Maybe Emeric wants to light a candle for the trial.
I drop my cloak on the plain stone bench. The chapel doors latch behind me, and I spin on a heel, suddenly nervous. “What’s going on?”
Emeric’s back stays to me, his hands still on the doors. “I could ask you the same.” He sighs, then turns around. Even in the dim flickering light, I can see shadows under his eyes. “What are you doing, Vanja?”
I narrow my stare. “What are you talking about?”
He takes off his spectacles and runs a hand over his brow. “The day after you dropped me in the Yssar, I paid a visit to aMeisterFrisch. I told him the prefects had reason to believe he was buying thePfennigeist’s stolen jewelry, based on Yannec Kraus’s ledger, and that I would ask for clemency if he agreed to send a messenger to the outpostimmediatelyafter anyone tried to sell him the Eisendorf jewels.” He pinches his nose. “And then I completely forgot about it. At least, until this morning, when the messenger arrived and I discovered you’d stolen the ledger.”
Scheit.
“It’s none of your concern,” I say. At least—it shouldn’t be. Not if he’s keeping his promise to let thePfennigeistcase go until after Adalbrecht’s handled.
“Is this because of the plan for tomorrow?” he asks exhaustedly, returning his spectacles to his face. “Because I know it’s not perfect, but it’s the best for—”
The best for everyone.That’s a little too close to home. So, of course, I lie. “No.It’s not about the plan, it’s just a loose end.” Then I realize exactly why he cares. “You’re the only one who knows I sold stolen jewelry. You won’t get in trouble for me doing it while I have an amnesty token unless you snitch on yourse—”
“What? No, I don’t . . .” Emeric waves a stiff hand. “I don’t care about that. What do you mean, loose end?”
I look away. “It’s clear everything will go fine without me, so . . . I have business to take care of.”
Thebefore I gois implied.
There’s a strange, splintering crackle in the air between us, static lightning flickering over a powder keg. I want to fight, to scream, to run. I want to have something to hope for again. More than anything, I want him to ask me to stay.
Instead he just shakes his head, incredulous. “Business. I can’t believe you.”
“I said it was none of your concern.”
“But it’skillingyou!” he explodes. “You being selfish just feeds the curse! I can’t believe that after—after everything, you still only care about yourself!”
“BECAUSE I’M THE ONLY ONE WHO DOES!”
My voice rings in the chapel like an hour-bell. Emeric stares at me, utterly floored.
“You haveno right,” I snarl, “to tell me adamnedthing about what I care for. I have nothing after this but what I take myself. I am a commoner and an orphan and a servant, and I haveonlysurvived by being selfish, becausewho elsewill care about a girl like me?”
“Vanja—” he starts, but I am not done.
He’s nicked an artery, and I am bleeding words.
“When all this is over, what do I go back to? The mother who left me for dead? The godmothers who only wanted a servant? Gisele gets to go back to Ragne and the castle her parents bought her when theysold me. Andifyou survive, you get to go back to your family, your prefects.” I scrub a fist over my eyes, ashamed at the rattle in my voice. “Which isonlyan ‘if’ because you’d rather kill yourself getting revenge for Klemens than—than—”
“It’s you,” Emeric says, abrupt.
That stops me cold.
He’s gone very pale, a tense current strung in every line of him, like he faces a different kind of execution. “It’s . . . it’s for you. I could wait for the other prefects to get here, if I just wanted justice for Hubert. But it would be too late. You can’t break the curse while von Reigenbach is a threat.”
I shake my head, wholly confounded,refusingto comprehend. He’s not saying what I think he’s saying. No, I’m not hearing right, I know what I am, it’s impossible—
Emeric crosses the stone floor to me, leaving charged inches between us. “I’m scared too,” he admits softly. “And I don’t want to go.” Unsteady fingertips rise, hesitate, trace the line of my jaw, careful, featherlight like before, like it could be the last. They stray to the corner of my mouth, and a helpless note spills into his voice. “But please, Vanja. Don’t ask me to watch you die.”
Fury and fear are written in his eyes, familiar like my heart is a mirror, like I traced them onto the glass myself. Fury and fear—and the same desperate, searching heat.
Emeric’s head tilts, bows, halfway to me. He’s waiting. Asking. I can still run. I should, I should, everything in me wants to run—
To him.
