Chapter 22 Nes
Nes
Nes had never seen a death omen. But this symbol felt as good an omen as any. She couldn’t smell any magic in the symbol on Toran’s neck, but she suspected it was only a matter of time before she did. The symbol would not remain simple lines on skin.
Toran had tried washing it off that first night. She’d watched him lean over a Wharf canal and scrub until his skin was raw. The symbol remained. Magic, as they knew, couldn’t be scrubbed clean.
Toran insisted he would be fine, promised her it didn’t change anything.
But she saw how he walked the streets with one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other itching to cover the back of his neck.
She couldn’t stop herself from imagining him dead in the street—from replacing Mikaud’s body with his.
By now, she’d memorized every line, every slope, and every point until it felt like she was the one seared by the symbol. Every time she closed her eyes, it blazed to life in the darkness of her head. So she didn’t close her eyes.
She didn’t sleep.
When she wasn’t with Toran, piecing together their trap for Damari, she was tailing him, guarding him from a distance.
At the end of each day, he’d head back to the Siren’s Hair.
She couldn’t watch over him from the room she shared with Suri, so she scaled the surrounding buildings and watched from their rooftops.
She’d easily found the window to his bedroom, and since then, she’d spent every night atop a roof, monitoring the man sleeping beyond it.
A man she was trying—and failing—not to give her heart to.
“Do you really think I don’t know what you do all night?”
Toran’s words brought her out of the memories of the past week. She blinked at him. “Do you really think I care?”
They walked side by side down the main street in the Wharf, fish guts splattering at their feet as fishermen gutted the day’s catch.
They’d spent the last three days wandering from sector to sector in search of a hidden stash of magic, but so far, all she’d been able to pick out were trifles.
Today the only thing she smelled was rotting fish—something she was sure Toran could smell, too.
The first part of their plan was simple. Damari was stealing magic. All they needed was enough magic to lure her to them. Their only problem was Damari had already hit the largest sources. This was their fourth sector in three days with no luck.
And magic wasn’t the only thing they couldn’t find. For reasons neither of them could learn, Genna had vanished.
Toran lifted a hand, running his thumb over the skin beneath her eye. “You have bags under your eyes. Are you sleeping at all?”
She turned her head, making him drop his hand. “I’m fine. You’re the one I’m worried about.”
He huffed a soft laugh. “I don’t need you watching over me.”
“You’re right,” she snapped. “You need the entire King’s Guard watching you. I don’t understand why you won’t tell them about the symbol. Or at least tell Quint.”
“I don’t need to burden Quint with this, too,” he said.
“Still no luck finding siren hair?”
Toran made a face. “We can handle this ourselves.”
She scrunched up her nose. “Right, because we’ve been incredibly successful so far. It’s not like Damari’s killed a dozen guards. Oh wait…”
Toran met her gaze. There was something in his eyes, a curiosity that warmed her toes and made her fingers curl.
“What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“I see you biting your lip.” She poked him in the arm. “Speak. Or my finger will become my dagger.”
He stared at her and seemed to decide her threat held merit. “You’re cute when you’re being sarcastic.”
Cute. She’d always spent too much time snarling and snapping for anyone to call her cute. It felt like a word meant for someone else entirely, for someone who hadn’t spent the last two years bloodying herself up in the Ditch. Someone like the original owner of the ring in her pocket.
She pushed ahead. “Yeah, well, you’re an ass when you’re being stupid.”
She twisted, looking over her shoulder at his infuriatingly handsome face. His lips still twitched with a smirk.
She’d come close to kissing him in that desolate warehouse.
She blamed the burning corpse fumes on her lapse in judgment.
Even now, in her right mind, it was hard not to let herself get lost in him.
Hard to remember he was a means to an end—getting her father out of prison.
She had to put her father above herself.
But all that felt impossible when Toran was right here in front of her, his gaze telling her he wanted her as badly as she wanted him.
Maybe she could allow it if he gave in first.
Toran didn’t move.
A motion over his shoulder drew her eye. People hurried past their little corner. More and more. Hordes of them, all headed in the same direction.
She turned slowly. Dread crashed against her when she realized where they were.
The scene was the same. The same as the one weeks ago, the same as the one that had crept into her nightmares.
Four guards surrounded a girl on a platform—newly constructed—high above the excited people. Between them, anchored below the wooden planks, a circle of cemented stone, and inside a drop into the ocean.
And the girl tied up…
Horror struck Nes—a blow so concentrated she nearly fell over—upon seeing the girl’s face.
Genna.
Nes clutched Toran’s sleeve. “Toran. Did you tell anyone? When I said I smelled magic on her. Did you tell anyone?”
His whole body was rigid, shock freezing him in place. “You—we…” His words were slow, as if he didn’t know how to string them together. “No. But maybe Fell knows.”
She dug her nails into his skin. “She’s not the Witch.”
When he looked at her, he tapped his nose. “But you said she had magic on her.”
She shook her head. “That’s not— It was a small amount. No more than the fighters in the brawlhouse get.” She tapped her flask. “No more than I carry around.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“You didn’t tell Fell about it?”
“Of course not.”
“Think, Toran,” she insisted. “We know who we’re after. We know her name and where she’s from. Genna’s lived in Gadore her whole life. She can’t be the Witch.”
Toran nodded. “You’re right. I know that, and…” He frowned, gaze returning to the platform. “Fell knows that. He knows the extra training Genna went through to become a guard, to prove she isn’t the Witch. Why would Fell sentence his own sergeant to death?”
“Does it matter?” she snapped. “We have to save her. Get up there and put a stop to this.”
His fingers fell down her arm to entwine with hers. “I can’t stop it.”
