Chapter 26 #2
“—Or,” Reyna kept going, “we need to find the Crown ourselves. Somehow. We can’t open the cave ourselves to let a candidate in, but Cyrus says there are these Messengers that maybe could ask the Fates to kick Thomas out and let us run the cave.
Apparently, these Messengers are how the Fate workers communicate with the Fates.
They just about never see them face to face. ”
“Seriously?” Cadenza wrinkled her nose. “The Fates think they can boss everyone around, but not have to talk to them?” She gathered her skirts and turned to the mirror.
Silk chiffon flowed around her. Sheer sleeves allowed the curve of her neck to take center stage. Her heart skipped a beat as she pictured herself a bride. Married. Tied. Forever.
Nerves frizzed in her belly. What if it didn’t work? What if the curse stayed and she was compelled for the rest of her life to return to the same town where her mother had abandoned their family? The same town where her father died. Where her stepmother ignored her until she left home.
If the curse stayed, would Taran give up again? All along he’d insisted she move on when the time came. Before Cadenza sang him awake, he’d been ready to blip out of existence to get his father to move on. It was too easy to imagine him doing the same thing for her.
“Cadenza,” Reyna asked quietly. “Do you really want to do this?”
There’s nothing else to try. I have no choice. She grimaced at the thought. Wrong words.
“Yes.”
Reyna watched her for a long moment. “Ok.” She whipped out a hanger from her try-on pile with a pantsuit of deep red silk. Lengths of sheer fabric flowed from the shoulder straps and down the back. “But I’ve decided I’m not wearing a dress. I’m wearing the pants in the family, baby.”
Cadenza laughed and threw her arms around her friend.
The gold of the hills failed to distract Cadenza on the trip down to Modesto.
Reyna was right about needing a green, thriving world and a new Crown, and it had given Cadenza an idea.
She’d discussed her plan with the smith after dress shopping, and Reyna agreed to drive her to the valley to try it.
They didn’t tell the Norroways; they never would have gone along with it.
They need to get past it, Cadenza thought, mouth mashed in a thin line. The world needed a Crown. And it needed a Crown more than Thomas Learmonth or Drostan Norroway needed their pride. Besides, the Norroways weren’t the only ones hurting.
No one in this story was whole.
Learmonth Country Club loomed on the left of the highway. A worker on a ladder was dismantling the gold arched sign as they drove under it. Half a dozen other men in fluorescent construction vests milled around a van with a contractor logo on the side, and a sign hung in the front window:
NEW MANAGEMENT COMING SOON
Thomas was running.
She fussed with the paper in her hands in the parking lot, folding and unfolding it, suddenly nervous now that she was here.
Paying a social call to an ancient, powerful being who knows you broke into his vault. Maybe not the best idea you’ve ever had, Cadenza.
“Come on,” Reyna said, climbing out of the car. “I’ll wait in the lobby in case you need me, but it’s probably better if you talk to him on your own.”
Cadenza nodded, stomach tight. The clouds moved away from the sun, and a wind chime melody swirled around her while the rays warmed her back.
She reached for the hum of the ground and the heartbeat beneath.
This was one of the reasons she was here.
The world needed music. The other reason was the people she’d come to love in the last few weeks—all of them.
Thomas Learmonth had abandoned his duty. He’d kept the earth from its Crown. And he’d wreaked vengeance on Taran for lifetimes.
But he’d also helped her understand her gift. He’d lost his wife. And he still held the power to release Taran from this nightmare. She had to try.
They strode through the front doors, and Cadenza marched to Thomas’s office, not bothering to knock.
Learmonth brooded at his desk, purple button-up rumpled and green rhinestone glasses tossed aside on a pile of paperwork. Red lined his eyes, and stubble dirtied his cheeks. Harriet’s portrait was clutched in his hands.
“Thomas,” she said.
He didn’t look up. “The prodigal daughter returns. Again.” He scoffed. “You’ve got nerve, haven’t you? Coming back here after you lie to me and then rob me of what’s mine.”
“But it wasn’t yours.” She couldn’t deny she’d lied to him. “You stole the oracles from the Norroways. Reyna and I just returned them.”
He sneered. “The Norroways.”
“The oracles weren’t all that you stole, Thomas.” Cadenza’s hands trembled, and she folded her arms across her stomach to still them. Part of him still cares. Under the pain, part of him still cares. Just like part of Taran still believed we could end the curse.
Thomas dropped his wife’s picture on the desk. The thud of the frame on wood hit Cadenza like a flat note in the quiet of the office.
“Why are you here, girl?”
Her breath grew shallow. Her voice shook. “Take the curse off, Thomas. Please.”
He finally looked at her, features twisted as a weather-blasted tree. “No.” A single word—a slap in the face.
“We need you,” she argued. “It’s been over seven hundred years. You and the Norroways need to get past this and do what you are called to do. The world needs a Crown, and it’s your job to find one.”
“The world can go stuff itself.” He traced the portrait frame, finger shaking. “What’s the point without Harriet?”
“You think I haven’t seen this before?” She unfolded her arms, her voice stronger. “This pining away, refusing to move on. What do you think Taran and Drostan have been doing?”
She stalked around the desk, clenching and unclenching her fists.
Stubborn old man. “And my father. He did the same thing after my mother left us. But he managed to pull himself out of it and be happy again, and he didn’t even have the burden of protecting the well-being of the entire planet to motivate him.
Other people still have their Harriets. Do you want them all to lose them?
Do you want the earth to die because you wouldn’t move on? ”
Thomas jutted his chin forward but didn’t answer.
“Thomas.” She grabbed his shoulders. “If you don’t care about the rest of humanity, then do it because you care about me. Because you don’t want me to lose what you lost.”
He shook out of her grip and went to the window.
“You do actually care about me, don’t you? Or was that a lie? Was hurting Taran really all you were after?” She trailed off. She had formed this plan based on her belief that some part of Thomas still cared.
His jaw worked back and forth. When he turned to her, tears ran from his already-bloodshot eyes. “I cared about Canon too. Bloody lot of good it did either of us.”
She stepped back. She had no words for that. Her own feelings about Canon’s death still roiled.
“Why are you here, Cadenza?” Thomas asked, rubbing his eyes.
She took the impromptu invitation from her purse and placed it on his desk. “To ask you to come to my wedding.”