Page 99 of Blackwicket
I didn’t hesitate to leave.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Thea’s dulcet voice and sensual magic were already rippling through the corridors as I dashed through murky halls in search of someone—anyone—who could help me prevent this before it began. But the house was abandoned, residents and guests already in place for the banquet. Unable to gauge how much longer I had until William expected me to be present, I went to assume my station with reluctance.
After ascending the grand staircase, I followed a faint light into a vestibule, where I found the person I’d fervently prayed to any god who would listen to see again.
Inspector Harrow was positioned in the narrow space, gazing through a cracked door, the entrance to the mezzanine. He resembled a specter, observing the living from the shadows.
“Victor.” His name was an invocation.
He caught me as I rushed toward him, but not to embrace. Instead, he grasped my bare arms, holding me away from his body as though the idea of feeling me against him was repugnant.
Despite my fury, I debased myself by opening my magic to his with no hesitation, tenderly searching for the connection it yearned for. Still, he remained hidden, unresponsive, devastating me.
“You couldn’t resist, could you?” he said, demeanor icy.
“What do you think William would have done if I hadn’t shown up?” I’d gone hoarse with anger. “Victor, he’s insane.He’s going to attempt replicating Grigori’s experiment, with Jack as the vessel, and me as the fucking battery. Somehow, he worked out that I was the one who gave you that magic.”
“Because I told him,” he replied, low. “Grigori had me locked in a fuckingclosetin an old third-floor guest room, so no one would realize I was still alive. But William would come to the door in the middle of the night and talk to me. He’d asked me what I’d done to make it through. Our father’s eye was on him to become the next vessel, and he was afraid, wanted to learn how to survive it. He was my brother, so I told him the truth.”
I was ashamed of the sense of betrayal I felt when there was no reason for it.
“And he told Grigori.”
“He didn’t,” Victor said, and there was a mournful affection in his voice; love that lingered for someone who’d become unrecognizable. “He kept it a secret. There’d have been no stopping Grigori Nightglass if he’d known. But it appears William was just waiting to use it to his advantage.”
I put my hand over his.
“We can walk away from this. Don’t you have your gun? We can kill William, we can…”
“Half of the people attending are high-ranking officials of the Authority, Eleanora. Even if William is dead, this will continue to go on, more children like Jack will be yanked from their beds and brought to this wasteland to become cursed weapons. That was Grigori’s dream — an army of Drudge with physical bodies to deliver the most effective destruction. There will always be a Grigori or a William waiting in the wings, and the only way to stop the spread of this is to burn the field.”
“But you don’t have to be kindling.”
“I want to be,” he said roughly, shaking me once, his cool composure rupturing. “I’m acreature, Eleanora. Half of me is amonster that feeds off human depravity, and I have less and less interest in restraining it. There has to be an end to it.”
I selfishly rejected his desire to be free of the lot he’d been assigned. Instead of wrenching from his grasp, I placed my hands on his chest, but he didn’t allow me to move any closer than this.
“You’re not a monster, Victor. You’re the inevitable, glorious outcome of survival. If you do this, maybe the Authority will be destroyed, but the Veil won’t be, and your sacrifice will only prove them right. They’ll toast your death, pat themselves on the back and tell everyone they knew magic was evil, and then move on to wipe out every person like us. You’ll hand them that victory if you dig your own grave.”
I’d kept my volume low, not wanting to attract attention and shorten the last minutes I had to persuade Victor to choose a different path.
“I see,” he growled, the menace of the sound amplified by the lack of light, the circumstance of our standing so close at the threshold of a battle neither of us wanted to fight. “I should live so that I might be a looming consequence, a weapon for whichever ideology sounds prettiest?”
“That is the most witless thing that’s ever come out of your mouth,” I hissed, incensed, pounding a fist into his sternum to relieve the fury his willful obtusity inspired. At last he pulled me closer, but it was only to prevent me from striking him again. We glared at each other, my eyes welling.
“You should live because you deserve to,” I said, refusing to look away, venting my remaining anger through my words. “You shouldn’t die here surrounded by people who don’t give a damn about you. Don’t force me to suffer your loss a second time, because you can’t be bothered to acknowledge what’s in front of you.”
The dull light from the banquet hall illuminated half of hisface, casting the rest in deep shadow. For a moment, both of his aspects merged, and he stood before me, whole.
“What’s in front of me, Eleanora?” he asked, meeting my ferocity with calm, his voice a murmur.
I was poised to tell him it was me, but I had nothing to offer Victor. We were no longer children racing bugs through a garden, or competing to locate the smoothest stone to throw into the sea. We weren’t sitting shoulder to shoulder, hopelessly nurturing untamed flowers filled with curses—a useless idea dreamt up by my mother to distract us from the fact that we were drowning, and that help was never coming. In truth, our futures were bleak. Victor was right; even if William was gone, the Authority wouldn’t be. Everything awaiting us involved a fight. Yet for the first time, Iwanted, with all the life-affirming hunger a soul is meant to feel. I wanted Victor near, wanted the scent to linger, to penetrate my skin. I craved the warmth and shock of him, the surge of magic that rose in me when he leaned close. I’d experienced desire in both my body and beyond it, a desire that compelled me to remember I was more than just blood and bones, destined to be swallowed by the earth.
“I want some bit of happiness before I hand myself over to the fate I’ve been dealt. Even a moment of that is worth fighting the tide for. Let life be our revenge, Victor. Please.”
He didn’t touch me again, but his magic, which until now had been restrained, reached for me, but Thea’s song was over, and she introduced, with warbling flair, William Nightglass.
