Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Thomasin was a terrible person. She had always known that.
And yet, being a terrible person had never felt so, well—terrible, before.
But if Thomasin had told Edith the truth about the ransom, then Edith would have been so angry she likely would have run off back to her father and never finished her quest. She would be devastated, and her dreams would be dead.
So, if one thought about it, Thomasin was really preserving Edith’s dream by concealing the truth from her.
Maybe if she kept telling herself that, it would start to feel true.
The daylight filtering into the passage grew brighter, and Thomasin gritted her teeth. She drew a dagger in one hand and her pistol in the other as she took the last few steps, preparing herself for whatever scene was brewing aboveground. If Edith’s father was already here she would—
Damn it. She had no idea what she would do. Thomasin couldn’t very well kill Edith’s father to get them out of this. Whatever she did, it had to be quick. If Thomasin knew Edith, and she really did think she was starting to, then Edith would not wait out of sight for long.
The first thing she saw when she emerged from Arthur’s Stone was the back of Worthing’s greasy head.
He and Jay turned to face her at the sound of her metal buckles and knives clanging against the stone rim.
Heart in her throat, Thomasin looked past them, scanning the trees.
The forest was mercifully, miraculously, empty.
Her entire body sagged in relief. She had never felt so wildly fortunate in her entire life, and she thanked whatever stupid god had allowed her this stroke of luck.
“Where’s Edith?” Jay’s tone was stark, and concern lined his features. “Did you find the treasure?”
“She’s fine. And no.” Thomasin brushed by them, holstering her pistol. “Edith’s father isn’t here?”
“Not yet,” Jay answered, impatience simmering in his tone. If Thomasin weren’t so distracted, she would have reprimanded him.
“Good. We need to leave immediately. Get the horses ready while I get Edith.”
Jay jumped into action at once but still threw the question over his shoulder. “What about the ransom?”
Thomasin stilled, halfway turned to Arthur’s Stone. She felt their eyes on her. Jay’s carefully blank, Worthing’s mutinous. “We’re not ransoming her anymore,” she said.
Jay nodded once, then went to saddle the horses. Worthing stalked over to her and said in a deep growl, “I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re doing, but we need that gold.”
She knew he was right, and that angered her more than anything.
The syndicate’s survival rested on Thomasin’s ability to pay off the Metropolitan Police.
But she couldn’t use Edith after the woman had just saved her life.
If she were to tell Worthing that her decision was being made to preserve a sentimental, newly found moral code, he would never respect her authority again.
“We’re gonna help Edith find the treasure like we were hired to.
” Worthing began to object, but Thomasin cut him off with a deadly glare.
“If the treasure doesn’t exist, or isn’t as bountiful as Edith believes, then we’ll revisit the ransom plan.
” That last part was a lie, but it still fell easily from her lips.
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Worthing roared.
He jutted a bony finger in her face, standing close enough that she could feel the rancid warmth of his breath.
“Why would we waste our time on this fucking imaginary quest when we already have the real prize? And in case you don’t remember, the treasure”—he spat the word with mocking vitriol—“was supposed to be here, which of course it’s not, because it doesn’t exist!
Why the hell do you think it exists somewhere—”
In one fluid movement, Thomasin slid a knife out from one of the hidden sheaths in her sleeve and stabbed it into Worthing’s shoulder.
Right into the fleshy part beneath his collarbone.
Deep enough to hurt, but not enough to truly wound.
She closed the distance between them until they were nose to nose and twisted the blade.
She felt him fighting the urge to curl in his shoulders, to rear back from the attack.
“Do not question me.” Her tone was hard.
She had spent years perfecting it, the way she needed to sound to get people to follow her.
Unfeeling, merciless, monstrous. The one thing that Thomasin knew she was good at was getting people to fear her.
So what if it left a sour taste in her mouth and a pit in her gut?
It was a skill that had made her successful beyond reason, a legend even among the worst criminals.
At least now she was wielding her monstrosity to help Edith.
She ripped the blade from Worthing’s body.
He gasped but managed to stay on his feet.
Wiping his blood from the knife on the sleeve of his opposite arm, she said, “I read about this thing once. They called it death by a thousand cuts.” She grazed the blade down his sleeve, to the exposed skin of his forearm.
She angled it, pressing the sharp edge ever so slightly into his skin.
“I wonder how many cuts it would take you to bleed out?”
Worthing drove his knee against her thigh.
In the second it took Thomasin to regain her footing, he reached toward the knife.
His fingers closed around her wrist, but just as he began to twist, Thomasin drove her other elbow right into his nose.
Bone cracked, and he dropped her wrist. Thomasin wrapped her hand around his throat.
Blood dripped from his nose and onto her fingers.
She squeezed hard enough to make him gasp, to leave bruises.
She had him now. She could see the obedience, the fear creeping back into his eyes.
Thomasin lowered the blade back to his forearm.
His lips flattened into a line as she sliced into his skin, a slash of red welling up.
“How many can you stay standing for, do you think?” She drew another line of blood, and a muffled groan of pain fell from his lips.
A smile split Thomasin’s lips. “I heard that.”
She sliced one more time, deeper than all the rest. “You will follow my orders, or you will be punished. You might not like what I tell you to do, but I promise you that the consequences for disobeying will be much worse. In fact, the next thing I cut might be your tongue.”
His throat bobbed as he swallowed instinctively, then nodded.
It was a quick, jerking movement. Thomasin released him with a shove.
He still hated her, would still look for opportunities to take power from her.
But she was confident he had been sufficiently reminded that he should at least be scared of her.
