They stood there like that for a long time. For as long as it took for her heart to break and piece itself together again. Patrick wiped the backs of his fingers over her freckles until the tears ceased.
“If you tell me you want to leave and never come back, I’ll take you away,” Patrick told her. “You only have to say it.”
Nina took a moment to answer, armoring herself bit by bit. “The last time my mother really spoke to me was in that house, in this town,” she said. “She left it to try and find a way to dig me out, and she died for it.” Nina looked at Patrick with steely eyes. “There are people all over the continent with their last hope in our hands. What you saw…” she said, and he knew she was imagining her father, deteriorating into that cot. “It’s not just in that house. It’s everywhere. You and I, we can change it,” she said. “It’s about time I did something to change it.”
He paused, not knowing if he should say what he was about to. “I needyou to survive it,” Patrick said. “I can’t see you hurt.” Though he feared she had already been hurt in all the ways a person could be.
“When I was under the Artisans’ roof, they wanted to weaponize me,” she said. “When I hid from them, they found me. What is there to do but fight back?” She squared her chin, pushed her shaking lips together, and Patrick felt relief overtake him at seeing this strength return to her.
“I’ll do the fightin’, darlin’,” he promised her, looking from one hazel eye to the other. “But you’ll be the one to change everythin’ for good.”
He pressed his lips to her forehead and held them there. Felt heat and hurt and a thousand other things transfer in that touch.
And then he backed away from her. Wishing, as he had innumerable times, that the two of them were any other pair.
“G’night, Nina.”
“Would you stay if I asked?” she said. “Just to sleep.” She paused. “I—I don’t sleep well anymore. Not since…”
Since Kenton Hill, where they’d shared a bed.
He should deny her, but what man could bring themselves to?
He sat in an unforgiving wicker chair all night, pulled close to the bed, where Nina slept fretfully.
But when his hand rested against her forehead, she quieted. Her eyelids settled. Her lips parted and released a breath, like it had been trapped in the cage of her.
So he kept it there until his arm deadened, and until his own eyelids drooped shut, and he dreamed of yellow hills, yellow hair, and a girl who felt like the sun.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVENINA
I woke the next morning in a frigid and unfamiliar room.
I recalled tangles of nightmares all evening—holes opening up in the earth and me pinwheeling into them infinitely, bracing for a shattering end that never came.
There was mercy in the sunlight touching the little window.
I turned my head to find Patrick still in that chair, his head hinged back, his mouth slack, purple eyelids unmoving. He didn’t flinch when I slipped out of bed.
I leaned down to touch a wave in his hair, to push it off his brow, and for a moment I was captured by how peaceful he looked in sleep. It was the only time there was no edge of tension on his face.
Someone had slipped a fresh newsprint beneath the door, or rather, jammed it beneath. I had to edge the door open to pry it free.
I held it up to the light, shook open the paper.
And froze at the headline.
My eyes sped over the rest, stopping at certain points, reading and rereading but not fully absorbing.Lord Theodore Shop… killed… alongside one Ms. Polly Prescott.
For an endless moment I looked down at the front page, trying to make sense of it. A train crash? Trains driven by Artisans didn’t crash. Not unless they were blown up. Not unless—
Lavnonshire, surrounded by water and swamp, came rushing to mind. Then Theo aboard that train.
There was nothing about what had caused the accident. Only that Theo and Polly, not so long ago standing beside me, were now dead.
I dropped the newsprint to the floor and left the room.
I found myself slipping out of the now-empty pub into silent streets. I followed them down a familiar route. A strange sound was welling up inside me, spilling over. A keening. I pressed a hand against my mouth and bit down on it.
