Chapter 47
I watch from a distance as a plume of smoke billows out across the city.
The Nomad and I are on the rooftop of an inn where he purchased us a room beforehand as a rendezvous point.
Acel and Phoenix were supposed to meet us in the room.
Which is why we’re on the roof instead, the Nomad had explained.
So we can see them coming. Or anyone else they might have brought with them.
I’d thought the precaution unnecessary. I don’t know what exploded above us, but it was enough to collapse half of the playhouse. Thankfully, the Nomad had paid off the playhouse worker who brought Acel and Phoenix to the Sister to get all of the workers out of that half of the building.
He’d arranged it beforehand without telling me, although, apparently Phoenix knew.
Still, Acel didn’t. And I’m doubtful Phoenix or Acel survived.
My stomach twists itself into knots. I’d be lying if I said most of those knots weren’t for Acel. Though it also makes me sick, thinking of Phoenix dead.
The Nomad and I wait on the rooftop anyway. The jewelry box is still clutched in my hand.
“Your knuckles are white,” says the Nomad.
I turn my attention to them, noticing for the first time not only the color, but the aching in my joints from keeping my fingers locked in the same position for so long.
“You haven’t said a word to me since we escaped,” says the Nomad. He gently weaves his fingers between mine and the jewelry box, interlocking them with mine and attempting to unseat the box from my grasp.
I tuck the box in tighter to my chest in response. Keeping one hand on the box, I write on the pad with the other.
They’re dead is all I manage. Even then, with my non-dominant hand and the way I’m still trembling from the adrenaline, it’s hardly legible.
“Perhaps,” says the Nomad.
I jerk my attention toward him, the hurt in my eyes communicating enough.
“You think I don’t care,” he says.
I think you got what you wanted, I write. I think that Phoenix’s life never mattered to you. And Acel…
My hands tremble so much over his name. What am I to write about Acel?
The man who had confided in me, the man whose love for the princess burned not hot, but steady, eternal.
Will the princess even hear of his death?
Or will she simply hear of the playhouse collapsing, her heart aching for the tragedy rather than for herself?
You promised him, I write.
“Acel knew the consequences when he signed up,” says the Nomad. “He was the queen’s bodyguard for years. You think he didn’t know how to calculate the risks?”
And did you tell him all the risks? I write. Did you—
Again, I can’t finish that sentence. Not when I’m afraid of the answer.
“Did I set off the explosion?” the Nomad asks, his gaze intent upon me. “No. But I did plan it.”
Anger stabs at my throat, leaving a welt behind. I’m not sure who I’m more angry at—him, for being so ruthless, for discarding Acel and Phoenix as if they were pawns on a chessboard… or me, for believing despite everything that there was some ounce of goodness in him.
I’m a very bad man. Hadn’t he told me that himself?
“It would be like you to take all the credit,” says a voice from behind me.
I whip around and find Phoenix and Acel standing behind us, alive and well. Acel is bleeding, and there is a patch on his neck that appears to be burned, but he’s standing and breathing. And Phoenix…
Phoenix doesn’t have a scratch on her.
I glance toward the Nomad. He has the look of someone whose dinner guests are late for the party, as if he was expecting them there all along, simply sooner.
How? I sign, maneuvering the box so that it balances between my forearms, freeing my hands.
“Turns out Phoenix here,” says Acel, “can blow herself up.”
My mind seems to cave in on itself even as Phoenix explains what happened above us.
“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” she says. “Terrible, really.”
“Yes. Quite unpleasant to witness as well,” says Acel. They don’t have to go into the gory details for me to imagine Phoenix’s torn flesh, spattering across the room as she exploded from within.
“That’s not even the worst part,” says Acel. “The worst part is her body knitting itself back together afterward.”
Phoenix. Her name makes more sense now. Although I’m probably not the only one glad she doesn’t reincarnate as an infant afterward.
“Yes, well, I guarantee it’s more unpleasant for me than it is for you,” says Phoenix.
How are you alive? I sign to Acel.
“That would be my doing,” says Lars, stepping out from the door and onto the rooftop. “No one told me the meeting place had changed.”
“That’s because we don’t like you,” says Phoenix. That’s not the reason, but now doesn’t seem like the time to correct her.
“Impractical woman,” says Lars in a manner that seems more like he’s assessing Phoenix than intentionally insulting her.
“Lest we stray off topic,” says the Nomad, “Lars here used some of the magic from Phoenix’s painting to create a shield for Acel. A sort of back-up plan.”
Acel holds up a metal bracelet dangling from his wrist at the same time Lars says, “That’s a gross oversimplification of the mechanism.”
Before Lars can dive into a gross overexplanation of the mechanism, I interrupt with the question that’s itching underneath my skin. And the explosion? Did it kill the Sister?
Acel snorts. “If only.”
“No,” says Phoenix, “but it distracted her for a while. The fire’s still burning. That playhouse is her prized possession. She’ll be busy salvaging what she can from it rather than chasing us.”
“For now,” says Acel.
The way he says it makes it seem as if for now is a quite short amount of time.
“Exactly,” says the Nomad. “Which is why we need to be out of here as soon as possible.”