The way he stumbled back from her clutching his bleeding shoulder told her everything she needed to know.
Jay approached with the horses as Thomasin stepped back into Arthur’s Stone. “Any objections?” Thomasin asked, her voice low.
He shook his head slowly. “Edith doesn’t know about the ransom. That’s why she’s still down there.”
It wasn’t a question, but Thomasin answered anyway. “Yes.” She tilted her chin up, daring Jay to push her further, to criticize. She could feel the disapproval radiating from him, but he just clenched his jaw and inclined his head.
“You’re the boss.”
Thomasin almost laughed. She had never felt less in charge. “Be ready to move,” she told them before ducking back down the stairs.
Just as predicted, Edith was already halfway up the steps by the time Thomasin reached her. “Patience is not your strong suit, is it?” Thomasin quipped as she looped Edith’s arm over her shoulder and took some of her weight so they could quicken their pace.
“No, not really,” Edith responded. Her voice was tight, and Thomasin knew she was trying to hide how out of breath she was.
But Thomasin couldn’t let them slow down.
They had to get away from Slaughterbridge as fast as humanly possible.
Edith’s father could show up at any second.
When they reached the surface, Thomasin lifted Edith out of the stone frame, ignoring her squawk of protest. Jay smiled when he saw Edith, but Thomasin could see the tension in his eyes.
She gave him a sharp glare over Edith’s head.
“I see the persuasion went well,” Edith said quietly. Thomasin, focused on ushering Edith to the horses, was confused by the remark until she followed Edith’s gaze to Worthing, who was still seeping blood. Not enough to render him useless, though. Thomasin still had some sense about her.
“It was an aggressive form of persuasion.” Thomasin’s pulse thundered in her throat as she guided Edith onto a horse.
It occurred to Thomasin as she mounted behind Edith, swinging her leg up and over as smoothly as possible so as to not jostle her, that this might be the first time in her life that she had ever run away.
She hated the squirrelly, pathetic way it made her feel, but the alternative was worse.
She needed to get Edith away from the danger of the ransom.
That was all that mattered. If there was one thing she was good at, it was compartmentalization.
She took her guilt and her cowardice and shoved them in a box at the back of her mind.
The only truth that existed was that she wanted to help Edith with her quest, and if running away was the way to accomplish that, then that’s what she would do.
Jay came up next to them on his own horse, one hand on the pommel of the saddle. He seemed to startle at the sight of Edith’s bandaged shoulder. “Are you alright?” he asked her, voice gentle.
Edith smiled. With no small amount of smugness, she said, “It was a booby trap.”
Jay gave a short laugh, somewhere between surprised and impressed. “Are you serious? What kind of—”
“We don’t have time for this,” Thomasin interrupted. She wrapped her arms around Edith and urged the horse into a trot, not even sparing a glance to check if Jay and Worthing followed.
Thomasin kept them at a punishing pace, or at least as fast as she dared with Edith’s body becoming progressively more limp against hers as they rode on.
When they finally made camp, after about two hours’ ride, Thomasin was holding up what felt like Edith’s entire weight.
The two of them dismounted rather ungracefully, the belt of Edith’s skirt catching on the buckle of the saddle at one point, then Thomasin led the horse over to Jay to be tended.
The man seemed to enjoy the work of feeding, brushing, and watering.
When she wasn’t looking, she swore that she could hear him softly murmuring to the horses while he cared for them.
Night had fallen quickly and so had the cold.
A damp chill fell on the forest clearing where they set up their bedrolls for the night.
Worthing disappeared into the trees, where he was hopefully hunting, but probably spending just as much time sulking.
Thomasin handed Edith the canteen with the most water left.
The woman still looked like a ghost, and after the day she’d had, Thomasin certainly didn’t blame her.
Sleep, food, and warmth were what she needed now.
One was supposed to rest after being shot by an arrow, not trek through underground passages and ride horses at pulse-pounding speeds.
Thomasin set about making a fire as quickly as possible.
Edith tried to help, insisting that the fire was her only responsibility, but Thomasin forced her to sit on a mostly dry log near the circle of firewood she was piling up.
She struck her flint against a rock, casting sparks onto the logs and kindling.
She blew on it, coaxing the little flames to take root.
Once the fire was roaring and warmth was seeping back into the air around them, Worthing returned with three squirrels slung over his shoulder.
He tossed them at Thomasin’s feet before storming away to his bedroll.
The three of them chewed their stringy pieces of squirrel meat in silence.
Edith retired to her own bed immediately after ripping the last stubborn tendril of meat from the bone.
Thomasin felt much lighter now that Edith was safe and the worst of her injury managed.
She hadn’t realized she’d been so worried about her until the tangle of knots in her stomach eased at the sight of Edith lying on her bedroll, breaths finally coming evenly, blood loss no longer a sword hanging over her head.
She laid her bedroll slightly closer to Edith’s than she usually did.
Not because she wanted to be near her, but so that Edith could easily get her attention if the stitches ripped, or if she started bleeding again.
The names of the constellations still eluded her as she stared up at the night sky, waiting for sleep to take her.
Usually, it took an exorbitant amount of time for her to convince her body that it was safe enough to rest. She settled in, preparing herself for those lonely hours, where time seemed to stretch and warp.
Tonight was no different than any other, except for one thing.
Being only a few feet away from Edith, Thomasin could hear the slow rise and fall of her breaths.
She listened to the sound of Edith breathing the way one listened to the ocean.
Those steady waves lulled her to sleep faster than anything else ever had.