45. Chapter 45
Chapter forty-five
“You’re alive.”
“So are you.”
The carriage continued on in silence once more. There was so much to say, Lux wasn’t sure how to begin. A part of her remained in disbelief that her thrown together plan had even worked at all. That Shaw was beside her. Every dirty, tattered bit of him.
“How did you break bones this time?” His voice sounded less like his own now that they were alone, hoarse and broken.
As if he’d spent hours screaming.
She rolled the shoulder, sore but pain-free at last. The healer had examined it quickly, speaking in low tones all the while. Every muscle had gone slack in her body by the time he’d snapped the shoulder back into place.
She’d still screamed. And she’d cried out again after drinking the tonic he’d given her. One to mend the fracture hidden in the joint of her elbow.
I can’t make it without pain . He had sounded almost sorry. Whether it was toward the agony he would inevitably cause her or toward his own shortcomings, she didn’t know. What she had known was if Riselda had created it, she would have been whole without so much as a wince. Clearly, he dabbled in what he didn’t understand, and his brilliance lay elsewhere. She had a feeling he knew it, too.
“Piercing a tree.” She pulled the dagger into her lap, allowing morning light to caress its blade even as the coal-black wood of the handle absorbed all that remained. Shaw’s eyes followed. “There’s something strange about it. Branches don’t break there. Leaves don’t fall. But they do beneath this.”
His fingers brushed across her hand and hers uncurled on instinct. He took the dagger, turning it over. “Has a tree ever been felled?”
“Of course n—”
An image. An axe, its handle coal black in Riselda’s grip. And—maybe—an answer for a long-ago question:
What need for an axe could her aunt have had?
“I suppose I don’t know,” she finished.
He handed it back to her. “Why did he release me, Lux?”
She lied so often…but his eyes were on hers, and they weren’t letting go. “Morana was kidnapped by the phantom. I levied her life with yours. And mine. I’m to move into the mayor’s mansion.”
One eyebrow raised. “Will you?”
“Never, of course.” The dried blood on the torn cloth of his knee jostled as they traveled over cobblestones. “Shaw… What happened down there?” She steeled herself for his reply, unsure if she would be able to stomach it.
“They wanted answers. My accomplices, how I’d learned of the lifeblood stores, how I managed to get in to begin with… I wouldn’t reveal anything, and so they resorted to their traditional methods of extracting them.” He lifted his ruined shirt.
Bile rose in her throat. She sucked in a breath, so loud now in the heavy quiet. Her fingers quivered and still, she forced them to reach forward. To touch each bloodied bandage.
“The physician—” Her voice broke, and she cleared her burning throat. “The one that set my ankle. You have to go to him.”
He lowered his shirt. “We’ll see. I’m not particularly keen on him after listening to your screams.”
“I refused his sedatives, and he did what needed to be done. If what they did to you didn’t kill you, the infection that I’m sure is brewing in there will.”
“What about Riselda?”
Lux swallowed. “Absolutely not.”
The carriage ride to Shaw’s home was some distance, made longer by the bustling bodies carousing in excitement for the Festival of Light. Lux woke, bleary-eyed and with her head nestled against the crook of Shaw’s arm, her body flush against his.
Was this all it took? One sleepless night and a brief lull in conversation?
She pushed back, the blush in her cheeks transforming from one of sleep to deep mortification. She didn’t want to, but she looked to Shaw anyway, ready to apologize.
A soft snore left his parted lips, his head laid back and turned toward her, eyes closed and relaxed in sleep. For the first time in many days, he appeared his age again, and Lux didn’t feel the least bit ashamed as she watched him breathe. A soft smile pulled at her lips.
The carriage rolled to a stop.
Tawny eyes flicked open, narrowed and unfocused.
“You snore.”
Shaw blinked his confusion away, glancing around the interior of the carriage with a furrowed brow. “I do not.”
“I won’t tell a soul.”
He glowered at her until the door clicked beneath his fingers. “Are you coming in?”
“If you make me tea.”
He huffed but gripped her hand, stepping down from the carriage.
Lux stumbled into him when he stilled at the alley’s mouth. She choked on a breath when she realized why.
Shaw’s door hung by one bent hinge; it threatened to give up its fight at any moment.
She knew how bad it would be.
For once, she begged to be wrong.
“Devil below,” she breathed, feeding the fire flaring in her chest. But Shaw didn’t hear her. He was already moving between the buildings, stepping through the doorway and into the narrow hall.
She came upon him as he knelt in the entryway, and Lux brought her fingers to her lips.
The paintings.
Please… Not his paintings.
They’d been mutilated, utterly destroyed. With precise strokes of a blade, the once-beautiful array of living color and light had fallen to shredded ribbons strewn about their feet, dangling from frames. The sight of them running through Shaw’s fingers now made her eyes prick.
He stood, and without glancing toward her, continued into the kitchen.
The cupboards had been thrown wide, dishes pulled and tossed aside, food trampled across the floorboards, but her gaze landed and remained on a bird, painted in flight, shattered and unmoving upon the ground. Every teacup lay in ruin.
“What have you done? ” Lux demanded of the mayor, his ears far away; if he weren’t, he’d be dead. She picked up the bird, its edges biting into her fingertips, and Shaw returned from his bedroom.
“Tell me you still have the journal.”
Flames leapt from his eyes.
They mirrored Lux’s own.
“I have it.”
He nodded, a curt jerk of his head. “This ends today.”
“Shaw—”
He cut her off with a downward slash of his hand. “I won’t live beneath the weight of his threats against me. Against my family. Against you. This ends today .”
“I only meant to agree with you, you know.”
“You—” He paused, eyes clearing. “Right. Then I need to go to my family. Make sure they know I’m alive and discuss a plan from there. Will you meet me?”
She nodded.
“And you won’t do anything reckless in the meantime?”