Page 108 of The Toymaker's Son

Devere emerged from the back corridor, sleeves rolled up, his face pale. “Get out!”

The men ignored him and surged in.

He backed up. “I have no wish to hurt you. Leave before I am forced to.”

“Like you did your father!” Russo shouted.

Devere’s gaze snapped up and speared Russo, but then he saw me and the fury on his face darkened. How had I not seen how monstrous he was? He wasn’t even human. He was a machine, a fae’s creation to torture a lonely man in his grief. I’d heard his heart tick-tock, but that, too, was a lie.

“What are you doing?” he demanded of me.

“The right thing.”

The gang members rushed him. One punched Devere in the gut, doubling him over, and the other caught his hair, using a fistful to hold him. Each blow chipped at my resolve… but he could end this. He was in control.

The mob marched him from the toy store out onto the street.

The whites of his eyes showed and his teeth gleamed in a sneer. “Val, don’t do this.”

“You killed your father,” Russo declared. “You’re a foul degenerate.”

Cheers rose up. Fists punched the air. Justice would be done!

“You can stop this anytime you like,” I growled back.

“You won’t like your life. Listen to me, Val. You don’t want to go back to that.”

“That’s not your choice to make!” Still he spewed the same controlling mantra. I was my own person, with my own life. Not a broken toy he’d toss in the corner when he was finally done with me.

They dragged him down the street, toward the main square and the old hanging post. He struggled, but not as much as I knew he could. Snow spun around us, and the icy wind cut to the bone. The storm was his doing, all of this washisdoing.

“Just let me go,” I muttered. All he had to do was let me go, and this would end.

One of the gang members slung the rope over the hanging post.

Devere froze in their grip, watching the noose swing on the end. “Wait, stop, this is wrong.”

“You’re the wrong one.”

As soon as I’d said it, I hated myself, hated everything, hated him for making me do this. He swung his head around and looked at me as though I’d taken his clockwork heart and crushed it in my hands. Shock blanched his face, then horror at what was to come. “Val, wait.”

Russo looked at me.

I nodded.

The men marched Devere up the wooden steps.

“If you go back, it’s over. It’s all over!”

“I know.” And I did, even as my tears wet my face again. But dreams weren’t reality. And my love for him had been a lie, even if I still felt it like needles in my chest.

“Stop.” He bucked in their grip, but as soon as the noose dropped over his head, he froze and scanned the crowd with wide, fear-filled eyes. The wind stopped too, and the snow hung suspended in the air like frozen dust.

“Devere Barella, you will hereby hang for the murder of your father, Jacapo Barella,” Russo announced.

“You’re all small-minded fools! I have done nothing wrong!”

One of the men grasped the wooden handle that would see the steps collapse beneath Devere.

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