Chapter 11 The Pistol
Leena ripped the mask from her face the moment she reached the street outside the cathedral, leaning on a tree to catch her breath. Revelers passed her, their laughter and joy a discordant sound in her ears. She felt like a phantom caught in the world of the living.
A tug on her shoulder drew her attention. She looked up to find herself staring into brown eyes the exact same shade as her own.
“Rami!” she cried.
He didn’t wear a mask, and it was clear that his health had improved since she’d seen him last. Tall, wiry, with a dimple appearing on his cheek, he had returned to the boy she’d always known.
She wasn’t supposed to see him until tomorrow and had been counting the days, so this felt like an unexpected blessing.
Except he glowered at her, his brows like slashes on his face.
“Come with me,” he growled, tugging her into an empty alleyway.
His right sleeve was pinned to his shoulder, and Leena had sudden images of the night Rami lost the arm.
Her brother swaying on the threshold—I lost control of the horse, Leena—then flashes of the grizzled doctor tutting under his breath as he examined the mangled limb. Gotta come off.
Rami had been only fourteen.
Baba had forced Leena outside during the procedure, but she’d hidden beneath Rami’s window, unable to bear the thought of her younger brother alone with the surgeon’s steel. She must’ve soaked in all Rami’s screams that day, for somewhere in the empty chambers of her body they still reverberated.
Leena shrugged away from Rami’s grip, glancing over her shoulder for St. Silas. He had still not returned.
“What—” she began, but Rami interrupted her with a quick wave of his hand.
“You lied to me,” he ground out. Rami had been running with the Black Coats ever since Baba had been taken away, and he’d adopted their quick, sarcastic speech.
He even wore his hair like them, slightly long at the back, tied with a leather string.
“You said you had found employment as a nanny. I had to learn from a damned Black Coat that my sister is now working for the most notorious man in Golborne.”
Leena urgently glanced over her shoulder again. “I understand your anger, but I’ll see you tomorrow and explain everything.”
Rami jammed his hand into his hair. “I have a fight for the Black Coats tomorrow. You will explain everything now.”
“No, Rami, I can’t. I will try to come find you the day after tomorrow, in the morning.” Leena wasn’t sure if St. Silas would accept the change in date, but pushed on despite her worries. “Wait for me until then.”
“I won’t go anywhere without you,” he growled. “Whatever the Saint is blackmailing you with doesn’t matter. We can outrun him.”
Leena laughed mirthlessly, memories of all the men St. Silas had butchered roaring in her mind. “I am indentured to him, Rami. We cannot outrun him, and we cannot fight him. This is my life now.”
St. Silas’s smooth voice cut through the alleyway. “Ah, this must be your special friend.”
Leena whipped back to look at St. Silas; he was no longer wearing his mask. She noticed the flecks of Basil’s blood staining his shoes.
Rami—always impulsive—stepped in front of her and unsheathed the sword he carried by his hip in one fluid motion. Leena silently cursed his stupidity. Of course he would reach for his sword as his first line of action.
Leena’s gaze swung back to St. Silas, remembering the pistol in his pocket. Her heart thundered. A blinding image flashed through her mind of Rami’s torn body bleeding life onto the cobbled street.
Before she could rethink her actions, she stepped between them.
“Leena,” Rami warned angrily, “get out of the way. St. Silas must answer for what he has done to you.”
“I went to him,” Leena snapped, barely turning to face her brother. “For the medication that saved both our lives.”
Rami’s eyes narrowed, his grip on the hilt white-knuckled. “It doesn’t matter.”
St. Silas’s voice was a leveled taunt. “The infamous Rami Al-Sayer. I must thank you for almost dying. Otherwise, your sister would not have made her way to me.”
Rami swore at St. Silas, profound and low. The Saint’s expression didn’t change. “Make no mistake, I will run you through, Saint.”
Leena’s senses were jarred by how quickly the pistol appeared in St. Silas’s hand, aimed at her brother’s heart.
“No! Mr. St. Silas—” She whipped her head around to face her brother furiously. “Rami! Do not be a fool. Go home—”
“No,” Rami grated out, eyes blazing with hatred.
“If you do not leave now, it will be me who is punished,” Leena hissed through her teeth, searching for anything to make Rami understand and go.
She saw hesitation flicker across her brother’s face, then he let loose another low curse.
His eyes darted between Leena and St. Silas in suspicious hostility.
Finally, Rami took a step back, sword still in hand but not held at the ready. “I’ll be expecting you the day after tomorrow, Leena.” He finally sheathed his sword and Leena let out a long breath. “Or I’ll come back for you myself and damn the consequences.”
“Fine. Just go,” she urged again.
St. Silas didn’t lower his gun until her brother was no longer visible among the crowd. Leena stood alone with him in the alleyway, breathing as if she’d finished a race.
Still, St. Silas’s gaze didn’t waver from her brother’s now departed back, a cold promise in his eyes. “If he attempts to break our contract again, mark my words, Miss Al-Sayer—brother or not, you will be left as the last of your line.”
Leena, who felt more helpless than ever—trapped within St. Silas’s palms, forced to act as his ghost-seer when all she wanted to do was to get rid of this bloody curse—bit her tongue to keep silent. She tasted blood from how forcefully she wanted to scream at him.
St. Silas didn’t wait for her response. He slid his gun back into the pocket of his coat, hand already reaching for his timepiece…and in that moment, Leena saw the gun gleam, its gray edges reflecting bluntly in the flickering lights.
Without thinking—without even daring to breathe—she lurched toward him in one swift motion and pulled the gun out of his pocket, forcing it into his abdomen.