She wrenched her hand away, glaring at him. “That’s Genna up there. And even if it weren’t, have you forgotten the day we met? The name Marnie Sorphel? Because I haven’t.”
Toran visibly flinched.
“Innocent women and girls shouldn’t have to die because of the slight chance they might be the Witch. You know Genna isn’t the Witch. You may not be the Crown Prince, but these are still your people to protect.”
“Nes.” He reached for her, but she hopped back.
“They shouldn’t have to die at all,” she snarled.
Atop the platform, a guard began to read the Condemnation of the Witch. If she was going to do something, she had to do it now.
She started picking her way through the crowd. Someone grabbed her by the shoulder, and she whirled, ready to start throwing punches, but the look on Toran’s face made her pause. His expression hardened, determination rising like smoke from a fire.
Relief pounded through her. “We need to save Genna.”
“I know what to do.” His eyes were focused wholly on the well. And then they were on her, and a question poked through the soil in his eyes. “Do you trust me?”
She’d asked him the very same question that night in the brawlhouse. And his answer had been no. She’d asked him again in the distillery. And he’d said yes. But when he’d asked her…she hadn’t been able to answer.
Trust. The word rang in her mind, the echo clanging against her heart.
Suri’s words rose from memory. I know you don’t trust easily.
Suri had been right. She didn’t trust easily.
After Phineas, she barely trusted at all.
She’d seen the world’s fangs, watched them tear out throats and gnaw on nerves.
The monsters were out there—large, small, ugly, and beautiful—and she never wanted to be fooled by one again.
But this was Toran. And if there was one thing she was sure of, it was that he wasn’t one of the world’s monsters. He was someone who, deep down, she wanted desperately to be. One of the ones who fought off the monsters. A good person.
“Yes.”
His hand came around hers, and then they were running. Away from the Drowning Square, away from the Witch’s Well, away from Genna.
They sprang from the Gash like ale from a barrel and crossed back into the Wharf, the canal running alongside them. He dropped her hand so they could run faster.
She wanted to know where in Nephele’s name they were going, wanted to ask how running away from Genna could save her.
But she didn’t ask. She only kept running. She’d told him she trusted him. She would trust him until her lungs gave out. And then, if he hadn’t shown her how to save Genna, she’d choke the air from his.
Toran turned sharply, cutting between a street leading to the Southern Gate and one with an expanse of beach and curling ocean at its end. They were in an alley; two large, windowless buildings rose up on either side.
Toran threw aside several stacked boxes, muttering to himself. His movements were jerky and frantic—the only sign of his nerves. She tapped her fingers against her thumbs.
“What are you looking for?”
When he didn’t answer, she started shoving boxes and crates aside, too.
“Here,” he said just as she toppled a crate of empty bottles. The glass smashed on the cobblestones, and he winced. She glanced back, but no one appeared at the alley entrance. The city was preoccupied with the Witch drowning.
Toran pushed a wide length of board aside, revealing a set of steps leading into the dark. A darkness so full it could have been a staircase to hell.
Toran struck a match and lit a lantern, taking the steps ahead of her as she followed. Light blazed around them, but the farther they descended, the less she could see in front of her. She inhaled deeply, salt and sea irritating her nose.
“What is this place?” It smelled too much of the ocean for her comfort.
“The underground,” he whispered. “The canals that crisscross most of the city aren’t there naturally.
Gadore’s first builders carved them out of the rock to direct the fresh water from the Tremaw River through the streets.
But there have always been a number of natural canals in the area, they’re just deeper. ”
“Do any lead out of the city? Beyond the Walled Prison?”
“Probably, but I don’t know which ones.” He raised the lantern, then nodded. “This way.”
“So these underground canals,” she said, eyeing the way the light danced off the strip of water to her left, “they connect to all water sources in the city?”
“No, they’re kept separate. The builders had to make sure the canals they carved aboveground had no chance of merging with the natural ones, since these source from the ocean.”
“But do all the ocean ones connect?”
“Yeah.”
She stumbled, and he caught her by the elbow. His hand was warm on her skin.
“If you think about it,” he said, not letting go, “everything connects to the ocean.”
She didn’t want to think about it. To her, the ocean had only ever been an endless source of cruel death.
She started tapping her fingers against her thumb again.
Toran’s hand slid from her elbow down to her hand.
His fingers spread hers, her palm opening to press against his.
Her tapping stilled as he held her. They walked briskly through the dark like that.
Toran came to a stop in front of an archway.
It had been sealed shut, but the builder seemed to have gotten tired of the job and stopped halfway up, leaving a window into the passage beyond.
Holding the lantern high, Toran leaned over the half wall.
Nes leaned with him, saw a flash of her reflection at the bottom, caught a whiff of salt water, and stepped back.
Toran handed her the lantern and pulled a rope off the wall beside them. “This tunnel connects to the Witch’s Well,” he said as he tied the rope around his waist. “It’s how they remove the bodies after they drown.”
She glanced between him and the still water waiting behind that half wall. A current of nerves tugged her stomach every which way.
“I’ll swim to the end and pull Genna out.”
She set the lantern down, freeing her hands. She’d trusted him. And now he was trusting her to pull him back, to keep him from drowning.
He stared at her, a question in his eyes.
She pressed her lips together. She didn’t have the right answer. “I don’t want you to die.”
He bit his lip, a grin breaking through. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
She secured the rope around his waist, then the other end around her own, giving it a yank so hard she felt the fibers grate her hip bone.
“Just don’t let it be the last thing.” She lifted her chin, meeting his eyes. The light of the lantern made them look more golden than brown. “Got it?”
“Don’t worry.” He winked at her. “I have plenty more things I want to say to you.”
Then he turned his back and began his descent into the tunnel.