25. Final Quest
25
Final Quest
Evan
Looking back, I thought running away from the US for the summer would make me feel better, as if distance, like time, could do its job and make the pain fade faster.
Just my luck: the opposite happens.
Although I start off in the UK visiting Zachary and Theodora in Oxford, we end up in the French countryside to spend the summer at the famous Chateau Montcroix.
And to be fair, the chateau is beautiful, the kind of thing you’d never see in the US, like something out of a storybook.
Mornings start late, with coffee and pastries on the terrace, the stone still cool underfoot.
Afternoons are slow and drowsy, spent by the pool or wandering through the vines, breathing in the smell of sun-warmed grapes.
Evenings are candlelit dinners under the plane trees, Theodora and Zachary arguing over books or classes or politics, Sev pouring expensive wine into crystal glasses, spilling it whenever his gaze lingers too long over Ana?s.
I want to be happy for them: they don’t deserve to be miserable any more than I do, and they’ve earned their happiness.
But watching them throughout the summer is nothing short of torture.
Having to see Zachary pour Theodora her morning tea, or spotting them draped over a velvet couch, reading books with Theodora’s head resting on Zachary’s lap and his hand moving idly through her pale gold hair, or hearing Sev, wine-drunk and giddy with excitement, sneak away with Ana?s in the middle of the afternoons and return hours later, dishevelled and mischievous.
Iakov joins us for a couple of weeks, and that helps, the two of us bonded over lonely misery.
We go for swims and for workouts, competing pointlessly just to feel some sort of satisfaction, or staying up late to play video games while our friends are spending their nights entangled with the women they love.
One night, he tries to make me play a weird video game full of monsters that are all ridiculously stronger than the player, and when I die for the fiftieth time, I throw him the controller with a sneer of annoyance.
“What the fuck is the point in playing if all you do is lose?”
“Because,” he grunts, eyes on the screen as he fights some sort of abomination, “the one time when you do win feels like fucking heaven.”
To me, that just sounds like masochism, but since I’ve had my fair share of seeking pleasure in pain, I can’t exactly judge.
After Iakov goes, though, I’m back on my own.
Alone under the honey sun, the pastel sky, alone with wine dulling the edges, days melting into each other like wax, alone with Sophie’s ghost dug so deep inside my chest there’s barely any room left for my own heart.
Sometimes, I can almost feel the imprint of her fingers on my chest, the way she’d held on to me the last time I saw her, like she’d collapse if she let go.
She let go anyway, in the end.
That night, I’d told her I was the knife in her wound, that she couldn’t heal until I was gone.
But if that was true, then why does it feel like I’m the one bleeding out?
At the end of the summer, when it’s time for us all to part ways again, Zachary surprises me by grabbing me into a firm embrace, slapping my back bracingly.
“You won’t always feel like this,” he says.
“And things won’t always be like this.”
I know he means well, but I can’t help the feeling I’m being lied to.
I pat his back and try to pull away with a half-hearted grin, but he tightens his hold, like he can tell I’m falling apart and is trying, somehow, to keep me together.
A lump rises in my throat.
“You sure?”
He nods with utter confidence and pulls away, gripping my shoulders.
“Some things are meant to be, Ev. The path isn’t always straightforward, but the destination is inevitable. You’ll end up where you need to be. You’ll see.”
“Since when are you so smart?” I ask, stepping away with a laugh and hoping he won’t notice the sudden redness of my eyes or hoarseness in my voice.
“Since the day I was born, actually.” He smiles, confident and sincere.
“So if you trust nothing else, then trust that I’m always right.”
The hope his words impart is fleeting: it scatters the moment I return to New York.
From the windows of my father’s office, Manhattan stretches below, cold and glittering dimly under the dark blue of early morning.
Inside, it’s silent.
The bookshelves lining the walls, a sculpture in the corner, an abstract tangle of metal that Gilbert Coulter would probably never be able to afford.
And at the centre of it all, Dad’s desk.
A massive slab of mahogany, free of clutter, everything filed away, computer turned off.
Nothing, in short, that I could fix my attention on while I avoid his gaze.
I sit across from him, elbows on the armrests, back straight against the cool leather, right knee bouncing up and down even though I’ve tried several times to stop.
Another year, another meeting.
A flawed mirror image of last year, because last year, I still had hope.
I’d come in determined to make something of myself.
To, as Dad put it, become someone Sophie deserves .
Now, it’s a different day, and a different conversation, but I can tell Dad’s expecting the same results.
