Chapter 34
K endra—the one they say makes people disappear—does not live in an ornate manor like I might expect.
Instead, we travel a two-week journey to a mining village on the inland of Kruschi, and make our way to the mines. A guard stationed out front recognizes Nolan and leads us down through the tunnels into the mine. We even ride a cart down into the belly of the earth.
By the time we’ve reached the bottom, my stomach feels queasy.
“Are you all right?” asks Nolan, grasping my hand.
I fight the urge to grab at my belly, not wanting to concern him. I suppose my symptoms are beginning to manifest.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I say, and we make our way from the cart and through a large metal door.
Inside is a woman behind a desk, her feet propped up and crossed as she leans back in her chair. She has long red hair that flows in waves around her, pooling into her lap. She arches her already sharp brows when we walk through the door.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” she says, lips drawn into a smirk as she peers at Nolan, at which point I immediately tense and glance in his direction. He shakes his head slightly.
Discomfort settles in my belly, but I try to push past it as she invites us deeper into the room. Nolan and me first, Maddox and Charlie filing in behind us.
Kendra—at least, I assume that’s who the redheaded woman is—gestures to a woman behind her chair who lurks meekly in the shadows of the room. She has long silver hair and gray eyes, though she doesn’t appear to be much older than me.
The woman silently glides past us on her way to close the door behind us, though I don’t miss the way her gaze immediately snakes over my belly.
A chill runs through me, and I cover my stomach with my hand, as if to hide my baby from her gaze, as if she can see him already. Quickly, she returns to her place behind Kendra.
“So what are you doing here?” Kendra asks. “It’s been, what, seven years?”
“Give or take.” The way Nolan says it makes it seem as if he wishes it were longer.
Kendra must sense his discomfort in being here because her eyes narrow, though more in amusement than anything else.
She glances down at my finger, where my wedding band glints in the low light.
“So I take it this is a business-only trip,” she says, and my stomach turns over.
“As our trips have always been,” says my husband through gritted teeth, which I must admit, does make me feel some better. “You do still manage business, do you not?”
“Depends on whether I like the assignment.”
“And by that, you mean how much the client is willing to pay,” says Maddox.
Kendra flashes him a grin—one that tells me she rather enjoys looking at him.
“Well, you’ve never been short on coin, that’s for sure,” she says, glancing at Nolan. “So what will it be?”
“My wife, Wendy, is with child,” says Nolan.
“Ah, so you need me to make her disappear,” says Kendra, leaning over slightly to write something on a notepad on her desk.
“Yes, I’m sure I have a safe house I can arrange.
One where you won’t have to worry about enemies kidnapping your beloved or your child.
It’s rather nice too. On a beach. You’ll like it,” she says, glancing up at me.
Where I expect disdain in her eyes, there is only practicality.
“It’s not Wendy who needs to disappear,” says Nolan.
There’s a scrape—the sharp edge of a quill against parchment. Kendra blinks, then slowly looks up at Nolan before glancing between the two of us.
“Well, this is new,” she says, scratching out what she’s already written. “I’m afraid I’ll need more details.” With that, she leans back again and crosses her arms, though this time, the posture appears more wary than confident.
“Once my wife gives birth,” says Nolan, “the child and I will need to disappear.”
Kendra’s tongue sticks out the side of her mouth, ever so slightly pinched between her teeth. Again, she glances at me. “How often are you hoping to visit your husband and child?”
A needle pierces my gut at the question, and my mouth goes dry. I fight the urge not to stare at the ground as I say, “They need to disappear from me, too.”
Kendra looks back at the silver-haired woman behind her, then back at us. Her easygoing nature has disappeared, replaced by a tension in her shoulders.
“You must understand this is quite an odd request,” she says.
“But you can have it done,” says Nolan. “You can make it happen.”
“I could make it happen,” Kendra corrects, “with more information to help me make my decision about whether I want to make this happen.”
“If you can make it happen,” says Nolan, “I don’t understand what the difference is. It’s not really your business to deal in details, is it? Just to perform the service?”
Kendra taps her quill against the parchment, marring it with ink splotches.
