Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
J ack drops me onto the bench seat and rockets away like I’ve burned him.
“Wait,” I say. “Where’re you?—”
“I’m sorry,” he pants, and then he’s flinging himself through the carriage door, yanking it shut behind him. He just...leaves me there, flat on my back, my skirts hiked up around my hips. Quiet flames pulse beneath my skin.
I stare at the ceiling. What the hell just happened? Never mind that a man has never touched me like that—how did I not know there’s another Null in Pine’s End?
Questions swarm me, so rapidly I can’t make sense of them. I eventually straighten my skirts and right myself, then smooth down my hair with shaking hands. When I open the carriage door, Jack stands across the clearing, his back turned. He’s little more than a black blot amid umber shadows, but his stance is filled with so much regret that I can’t miss it, even in the dark.
“I’m sorry.” His gruff baritone captures a wealth of feeling. He turns his head, though not enough to look at me. “I don’t know what happened.”
A beat passes. “I kissed you,” I say. “Which you were...not averse to, apparently.”
His back flexes, his shoulder blades flaring like wings. He doesn’t answer.
I step down from the carriage, careful not to catch my wedding dress on the footplate and go tumbling face-first onto the ground. With a Null standing fifteen feet away, it’s a distinct possibility. “And I...didn’t exactly hate it, either. Actually, if you really want to know, that was the most?—”
“I don’t.”
The desperation in his voice shuts me up. “What?”
“I don’t. Want to know. That’s not what I’m here for.” He sounds almost frantic. “I shouldn’t be kissing you, or touching you, or getting anywhere near you. I shouldn’t even be looking at you. I just need your help, and once that’s done, I’ll deliver you back to your life. With your Mark intact.”
My blood cools. Silence piles between us. “Oh,” I finally say.
“Fortuna’s curses, I’m so incredibly sorry. And thank you. For coming to your senses. Before it would’ve been too late. I... Goddess, I have no excuse. I just...” He buries his face in his hands and releases a shuddering breath.
I wait, but he doesn’t seem inclined to continue, so I glance around. Shadows lie thick in the clearing. Off to the right, a smudge of light glows through the trees. It might be a lantern, or a candle in a window.
“It’s fine,” I say.
He grunts a denial, clearly having no idea of just how much I mean that .
I rub at my arms. “Maybe you should show me what you need help with?”
Jack takes a measured breath and pivots. “Right. Yes.”
He’s a man of few words, I decide, because he unharnesses the horses and turns them loose in silence. He takes my trunk down from the carriage like it weighs nothing, then inclines his head to indicate I make my way into the trees.
I can’t see much, but I follow the beckoning light, since there don’t seem to be any other options. Pine branches snag my hems, and I wonder where we are. Probably halfway between my estate and the duke’s, if I had to guess. Ten or so miles from Pine’s End.
Not that it matters. We’re ranged too far into the woods for me to run, though I wouldn’t have, anyway. I have nothing to go back to, at the moment. Nothing besides misery and servitude.
The distant light brightens. We emerge into a clearing rimmed by shadowy bracken, where a stone-walled cabin awaits, tidy and adorable. A candle glows in one window, burned almost all the way down. Two doors occupy opposite ends of the building, while the shingled roof looks to be in good repair.
Jack motions me toward the left-hand entrance.
I make my way over and hold the door for him, seeing as how he’s lugging my trunk. He grunts in acknowledgment, then edges around me in a way that inspires me to sniff at my armpits.
I don’t smell, though. At least not that I can tell.
Inside, Jack sets my trunk at the foot of a bed that looks sturdy and inviting, if simple. The white bedding gleams in the light of the sentinel candle .
I take the place in. A quaint table and two chairs occupy the space by the window, opposite a corner hearth that looks remarkably pristine. A generous bookshelf sits against the wall, almost comically large, because the room proves far smaller than expected. The cabin’s exterior isn’t exactly grandiose, but it didn’t suggest this level of coziness, either. Then I realize.
“The door,” I say.
Jack takes my measure. I wish I could determine his eye color, but in the candlelight, everything takes on the same wan shade of gold. “What about it?” he says.
“The other door, I mean. Where is it?”
