The Minor Fall

CHAPTER 56 Dead Sea

CHAPTER 56

Dead Sea

J ump.

Jump!

Nereida waved hurriedly at Sahn as she pointed to the jutting edge of the cliff. My stomach pitched at the unending drop below, the distance too phenomenal for my human eyes to bear. Yet even as I thought it, her pupils dilated until she focused on a tiny bird floating on the surface of the milk waters below.

Sahn gestured to the surrounding mountains, pointed at the path down. No, we’ll walk, he seemed to say.

I stared at him, soaking in the details of his gilded hair, the cloth draped across one shoulder and wrapped at the waist, the feathers that fluttered in Ruhaven’s warm breeze. The best friend I’d discovered in the Gate.

And one I’d never meet again. Not if the memories were ending. How could it all come so quickly to this shuddering stop? I hadn’t had enough time. To know Sahn, to know Bryn, to live in a world more impossible than life.

I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to the land I’d been born from, wouldn’t be able to kiss Sahn or hear his rolling laughter one more time. It was like losing Willow again, but slower, a death dragged out over weeks.

She would never return either. Never know Ruhaven or Tallah, the smells of the world, the cliffs that peeked over mist.

Sahn snapped my attention back to the dream. He was yelling at me, Don’t jump, don’t jump.

But I backed up, talons digging into the bone rock. A wild, reckless exhilaration filled my lungs. I could do this. I had to do this.

My muscles bunched, the tendons in my legs straining as I started toward the edge. One stride, then another, I was a bird with invisible wings. Maybe in the next life I’d have them.

The cliff gave way to miles of empty blues, of faded mountains and the roaring white lake below. I braced, feeling the ground for the last time, then leapt.

And fell.

I woke to the sound of rain trickling down the attic’s window.

How long had it been? Three days? Four? Were Bryn and James still safe? Would I feel it if they weren’t? But then, I hadn’t even felt Willow die, hadn’t felt Levi’s Inquitate end her life.

I needed Tye to come back so I could get any remaining answers out of him. But he seemed to be done with me now. I was like bread in the oven—waiting to rise, or for the Fall to pass.

How long would it take to hear the call? And what would it sound like? I could imagine what Kazie would say— hopefully nothing like your singing, Roe . Why hadn’t I asked her what she’d heard? Why hadn’t I visited Ruhaven with every waking breath? I took for granted that I’d have years, when I’d only had months.

I pried open a groggy eye.

And shot off the bed.

It wasn’t rain I’d heard trickling on the windowpane, but tea being poured by a hand inching out of a candy-apple red suit. The only color in this attic room. What was she doing here?

Maybe Tye wasn’t feeling so sympathetic anymore.

Well, neither was I.

Holding my breath, I stretched out an arm and slid the wire from the overhead light I’d disassembled off the nightstand.

“Roe.” Carmen’s voice carried through the room, authoritative, brisk, and quietly disappointed. “At any point, including this very moment, I may order my Inquitate to show you a never-ending nightmare that would have you ending yourself before I could. Put the wire down.”

I tightened my grip on the weapon.

Her Inquitate—because they all controlled one. I’d find out how, then I would hope that the thread communicated everything to Bryn for me.

Carmen sat at the metal card table, the vase righted and returned to its original place in the center. But there was a tray there now as well, like Bryn had brought up the stairs the day I left.

I rose slowly, the wire in my fist. Could I see the Inquitate if it wasn’t an illusion? Did it always appear as someone else? And how long did it take to attack?

Her skin glowed nearly blue in the morning light. It was painful to look at, harsh and edgy, tight, like you could slice yourself on her forehead. Her shoes were black and polished, in a style that belonged to a dead era, or nuns.

Then she looked at me.

For a moment, the image of her wavered, something else replacing the skin almost as fine as Bryn’s. It sagged under the jowl, wrinkled at the brow, folded at the neck.

I dropped the cable.

Carmen’s lips spread into a thin, bloody line as she moved a bony finger through the air, stroking an invisible pet. “Have a seat, Nereida.” She crossed her ankles, tucking them neatly away as she folded manicured hands. “I expect you have questions for me.”

The pot of tea steamed on a lace doily. “What’s this?”

“Diplomacy,” she answered, tapping the cup across from her. “Do sit. I have agreed not to harm you for Tye’s sake.”

So Tye hadn’t decided I was better off dead.

I walked carefully around the bed, ducking the slanted rafters. She didn’t flinch or tense when I stopped a meter away. Not worried I could hurt her like I did Levi?

I slid into the hard seat and studied her.

