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“Orin?” Elowen asked.
Paesha shook her head, eyes cast to the floor. “He said he had some stuff to sort, and he’d be here as soon as he could.”
“How many would you say there were, Dey?” Hollis asked, stepping beyond the door to take a seat in one of the old wooden chairs lined up against the wall.
“At least fifty, not including any that might’ve been in the halls.”
“Just tell us what happened,” Elowen interrupted. “Nyx saw the soldiers leaving the castle and came to get me, but we’ve heard nothing else.”
“They’re hunting me. I should have known it would happen. They found out I was in the last show, I’m sure.”
“Well, you killed two of his guards, and we incapacitated a lot more. The new king might’ve been scorned when you left him at the altar, but now he’s pissed,” Paesha said. “The only thing we can do right now is wait it out.”
“I have to perform in the next show, no matter what. If I don’t…” My voice trailed off, unwilling to reveal the stakes to strangers.
Elowen leaned into me. “You better make a plan then, because my brother isn’t going to miss the opportunity to see you captured before you can walk out on that stage.”
Orin never came. And though I knew it was foolish, I found myself on the rooftop of the apartment building, still dressed in the golden gown, with a heavy blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I stared out over the city, listening to the gritty ambiance of Requiem. Far off in the distance, the clock tower in Perth orientated me. Beyond that, my father’s castle could hardly be seen, bathed in shadow, a reminder that even the strongest could be slain. No one took their title into eternity. In Death’s court, people were nothing more than wandering souls.
Every movement in the city below snatched my attention as I watched for armor, but more than that, I sought a broad figure with a heart of stone and enough stubbornness to break me.
“You’ll catch a cold,” Hollis said, startling me. I whipped around just in time to see his smile curl. He walked to the edge, wrapping age-marked hands around the rusted railing. “Care to share your thoughts with an old man?”
“Trust me, whatever’s twirling around in this brain isn’t worth the time it takes to speak it.”
“Oh, Little Dove. We all see the way you look at him.”
“I’m not supposed to care,” I whispered. “Caring makes me vulnerable and weak. And all we do is fight. He hates me.”
“No. He doesn’t. You just make him feel things he’d rather believe are not possible. In all my years, I’ve learned that when it comes to matters of the heart, there’s nothing rational about it. And just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, you find out you know nothing at all. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have traded the only freedom he would ever know for your safety.”
We watched the crows peck along the cracks in the ground, bathed in the blue cast of the streetlamps. A hunched figure, wrapped in layers of worn clothing, stepped a little too close, and the birds scattered, cawing their disapproval as my mind spun with confessions best left unspoken.
But I was weak. And more than anything in the world, I needed a friend. This friend.
“It’s just… There are these moments I have with him that feel so raw and real. Where the man behind the anger that consumes him comes out, and that version of him is so kind. The night he married me… I know he lied, Hollis. I know he was doing it because he had to. But there was a sincerity there, in his hopes for the world, in the way he’d looked at me. And I’ve spent every day since longing for the way he’d made me feel.”
I swallowed the thick lump in my throat, leaning my head on the old man’s shoulder when he wrapped an arm around me. My nose stung, giving away the tears that pooled in my eyes. I tried to force the heavy emotions away, but there was safety here with Hollis. A space he’d created where I was never judged. “You’ve always made me feel like more than what I am. Thank you.”
He chuckled, leaning his head to mine. “You are more than you believe yourself to be, my girl. He’ll see the light one day, I’m certain.”
“But what if I truly am only darkness?”
“You aren’t. But if you were, then he would see the cataclysmic depths of you and wonder how you find the will to light up a room, all the same.”
I swiped away the tears freezing my cheek. “How did you get so wise, Old Man?”
He sighed, watching his breath plume in the chilly air before drawing back his sleeve to reveal an aged golden band on his forearm. “I loved a woman once. Promised her the world, and I intended to keep that promise. I didn’t have much more than the clothes on my back and a spool of thread in my pocket, though. So, I stitched her a bracelet and promised to replace it one day with a gold band. I wanted everything with her. The home, the children, the world.”
I was almost afraid to ask. “What happened?”
He lifted his chin to the silver moonlight, eyes falling shut as a single tear fell, wrenching my heart into pieces. “My sister killed her.”
Old men weren’t supposed to cry.
Jarek slammed a handful of posters onto the table the next morning at breakfast, his massive brown hand wrinkling the whole stack as he slumped so heavily into the metal chair beside Quill, I thought it might break. “We’ve got a problem.”
Sliding my glass of water to the side, I lifted the paper, eyes gliding down the beautifully crafted message.
