Chapter Seventeen
The date ended rather abruptly. One moment, Timothy was bidding her goodnight with a kiss she avoided at the last moment, glancing across her cheek, and the next she met an oddly familiar face peering at her from across the street.
She gasped, pulling back, and Timothy, apologizing profusely, shuffled away.
She spared him a glance. “No, not you,” she found herself saying.
She really was the worst at this. “Thank you, Mister Lofte. I enjoyed the night. I’ll likely see you tomorrow, I think.
Goodbye!” Then she ran in the direction she’d last seen the strange man staring back at her.
It was the trespasser. The man darted in the neck on Opulence’s grounds.
She was as sure of it as she was in her newfound hatred of whiskey.
The moonlight offered a brief glimpse of a torn brown shirt turning the corner, and she rounded it at an outright run, her heels clacking alarmingly on the cobblestones.
“Wait!” she called.
She never once considered he’d obey. A mistake, for as she turned the corner, she smacked straight into him, sending them both stumbling.
The man nearly went down, while Alora twisted her ankle with a muted cry.
Righting herself, she breathed through clenched teeth, willing the pain into submission.
“I’m so sorry,” she hissed at the man.
“You told me to wait,” he said simply, and stood there in his tattered clothes.
He looked utterly lost.
He was middle-aged, judging from the hint of wrinkles and sparse peppering of gray hair, but it was his eyes she focused on. Eyes that were once so intense in his intent as he ran past her that day but were now dark and empty.
“Do I know you?” he asked, in a hopeless tone.
Alora felt a sudden surge of discomfort, same as she did while in the presence of the Urchin’s victim. “No. But I’ve seen you before.”
“Oh,” said the man and sighed. “I do not remember ‘before’.”
“None of it?” She shifted her weight to her opposite foot, the pain ebbing and flowing like waves.
Suddenly his eyes were no longer empty but filled to the brim with unshed tears. “None of it. I don’t even know my name. I keep wandering, wondering, waiting for someone to recognize me, but so far no one has. Aside from you. I’m starting to believe I was never meant to be here.”
Alora’s heart clenched. “Perhaps you’re not from Enver.”
“How would I ever know?”
She’d no answer, other than loading him up in her cart and taking him from one town to the next herself. Though that would require a good deal of time she didn’t have, what with the deadline encroaching. Not to mention the impossibility of her ever returning to Eirian, the town that disowned her.
“What do you know of Opulence Mansion?” Alora glanced around as she said it, pitching her voice low.
“Nearly nothing,” he replied, not near so quiet as herself. “Only that it’s a place of great enchantment, and open to members rich enough or desperate enough to scrounge the coin. Or that is what I’ve heard.”
She didn’t know what to do. Clearly, the dart had contained something which stole his memories, and at a much larger scale than whatever the Urchins utilized.
But no doctor could help him, and she’d heard several times now the constable was useless in this.
It made her incredibly furious when she thought it through.
“I saw you once when you knew yourself. Your memories were stolen from you.” She reached out with the coin she had and imagined a bit more into her palm.
“Hire a driver to take you to the nearby towns. I never met you properly, but you hadn’t looked like you traveled far; no horse or carriage brought you to the mansion’s gates.
Maybe you’ll find someone who remembers.
Worst case you find some honest work. I’m told Enver can be a difficult place to make your way. ”
The man stared into his palm in confused wonder. When he said nothing at all, she thought maybe she’d overstepped. “Or you could stay. I know a baker looking for help.”
When he finally looked up, Alora was warmed. The man looked to be overfull of gratitude—a sight which made what happened next all the more shocking. His eyes rounded alongside his mouth, and he began backing slowly away. “Run,” he said. “Run!”
Alora heard several coins plink upon the stones as she whipped around best she could, her ankle sending a searing pain up her calf. She was met with darkness.
And not the sort that happens in the night.
“You,” she seethed, and lunged inside it.
***
She couldn’t see. Whether she blinked or not, the darkness was the same. And then she could, her ankle giving way beneath her, and her hands reaching out to grip the wall, everything lit by the pale light of the moon. She stood there, braced and heaving, angry and hurting. Had she imagined it?
No. That man saw it too.
