Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
A few hours later, Mina wakes me with a whine and a firm paw planted in my side.
“All right, all right.”
After a quick shower, I dress and head out. We walk to the park. I lack the energy to run again tonight, but I have brought the ball. While we play fetch, I watch the streets.
Life has resumed.
Mostly.
The police presence is heavier than usual. Officers stand at intervals, watchful but calm, waiting. Everyone knows the return of magic is only the beginning.
The question is how long before something tips.
Most of the shops are open, all with the same hastily printed signs:
MAGIC HAS RETURNED
PLEASE BE CAREFUL
A nearby coffee shop radio repeats an official notice on a loop: stay calm, do not react if you feel out of control, contact the government if you need help.
The broadcast cuts briefly to a hospital update: clinics across Elyrion report unexplained improvements in long-term Fade patients.
I stop with the ball in my hand.
Then Mina barks, impatient. I throw the ball and watch her bound after it.
Contact the government.
They watched as we suffered. They took our children for the Games and issued contracts on anyone with talent, and now we are meant to ring them for help.
It will be complicated.
I cannot fix all of it.
I throw the ball again and catch movement at the edge of my vision.
The man who shot at me the day I collected Bruce attempts to creep up behind me with very little success. Mina has already noticed him. When I give a subtle wiggle of my fingers, she veers wide and sniffs ostentatiously near the fence. Her tail wags while one eye tracks him the entire time.
Good girl.
I researched him after our first encounter.
He is a small-time crook who fancies himself an assassin, though not a very good one.
This time, he has traded the old gun for something more ambitious: an enormous, poorly balanced knife with no guard, more dangerous to the wielder than the intended victim.
He lunges at me, his swing absurdly wide.
I duck, step inside his reach and drive my elbow into the side of his head. He staggers. Before he can recover, I twist his wrist until the knife drops, then use his momentum to slam him face-first onto the grass.
He is unconscious before he finishes falling.
I empty his pockets.
Identification. A few notes. And, folded into eighths and gone soft along the creases, a page torn from a newspaper: my licence photograph beside a headline about a child confirmed dead in the Glass District.
Who brings a cutting to an assassination?
He has been carrying me about in his pocket for weeks. Practising, probably. Working out what he would say afterwards.
Nobody sent him.
I have met dozens of him. People who want a reputation and have decided the quickest way to earn one is to step on somebody notorious. They choose me because a woman who kills children ought to be easy, and because nobody asks awkward questions when that woman turns up dead.
The first one tried it when I was twenty-two.
This one brought a knife too large for him and a newspaper cutting, and he has now failed twice.
“You really shouldn’t have picked me,” I tell him, though he can’t hear me.
“You are a spectacularly bad assassin. Twice you’ve come for me.
Twice you’ve failed.” I crouch to his level and drop his identification beside him.
“You’re also very lucky. If those children weren’t over there and the police weren’t coming down the hill, this conversation would be going very differently. ”
The curl of anger in my chest wants to do something about it permanently. I do not. Instead, I straighten up and look towards the officers, catching their attention.
Mina trots over and snuffles at him with great interest.
“Are you okay, love?” A woman with two children has stopped nearby, keeping them behind her. “I saw him attack you.”
“I’m unhurt, thank you. The police are on their way.”
Two officers are already descending. The children, far more interested in Mina than the unconscious man on the grass, rush towards her, their small hands digging gently into her fur. She accepts their attention as her due.
The officers work efficiently. They bag the knife, take my details and radio the incident in. Almost at once, their manner warms, as though my name has come back flagged in a way it never has before.
“Miss Morris,” one says with a small bow, “it’s an honour. May we escort you home?”
“No, thank you. Mina and I can manage.”
The woman gives her statement, gathers her children and leaves. The little girl waves sadly at Mina as they go.
While the constables finish their paperwork, a familiar figure comes down the path towards us.
Cáel.
He walks straight to me. The officers nod in recognition. A restraint bag—the same reinforced kind I have packed bounties into a hundred times—arrives, and the unconscious man is collected, photographed and removed with speed and discretion that would have been unthinkable a week ago.
Cáel cups my jaw.
“I’m fine. He wasn’t much of a threat.”
“I worried when you left.”
“I’m sorry. It was all too much—people, noise, importance. There was nothing left for me to do, and I felt as though I was in the way. You needed space to work.”
“You were never in the way.” His thumb strokes across my cheek. “And I owe you an apology. I should have told you I’d involved central government.”