“Yes, well,” she says, “it is also imperative to my business that I remain alive to operate it. And when the world’s foremost privateer asks me to make him disappear rather than his wife… You understand why I must ask questions. Whoever’s after you, I don’t particularly want coming after me.”
“Please,” I say. “Please. We have money.”
“Again,” says Kendra, “I’m told that coin doesn’t hold much worth in the afterlife.”
Nolan and I glance at each other. If Kendra is worried for her life, there seems little chance that once she discovers the truth of who we’re running from, she’ll be all that eager to help.
Still, she seems like the type of woman who could spot a lie from oceans away. And without telling her anything, I doubt she has any inclination to help us.
From the ornate look of her furniture, it doesn’t seem as if she’s in need of the money. At least not in the way most would think in need. I suppose people in professions like this have a different sort of need for money—not for what it can buy, but for the thrill that accumulating it provides.
“What has a mother so eager to be separated from her husband and infant?” asks Kendra. There’s more than fear in her eyes. There’s curiosity. Perhaps even a hint of pity.
I swallow, hoping I can capitalize on that. If I’ve learned anything from the last time I was compelled under a bargain, it was not to underestimate the compassion of others.
I think about how I had not even considered asking Tink for help. How I would have rather died than turn her over. The irony of it all had been that my sacrifice was the last thing she had wanted. She had rather us try together. Fail, together.
Kendra is not my friend, though. And I’ll have to be careful with my wording.
“I’ve been cursed since I was a child,” I say. “My entire life has been dictated by a bargain made by my parents with the hopes of saving me from an illness.”
“Ah yes,” says Kendra. “I thought your Mark looked familiar. You’re the girl promised to the Shadow Keeper. I’m assuming that didn’t work out well.”
I continue. “On the night I was to be handed over to him, my family’s manor was attacked.
” I try not to look at Nolan as I say it, not wanting to give away that it was he who attacked us.
“I struck a deal with the Shadow Keeper, hoping to save the lives of my brothers. But he didn’t tell me what he wanted from my side of the bargain. It was practically a blank check.”
At this, Kendra tuts in disapproval, but she doesn’t say anything.
“It turned out to be a mistake, as you can imagine,” I say.
“I was seduced by the Shadow Keeper’s charms and thought myself in love with him.
I suppose I was in love with him. Or who I thought he was.
But he killed one of my brothers, and fearing I would discover the truth, he called in the bargain, forcing me to choose him.
It wasn’t until after this that I discovered he was to blame for my brother’s death.
Eventually, I escaped, though I won’t bore you with the details. ”
“Oh, I highly doubt that boring is the most accurate word,” says Kendra. “Especially since the last time I saw Nolan here, he possessed both of his hands. But I imagine you have your reasons for leaving out the origins of your relationship.”
I bite my lip. Kendra smiles. “Don’t worry. I understand.”
“Nolan rescued me from my bargain with the Shadow Keeper,” I say. “But he did it at a price. He made a bargain of his own. A bargain with a woman who loved him and wanted him for herself. She was to keep him a slave, a prisoner. But I couldn’t have that. So I offered her something she wanted more.”
Kendra glances down at my belly once again.
“A child,” she says.
I squirm, because it’s not the complete truth—though it’s not entirely a lie.
“I promised her our future son,” I say. “You have to understand. During the time I was with the Shadow Keeper, I never fell pregnant. I didn’t think it was possible.”
“I see,” says Kendra. “And now you’re compelled to give up your child to this woman as soon as you give birth.”
I nod, wiping a single tear from my lower lid.
Kendra glances at Nolan. “And you’re afraid of this woman?”
“She has my wife under a bargain,” says Nolan. “My child too. Why would I not be afraid?”
“Hmm,” says Kendra, looking unconvinced. She brushes the feather of her quill against her full lips, watching us. I can see her mind shuffling through the details, searching for loopholes.
“You know, I could make the child alone disappear,” she offers to me. “And then you wouldn’t have to lose your husband.”
“I know,” I say. “But it’s not my child’s fault that I’ve bargained him away.”
“No, I suppose it’s not,” says Kendra.
“I don’t want him to have to lose both of his parents,” I explain.
“That’s quite selfless of you.”
