Page 81 of Mortdale

I looked out the window, staring at the foggy, bland scenery. “An apology would be nice.”

“I’m not sorry about anything in particular. I’ll come back to you when I think of something.”

“Stop staring while I’m so indecent.”

“Nothing indecent about it.” He leaned forward again, his palms resting against each side of my ribs. “What’s the matter? I can hear that something is worrying you.”

I’d briefly forgotten he could read my pulse like a musical sheet.

I sucked in a deep breath, struggling to let it go. “I feel lost. I’m not used to it.”

“Is this about Ethel?”

“Her, too. I can’t think of her without a fist-shaped hole appearing in my heart. I don’t want to fail her. We’ve been failed enough in this lifetime.”

“Look at me,” he said, his palms gently moving up and down the sides of my ribs down to my hips—and I was grateful to have skipped the dratted corset. “You can never fail her. I have a feeling she knows that, too. She’ll never blame you. I would have never blamed any of my siblings, either.”

“It’s grown so much bigger now, too.” My lower lip slid between my teeth in an attempt to hold back what I told him next. “I think it could be somehow related to this Madness. What I’ve been sent here to find, I mean.”

His hands settled against my hips as he seemed to mull over my words. “How about we worry about it after we have some more proof?”

“I can’t schedule my feelings like you do. Time management isn’t particularly my strongest suit. Not even dealing with my emotions. I just let them run loose. They’ll figure it out somehow.”

His hands slid over my hips to settle on my lower back, bringing us even closer. “You just let them cannibalise you. Eat at you little by little. You think if they rip you to shreds, there will be nothing left to feel. Relief. That’s what you’re after.” He pulled me closer to him, sliding me to the edge of the seat. “I understand it. I’m tempted, too. All the time. Sometimes I let myself just stand there, let them have a go at me. It makes you think there’s some relief in pain. But it’s only distraction, and distraction isn't a relief. And then you constantly look to distract yourself. Any way you can. And more and more, until the pain just accumulates and accumulates. When there’s only a hollow thing left of you is when you realise it’s only filled with pain and nothing else. You’re this walking, talking, breathing vessel of agony.” His golden eyes paced between mine, soft and careful. “We don’t want to be that, do we?”

I shook my head. A dull ache weighed against my malar bones, and I pressed my trembling lips shut.

“We won’t be that,” he said, briefly resting his brow to mine before pulling away, putting so much space between us that I finally took notice of gravity.

He put my shawl around my shoulders, and helped me out of the carriage. Rain had soaked the entire left side of his shoulder, but he held the umbrella steady over me as we crossed through the wide, tall cavaedium gardens filled with dark puddles of water.

“What did they do to this place?” The dead shrubs, the rotting plants, the snag trees crawling in maggots and flies, all of them were…gone.

He looked around. “It seems they’ve cut everything down.”

Huh.

The Basilica was fuller than the opera on a Saturday show. People crowded it corner to corner, all veiled in black and anonymity, chatting about with candles in their hands.

Just brilliant.

He brought me under a roofed part, next to a wide column shielded from the rain. “I’ll have to greet the exarch.” Glancing somewhere behind me, he nodded, and Henry and Arthur came to step beside me as he brushed a hand down my face and left.

“Who are these people?” I asked, gathering my shawl tighter around me.

Arthur looked just as uncomfortable as I did. “Anyone Logan could send an invitation to.”

“Great.”

“The more people attend, the more reason we will have to scan the grounds of the Basilica without being followed around. We had to make the distraction as big as we could. Though—” He looked at me. “We didn't really have to. Mortdale has been dying to see Logan’s little witch take the dip.”

“You’re one to make a joke after almost two weeks of not speaking to me.”

He grunted, scanning the place. “One more fistfight and he might shiv me in the gut.”

Fistfight? “You’ve been fighting with Logan?”

“He’s been taking drills pretty seriously these past couple of months.”