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“I did,” Dolph told her. “I couldn’t risk doing it any other way.”
“Jianyu!” Abel was shouting from the other side of the roof, where Abel was leaning over Cela.
The sound of his name jolted him from the shock of seeing Dolph. “Viola,” he called. “I need your help. Cela—”
Viola turned away from Dolph and was moving before Jianyu even finished.
Abel had Cela’s face cupped in his broad hands. “Come on, Cela. Stay with me,” her brother begged. “Look at me. Right here. Just keep your eyes on mine.”
But Cela’s eyes were wide with pain and fear. Her hands were clutching her side, where Viola’s knife protruded, covered in her blood.
“Get out of my way,” Viola said, but Abel wouldn’t be moved. He tried to shake Viola off.
Jianyu knew it would take more than a simple touch to heal the wound made by that knife. Gently, he took Abel by the shoulders as Viola removed the small, carved seal from her pocket. “Let her work.”
He held Abel firmly as Viola wrenched her blade from Cela’s side. Cela cried out in pain, and Abel flinched under Jianyu’s hands as blood began pouring from the wound.
Cela looked up at them, her eyes first finding her brother but then looking beyond Abel to lock on Jianyu as Viola began to work.
He had been a fool.
Jianyu had told himself that he could not burden her with the sort of life the two of them might share. He had told himself that she was not strong enough to bear such a weight, that eventually she would break and come to hate him. But as her eyes remained on his, steady and clear, he knew himself for a liar. His fear had never been for her but for himself. Because losing her would break him in a way that nothing else had been able to.
She had not asked for tomorrow but only today, and he had been reluctant to give her even that. He would not be so stupid again. He remembered being healed by that seal, the small artifact they had stolen from Morgan’s collection at the Metropolitan months ago and knew that the next few minutes would not be easy for her. As the cold energy of the seal filtered through the air, he promised her silently that he would give her every tomorrow, a hundred times over. As he watched her skin knit itself together, he vowed that he would start today.
THE FUTURE’S PAST
Dolph Saunders knew he was a bastard and a fool as well. All the good that had come to him in his life—his Leena, his friends, his people at the Bella Strega—he hadn’t appreciated any of it. Not truly. Not until he’d been forced to live alone, hidden away in the unused upper floors of the safe house he’d charmed, guarding against any contact with his previous life. He hadn’t known what regret was until he had to stand by and watch Nibsy Lorcan destroy everything he’d built.
Because it was the only way to change everything.
But when Viola and Jianyu turned from him to help their fallen friend, he felt the bone-deep knowledge that his actions had changed more than he’d expected. He’d heard their voices these past weeks as they came up through the ceiling of the floor below. He’d watched from a distance as Jianyu had stepped forward to become the leader Dolph had always believed he could be, as Viola stood by his side without shame or regret, and he’d been glad for it. He’d been gratified that, for all his mistakes, he had somehow managed to set the foundation for something larger—something better—than he could have ever built himself. And they had done it without him. Despite him.
And if he felt the loss of something he could not quite name as he watched his friends, their heads bent close together across the roof, he did not regret it.
The rooftop was a disaster. It would have been so much easier if he could have stepped in an hour ago. Hell, months ago would have been preferable. But Dolph had done the hardest thing he’d ever had to do—he’d bided his time and waited. Even when he saw Nibsy in the park not an hour earlier, when he could have struck the traitorous snake down and ended the danger, he had held himself back.
While everything went to hell, he’d done nothing but watch, impotent and pointless, because he had believed it was the only way they might claim the chance to make a different world.
In one corner, a clutch of men in shining robes were huddled, fearful as children. Chairs and tables had been overturned as people scattered from the danger. One of the large cauldrons had been tipped over, and now its fiery contents were smoldering on the tiles. The rest of the Order had fled like the cowards they were.
Darrigan and the girl were getting up, and the way Darrigan was looking at Esta—the way he held her face in his hands like she was something infinitely precious—told Dolph everything he needed to know about the state of things between the two. The Magician and the Thief had become something larger and more complete together than either of them had ever been apart.
“It’s good to see you, old man,” Darrigan said, slinging his arm protectively around Esta. “I wondered if I would. But I should have known you’d want to make an entrance.”
Dolph shrugged. “Turns out I’m a hard man to kill.”
“You did this?” Esta asked Harte, glancing between the two of them. “You should have told me.”
“You know I couldn’t,” Harte said. “The fewer people who knew, the more likely it was to have a chance of working. Keeping secrets is the only way I’d ever gotten around Nibsy before.”
“I don’t understand,” she told Dolph. “If Nibsy didn’t kill you, why did you wait until now to show yourself?”
“I had to,” Dolph explained. He took from his jacket the small notebook that had been the bane of his existence these past months. Every time he had wanted to act, it had counseled caution, so he had waited until the words on those pages pushed him to this time and place, to this singular chance to bring the Brink’s power to an end.
“That’s why you gave Dakari the diary,” Esta said, looking up at Harte. Her expression shifted suddenly, and tears made her eyes glassy. “He did it,” she whispered to Harte. “He chose to help us. He saved us. But why the diary? How could you have predicted that would work?”
“I didn’t, exactly. But I knew Dolph well enough to know he would’ve needed some kind of proof,” Harte told her.