“Well, I don’t know that you could call it all that selfless,” I say. “Not when it was selfishness that put us in this position to begin with.”
Kendra looks as if she’s considering that.
“How far along are you?” she asks, returning to the parchment on her desk.
“Does this mean you’ll help us?” I ask, heart lifting and falling at the same time.
“As long as you don’t convince me out of it,” she says, not looking up from her parchment.
Nolan grabs my hand and squeezes it. I squint my eyes just for a moment, taking in what relief I can.
I might never be a part of my son’s life, and as much as that aches, I can’t help but be relieved to have escaped the alternative—either my son or my husband, a prisoner to the Middle Sister.
“I don’t know how far along I am,” I say.
Kendra summons the woman behind her with her hand. “This is Malia, my newest Seer,” she says. “She has a sense about her. She’s adept at estimating these things.”
Malia glides toward me. “May I?” she says, holding her palm out, hovering it over my belly.
I nod, and she places her palm on my stomach, closing her eyes as if to listen through her hands. The fact that she’s a Seer, I suppose, explains why she seemed to know when I walked into the room that I was carrying a child.
“She can’t be more than three months along,” says Malia. “Perhaps four, but that would be a stretch.”
I can’t say that this surprises me. Although I have already outgrown my old clothes, nothing about my belly’s shape would suggest that I’m carrying a child. I count the months ahead, and as I watch my husband, I see he’s doing the same—the two of us numbering how much time we have left together.
“In that case,” says Kendra, “the charge will be extra. Seems we’ll have to keep her for at least six months.”
Nolan’s hand clenches in mine, even as shock barrels through me.
“Keep me?” I ask.
“That is the safest option,” says Kendra. “We transfer you to a safe house, and you stay there for the remainder of your pregnancy. Once you have the child, we can turn it over to Nolan immediately.”
I look at Nolan. “I don’t—I don’t want to stay.”
He glances back at Kendra. “No,” he says. “We’ll come back when the child is due. Not before.”
“Children can come early,” says the Seer, for the first time speaking up without being asked.
“Well, if the child comes this early, this arrangement is irrelevant, is it not?” I say, my heart throbbing at the thought of losing my little boy—not to the Sister, not to hiding, but to the icy darkness.
“We don’t get to choose when children come,” says Kendra.
“No,” says Nolan, “but there’s no reason that Darling and I can’t spend the next few months together.”
Kendra seems to consider this. “I don’t like it. But for an old friend… Come back here in three months. That will allow us enough time to transfer your wife to the safe house, to get things set up and ready for the baby to come. In the meantime, I’ll find a wet nurse we can hire.”
She says the words casually, but they pierce at my stomach.
I remember the Serpent’s words. How I’d chosen to never let my child nurse at my breast. I thought at the time that it didn’t matter.
But now, the idea of another woman feeding my little boy—a pang of jealousy rises up within me, though I can’t excuse it or explain it completely.
Next to me, I feel a presence come up from behind me—Charlie, interlacing her hand with the one that Nolan’s not holding.
I try not to let my imagination run away with me, but my imagination is well-practiced.
I think of Nolan, living in a safe house somewhere.
A beautiful island with a gorgeous wet nurse who helps him raise our child.
Will he fall in love with her? Will he see the way she tends to our little boy and find his heart warming to her?
Will he think of her as the mother I could never be?
Kendra’s voice rips me away from my spiraling thoughts. “Well then, it’s time to discuss payment. Malia,” she says, turning to the silver-haired woman, “please see Mrs. Astor out of the room.”
“That won’t be necessary,” says Nolan, and Kendra looks at him as if he’s a child who needs explaining to.
“We’re not just discussing the payment, Nolan,” she says. “If your wife is compelled, as she says she is—if she’s under a bargain—that compulsion will only grow stronger the closer she comes to delivery. There are parts of this arrangement that she cannot know.”
Nolan looks as if he’s about to argue, but I place my hand on his forearm. “No. She’s right,” I say. “You need to discuss your location, where you’ll meet up, what the plan is for after the baby is born. I can’t know any of those things. I won’t be able to keep them from the Sister.”
Nolan winces, but he doesn’t argue with me.