra manages a plethora of safe houses. Has connections with those who can forge paperwork for those needing new identities. She makes people disappear,” explains Charlie, her voice slow, drawn out. Like instead of offering me an idea, she’s delivering terrible news.
“It wouldn’t matter if she made me disappear,” I say. “I would still have to turn him over.” I stop, realizing now their meaning. “You mean you want to separate him from me? You want to make my son disappear.”
Our attentions turn to Nolan. My husband blinks at me. And though the realization aches in the folds of my gut, I know this is the only way forward.
“She could make you disappear too,” I say. “Couldn’t she?”
Nolan cranes his neck to the side, his jaw bulging. “Absolutely not. I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving my wife.”
My heart cracks in two. My wife . What a beautiful, terrible phrase. “You wouldn’t really be leaving me, though. I would know that out there somewhere, you were taking care of our son. That you were raising him. That even if he didn’t get to grow up with his mother, he’d at least have his father.”
The sinister voice in the back of my head reminds me that of the two of us, Nolan would be a better parent, anyway.
Still, it feels sickly, the idea of giving up my child.
But now that it’s rooted in my head, I can’t seem to make it go away, can’t seem to see around it.
The idea grows trunks and leaves and thorns, blocking my sight from any other path.
But I don’t mind.
I didn’t want to see a path where Nolan was forced back into the arms of the Sister. A path where my son would grow up nursed by a predator.
Really, if I think about it, this is more happiness than I ever thought would be granted to me—knowing that somewhere out there, my son was with his father, well taken care of.
“No. No, that’s not an option,” says Nolan.
“What else do you suggest?” I ask. “That this Kendra send our son away? Find him another family?”
Nolan glances up between Maddox and Charlie.
“Kendra still does that too, on occasion,” says Charlie.
“Yes,” says Nolan, practically grinding his teeth to powder. “When the parents are not capable of raising the child.”
“Which I am not,” I say, fixing my gaze on Nolan. “But you are.”
Nolan’s face hardens, and he tears his gaze away from mine.
“We’ll speak to Kendra,” he says. And for now, despite the anger in my husband’s voice, that’s enough.