Something flickers across what little I can see of his face. It might be appreciation, or simply a trick of the light. Or of the mask. “There’re two sides,” he says. “They don’t connect.”
“Oh.” I do another sweep of the room. It’s cute. Clean. How strange that it’s walled off from the other half. “And what do you need my help with, exactly? Not keeping house, from what I can tell.”
“No.” His jaw flexes. “There’s a woman. In the other room. She took ill a few weeks ago with the flu, and it’s taken a turn. A bad one. She doesn’t have much hope at the moment, but I’m hoping you can fix that.”
I blink. “She got the flu in September ?”
His shoulders tighten. “Back in August, actually. She’d been...spending time with me. So.” Coldness coats his gravelly words.
I press my lips together, not needing him to elaborate. Clearly, he blames himself—and his ill-fated luck—for this woman’s condition .
Then my thoughts hit a snag and go tumbling. “Wait. This woman…she’s not your wife, is she?”
Nausea snakes up my throat. Did I just force a married man into an out-of-control make-out session? Did I betray this poor woman while she’s dy?—
“No.” Jack bites the word off clean at the end. “I’d never inflict myself on anyone in that capacity. So...no. You don’t have to worry about that.”
Relief washes through me, muddled with dismay that he thinks of himself as something that can be inflicted . “Oh. Okay.”
He waves a gloved hand as if to brush aside this line of questioning. “The point is, I need you to stay here for a little while. In this room, close enough that she can soak up your luck. So she can beat the odds and get better. Please.”
I nod along. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. I’ll bring you meals every evening. And anything else you need. Once she recovers, you can go...”
Home , my mind supplies. Only nothing about the word entices me. Brendan will only send me back to the duke.
“...wherever you want,” he finishes.
I clear my throat. Wherever I want.
Really, if I had my way, I’d stay lost. I’d sooner lie in bed and read all these books—which are so numerous the shelves sag in the middle—than see the duke again. Much less endure his touch. “Okay. That doesn’t sound so bad. But where will you be? While this is happening?” Not here, clearly. If Jack sticks too close, he’ll nullify my luck and leave his...whoever she is...unprotected.
He inclines his head toward the window. “Out there.”
I frown. “In the woods? ”
“I’ll sleep just far enough away for your luck to work. But not so far that you should consider running.”
“I wouldn’t,” I say, a tad crisply. “If a life needs saving, of course I’ll do it. You didn’t even have to kidnap me. You could’ve just stopped the carriage and asked. I would’ve gladly come with you.”
“The duke’s man would never have let you go. So yes. I did have to kidnap you.”
Silence descends as I absorb that, because he’s right. On the far side of the wall, bedsprings creak, followed by someone coughing. It’s deep and hacking and sounds like it’s tearing their lungs apart.
I wince. So does Jack. As if reminded of his purpose, he breaks away and goes to the fireplace. He kneels and fiddles with some kindling in silence.
I rub at my bare arms again, trying to generate some heat. Now that night has fallen, it’s getting chilly. The countryside around Pine’s End is often like this in early September—comfortable during the day, nippy at night. And yet the fireplace looks immaculate. As if no one has used it in a while.
While Jack works, I wander toward the bed and sit. The mattress feels every bit as welcoming as it looks. “That’s the cleanest hearth I’ve ever seen. Do you not stay here, usually?”
Jack grunts. It’s not a friendly sound, but it’s not exactly unfriendly, either. How strange to think that, just minutes ago, I had his tongue in my mouth. Had the hard length of him pressed against my core.
“I live here,” he says. “Away from... Well. Away. But I don’t usually use the fireplace. Something always goes wrong. The chimney clogs and smokes up the whole cabin, or a freak gust blows sparks through the room. One time a hawk flew overhead and dropped a rabbit down the chimney. It wasn’t alive anymore, but...it still made a mess. Fur and embers everywhere.”
His gaze strays to a mark on the floor, barely visible in the budding firelight. A patch the size of my palm has been charred into the plank.
“I learned my lesson after that,” he rumbles. “But with you here, it should be fine.”
A pang circles my heart, then pulls tight. I’ve known. Ever since meeting Weston, I’ve understood that while I sail through life, Nulls meet with struggle after struggle. And at times, I’ve come within spitting distance of cursing Fortuna, because I don’t understand why the goddess would give to her flock with one hand while taking with the other. It seems...spiteful. Petty.