James’s aunt appeared as unlined as her portrait, without a single wrinkle around the eyes to indicate she’d experienced a second of life. Her lips were thin, but they didn’t pucker, and her forehead allowed only a single, faded crease between her brows.

I sniffed at the tea she’d poured for me. It smelled like a dead rose. “Were you ever in France?” I asked, or had Tye been lying about visiting her there?

She lifted a biscuit as thin as her nose. “Yes, of course. I own a pied-à-terre on the east coast. I prefer to stay near to Naruka, to save other Drachaut.”

Saving them. Was that how she saw it? Kill a Ruhaven to prevent a Drachaut from inadvertently returning via the Fall. Didn’t they want to go back? Maybe not all, maybe not even most, but surely some found the same lure in Drachaut as we found in Ruhaven.

Carmen lowered her nose. “You don’t think of this as saving.”

“Do you think that’s how Patrick sees it? Do you think he’s in his grave right now feeling very saved?”

“As a triplet, he would have killed one of us, and he did plan to make the Fall. You know this, as it was in his diaries Tye informs me you read.” She smoothed the non-existent lines of her knee-length skirt with nails of the same color. “So I save Drachaut, yes. What would you call it when we are destroyed, when our lives here are stolen without warning, when we fade from existence for a Ruhaven’s misplaced dream?”

I didn’t have an answer for her. “So you kill the triplets.” Killed my sister.

Delicate nostrils flared on an impatient breath. “If James intends to recruit them, then yes. The Inquitate make things simple. We control them, and the deaths appear accidental—indeed, are accidental—as the attack is an illusion.”

An illusion they control. “What about Bryn’s leg?”

“His leg? Oh. O’Sahnazekiel. That was mere overindulgence on Levi’s part. If he had simply killed him quicker, then this mess could have been avoided.”

Bile rose in my throat. “Did he overindulge on my twin too?”

Carmen reached for another biscuit but she didn’t eat this one either, only twirled it until crumbs soiled the tea. “No, precisely the opposite. I think you can understand how that was strictly preservation. When it was reported that James had discovered your location at last—mistakenly, I later learned, Maggie’s son was never as bright as her—I had Levi remove Willow before she could put Tye’s life in danger. Little did I know she had a twin. In my years at Naruka, I have never encountered such.” She looked both perplexed and delighted at the idea.

I reached for the tea I hadn’t touched.

Carmen lifted a candy-red nail, tilted it back and forth at me. “I will have you convulsing on this dirty floor should a drop of that hot tea touch me,” she warned.

How long did I have before that? Long enough to grab the teapot, dump it into her pristine lap, and bolt out the door? Long enough to get past Levi? To make it to the Gate? Was I prepared to arrive at Naruka with the Drachaut on my heels?

“And consider this,” Carmen added after a slow blink. “Tye has convinced me that Brynjar is not currently a problem. As his existence only threatens Tye, I have allowed him to live, though it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like being uncomfortable.”

“Bryn has nothing to do with this.” And if you touch him, I will find my Mark again, and no illusion will stop me from what I’ll do to you.

“He most certainly does, and I suggest you use the information you already have to draw your own conclusions.” She set her mouth to the stain of matte red lipstick on the teacup. Paused. “But should you provoke me, I may at any point change my decision on Brynjar. It must be difficult to walk to the Gate with one leg. I can only imagine how hard it shall be with none.”

I eased my hand off the tea—for now.

“Good girl. Now eat.” She tapped the biscuit.

I grabbed one and bit into crumbly sewage.

Carmen nodded. “You know, Maggie doted on James. She knew what a soft heart he has, so she kept most everything from him. He’d have never stomached what she put the Drachaut through.”

It was hard to swallow the sodden crumbs. “He doesn’t know about the Drachaut, that the Fall would pull you as well,” I deduced. James would have never stomached that consequence.

Her laugh was a dry cough, a vacuum choking on a sock. “Of course not. Maggie spent her life hiding the unsavory parts of Ruhaven from him, the consequences of what it means to go to the Gate, to view the memories. We grew up together, Maggie and I.”

“But you were Drachaut.” How had Carmen visited the Gate for years and neither Maggie nor James realized there were Drachaut in the Ledger?

She set down the tea with a knobbly knuckle. “Yes, but I did not understand it. I lived in Drachaut, as some Ruhaven do, and so I was like the ugly duckling, forever fancying itself a swan amongst the fowl, only to find I was something far more hideous. That was how I lived, day after day.” She glanced out the window, where the snowy fields reflected in her clouded eyes.

Hideous? Was that how she saw the Drachaut? “But you recruited anyway. You found Tye.”