I take that as my cue to open the box. When I press my finger against the button, it clicks open. Inside, there is… nothing. The box is empty.
I feel as if I’ve been gutted. All that’s inside is a velvet cushion, five jagged indentations marking whatever used to lie there.
“You’re kidding,” says Phoenix.
I glance at the Nomad to read his expression, hoping, for once, for that smug I know something I haven’t told you look.
Instead he’s staring at the box, blinking, as if his eyelids are a stage curtain.
As if drawing them then opening them once more will banish the current scene and reveal one in which the box contains whatever he’s looking for.
“Please tell me this is your idea of a joke,” says Acel. “What? Did you already remove it before we got here?”
Phoenix is next to start. “If you’re trying to swindle us out of our reward—”
No, I sign with one hand, bringing my fingers together, then balancing the box between my forearms again. I’ve been with it the entire time.
“And why would we trust you?” says Phoenix. “You are clearly in love with him. And besides—I’ve heard your story. It’s not as if you haven’t been swindled by a man pretending to love you before.”
“Hey,” says Acel, his voice a warning, the Nomad’s body language even more so.
Her words land deep in my gut. But I hold my hand out, stopping the Nomad from getting anywhere near her.
She’s right to be skeptical, I write. But I look at Phoenix, and I don’t know how to prove it to her. My words won’t do a thing, but maybe my eyes can. Maybe she’ll be able to see the honesty there.
I’m not lying to you.
I refuse to look away. Phoenix’s mouth hangs open slightly, her tongue positioned to the side behind her teeth.
“I’m done,” she says.
“Done?” says the Nomad.
“I just got myself on the wrong side of a Fate for you,” she says. “All because you claimed you knew what you were doing, and I believed you.”
“How was I to know that someone got to it first?” says the Nomad. “Clearly I was right. It was at one point in that box.”
“Yes, well, the Sister didn’t know that it was gone, did she?” says Phoenix. “Otherwise she wouldn’t have kept that box in the safe. Which means she thinks that you stole it. She thinks we stole it.”
“Are you going to turn us in, then?” says the Nomad.
“No. I’m not that stupid,” says Phoenix. “I’m putting as much distance between myself and you as possible.” Phoenix walks away. And no one stops her.
“You think you don’t need my protection,” says the Nomad.
Phoenix laughs and without looking back says, “You can’t protect anyone. You’d do well to remember that, Tink.”
And then she’s gone, the door to the roof slamming behind her. Only a few seconds pass and, much to the surprise of everyone on the rooftop, Lars follows after her.
“I don’t think you’re going to be the one to convince her to stay,” says the Nomad.
“That is far from my intention,” says Lars. “My involvement with you has caused me to be complicit in the unthinkable. I can no longer participate when such evils are involved.”
The Nomad glances at me, brow rising.
I think it’s because we blew up a theater, I write.
“Ah,” says the Nomad.
Then, spinning around and looking as if he’s forgotten something, Lars hurries up to me. Before I can react, he slips something into my pocket. “For your wings,” he says by way of explanation before sauntering off toward the door.
It clicks shut behind him.
“And what about you?” says the Nomad, looking at Acel. “Is this where you give up?”
My heart twists. I didn’t get the tapestry for him. Not that I’m certain he’ll care. Not after what the Sister told him of his fate.
Acel isn’t looking at him. Isn’t looking at me. Instead, he stares off into the distance toward the plume of smoke littering the sky.
“I don’t end up with her in the end,” he says.
We heard, I sign.
“Yes. I thought you might have,” he says. “So I suppose it doesn’t matter what I do.”
“So you’re just going to leave?” says the Nomad. “Fade into obscurity?”
Acel laughs, the sound pained. “I’m no idiot.
I might have come on this journey in the hopes of being with the woman that I love.
I gambled everything on that ending. I gambled and I lost. The queen won’t accept me back.
Not after I abandoned my post so quickly, without explanation. And even if she would—”
I finish his sentence with my quill. You don’t want to put yourself through that again. With the princess.
Again, his face looks pained. “I would have been content,” he says, “to live the rest of my life adjacent to her. That’s what I told myself, anyway.
But that was a lie. I was always going to want more.
Hope for more. And I was going to spend the rest of my life hoping for something that was never going to happen. ”
“Are you thanking me?” says the Nomad.
“Far from it,” says Acel. “If I were going to thank anyone, it would be Tink here. But I’m not exactly thanking her either.”
That seems fair.
You’re coming with us? I sign.
“It’s not as if I have anywhere else to be now, do I?” says Acel. “What am I supposed to do? Join a traveling band?”
Something about his words taps on my skull, tickling my mind.
I open the box again and stare down into it. A memory flashes before me—a sound, melodious and haunting in my ears. I trace the edges of the indentation of the artifact. I let out a silent huff, staring incredulously at the Nomad.
“What?” he says.
You’re so stubborn, I write. You put us through all this trouble for nothing.
“Yes, well, I can see that now,” says the Nomad, gesturing toward the empty box. “Had I known it was empty—”
No, I interrupt. No. Had you just told me what the artifact was to begin with, we could have saved all this time.
For once, the Nomad shuts up.
“Tink,” says Acel. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
I know who has the artifact, I write. I know who’s had it all along.