Yet something about the naked resignation in Jack’s voice accesses a whole new level within me, some basement horizon that opens onto regret.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “That you’ve had to deal with that your whole life. It’s...not fair. I’ll never understand it, honestly. Why Fortuna does this to us.”
He pauses and looks at me.
I gnaw at my lip. Nulls and Charms probably don’t typically discuss this. Even Weston and I always avoided the subject, though I couldn’t say exactly why.
“You don’t like being a Charm?” he finally says. A note of wariness threads his tone.
I consider. The answer to that question is one I’ve never admitted to anyone. The closest I’ve ever come was with that Null woman in the marketplace, when I was eleven.
But something about this stranger, this anonymous highwayman in his black mask, frees my tongue. He could be anyone. I could be anywhere, talking to the sky or the woods or simply myself.
“I hate it,” I say.
Jack drops the log he’s holding. I swear it happens more slowly than gravity should allow. The wood hits the hearth with a hollow thunk. “How’s that possible?”
Low flames crackle behind him. I’m glad I can’t really see him. It’s easier to confess to a shadow. “Because,” I say. “People have always treated me like I’m...this.” I wave to indicate my Mark, trusting he’ll know what I mean. If anyone will, it’s him.
“But everyone worships you,” he says slowly.
“No.” I scoff. “They worship the tattoo. They worship what it means. What it can give them.”
He swivels to his task again, but I get the sense that he’s thinking. Hard.
My heartbeat swells to occupy the quiet. I have no idea why I just told him that, but having done so unspools something kept tightly caged within my ribs.
Jack feeds the fire until the glow brightens. I relax against the pillows and watch him work, lulled by the shift of muscle beneath fabric. Once the flames gain a foothold, he rises.
“I think I get it.” His words are tinged with something like bitterness. “But for me, people treating me like my Mark has always come as a relief. It’s...easier like that. Better not to have to push people away. Because I’m not always very good at it. Clearly.”
My breath catches. “That sounds lonely.” More accurately, it’s cruel.
“What you’re describing does, too.” He runs a hand along his jaw. “I’ve never stopped to think that all that adoration might seem...artificial.”
A spark suffuses me. Artificial . That’s the perfect word. Nothing about my life is organic, or natural. It’s predetermined. Shaped by hands that aren’t my own.
“There’s more to it, too,” I say. “Sometimes, I wonder what being Marked has done to me. What kind of person you become when life just hands everything over, without a fight.”
The fire backlights him, obscuring his expression, but something in his stance shifts. “Probably the opposite kind of person you become when life refuses to give you a single thing you want.”
Silence settles, but it doesn’t feel awkward. It’s dark and velvety, stuffed with meaning and stitched up with threads of kinship.
At least, that’s how it feels to me. Because while Jack and I technically occupy opposite poles of luck’s spectrum, I sense in his answer a ghost of the same powerlessness that lives in me.
Neither of us asked for this. Neither of us has any say.
At the thought, my fingers sneak to my lips. They feel swollen. Beautifully bruised.
Jack clears his throat and scrubs at the back of his neck. “I’d better not stand here all night,” he says, clipped. “I should give your magic a chance to work. Do you need anything?”
My chest clenches at the thought of him bedding down in the woods. But I know he can’t stay here, not if he wants his friend to recover. “I don’t suppose you have any milk?”
“Milk?”
A blush stains my cheeks. “I know. I’m a grown woman, and it’s weird. But I’ve loved milk ever since I was a kid. I still have a glass every night. I swear it helps me sleep.”
A beat passes. “I didn’t say it was weird. And there’s some in the coldbox. Outside.”
I blink. That’s...lucky.
“I just figured you’d need more than that. Isn’t there anything else?”
“No. I’m pretty low maintenance.”
His eyes wander over my lavish wedding dress, and my blush kicks up a notch.
“Despite appearances,” I add.
He nods and makes for the door, but I can’t quite bear for him to leave me alone. Not yet.
“You’re a good kisser,” I blurt. “Phenomenal, actually. That was?—”
He stiffens as if shot. “Goodnight, Bria,” he chokes out.
Before I can say more, he wrenches open the door and disappears into the night.