“Yes, even the Drachaut want company, want the familiar. I consider it my job to protect them.” Turning from the window, she tilted her head at me like a crow surprised to find the mouse asking questions. “I remember the year I discovered who I was, as there was some trouble up North—weapons smuggling—but then they were always blaming the British for this or that.” She made some vague sounds. “I was twenty-two at the time. Maggie and I were in the Gate together, and when we woke, she asked me, as she always did, about what I experienced. My name was Ariqutaque in the Gate, and she was a vociferous reader, so I often returned with more detail about the history of Tallah that I’d gathered from these books. But on that day, something different happened. I met my Tether.” She lifted a silver eyebrow, each individual hair groomed to submission. “I believe you met your own Tether, Partheon, in the Gate?”

“Who?”

Disapproval shone on her waxy skin. “Tye.”

That was his name—the demon I’d stabbed. “Yes.”

“I told Maggie I’d met mine and described the creature to her. She told her mother—a truly insufferable woman—and naturally enough, the old bat pulled out the texts, rifled through until she found a creature of a matching breed. It was an Azekiel. And all Azekiels are Ruhaven, which would make me…”

“A Drachaut,” I finished.

“Until then, they had been unaware of any coming through the Ledger. So her mother forbade we inform anyone. And slowly, Maggie—my friend since we were twelve—began to distance herself from me. That is what a Ruhaven is.”

There was no way James had known about this.

“What happened to Maggie?” I asked quietly.

Carmen planted knobby hands on the table, leaned in until her breath reeked worse than the tea.

I met her eyes.

“I think you understand, Nereida, that I do not mind getting my hands dirty when it is needed.” She leaned back with a tiny smile, and added, “You should be aware that Drachaut, unlike you Ruhaven, do not need the Gate to call them to make the Fall. At any point, I may decide to right some old wrongs. Be sure, for your own sake, that I do not feel compelled to.”

C armen had killed James’s mother, had ordered Willow’s death. Levi’s Inquitate had killed my twin. Tye had lied to me since we met. James had been deceived by everyone, even his own mother.

Holding a bracket of the broken door latch, I fought to loosen the second bolt on the barred window. Either the screws were frozen solid, or my fingers were, but the damn thing wouldn’t budge. An hour ago, I’d gotten it to crank a full inch, and I was really hoping I hadn’t hallucinated that.

I needed to escape now and warn James about Carmen, because I wasn’t sure how much Bryn could hear when the thread between us had been dead for days.

Luckily, the attic was only one flight up, short enough that if I eased myself out the window with the cable I’d pried from the light switch, I might not break a leg on the fall—which would make running through the woods afterwards very difficult.

Why couldn’t my Mark—as Bryn had thought the thing on the ice had been—materialize now? Not that I could chaotically punch my way through these bars, but I wouldn’t say no to a fire Mark, if that was even possible.

Wait.

I eyed the lighter on my nightstand, the one Tye had left next to a pack of cigarettes. It’d be stupid, but maybe I could—

A sudden blast of noise had me shooting out an arm and gripping the frozen bars of my window just to hold myself upright.

Music stabbed into my eardrum at a head-splitting volume, like I was standing at the front of a concert with my ears glued to the speaker. I squeezed my temples, wincing as the notes pounded into my skull.

I fell to my knees as it ratcheted up even higher. Each note buzzed in my bones, wove an unknown melody behind my eyes, plucked my skin alive with the imaginary strings of a harp.

The thread flickered for the first time in days, glowing as bright as Bryn’s golden eyes. Warmth seeped into my ribs, heating my body from the inside out like I was hugging a hot water bottle to my chest. Could Bryn feel this too? The soaring notes that were tearing me in half?

Then it stopped.

Silence exploded as deafening as the music, ringing a long, empty cry, like a wave rippling through the sea until it died on the shore.

I knew what this was, as certain as I knew Bryn was my mate.

Kneeling, I waited for the ringing to stop, for my world to right itself on its axis again. Then I heard something else.

Willow.

She was repeating those words over and over again, like she’d done at the Gate. Like Ruhaven had—because it hadn’t forgotten what I owed it. Even trapped in this attic, it wanted me to make the Fall. To give back what it’d lent me for a short while.

And now I had only two weeks before Willow was gone forever.

4 days after the call

I curled my fingers around the cold edge of the toilet, breathing through my nose as rust dripped into a bowl that was still less revolting than the eggs.

Tye’s work boots skidded into view, the tips of them coated in snow. “Look at what Ruhaven’s done to ya,” he admonished. “You’re as bad as Stornoway. Can’t stomach eggs anymore? There ain’t even a word for that.”