Neither moved.
Leena’s harsh breathing sounded wild in her ears.
She felt St. Silas’s muscles stiffen beneath her touch even as his face remained impassive.
“Have I now found your weakness?” Leena’s hand spasmed over the cool metal, but her voice still held the echoes of anger that she had carried since touching the ledger.
His laugh was quiet. “I’m afraid not, but a good try.” Then his voice dropped to a whisper, as if meant for the two of them alone. “Will you shoot me?”
He continued to stare down at her, his pupils dilating.
“Mark my words, I can and I will.” Leena sounded far more steady than her racing heart, a part of her aghast that his reaction was so staid.
Her finger twitched on the trigger. Could she do it?
She’d never held a gun nor threatened anyone in her entire life.
Could she live with the consequences of such violent action?
“If I shoot you, think of how many confessors I can save from so much pain and misery.”
“No doubt hundreds. Countless.” His reply was quick and sure, his gaze not leaving hers.
“As long as you live, you will use me as an object to inflict misery. I will be weaponized.”
“You speak facts, madam.”
Leena’s mouth twisted. Every reason she listed was an unshakable truth, and yet the actions she would have to take to rid the world of such a beast would very likely shatter her.
The avid interest grew in St. Silas’s gaze, until it seemed to swallow his eyes whole. He watched the warring expressions play across her face with barely concealed fascination. “You don’t have it in you,” he challenged softly.
A bead of sweat trailed across Leena’s temple despite the chill autumn air.
St. Silas’s voice dropped to a seductive burr.
His head leaned toward her even as his body remained still.
“I admire your bravery, Miss Al-Sayer, and thus far I have been lenient with you, but this has gone far enough. Give me back my pistol. I give you my word I will not punish you for this fruitless act of defiance.”
“Does the Saint of Silence ever forgive any threat against him?” Leena’s eyes blazed into his, daring him to contradict.
“Then shoot me.” His response was low and gravelly.
When he saw that Leena remained still, St. Silas’s mouth pulled upward. “You cannot, can you?”
Leena dug the pistol into the hard muscles of his abdomen and was gratified to see his jaw twitch. “Did you know that Lord Avon led the Wake?”
Even if she could not kill St. Silas, Leena would do everything she could to wrestle some secrets from him, to gain a modicum of power. Otherwise she would choke on her own continual helplessness.
A glimmer of amusement flashed through St. Silas’s dark eyes. He was enjoying this. “Aye, I knew.”
Leena had never stood this close to a man before, but she was so caught up in the moment she did not notice that her chest was almost pressed against his save for the gun that she held between them. A passerby would think they were two lovers caught in a secret embrace.
How different that image is from this bitter reality.
Leena threw him the same question that Basil hadn’t had an answer to. “Who runs the Wake now?”
St. Silas raised a brow and repeated her own words back to her. “No information comes for free. A secret for a secret.”
Leena stared up at him in disbelief. “I have a gun aimed at you.”
“Yet I feel certain that I am in no danger of losing my life.” His gaze was not soft as it roamed her face. “A secret for a secret.”
Leena only had one secret left to trade—that ghosts could possess her body when she slept. And she would never give him that power, even if it cost her life.
Leena held the pistol firm a moment longer. She could not shoot St. Silas—not when vitality poured out of him like a flood. Not when he was so very alive.
A part of her shivered at the punishment that he would soon deliver, although she knew he would not kill her while Lord Avon’s ghost remained unfound; that he had made clear.
No, he would make her merely wish for death.
More than ever, Leena desperately needed her actions tonight to result in a victory, or else she would’ve brought down the Saint’s wrath for nothing.
“Why do you seek Lord Avon?” It was the third time she’d asked this question, each time receiving only vague responses back.
His gaze hardened. “As I’ve said previously, Avon took something from me.” Then, as if it was wrenched from him: “Something that has caused my life to deviate from its original path.” A frown etched his mouth. “That is all you will get from me, madam, so I would be careful with your next steps.”
Leena was grimly satisfied by this, because it was she who had received a confession from St. Silas this time, just as he’d forced so many from others.
Just as she’d begun to withdraw the gun, St. Silas’s fingers closed firmly over hers.
“Next time—” His voice was rough as he dragged her hand holding the pistol away from his abdomen and toward his chest, right below his heart.
He glanced briefly at their intertwined hands, a harsh furrow to his brows.
“If you ever desire to kill someone, not merely deliver a flesh wound, aim here.” He pressed more firmly still.
“I assure you, sir, this will be the last time.” Leena’s lips barely formed the words.
He finally released her, but his eyes remained locked on her as if against his will. Leena stepped back, silently returning the weapon, wondering if her punishment would come immediately.
St. Silas took the pistol wordlessly, pocketing it back in his coat. With a final dark glance at her he turned to go, not waiting for her to follow him as he melted into the crowd, his mask firmly back in place.
—
What Leena had done that night was no small thing. She, Leena—with no name and of common blood—had held the life of the Saint of Silence in her palm. For one brief moment, there had been a shifting of power.
Throughout the night, across the streets that pulsed with revelers, in the carriage that descended farther into the mouth of the city, St. Silas’s vivid gaze kept dragging back to her—as if Leena’s actions had created a new tether between them.
Leena met his glances steadily even if her heart was heavy with uncertainty. Every time St. Silas’s eyes returned to her, they flickered with annoyance—No, Leena thought jarringly, not annoyance, but with a sort of unwelcome realization, as if he was seeing her for the first time.
As if he was unearthing her.