Chapter 31
When he heard the door to the back alley shut behind her, Nigel’s knees gave out.
He somehow managed to direct himself to the cane chair and collapsed into it rather than straight to the floor.
All the remaining strength in his body seemed to flood out of him and flow away in every direction, leaving him a drained husk where he sat.
Debbie fluttered from her skull and landed on his shoulder. Her claws pinched, a comforting pain. She felt strangely heavy. For a while, they were silent together. The raven occasionally picked at his ear and hair and the buttons of his unfastened collar, but otherwise left him to his thoughts.
Then, in a low voice, Nigel said: “She knows, Debbie. It’s over. She knows.”
“Never mind?” the raven suggested.
But there was no never minding now. The look on her face was emblazoned in his memory for all time—the look of horror that suffused her sweet features when she realized that everything Lancelot Mortimer had told her about him was true.
And what all had Mortimer related? Nigel hadn’t been there for that part.
He’d obviously told her about the affair with Jastira, not to mention dropping his Dark Sorcerer’s name.
Had he also told her that Nigel was responsible for those awful facial scars Mortimer now bore?
Probably. No doubt he’d relished the telling.
In light of these revelations, how could Luna do anything other than flee his presence?
How could she bear even to look at him? He couldn’t blame her.
He wouldn’t. It was his own fault after all.
He’d deceived himself into believing that he could become a better man, a man worthy of her friendship, of her . . . of her kisses. Of her love.
But whatever he’d shared with her in those heated moments on the Lover’s Tower and in his own kitchen, it was over now. Moments were all they would ever have. All to brief, all too fleeting. Mere tastes of hope far beyond anything he deserved.
Because there was the truth: he didn’t deserve her. He never could. Not a woman like Luna Talbot, an angelic being composed of pure sweetness and light and joy and goodness.
He closed his eyes and bent over double, his elbows on his knees, his head hanging heavily between his shoulders.
He felt as though he would be sick again as memory of her lovely voice sang inside his skull: “Oh, Ward. How’s a girl supposed to stop herself from falling for you? You . . . you take my breath away!”
But of course, that was right. That was how it should be. She should love him. Ward was good and strong and brave and heroic. He was worthy of Luna’s heart, Luna’s love.
Nigel rubbed a hand down his face. He was sweating, he realized. His body still worked to purge the severmist influence in his veins. And he was becoming more aware of the pain in his jaw. He should probably find that tea Luna suggested. It wouldn’t do to let an ugly, purple bruise set in.
Or . . . and here was a thought . . . he could simply sit here forever and wait to die.
Just cease making any effort of any kind, and let the plants all grow over him until he was swallowed up in greenery.
Yes, that might be better. After all, everything was so rotten, so foul, his very existence diseased. It would be preferable if he simply—
“You must know what I have planned for her.”
Nigel’s eyes flared open. He stared down at his feet and the tiled floor and the shards of broken teacup. But in his mind’s eye, it was Mortimer’s scarred face he saw.
“There’s no way,” Nigel growled.
“Never mind?” croaked Debbie, startled into a little flutter on his shoulders.
Nigel sat up, his bruised jaw setting in a terrible grimace. “There’s no way the wardsmen caught him tonight. He’s still out there. Somewhere.”
He surged to his feet. He did not care how his body protested nor how his soul howled for relief.
Lancelot Mortimer was still at large. He could not be allowed to continue his hunt for Luna.
He could not be allowed to go on living.
Nigel had never outright murdered a man, but, considering the laundry list of foul deeds already attached to his name, what difference would a little magicide make?
An infusion of purpose flooding his veins like adrenaline, he climbed the stairs to his apartment, retrieved the bottle of distilled Dire Matter.
Then down to Garden, where he stood in the doorway, gazing out on the moonlit grounds of his father’s great masterwork.
He knelt, placed a hand on the magic-infused soil, and spoke a word of command: “Come.”
A moment of stillness.
Then, across the lawn, something small, leafy, with a little trumpet-shaped blossom came snuffling along. Eagerness brimming from stem, leaf, and petal, the houndsnose rushed to where Nigel knelt and began performing circles of excitement in front of him. Nigel could almost swear he heard it whine.
Nigel scooped the blossom up in his palm. “We’ve got a job to do tonight. Are you with me?”
The houndsnose wagged its leaf tail.
“Good boy,” Nigel said.
Minutes later, the door of The Arcane Bouquet opened and shut to a peel of brass bells.
But anyone watching—any street fiddlers lounging in darkened doorways, for instance—would not have seen the robe-shrouded figure which slipped away into the dark of the night.
At most, perhaps, he would feel an ominous presence, there and gone again.
Then, with a shrug, he would tuck his fiddle under his chin, apply bow to strings, and fill the air with strains of a lonely, lovelorn melody.