The last time I’d thrown up like this, Bryn had been beside me, trying to get me to drink something, apologizing for what had been both of our mistakes. I hadn’t trusted the bond he was showing me then, had been full of suspicion—that’s why I’d pulled those memories out.

I flushed the toilet, wiped my mouth. “Why do you hate him?”

“Stornoway? Besides the obvious, that he’s a self-entitled prick?”

No, he’d put everyone else ahead of himself. Had stayed in Norway just to keep the Inquitate away from us, believing they were pursuing him.

“Roe, that guy never knew a good thing when he had it,” Tye said from above me. “Gets to play angel man in Ruhaven but he’s still not happy, still needs that witch, Nereida—no offence, Roe—and loses his goddamn mind when he can’t have everythin’. Then he goes up to the Gate to kill himself. It ain’t right.”

And even knowing Bryn tried to die for Nereida, I’d chosen Willow.

Tye crouched down, puckered his lips into a whistle, and blew out the high-pitched tones of the call I couldn’t stop hearing. The call of Ruhaven. Or was it Tallah?

“Stop that.”

The whistling died on a smirk. “Why, Roe? You’re hearin’ it in your head every day anyway. Gettin’ hard to ignore, ain’t it? Damn thing nearly keeps me up at night. But we only got ten more days of this.”

I rose, brushed off the hand Tye steadied on my elbow, and shoved out of the bathroom. “Why do you keep bringing me what you know I can’t eat?”

“Other than to punish ya for tryin’ to light the attic on fire?”

My eyes flicked to the blackened roof boards. I’d gotten a sizeable amount of smoke started before the lighter ran out.

“Not bad, darlin’.” Tye moved to the window, tilted the blinds, shrugged. “I give ya the eggs ‘cause I like to remind ya.”

“Of what you’re keeping me from?” From Ruhaven, from saving Willow.

Tye lifted a brow. “Of what it can do to ya.” He eased open the window, letting in the snow and sap of L’Ardoise in winter. I used to love that smell—now I couldn’t remember why. “Seein’ Stornoway there that day, lyin’ near-dead and waxy and hollow, well, I didn’t know what it might’ve done to me. He wasn’t just riskin’ his own life, he was riskin’ mine as well.”

“Because you thought he was your Tether.”

“I did. I mean, I knew it could have been the other triplet, but the way that everythin’ about the man ground against me like a fuckin’ cheese grater—right from the beginnin’, ya know?—I thought, fuck, it’s just gotta be him.” His eyes darkened on me. “But I sure am glad it wasn’t. As soon as I met ya, I thought there was somethin’ there.”

“There wasn’t. There isn’t,” I said as I inched toward the door. The lightbulb swung between us, blinding his view briefly.

Tye wagged a finger. “Don’t know that I recall ya feelin’ that way when we were in the tack room, darlin’.”

I almost sprinted for the bathroom again. “That was a mistake.”

Tye blew a kiss. “If ya wanna pretend. But like I said, I hated Stornoway, so when I got a chance to rip him up, I took it. And knowin’ he could do nothin’ without revealin’ his little charade? Well, I slept like a baby that night after the tack room.”

Bryn had known Tye was sabotaging us from the beginning and said nothing, not even when I’d pushed him to the brink.

“You should have just left me in L’Ardoise,” I said. “Told James I was a lost cause.” Why hadn’t he? For the last few days, when I wasn’t trying to pry the bars off the window or set fire to the roof, I’d turned the question over in my mind.

Tye had spent six months in L’Ardoise, and at any time he could have permanently disabled me with his Inquitate, or told James that I wouldn’t move to Naruka. After all, not every Ruhaven did or could move. James might have persisted because he’d thought I’d been his mate or sister back then, but Tye could have talked him out of it.

Yet Tye had brought me to Naruka and shown me the Gate himself. Not only that, but he’d argued with me when I’d wanted to leave, had called L’Ardoise a nothing town, had insisted I keep visiting the Gate.

If he’d feared that I might make the Fall one day, then why bother with any of it?

Tye turned from the window, crossed his arms. “I thought about leavin’ ya,” he agreed, his voice gone contemplative. “It’d been six months and James was wonderin’ what was takin’ so long. But I needed to stay at Naruka and he wouldn’t’ve let me recruit again if I messed this one up.” He tossed an extra quilt on the bed. “One of us needed to know who James was tryin’ to contact. Who might be goin’ through the Gate, just in case. I didn’t mind it so much there. Carmen, she hated everythin’ and everyone. But I liked James, liked you, Roe. I just had to make sure ya didn’t make the Fall.”

Tye scraped out the chair that Carmen had sat in less than a week ago. He looked up at me under wavy locks, his petal-green eyes as sincere as the day we met at the ballgame.

