Page 18 of Ties of Legacy

Avery winced. “So you can go where you like, but you have to have the candelabra with you?”

He nodded. “My mother thought it was wonderful. But I’m sure that if you imagine me as a boy, you can work out how I felt.”

Avery thought what a gang of children would think of a playmate who carted a bronze candelabra with him everywhere he went and winced.

“But you must have explained it to your friends?”

Elliot shook his head. “You’re the first person I’ve ever told. My mother made me promise to keep it a secret. She was worried someone could use it to control me.”

He stated it matter-of-factly, but Avery felt the weight of the confession. He must have endured teasing—and sometimes pain and illness—for years. And not only had he been alone in it, but he’d done it all with the added burden of knowing the situation could easily become worse.

But he was telling her. Which meant he was desperate.

Or it was all a lie.

She shifted uncomfortably at that possibility. She had spent her life traversing kingdoms that contained talking birds, giant pumpkins, shifting landscapes, glass that bent as easily as cotton, and mirrors that could reveal a person’s true emotions.But Elliot’s tale was the most nonsensical one she had ever heard. Why had it taken her so long to question its veracity? Why did all her instincts tell her to believe Elliot?

“You’re telling yourself it can’t possibly be true, aren’t you?” he asked ruefully.

She flushed at being caught out.

“That’s the other reason I don’t tell people. It sounds like something I made up in a fever dream.”

“But you didn’t,” she said softly, sure of the words as she spoke them. “I’m good at reading people. I don’t think you’re lying.”

He stared at her across the flames, a look in his eyes that made her own drop away.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

She didn’t know how to reply. She didn’t think he was lying, but that only meant he believed his own words. And it didn’t mean he was a trustworthy person.

She cleared her throat. “But how did I get involved in this? If you’re saying the candelabra I have in my cart is the one you’re tied to, why did you return it to me? Stealing it only seemed to make you more sick.”

“That’s because it was the wrong one.” He rubbed at his temples. “I only got a glimpse of you holding it back at the smithy, and I just assumed…And then when I was retrieving it from the crate, you interrupted me before I got a proper look at it. It was only when the weakness hit that I realized it wasn’t the right one.”

“But it’s the only one I have,” Avery protested. “So why are you still following me?”

“Because if I get too far from your cart, I’m in so much pain, I can barely move,” he said simply.

“So you think…what? That someone hid it in my cart, and I don’t even know it’s there?” she asked. “What led you to think it was at the smithy in the first place?”

“Because my camp was raided one night, and a bunch of valuables were stolen while I was sleeping. Thankfully, I slept with my main coin purse on my person, but I had foolishly left the candelabra in my pack. By the time I woke up and realized it was gone, I was already too weak to have any hope of catching them.”

“So what did you do?” Avery asked, feeling more concern for him than she wanted to admit.

“Did you ever play that game Hot and Cold as a child?” he asked. “You know, the one where someone hides something and then guides a searcher to find it by giving instructions on whether they’re getting warmer or colder?”

Avery nodded.

“I was basically stuck in the kingdoms’ worst version of that game. Except instead of someone telling me if I was getting hotter or colder, I had to judge for myself based on whether my symptoms got incrementally better or worse.”

Avery winced.

“It took a long time,” he continued, “but I eventually tracked the candelabra to the smith in Henton. But he wouldn’t deal with me as a customer unless I joined a six-month wait list for a commissioned piece and returned on my allocated day.”

Avery grimaced, knowing that part of the story was indisputably true. The smith was famed for his inflexibility. It was the only reason she hadn’t gone straight to Henton six months ago and pleaded Bolivere’s case on their behalf. He’d even turned her away when she arrived a few hours early for her assigned slot. She knew the smith had already finished her lamp—she had seen it—but he had still made her return the next day.

“So, what? You decided to rob the smithy?” she asked with a laugh. But the expression on his face made her falter. “Oh. Right. That was what you were planning.”

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