Chapter Two #2
“Hey, Eddie,” she murmured. “Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve come to see you.
” She never knew what to say to him. Felt sort of stupid for saying anything at all.
But it would be weirder to sit here in silence, her thoughts fluttering around uselessly in her head.
Maybe he couldn’t hear her when she spoke to him out loud, but he certainly couldn’t read her mind.
“I’ve been busy, you know? Killing faeries.
I still haven’t found the Beast, but it can’t hide from me forever.
” She rubbed the scar on her palm, an oath made in blood.
“I … I saw Dickie today. He said he was sorry about what happened. He’s all grown up now.
Handsome. Works at the Kingmaker. Absolutely reeks of pomade.
Lady Bright, you would have given him shit for that.
” She laughed, but it died in her throat.
Seeing Dickie today had thrown her. He was a reminder of all the things Eddie would never have—a grown-up life, a future stretching out before him.
Instead, her brother’s body had long since rotted beneath the grass she now knelt on.
How different would things have been, if she hadn’t made him take her to the circus that night?
Would he and Dickie still be friends? Would they all be working at that restaurant together, as inseparable as they had always been, complaining about their rich-asshole patrons over pints of stout once their shifts had ended?
She shook her head, angry at herself. She might as well wonder what things would have been like if her mother hadn’t died, if her father had never dumped them at the workhouse before fleeing the country and his debts.
Those were things Eddie had forbidden her from ever thinking about.
It was pointless to look back when the past would never change.
Better to look ahead, to push relentlessly forward.
Give yourself five minutes to break, he had always told her when things went bad.
Then shove your pain down deep, where no one can see it, and keep going.
But it was hard not to look back, when she had dedicated her life to avenging the past.
She rubbed the scar on her left palm again. “I miss you,” she whispered, and leaned forward to press her forehead against the cold stone.
Oh yeah? What do you miss about me? She imagined him saying. Go on. Let me bask in your adoration.
There were a thousand things, of course.
The countless invisible threads that made up the tapestry of a relationship: the language of siblings, references only they understood, half-remembered jokes only they found funny.
She missed his smile—not the grin he used on the people he was charming out of their money, but the one he saved just for her, for those quiet moments when the nights were so cold they had to huddle together for warmth, their breath fogging the air.
The smile that said you’re a nuisance but I’m glad you’re with me.
It was a smile Lyssa imagined all brothers bestowed upon their sisters like a blessing, and she wished now that she had answered each one with I love you, too.
She missed having someone to huddle beside in this cold, unforgiving world, someone who would share his warmth with her simply because they were family, and because he loved her despite her sharp edges.
Their friends would say they missed Eddie because he was funny, and kind. But he was so much more than that.
He was everything.
And the Beast had taken him from her.
“Lyssa?” a voice said behind her, and in an instant she was on her feet, her pistol in her hand, Brandy growling beside her.
Lyssa’s father stepped into the light of the gas lamp at the edge of the cement walkway. He was clutching a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a creased photograph of their family in the other, taken before Lyssa’s mother had died. Before everything went to shit.
“What are you doing here?” Lyssa demanded.
She didn’t lower her pistol. “I thought you were in Westgate.” She had gotten immense satisfaction from seeing Warham’s worst debtors’ prison listed as the return address on his last few letters.
Had gotten even more satisfaction from burning what were probably pleas to help him, to pay for his release, unopened.
“I got out six months ago,” her father said.
“I’ve been visiting Eddie every week since, to make up for lost time.
” He looked old and frail now, his hair graying, dark circles beneath his eyes, the blood vessels in his nose broken from a lifetime of drink.
He was thin, too, the muscular frame he’d had as a younger man sagging, his shoulders stooped.
But he wasn’t in rags. He was dressed in the clothes of a clerk, as if he had just gotten off work.
The realization released claws of cold fury in Lyssa’s stomach, inching their way toward her throat.
He should be suffering, as his children had suffered.
Sleeping on the street with discarded newspapers for blankets, as they had often done.
“You don’t deserve to mourn him,” Lyssa snapped. “It’s your fault he’s dead.”
That wasn’t entirely true. It was her fault, too. If she hadn’t goaded Eddie into trying to win the prize money for killing some faerie-made monster in a cage, he would still be alive. But their father was the reason they’d been that desperate to begin with.
Lyssa’s father seemed to fold in on himself, the bouquet drooping as his shoulders slumped. “I know.”
The admission surprised her, but she didn’t lower her pistol. Didn’t respond.
“I’ve been trying to find you,” he said, his voice quavering.
“Since before they put me in Westgate. Since I realized your name wasn’t listed with Eddie’s on the memorial wall.
I had almost given up when I saw an article about the Butcher in the paper.
You may have changed your last name, but I knew it was you.
” Those words were accompanied by a disapproving frown that only stoked her fury.
As if he had any right to be disappointed that she’d wanted to cut all ties to him.
“How?” she demanded.
“Lyssa Carnifex, the most vicious woman in all of Ibyrnika, hunting the kinds of monsters that took Eddie’s life?
It wasn’t too difficult to figure out. You always did have a temper, and when it came to protecting your brother…
” He shook his head. “I sent letters to the post office box listed in the article, but I never heard back. I—”
“Save your stamps,” she said through clenched teeth. “I burn anything with your name on it unread.”
“I just want to talk,” he said, spreading his arms wide. Petals drifted from the flowers in the bouquet, scattering at his feet. “I want to apologize for—”
“I will never accept an apology from you,” Lyssa said. “I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to see you, I don’t want any more of your fucking letters. Do you understand me? You died the moment you left us at that workhouse, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Lyssa, please. I didn’t know what else to do.” Her father took a step forward, and she cocked her gun.
“Don’t think I won’t put a bullet in your heart,” she warned him, and he froze. “If you ever see me here again, you are to leave without speaking to me. Swear it.”
“I … I swear,” he said, defeated.
“Good.” She turned on her heel, whistling to Brandy, and plunged deeper into the park, where the light of the gas lamps didn’t reach, walking as quickly as she could until she got to the stone wall bordering the far edge.
It was almost double her height, and engraved with a complete list of the Beast’s victims. Lyssa leaned her back against it and let out a shaky breath, unnerved by how present her past was today.
It felt like a warning, somehow—but she wasn’t about to sit out here in the cold, picking it apart at the seams. She hitched her drawstring bag full of letters and newspapers up higher on her shoulder and secured her pistol in its holster.
“Ready to go home, Brandy?” she asked, and the bullmastiff huffed a heavy sigh in response.
A pang of worry squeezed Lyssa’s heart. Every trek back into this world aged her beloved friend, and he was already older than any normal dog his size should be, as Dickie had pointed out.
She knew she should stop bringing him along, but he hated to be left behind, and her resolve to do the right thing for him always crumbled at his first anxious whine.
Looking over her shoulder to make sure her father hadn’t followed her, she reached into one of the pouches on her belt and pulled out a stick of white chalk.
She drew three lines on the stone wall, forming the rough shape of a door, followed by a knob.
Then she tucked the chalk back into her pouch and knocked.
The lines she had drawn began to glow, and the Door swung open.
Lyssa stepped over the threshold, into the forest on the other side.