I lunged for the door. Locked.

“Do I look bone fuckin’ stupid, Roe?” Tye said when I cursed. “That’s your problem, darlin’. Ya always underestimated me.”

I let go of the door, turned, and stared at Tye in his tired Wrangler jeans and plaid jacket, the fur brushing a squared jaw I’d once found attractive. I worked my tongue around the anger tightening my cheeks, then clamped down, hard, on the words I wanted to shout at him, but the wintery frost of L’Ardoise cooled the bitterness that wouldn’t help me.

“Soon you’ll be outta here, Roe. Think how happy Stornoway’ll be. Lots of time left to spend with him.”

And what of Willow?

Tye tossed a pack of cards on the table. “Ya wanna play? Not enough for euchre again, but I reckon we can figure somethin’ out.”

When I said nothing, he sighed and started dealing anyway.

But I was done being something he could play with.

My bare feet froze on the floorboards as I crossed to him. Took a seat. He folded the cards in his big hands and dealt them slowly, face down.

He’d let them kill Willow. He’d manipulated James. He’d threatened Bryn.

I turned a card over, then another.

“That ain’t how this is supposed to work, Roe.”

Levi was responsible for crippling Bryn. “No?” I flicked the cards at him. “I don’t think you’ve got much more to hide.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “If that’s the way you wanna play this.”

“That’s the game I like.” The cards landed around his boots, rested on his thighs, stuck out of his pocket. “Tell me, Tye, when you watched me scrambling around for months looking for signs of the Inquitate, did you have a good laugh to yourself?”

He dusted his jacket. “You forget it was me who put ya on that path?”

And why had he? “But you tried to convince us the Gate called the Inquitate.”

“It is the reason, ain’t it? Maggie was killin’ us for that thing. I wanted ya to understand why.”

“Where’s Levi really been?”

Tye’s fist curled on the edge of the table. “Right. Here. Levi took over this place for me, and when I came back a few months ago, I helped him get it ready.” He nodded at the barred window. “Just in case.”

I emptied the rest of the pack. “In case you needed to imprison Ruhavens?”

“Just you, darlin’, ‘cause I’m a gentleman like that.” He dug out a lighter. “Afterwards, I needed to talk to Carmen in France and explain the plan I had in case ya got stupid and decided to make the Fall. Killin’ folks with the Inquitate was never my way.”

Now he wanted to play the hero?

“No, just because you didn’t want to go back, your way was to let them kill Willow.”

Down came Tye’s fist. Coffee soared off the table, splattering the wall and blending with the water damage. The mug clattered across the floor, the broken handle flinging in the opposite direction.

“ Just because I don’t wanna to go back? ” he hollered, shoving to his feet. “You would kill me, Roe. That’s what ya’d do to me if ya made the Fall. And you wanna stand there and be righteous?”

I held my nose as I swiped the tray off the ground and chucked a slippery egg at his hard jaw. Tye ducked, then caught the next.

“You’re killing Willow by keeping me here.” I could feel it inside me, had since Kazie left—a drawing, aching thing ready to escape, like if I disobeyed the Gate, it’d take its punishment anyway. “I heard her when Kazie made the Fall. That’s why I want to go back. Ruhaven told me to. Willow told me—”

“That’s why you wanna go back?” he roared, and swiped the tray from me, flung it across the room where it clanged against the rafters. His fist whipped out, grabbing me by my sweater. “Darlin’, right now, I’m the only goddamn thing between you and the worst illusion you’ll ever see,” Tye warned in a low voice. “I could make you watch the skin peel from O’Sahnazekiel’s bones, and it’d be as real as smellin’ the blood yourself. Or maybe I’ll show ya what Bryn looks like from the inside out, and maybe it won’t be no fuckin’ illusion either.”

My belly turned to ice. “If you ever touch him again I’ll—”

“Oh, now ya wanna pretend you give a shit?” Tye sneered. “After the way ya treated him? You left with me and there ain’t no takin’ that back, honey.”

“I love Bryn.”

“Bullshit!” His face swelled to the color of Carmen’s suit. “You love Willow. And that’s the only goddamn thing you ever did love, Roe. He ruins his life over and over for ya while you just spit in his face. Every one of us is makin’ sacrifices for you, but do ya see any of that? No. Ya don’t see what I’m doin’, and you sure as hell never loved Stornoway.”

“You’re a liar, Tye, a manipulator, a cheat, a user, a—”

He twisted my sweater, choking off my air. “No, I’m your goddamn salvation.” Then he leaned in and whispered, “Eat the fuckin’ eggs, Roe.”