Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Thomasin watched as the only home she’d ever known walked away from her. Then she stared at the cliff that held the secrets of Avalon. When that grew too depressing, she stared at the empty trees until her eyes went fuzzy.
Edith was gone. She let her legs give out beneath her, knees crashing into the hard ground.
Everything she had dared to hope for herself, gone in an instant.
Thomasin fell forward on her hands. She was literally on all fours in the middle of the woods out of pure, miserable despair.
If the old Thomasin could see her now, she’d rob her blind and probably beat her senseless.
A hollow laugh fell from her lips. There wasn’t even a boat for her to get off the island.
They hadn’t thought that far ahead. With Edith at her side, and the quest before them, the return trip hadn’t seemed important at all.
There were footsteps, loud and steady. Thomasin jerked her head up, hating herself for the hope that bloomed in her chest, for thinking Edith might have come back for her.
But of course she hadn’t. Thomasin curled her fingers in the dirt.
“Is this what you wanted, then?” Worthing strolled up to her, looking down at where she kneeled on the ground. He was here, on the island. He must have sought out Edith’s father, made some kind of deal.
“You followed me.” Thomasin said. It wasn’t a question. She should have known he wouldn’t let her out of his clutches. He would never be able to accept the victory she offered him. He needed to best her on his own terms.
Let him, Thomasin thought pitifully. She had already lost everything that mattered to her anyway.
“She makes you stupid,” Worthing said, crouching down in front of her with all the condescension of a scolding parent. “You didn’t cover your tracks.”
Thomasin couldn’t disagree. Edith had made her stupid. Happy, and unforgivably stupid. Worthing still watched her with pitying eyes, waiting for her to fire back. She waited too, waited for that familiar anger to rise in her like a tide.
She felt nothing.
Her fingers sifted through the dirt. She slumped down on her heels and craned her neck back so she was looking right up at the pointed line of Worthing’s chin.
“You could be in London right now, with the syndicate all to yourself. Yet you’re here with me.
Sounds like I make you stupid too.” The words might have been cutting, but they sounded dull and resigned.
“I don’t like loose ends.”
“I wouldn’t have come back,” Thomasin said.
Worthing scoffed. “I knew your little pet would tire of you eventually. Once she ran back to her palace, you would come back for yours. I couldn’t risk that. And look at this.” Worthing spread his arms wide, gesturing at the deserted forest around them. “I was right. She’s gone and left you.”
“And I still don’t want the syndicate,” Thomasin growled.
“Oh really? Then what do you plan to do?”
Thomasin hadn’t an earthly clue. Her plan had been to travel the world with Edith.
To go on adventure after adventure, and then maybe even settling down somewhere would feel like an adventure because it would be with Edith.
She made everything exciting and joyous.
Now, Thomasin’s future stretched out before her like a scorched sheet of parchment, blank and blackened.
Or more likely, the parchment was entirely gone, burned to ash.
“It doesn’t matter what I say. You’re going to kill me either way.” She wasn’t scared when she said it. But she was when he shook his head, thin lips twitching into a smile.
“Not quite yet,” he said, then looked over his shoulder and called out, “We’re ready for you, Chief.”
Thomasin scrambled to get her feet under her, but Worthing whipped out his gun and aimed it at her head. The message was clear: Don’t move.
The chief inspector sauntered out from behind a copse of trees.
It wasn’t just Edith’s father, then. Worthing had gone and made a deal with both of them.
Edith for money. Herself for the syndicate’s immunity from the police.
It was the perfect plan, really. Everything Worthing wanted, tied up in a neat little bow.
And she was the only one who would have to pay the price.
“How far the fearsome Lord of the Sunless Syndicate has fallen,” the chief said when he came to stand next to Worthing. The two looked like old friends. Ironic, considering all the tirades Worthing had gone on about the, as he had often called him, cowardly, buffoonish chief inspector.
“I assume your wife does not send her regards?” Thomasin said with a grimace.
The chief knocked the look from her face with a sudden kick to her jaw. She saw black as she fell to the side. Blood dripped from where she bit through her lip, and she spit a wad of it on the ground.
“I’ll take that as a no,” she said.
“You wretched whore,” the inspector spat.
Worthing crouched in front of her as if to examine the bruise she could feel blooming along her jaw with a vengeance.
“I offered to kill you for him, to do all the dirty work and let him stay in London. He refused.” Worthing gave an amused shrug and cast his gaze over to his companion.
The chief licked his lower lip. “I wanted to be sure you suffered the proper amount before your execution. I wanted to see it with my own eyes.”
“I’m honored,” Thomasin said. When she pushed up on an elbow, Worthing closed his hand around her bicep and hauled her to her feet.
He wrenched her arms backward, pinning her wrists behind her back.
She watched idly as the chief joined Worthing.
Then, she felt the rough bite of rope on her skin.
They tied her hands tight, the bones of her wrists screaming in protest, her shoulders pulled back so far they began to throb.
A hand fisted in her hair, yanking so her chin tipped up to the sky.
