“Do you have to?” I asked.
I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway. I didn’t want him to go. But at least he was doing something. At least someone was. I don’t think any of them believed they could win. It was more like they didn’t care if they ended up dead, as long as they got their revenge. As long as they died fighting.
I let my eyes rest on him longer than I should have. His ash brown hair was windswept and messy, his face half in shadow beneath the trees. The faint scar curved under his eye, and the stubble along his jaw made something in my chest pull tight. He still looked like Will, but he wasn’t a boy anymore.
“We know where they are,” he said. “And we’re going to kill every last one of them for what they did. Their leaders. Their guards. Even their cooks. All of them.”
He turned to me and cupped my face in his hands like he was trying to memorize it. Like he didn’t want to forget me.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered.
“How can I not?” I snapped. “It’s suicide. I—I can’t lose you too.”
I wasn’t trying to be cruel, to make everything about me, I just needed him to see it.
How much it hurt.
“I have to get back to work,” I said, cutting him off before he had the chance to speak. Then I turned and started walking toward the gate.
“I’ll be back,” he said softly. Like he meant it. Like saying it out loud could make it true.
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ll come back to you,” he said again, firmer this time. “No matter what happens. I will. I promise.”
I wanted to believe him.
Gods, I wanted to believe him, but all I could think was that it might be the last time we sat there together.
I rolled my eyes, trying to cover the ache building behind them.
“If you see Aran…” I started.
Will’s eyes flared, the soft blues burning red.
“I will kill him,” he growled.
His gaze then dropped for half a second, to my lips, then back up to meet my eyes.
“Will you come see me off?” he asked, but all I could see was him holding back all the things he couldn’t say, because I was doing the same thing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I knew that I was making a mistake.
From the moment I stepped outside at the end of my shift at the bakery, it felt as if the wind itself was trying to stop me from meeting Arche. The cold hit me hard, as if it wanted to shove me back inside, back into pretending anywhere still felt safe.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t eat, couldn’t breathe. Arche had said he might be able to help, and that was all I had, thatmaybe.
The streets were silent, but not peaceful. Never peaceful anymore. Just quiet in the way a battlefield is after the last scream. The blood was still on the cobblestones, dried into the cracks. Someone had tried to scrub it away, but it remained, clinging to the stone. A broken window yawned open on my left. Glass glittered in the light, sharp and jagged. I pulled my cloak tighter, told myself I wasn’t afraid. But I was.
Not just of the night, or what I was doing—being stupid and desperate enough to risk everything.
And then I saw him. Arche stood by the alley just outside the bakery, tall and still. A shadow against the cold light, his hands buried in his coat, and for a second, I just breathed.
He was there. He hadn’t lied. That wassomething.
“Good evening,” I said quietly, stepping closer.
