Chapter Two Nina #2
“Unless you feel inspired to derail this train, Nina.” Patrick’s back slumped farther down the wall. “I wouldn’t say no to an earthquake.”
I eyed his injuries once more, the rope looping through the cattle rings. I shook my head. “I can’t.”
His eyes snapped open then, colder than I’d ever seen them. “Don’t lie to me,” he said, so darkly it crawled over my flesh. “I’ve seen you move hills. It ain’t a matter of can’t, is it? It’s a matter of won’t.” He held my gaze. “I never had your loyalty, did I?”
And there it was. That gun of his pointed between my eyes, finally firing.
I think he saw it—the way my mind folded in, they way my heart stuttered. “Patrick, I—”
“Tell me,” he said, his tone banal to anyone but me. “Say it exactly as it is, Nina. You work for the House, and I’m a fool.”
I saw, for that brief moment, all the way through him. Irreparable wounds. Punctures and shattered bones, tendons unmoored and swinging, spirals of slackened gut and a gasping heart.
And I was desperate to tell him everything. Every wretched thing I’d done, every wretched thing done to me. But the list of confessions was overwhelming. How could I tell him that I was every bit as terrible as he feared and still have him love me in the end?
“The House has my mother,” I said, the words barely breaching my lips. “And Tanner promised to kill her unless I… unless I helped him.”
Patrick’s eyes rolled back and closed once more. For a moment, I thought him asleep. “So, you helped him,” he whispered—to himself, it seemed. “You found the last Alchemist for him.”
“No,” I said, louder than before. “No, I changed my mi—”
“And why did Tanner need the earth Charmer to do it?” Patrick interrupted. “What else did he ask you to do, Nina? After you’d found me?”
I lowered my head and closed my eyes. “Patrick—”
“Did he ask you to bury us all in the mud?” he pressed. “Was that the grand plan?”
Theo scoffed darkly. “I assure you, Colson, if she wanted to bury Kenton Hill, the whole place would be fifty feet under.” His cheeks had turned ruddy.
He leaned his head dejectedly against the wall.
“Her grand plan was to seduce you,” he said, the veins in his hands growing more prominent as he said it.
“In the hopes you’d reveal where you were keeping Domelius Becker. ”
I sucked in a breath.
Patrick’s jaw went rigid. I watched his throat bob once, twice. He did not look at me again. “Then you can tell your boss she was successful.” His eyes closed. “A better actress, I’ve never seen.”
I felt myself crack and splinter.
“So, I told you my secrets,” Patrick said, quieter now. “You took them straight to Polly. And she scribbled it all to Tanner.” His eyelids fluttered, strength failing him. “You even paved him a road right into Kenton, and had me believe you were paving it for me.” He sounded begrudgingly impressed.
And there were waves of guilt in me, yes, but there was irritation, too. Defiance.
An actress, he’d called me. They both had. But I could bring to mind every instance of Patrick’s eyes pinning me to a wall, his fingers whispering over mine, and always it seemed something was perched on the edge of his lips when I was near, seconds from tumbling free.
He had seduced me.
I set my eyes on Theo first, tongue pulsing. “You told me that you came to Kenton Hill as a trade. In return, Lord Tanner would resume his search for me.”
Theo’s eyes became confused, guarded. He nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“And then I turned up alive, and you were surprised to find that I wasn’t still eighteen years old and fawning over you.”
His lips pressed together tightly. “That’s not—”
“And it hurt your feelings that I no longer needed you. Angered you. It makes you mad still, to know I chose someone else.”
He couldn’t seem to conjure a denial. Instead, he glowered.
“And you,” I continued, turning on Patrick. I found him watching me closely. “Who brought me into his parish with my wrists tied and a sack over my head. Can you honestly meet my eye and claim that I tricked you into… into…”
“Lovin’ you?” Patrick asked, his voice deep, rebounding in my chest. I hadn’t unbalanced him at all. Hadn’t made a dent. “In truth, Nina, I don’t have it in me to unravel that question.”
He turned his head away as though he couldn’t stand the sight of me.
I blanched. But I had to tell him all of it now, while he was still close enough to hear it. “I lied to you,” I admitted. “About Tanner, about what he’d demanded of me, but not the rest. I didn’t reveal your secret to anyone. Not even Polly. I didn’t bring soldiers into Kenton Hill.”
“I wish I could believe that,” Patrick said, wincing. “But even if you weren’t lyin’ to me right now, it wouldn’t count for much, would it? We’ve both of us made a few too many missteps.” He didn’t seem to need my response. “Mine was lettin’ swanks into Kenton Hill in the first place.”
