Page 120 of Blackwicket
Love you.
Chapter Forty-Three
The shore where I’d once stood with my sister and dreamed dreams of leaving to far-off places was now where she would rest forever, buried deep in the shingled rocks.
Hannah had spent several hours healing the worst of our injuries, knitting my ribs together, setting and correcting the bone in Victor’s hand, then tended Jack’s nose and Thea’s black eye for good measure as Victor and I began the long work of digging Fiona’s grave. Thea joined soon after, while Jack sat vigil by Fiona’s body, stroking her hair, until we were finished.
I comforted myself knowing that my sister had moved on surrounded by people who would miss her, who’d loved her deeply. She’d left an unending list of mysteries in her wake, but she’d also left a trove of golden memories nothing could tarnish. The girl Fiona had been and the woman she’d become would forever remain two separate people to me, and I would choose to hold her close as the girl who’d held me at night when I was afraid, who’d sat with me on the floor to read books by the fire, stolen sweets from the kitchen, and laughed into the wind sweeping off the sea.
The four of us built a cairn to mark her grave, and when we were done, Thea and I sat next to her, watching the waves roll over the beach. I was wondering what shape my life would take now that the Fiend was loose and my sister was truly gone, nowthat I knew I’d never had a father, that perhaps I wasn’t human at all.
Victor and Ramsey had both disappeared, and Hannah stood with Jack near the scraggly tree where Fiona and I had picnics with our mother. They were talking, Hannah pointing to the horizon.
“She was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Thea said at length. “And the worst.”
At this confession, she cast her eyes down at her fingers, which she ran across the smooth pebbles between us. She was unmade, wrapped in Ramsey’s old coat, her face bare and open, hair curling in the salt air. I’d never seen her so at home in her own body, a woman allowed to exist as she was without putting on a show to survive.
“Where will you go?” I asked.
“Jack and I will find somewhere, maybe in the community where I was raised. There’s not much out there. Without curses, the Fiend won’t bother us.”
“What about the Veil? It seems they’re in a position to replace the Brom, or at the very least start a war with them. William was pretty certain they were going to be a problem.”
“William did always have a knack for having his thumb on the pulse of trouble,” she acknowledged, then paused, shaking her head. “We’ll just have to do our best. There’s no other choice. What about you?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked over my shoulder, up the slope of the bare, grassy cliff to the ruins of Blackwicket House, the only place I’d ever belonged.
“Will you miss it?” Thea asked, her fingers brushing against my hand in a show of sympathy and in an effort to connect as two people who understood loss. Misery had brought us together. We might not have chosen each other without Fiona,but we were bound by our love for a woman who’d irrevocably changed us both.
“I always will,” I turned away from the view with a resigned smile.
“I think I will too,” Thea admitted.
“It’s time to go,” Victor called, he and Ramsey returning, their faces grim. Though Victor hadn’t said a word since we brought Fiona’s body to the beach, he spoke now with the authority I knew him best for.
Thea and I stood, moving at the same moment to hug each other. She still smelled of jasmine.
“If you ever need anything,” I said.
“I hope I never will,” she replied.
We approached the gathering of our motley group, and I realized no one among us belonged here.
“It’s not safe for any of you to stay here anymore,” Ramsey said in his brusque bass, “So we’ve decided to relocate you.”
“Ramsey?” Hannah’s voice was surprised, pleased.
“Better to ask forgiveness,” he gruffed.
“Where could we possibly go that this won’t all reach us?” Thea asked, “Are you going to sail us across the sea?”
Ramsey barked a laugh.
“No, there’s nothing out there anyway. What you see there is a line that doesn’t exist.” He lifted his chin to indicate the horizon.
“That can’t be true.” I examined the distant junction between water and sky where ships had sailed. “Nightglass was a shipping town. There were always merchant vessels docking at this port.”