A shadow played over the stones. A regular one, caused by clouds and moonlight, and yet her fingers drifted toward it anyway.
“Reaching for me?”
Alora cried out at the voice in her ear, at first in alarm and then in pain, as she spun once more on her injured foot. Her back met the wall in a jarring thud. One moment she saw a bottomless dark, and the next, a man. The Urchin towered above her.
His hand found her arm, steadying. A twisted sort of comfort. She wanted to toss him off but couldn’t afford the imbalance, which only angered her further.
“Do not touch me.”
The Urchin released her at once, but he didn’t step away. “You’re angry with me. That’s well enough. I’m angry with you too.”
“Pardon me?” she said, shocked over this more than anything come before.
“No, I will not. What is the one thing I asked of you, Miss Pennigrim?”
“Nothing. You’ve never once asked me anything at all!”
The Urchin hissed a breath. “Do not speak of what you’ve witnessed. That is what I needed from you, and now I overhear far worse than I could have imagined. You’ve also been present at a trespassing?”
Apparently, Alora’s refusal to admit anything fueled his fury. She could feel the uncontrolled energy encircling them both the longer she kept her lips pressed tight. The Urchin bent forward, his masked mouth unbearably near her own.
“Answer me.”
“Fine,” Alora snapped. “I was there, and the trespasser is now lost, just as Mister Macaw said.”
“Mister Macaw said? He should not be speaking of it to you at all!”
The incredulity she felt over where her dream’s path had brought her was unmatched.
She laughed, biting and hysterical. “What is this madness? Opulence Mansion and its exclusivity, harboring some festered secret society full of black-market dealings and muscled goons. I can’t hardly stand it!
This is Enver, city of enchantment and dreams. I came here to escape, not be pulled down again to a pit of wolves. ”
She should be careful; her laugh was well on its way to becoming a sob.
She’d so much hope for the road ahead, only now there was a wall of darkness standing in her way.
Quite literally. She wanted to pound against it, scale it, anything but remain here like another helpless victim of Opulence.
And she would have. She would have tried anything.
But unfortunately for her, her ankle abruptly decided itself unfit to endure what little weight she pressed upon it—and buckled.
The Urchin’s arms were swift to catch her, his grip hard around her waist. How quickly he’d forgotten she’d told him not to touch her.
How slow she was at reminding him.
Alora felt his hood brush her hair as he bent nearer. “Are you injured or unwell?”
“Injured,” she told him, honestly. Because while he’d certainly hurt others, he hadn’t hurt her. Not yet.
At the least, she expected his hands to remain where they were until she regained her footing enough that he could interrogate her further.
At most, she thought he might offer a shoulder to assist her in hobbling home.
What she did not expect was for the Urchin to sink onto one knee.
Alora stared at the top of his covered head in blatant shock, her mouth wide.
A memory, albeit a distorted one, niggled at her mind.
Of her once wishing for exactly this—and why she wished it. Her cheeks burned.
One gloved hand remained at her waist while the other skimmed her side, down the curve of her hip and thigh, all the way to her pulsing ankle. She gasped at his prodding, and not all of it pain.
“It isn’t broken,” he told her.
“I didn’t think it was.”
“But it’s swollen. You will need to be off your feet for some time unless it’s mended now.” His thumb brushed over her joint like a caress, and Alora felt the uptick in her heartbeat. When she thought it impossible to beat any faster.
She swallowed. “The doctor’s then.”
“Inefficient places,” he scoffed, and rose to his feet.
“Do you have a better suggestion? Are you also a gifted healer as well as capable of casting out light?” She tried to add bite to her words, but his hand remained at her waist, searing her to distraction.
“Cast out light? What do you think I do? Play with the paltry shadows?” He loomed over her then, mask reflecting moonlight, eyes a pool of black. The air pulsed. “I take light and break it, Miss Pennigrim. And there’s no escape from me unless I wish it.”
The darkness threatened to consume her. He threatened it.
She’d been subjected to the former before and it terrified her. But a part—a small, incredibly unwise part—twinged with curiosity over the latter. What might it be like?
“Tell me, Miss Pennigrim. When did you forget to fear me?”
I honestly can’t say.
Instead, she glared up at him. And she continued to do so, even when the darkness grew, and the black overtook them both.