“How long?”
“Since the Spire,” he says. “Since the night you drew the first map and I understood what I was looking at. I filed a report that evening, and I have filed one almost every day since. Every call you saw me take. Every night I told you I was planning.” He does not look away while he says it.
The device in the stairwell, and Velmora, and the time difference nobody there respects. A police officer in that square being told, within minutes, exactly whose collar he was looking at. The voice through the wall at Preston’s house at four in the morning.
I did see it. I saw all of it, and each time I told myself a story, because the story was easier than the question.
“I didn’t hide it because I doubted you,” he says quietly. “I hid it because one loose word in the wrong place would have reached the wrong ears before we had enough evidence to protect you. But you deserved to know.”
I understand secrecy better than almost anybody living.
And I chose not to ask.
I am in no position to judge him for doing the same thing I have been doing since I was sixteen.
“Thank you,” I say. “For telling me now.”
He studies me. Determination and something gentler move across his face. “What happens next is up to you.”
“Up to me?”
He unbuttons his coat, then starts on his shirt.
We are in a public park, which is not remotely private, and I glance around in alarm.
“What are you doing?” I catch his hand.
He smiles broadly, and only then do I notice the dimple.
He gently moves my hand aside.
The third button. The fourth.
His shirt falls open.
Over his sternum is a sigil: a flame.
Matching mine.
“Oh,” I breathe.
“Mine came in the chamber,” he says. “While Thea was working. You told me you had done the borders first, and I felt it arrive.” He looks at the flame rather than at me.
“I had a theory the night you showed me yours. I wouldn’t say it aloud, because I wasn’t certain, and because it isn’t a thing to guess at.
” A pause. “I was certain about ten seconds after you whispered that.”
He lets me look at it a moment longer.
“I didn’t force this,” he says, rebuttoning his shirt. “A soulbond forms only when both people feel the same. The bond makes no mistakes. It may have found us, Elenora, but I will never press you into anything you don’t choose.”
“No,” I say softly. “You wouldn’t.”
“I think some part of me has carried you since I was eighteen, when I watched a girl on a screen fight skeletons and lose the Games so another child could live. Every moment since we met has turned that memory into something real.” His gaze remains fixed on mine.
“I love you, Elenora. If you would rather remain friends, the heart magic will fade. If you accept it, the bond will grow. Eventually, we’ll be able to speak without words. ”
“That explains a lot,” I murmur.
“You asked me once: Will you face trouble when you go home? I should have said, I am home. I’m home wherever you are.”
He waits.
“I love you,” I say. “Ridiculous, I know. It’s only been a week.”
“It’s been a hell of a week,” he replies with that same smile.
“It has.” I draw a breath. “You don’t have to—”
“You don’t need to decide today. We can—”
I kiss him.
It is impulsive, and I regret it at once. I pull back, an apology already forming on my lips, uncertain whether I should have asked first—
Then he kisses me back.
Properly.
Thoroughly.
One hand tilts my jaw. His lips are warm and certain, and every thought of apology vanishes. His sigil beneath my palm answers with a low golden heat, not demanding, not consuming—only there. Waiting. Choosing. Chosen.
When we part, my lips tingle and my heart hammers. His heartbeat shifts against my hand until it matches mine.
Mina barks once, wedges herself between us, then circles until her tail thumps against my thigh.
“Ow.”
“Does she approve, do you think?” Cáel asks.
“Absolutely.”
He presses another gentle kiss to my mouth, then stoops to pick up the ball and throw it.
Mina explodes after it with the joy of a dog who has finally found someone who understands proper technique.
His arm settles around me and draws me close.
“There’s a great deal to do,” I say.
“There is. I’ll go wherever you go. I’ve been offered a post here to help with what comes next, but we can do whatever you wish. Leave. Move to Velmora. Start somewhere new. Or stay.”
“I’m not qualified for any of this.”
“You don’t need to be qualified. You need to be yourself. With me, if you’ll have me.” He looks down at me. “You’ve done your duty, Elenora. No one would blame you for walking away, but I know how much you love this city.”
“They don’t like me.”
“When they understand what you’ve given them,” he says, “they will.”
“I’m nobody’s hero.”
“That,” he replies, “is exactly why they’ll adore you.”
He squeezes me against his side. “Come on. Vivian and Thea are waiting. They’ve cooked, and you know how they feel about feeding you and Mina.”
He takes my hand. The warmth of his magic curls around mine, and together we walk towards his waiting car.