Worthing’s face came into view, and he was smiling as he removed her weapons.
One by one, each dagger. The obvious ones, the well-hidden ones, they were all taken from their sheaths and dropped unceremoniously on the ground, where Worthing made sure to kick them out of reach from her feet.
It made a distant, broken part of her smile.
He was still scared of her, even tied up and complacent.
The pistols were next. Those he kept for himself, tucking them into his jacket and his waistband. Thomasin didn’t blame him. The daggers were of varying quality—she had collected them throughout the course of her whole life. But the pistols. Those were expensive.
The chief inspector kept his own gun trained on her as Worthing led her away.
Her mind was blank as she lifted one foot after another.
She wasn’t even paying particular attention to where they were going.
Thomasin found she didn’t want to know. But she couldn’t help but listen as the chief said, “Where are we taking her? The boat?”
“No,” Worthing said, the words clipped. “Lord Darling didn’t want blood on his precious deck.”
“Well, I completely agree. This is ugly business. Not meant for polite society.”
She could hear the undercurrent of malice in Worthing’s voice when he responded, “Of course, Chief.”
The inspector didn’t notice anything, though, just nodded smugly.
If Thomasin cared, she would have noted this newly revealed advantage.
The contempt between the two men could be manipulated, stoked.
Worthing thought he was in charge of their little scheme, but the chief inspector was sure he was the one in charge.
That was a weakness that Thomasin could easily exploit.
A sly word here, a nudge there, and she could have them at each other’s throats.
Which would provide the perfect opportunity for Thomasin to slip away.
But to where?
That was the question that kept her from action.
The only boat on the island was occupied by Edith and her father.
She certainly wasn’t going to waltz up and join them.
She had far too much pride to torture herself like that.
Not to mention that Edith’s father would likely try to take Thomasin right back to her current captors.
Of course, Thomasin could easily overpower Lord Darling, but …
she couldn’t do that to Edith. Perhaps she didn’t have any pride left after all.
She saw no other way forward except to stay in chains, or rather ropes, and just let Worthing lead her along to her doom. She was starting to think she had been doomed the moment Marshall pulled her up by her shirt collar.
Thomasin had killed, lied, cheated, stolen.
She had lived without morals or kindness or care.
People like that didn’t get happy endings with the women of their dreams. They died like Jay, left rotting among the trees.
That would be her. Thomasin’s only mistake had been in thinking that being with Edith would change that fate.
In thinking that Edith’s goodness would outweigh Thomasin’s badness in the cosmic scales of justice.
She was a fool.
Thomasin didn’t look up from her feet until their pace slowed. When her eyes lifted, and she saw their destination, her heels almost dug in of their own accord. Not here, she thought, anywhere but here.
The abandoned church loomed before them.
It was a cruel joke. Worthing tightened his grip, sensing her hesitation.
He shoved her through the ramshackle doorway.
They walked down the same aisle that she and Edith had walked down …
God, it had only been the previous night.
It felt like a lifetime ago. Her foot caught on a broken floorboard, and Worthing dropped his hand, letting her fall face-first into the rubble.
Her hands were still tied behind her back, so she twisted to take the impact on her shoulder.
The force against the pinned limb clanged through her, but it was better than taking the brunt of it to her face.
She rolled to her back. Pinprick shards of glass cut into her shoulder blades.
“You’re such a dick,” she wheezed, the fall having knocked the breath from her chest. The chief stared down at her with a twinkle of malicious mirth in his eyes.
He dragged her back to her feet, only to shove her into the very same alcove that she and Edith had shared.
At least the universe still had a sense of humor.
Her knees slammed onto the velvet-covered floor.
Worthing took hold of her then, slicing through the rope binding her wrists.
For half a second, Thomasin thought maybe he was having a change of heart.
But he was only retying her to the pillar that stood in the far corner of the alcove.
He even made sure she was facing the crumbling wall so she wouldn’t be able to see what they were doing.
This was what Edith had done to her, she mused, as Worthing wrapped another rope around her ankles.
Edith had softened Thomasin, made her hope for things again.
Even stupid notions, like thinking Worthing might have a shred of mercy for her.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Edith had convinced Thomasin she could be loved.
Then she’d left, proving what Thomasin had always known deep down: She was unlovable.
The problem was that now she knew too well what Edith’s love felt like.
A flash of golden light in the pitch-black sky of her life.
But that was all it had been, a flash. Thomasin should’ve known it wouldn’t last, but she’d thrown herself into Edith headfirst.
God, she had been planning to spend the rest of her life with that woman.
She had been good. For Edith, she had been good, and it still hadn’t been enough.
The only parts of Thomasin that were worth anything were the despicable and ruthless ones.
Marshall had always taught her that, had instilled in her that she was meant to wield power over others, not be loved by them.
Edith had made her believe that there was something inside Thomasin that was redeemable, that she mattered beyond her skills as a criminal.
But it was all a lie.
Not one soul on this earth loved Thomasin.