The same disappointment.
Again and again and again.
He doesn’t speak at first, just steeples his fingers, observing me.
I’ve not seen him all summer, even though I promised I’d visit home before leaving for the summer.
I couldn’t bring myself to, not after the gala, not after—
“You’ve had six months at KMG,” Dad finally says, putting my thoughts out of their misery.
It’s a credit to him that he doesn’t sound angry or irritated: I would, if I were him.
“And in that time, you’ve floundered in two departments, failed to distinguish yourself, and given me no reason to believe you belong here.”
Wow.
Well, at least he’s not pulling punches or mincing his words.
I nod. He’s only telling the truth.
He sits back. “I’m not firing you.”
I can’t help my eyebrows shooting up, and I bet I look like a right idiot, eyes wide and mouth gaping, because I walked in earlier feeling like a prisoner on death row, and part of me was relieved that it was almost over, that my limping career at KMG was finally going to receive its mercy bullet to the back of the skull.
“There’s an imprint under your mother’s publishing division. Inkspill Publications. Does that ring a bell?”
I shake my head.
“No, I didn’t expect so. It’s an academic imprint, about fifteen years old. Very small, very niche, very prestigious—and failing.”
Well, that makes two of us.
Immediately, there’s a wave of something unexpected in my chest: a weird defensiveness.
I don’t know anything about Inkspill, but something about Dad’s blunt statement that it’s failing makes me want to push back, to say something passionate and dumb like just because it’s struggling now doesn’t mean it’s doomed forever .
Dad slides a file across the desk.
“If you can turn it around, make it profitable, then we’ll talk about your future. You’ll have the freedom to choose any role in the company. I’ll mentor you personally.”
I look down at the file, but I don’t reach for it.
I don’t know the first or last thing about academic publishing, and he knows that.
I narrow my eyes at him in realisation.
This isn’t an opportunity: it’s an execution order concealed beneath the veneer of corporate tact.
He’s looking at me head-on, like he’s expecting me to say no, to turn from the challenge, to quit before I’m fired—all the things I desperately want to do.
But I don’t. I meet his gaze head-on, eyes still narrowed.
“How exactly are you expecting me to do that?”
“You’ll be working as a strategic consultant,” he says, as if the words should mean something to me.
“You won’t be in charge, that responsibility belongs to Inés Alfaro, the head of the imprint. She’s been fighting tooth and nail for her imprint and her team. You’ll report to her, work alongside her, and find a way to make Inkspill profitable within the next year.”
A consultant.
Is this a trap? Is Dad handing me a sinking ship and waiting to watch me drown?
But that doesn’t sound like him.
My father is direct, high-handed rather than underhanded.
If he wanted me gone, he’d tell me outright.
A year ago, I wouldn’t have even pretended to try.
I would’ve let the inevitable happen, watched success slip through my fingers like everything else.
But now, after everything—after Sophie—I can’t.
I don’t know what I want, not really, but I know I don’t want to be nothing .
“And what if I fail?” I ask.
When I fail, I think, but keep it to myself.
“Then you’re out. Permanently. What you do after that is up to you, but it won’t have anything to do with KMG.”
I look back down at the file.
The name Inkspill Publications is printed in bold across the front, along with a brief tagline: Publishing Knowledge, Preserving Minds .
The logo is an inkpot spilt over a page.
Sophie would love this.
An academic imprint, built to preserve knowledge, to elevate academics.
This is the kind of thing that would matter to her, the kind of thing she’d talk about with that quiet, austere passion of hers, the way she used to talk to me about Hamlet and Persuasion and Mr Houghton’s model essays.
If Sophie was in my life, if Sophie was still mine…
The thought hurts like hell, but I can’t help it.
If I was with Sophie, if my Dad had given me this ultimatum and I’d spoken to her about it, lying in bed one night with her dark head on my chest and her fingers idly tracing the veins in my forearm, she would have given me a serious frown and told me I should do it, I should save Inkspill.
She would’ve told me I could .
The image dissipates like a vanishing ghost. Holding on to the dream of her is pointless.
I need to let her go—I should’ve let her go a long time ago.
I should have let her go after Spearcrest, after the summer, after she told me she wanted to break up.
I swallow thickly, glance at the file again.
Work is supposed to help me get over Sophie, give me a purpose with which to fill the gaping vacuum she’s left behind, a knight’s errand to give me something else to do than pine at her feet.
Not a test designed for me to fail—but a quest.
I pick up the file and stand. “Okay. I’ll do it.”