I spurred my horsefaster, its hooves eating up the ground as we raced along the coastal road.
Purchasing Marin’s manor by the sea had been an act of desperation. I wished I could say I’d thought of it from the start. That I’d had this master plan to preserve her dream. But in reality, I’d woken up in a haze after a night spent wandering the kingdom’s back alleys looking for trouble.
Old habits. The kind I thought I'd buried. But without her, I slipped fast—drink, fights, nights where I didn't care if I came back in one piece. I wasn’t aware of the month, let alone the day of the week, until Bowen dumped a bucket of water over my head and mentioned the expiration of her father’s land agreement.
That was the day I realized I had to face the pain. That I’d never forgive myself if I let the last piece of her go.
And so, my soul-destroying apathy ended that morning when I raced into the royal record hall wearing unlaced boots and an inside-out tunic, and spent a fortune on a crumbling pile of stone and broken glass.
Years of saving from treasure hunts, salvaged shipwrecks, and a couple of risky relic runs had finally paid off. I had more than enough to buy the place, fix it up, and still have coin toburn.
Not that it mattered much. What good was a fortune if you had no one to spend it on? And there were only so many crystal chandeliers you could buy before you were just showing off. Not to mention, drawing the covetous eyes of thieves like myself.
A few signatures later, I was the proud owner of my very first home. An orphan who’d finally planted roots of his own. Only to find that home filled with the ghost of her smile, the echo of the life I’d wanted, and an unhealthy amount of spiders.
Ugh. So many spiders.
And it didn't fix anything. But it gave me something to rebuild. Something to look forward to. I stopped blurring the days with drink and poured myself into those crumbling halls like it was sweat equity for the soul. Board by board. Tile by tile. Trying to carve meaning out of the ruin.
It didn't bring her back, and I never thought it would. But her home saved the life of a man who'd never had one.
I dismounted my horse, tied him to the gatepost, and took the craggy stone steps leading to the manor, two at a time. Dust motes hung in the air, caught by the light as I threw open the door. But there was only silence on the other side.
She was gone. I knew it without checking the rooms. There was something about an empty house that you could feel in your bones. A hollowness, rooms waiting to be filled with sound and light.
At least, that’s what I imagined it should feel like. Bowen’s house was in constant chaos now, but it hadn’t always been. There was a time when the drapes were drawn and the windows barred. I remembered that silence. I’d even preferred it for a while.
I sighed and dragged a hand through my disheveled hair. I used to call Bowen sappy. Turns out, I was sappy’s melodramatic cousin.
My footsteps echoed through the great hall and past the curved staircase leading to the second floor. Annie had said she’d caught the woman snooping in the hallway, and seeing how the front door had been locked, she’d likely slipped in through the back terrace. That door never seemed to shut properly. Fixing it was on my list. Then again, with a house like this, what wasn’t on my list?
I slowed in front of a pair of arched double doors and swallowed thickly. She wouldn’t have gone in there, would she? The doors were kept locked at all times. Not that a lock had ever stopped Marin, or anyone of us, for that matter. For a crew like ours, locks were merely a delay.
But it probably wasn’t Marin. After three years? It was a foolish hope.
It could have been a vagrant, which meant fixing the terrace door jumped to the top of my list. Or, with my luck, it was a traveling merchant, forcing her way inside to sell a stack of kingdom almanacs.
Yeah, the joke was on me. Those almanac merchants were always so pushy, going door to door with their dusty volumes full of facts. I was lucky Annie hadn’t committed me to a full set. Those tomes were horrifically overpriced. And the sea glass was probably a ruse to lure Annie closer so the merchant could pitch her wares.
I blew out an irritated breath, convinced I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, and checked to see if the arched doors were still secure.
My hand froze on the handle.
Out of the corner of my eye,I spotted something lodged into the wood paneling: a dagger, and pinned beneath it, a note.
Even almanac merchants didn’t leave daggered calling cards.
Ah, damn. Hope is a wretched thing.I scraped my damp palms down my thighs and stared at the blade as if the possibility of what it meant hadn’t already sliced me open.
The first man to be felled by the wrong end of a dagger.
I leaned in, and with the breath bottled up in my chest, I dislodged the blade from the wall. Trapping the note beneath my hand, I flipped it over to reveal familiar, elegant handwriting. Except the message wasn’t nearly as refined:
You diabolical thief! You stole my house. I will reclaim it. Watch your back.
-M
I pressed my fist against the wall, letting it hold the weight my legs refused to carry. I read the note again. And again. Until I could have formed the words with my eyes closed.
