Luna sucked both lips in, biting down. Then, drawing a swift, determined breath, she knelt and placed her hand atop his where it rested on his knee. His flesh was icy cold, but she felt him flinch at her touch. Not enough that he pulled away, but he was, at the very least, aware of her presence. “Mr. Grimm,” she said, “how do you feel?”
He blinked again, his gaze still fixed on the stove. His lips moved silently, then pressed into a line. Finally, he managed a low mumble: “I’m fine.”
“Did . . . ?” Luna hesitated. But she needed to know. She needed to get the information from him if she was going to help him properly. “Before the . . . the severmist gas hit . . . did that sorcerer hurt you? That is to say, are you Dire-burnt?”
A long moment of stillness. Then he nodded.
“All right.” Luna’s stomach clenched. “Where?”
“Internal,” he muttered.
She nodded again. Then, squeezing his hand, she got to her feet and hastened to the kitchen. As much as possible, she kept her mind focused on the task at hand, gathering dried sprigs of Saint Hylda’s Wort, stinging nettles, and shriveled calendula, grinding them together while the kettle boiled. She would not let herself think about Ward. About that earring. About her near-escape. She would not let herself think about whether or not shehadescaped, or was it just a matter of time before Lancelot Mortimer tracked her down. Would he follow her here? Or did the wardsmen manage to catch him? Because, from the sound of it, Ward and his fellows had, indeed, made it to the warehouse and had some sort of altercation with the Brute Boys. Ward had said something about sorcery slung about, so maybe they’d apprehended the sorcerer?
“Oh gods,” she whispered suddenly, lifting her head from her work and blinking into empty space. “What about Tobias?” She’d quite forgotten the poor fool boy in all the rest of the tumultuous business of the evening. Green Mother willing he’d gotten out of that warehouse in one piece, made his way home to his mother. She’d have to make a point of checking on Mrs. Goddard once she was done here. If she could.
Shaking a strand of hair back from her face, Luna focused on finishing her tea. She scooped her ground-up mixture into aball strainer, poured hot water into the pot, and set it to brew. Then, fetching a fresh cup as she went, she carried the steaming pot back to the nook, where Mr. Grimm continued to sit where she’d left him. Whatever he’d suffered tonight, combined with the strain of carrying her from the warehouse district, had quite done him in. Judging by the color of his skin, she didn’t think he was in danger anymore, but how could she know for sure?
Luna poured the Saint Hylda’s tea then moved to kneel in front of him again. As she did so, she noticed the shattered remains of the previous teacup and saucer. She bit her lip, but decided she simply didn’t have it in her to deal with that right now. Instead, she lifted the fresh tea to Mr. Grimm’s lips. “Drink this,” she said, her hand quivering more than she liked, threatening to slosh hot liquid down his front. “Please.”
He obeyed, dully. With some persistence, she managed to get him to drink the whole cupful. Then she set it aside, without so much as a glance at the leaves within. Somehow, she couldn’t bear to look at any futures just now. Something told her she would only see things she’d wish she hadn’t. Sitting back on her heels, one hand still resting on his knee, Luna peered up into her employer’s face. He looked so pale and drawn, and it nearly broke her heart.
“Such a ghoulish figure was he,”Lancelot Mortimer’s voice whispered in the back of her memory,“wreathed as he was in shrouds of anti-glitter, the blackness of the Void lodged deep in his eyes!”
A sharp pain gripped her chest. Luna dragged in a little half-sob. She didn’t want it to be true. She didn’t want any of it to be true. She wanted everything that man had said to be a damned lie!
But she had to find out. One way or another.
“Mr. Grimm,” she spoke softly. “Can you . . . can you answer a question for me?”
His eyes focused for a moment on her fingers. Slowly, dully, they lifted to her face. With the thaumatic light bulb behind him, she couldn’t see much of his expression, but the blue irises seemed strangely dark.
“Mr. Grimm,” she said, “is it true? That you are the Grimshade Lord?”
His eyes widened slightly. Some of the dullness vanished from his face, replaced with the sharp clarity of horror. “Did . . . did Mortimer tell you that?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He huffed out a gust of air and turned away from her. His eyes shut, and the line of his cheek drew tense. She watched his jaw clench, watched the muscles in his throat constrict as he swallowed.
Then he nodded. Once.
“Oh.”
Luna sat back on her heels, her hand dropping from his knee. A storm seemed to rumble in the depths of her chest, distant for now but rolling in fast on high winds. She managed a little nod, opened her mouth to speak, but the only word to emerge was a second, even softer, “Oh.”
Mr. Grimm’s head turned sharply, his gaze fixing on her face. He leaned forward and reached for her hand, but she wrenched away and would not look at him. “Miss Talbot,” he said, his voice urgent, “I need you to believe me. I am . . . I am not that person anymore. I am ashamed of who I was. Of what I became. But I have put all that behind me. The Grimshade Lord is dead and buried. There is . . . there is only me left. Only Nigel Grimm.”
She looked up at him. Slowly, carefully. As though afraid what she saw might damage her eyes. He leaned toward her, his expression so raw and strange, his skin still stained with the purple severmist. He looked wild and unkempt and bizarrely unfamiliar, and yet the urge was still so strong in her to lean intohim, to let him catch her in his arms, even as she saw he wanted to. To let him pull her close, press her head to his chest. To let herself know the comfort of his beating heart and his strong embrace, and to simply believe what he said without question, without doubt.
Instead, she asked in a breathless whisper, “Who was Janet?”
Whatever color was left in his cheeks drained away, leaving him gray as death. She could feel how desperately he wanted to turn away from her, to break her gaze. But he didn’t. He held on. It was a stubborn choice, almost violent. Almost cruel. “Janet was her real name,” he answered at last, his words devoid of expression. “Janet Thorpewillow.”
Luna nodded. She did not have to ask who he meant byher.She knew. Gods above and below smite her, she knew. “So when you told me the Shadowbane Lady had killed her, you meant . . . you meant . . .”
“The Shadowbane Lady destroyed everything that once was Janet Thorpewillow when she became Jastira. When she became the darkest version of herself.”
A sob threatened to rise from the depths of her gut. Luna wrinkled up her entire face in an effort to keep it at bay. Clenching her jaw tight, she sniffed hard. “And you were her lover.”