I fumed. “I didn’t give you up.”
“So you say.”
“Yeah.” I tugged at the ropes around my wrists. “So I say.”
“Yet there’s the matter of timin’,” said Patrick, “and the scant few who knew what I was.”
“Patrick, you know me!”
He chuckled grimly, wiping his brow against his sleeve, and looked resolutely at nothing at all.
“It felt that way, didn’t it?” he said. “Like we knew each other.” He closed his eyes and leaned back into the wall of the carriage.
“But when I think about it, Nina, you’re a stranger to me.
” He nodded to himself as though confirming something.
His eyes closed. “A stranger with all my secrets.”
A tear slipped free and sprinted for my chin. My heart thrashed, and I did nothing to quell it. I watched Patrick close off in increments until his entire body was angled away from mine, and I could see nothing but the flushed skin at the back of his neck, the jumping pulse beneath his ear.
Theo cleared his throat. When I spared him a withering glance, his jaw softened. “For what it’s worth, Pat,” he said, seemingly with great effort, “it can’t have been Nina who brought this army to your doorstep.”
“Your word’s worth nothin’ to me,” Patrick said with finality. A few moments later, he lost consciousness.
The train rattled on, and the three of us swayed like slaughtered pigs on hooks.
Night crept in and made breathing easier.
It was more difficult to see the blood across Patrick’s chest, easier to avoid Theodore’s insistent gaze.
I couldn’t be sure how long I had gone without sleeping.
Without eating. I ignored my screaming bladder.
Anger kept me awake. The more my mind churned, the more that rage grew.
For Theodore, who thought I was his, no matter my own feelings; for Patrick, blinded by his own hate; for Polly, who was damningly absent; for Lord Tanner; and Luderman; and all men, suddenly. How quick they were to use and discard me.
But then that anger turned inward, and I found myself wanting to claw at my chest, take my own heart in my hands and wring it.
This was my doing. My cowardice. I’d waited too long to tell Patrick the truth.
I’d had power and squandered it, hadn’t done a thing to help another with it.
I’d hidden behind years of neutrality, running and running until the consequences caught up to me.
Loathing like I’d never felt before made its home under my skin.
I let it sink in. A penance.
The train clattered on.
Luderman awoke as the train whistled its arrival. He’d snored for more than half the journey and came up bleary eyed, his nose off-center, his lips sealed in dried blood. He took one glance in my direction and glared but did not advance.
While the soldiers stretched and yawned and gathered their bayonets, Patrick spoke. It was soft. Reluctant.
But he spoke for me, in a quiet aside, as though he couldn’t bear not to say it. “You have something the House needs,” he told me. “It gives you power. You understand?”
I stared at him, nodded. He was looking dead ahead at the forthcoming soldiers. “They can’t take that from you,” he said. “Whatever else they might take, they can’t take who you are.”
I remembered what he’d said to me once, when we were twelve.
You’ve got a mind of your own. Don’t let those fuckers take it.
I shivered.
I meant to say something more to Patrick, or to Theo. I felt suddenly, frighteningly, as though it might be my last opportunity.
But any words, all words, now seemed futile. What could possibly be said in these last few seconds to dispel the rot?
We prisoners were blindfolded again, our hands retied, threats spat in our ears about being belted senseless if we tried to magic our way out of capture, but with hundreds of soldiers surrounding us on all sides, that promise seemed extraneous.
I could do nothing but listen. I listened to the train cranks settle and the steam chest let out a final sigh.
Hundreds of feet and voices rent the cold air.
Some were gleeful, wives and fathers and children fishing their soldier from the trough, delighted they weren’t dead.
Some cried, their soldier not among the school.
I was shoved and herded onward until the sound dwindled, and the music of the city rose up, though not as I remembered it.
I tried to bring to mind the National House, the citadel and its domed roof, the clock tower, the steepled rooftops, the thin channels of fresh water running street side, the horseless wagons and red bricks.
I wondered if it looked as different as it sounded—subdued. On edge.
I noticed the change underfoot when we entered the courtyard of the National House.
Cobblestone became dirt, then steps, then mosaic, until the city was muted.
Heavy doors closed. I heard Theodore arguing to have his blindfold lifted, Patrick breathing heavily.
I wondered how long it would take for his wound to foul.
I had spent enough time in the House to know where we were heading. Up the grand winding stairs, down one corridor and another, into a vast, sparkling room normally occupied by—