Page 13 of The Toymaker's Son

My heart pounded harder, as though his words had a direct link to it. “What are you implying?”

His gaze lifted, seeking mine across the table. His delicate lashes came down, then fluttered up again. “You have no idea of the mechanism in which you’ve been placed.”

“Help me understand.”

“If only it were that simple.”

“It is. Just say the words you need to say. Tell me the truth.”

Devere smiled, and for a second, my heart stopped. His smile hooked into my chest and stole my breath.

Devere stood, and the sensation vanished like a click of the fingers. He buttoned his coat and looked down. “Whatever brought you back to Minerva wasn’t worth the price.”

“I am not in danger. These people will see you hang,” I whispered. “I cannot help you if I do not know the facts. You must tell me what you know.”

He lifted his gaze and peered across the room, into a distance I couldn’t see. His smile had grown stiff and wooden on his lips. “You’re in his sights now, a minor cog in his greater machinations. He does not give second chances.”

“Whose sights?”

Devere swept across the room, his long coat flaring.

I shot to my feet. “Dammit, Devere… who!”

The others in the inn stared.

Devere hesitated, his hand on the door handle. If he turned, I’d see his eyes, and in them, the truth. As boys, I’d heard him laugh a thousand times. I’d touched his hand, his face… his lips. I’d kissed him, wanting him more than anything, more than my desire to escape this wretched town. The boys we’d been were gone. He’d changed, grown cold, and I might have had something to do with that. But those old embers still glowed in me, threatening to burst to life, full of heat and fire. I couldn’t allow that to happen. I couldn’t fall for him again. But I could save him, if he let me.

“Who?” I asked again, softer, silently wishing he’d turn around and sit back down, but knowing he wouldn’t.

“The nightmares,” he said, and left.

ChapterSeven

Wildflowers droopedfrom the overgrown graves I passed. A path had been cut through the grass, allowing visitors access, but that was as far as any caretaking went. Lichen-covered gravestones leaned left and right, and some had toppled altogether.

The midday sun barely fought off the frost in the air. I’d kept my coat buttoned up to my neck and hurried through the older graves to the newer ones and the stone marking where my parents lay six feet down.

The stone was black granite speckled with quartz, like stars. Someone had paid a great sum for it. Not me.

I stood over the slightly raised lump in the dirt and expected to feel something. The telegram with news of their deaths had come one evening, years ago, while I’d been working late in my Massalia office. I’d drunk half a bottle of whiskey in celebration of whatever God had been listening, and that had been the extent of my grief.

Today, though, I’d brought a bunch of flowers, because that’s what loving sons did at gravesites. But they didn’t deserve them. They hadn’t deserved me either. I tossed the flowers onto the grave and thrust my hands into my pockets.

I’d only come to make sure they were dead and in the ground. To make sure it was real. They were gone, and this world was a better place for it.

I crouched at the foot of their grave. Devere had suggested their fate hadn’t been an accident, that someone had been behind their deaths. He could have been lying, but the boy I’d known didn’t lie, and I suspected the man didn’t either. Could he be manipulating me for the way I’d turned on him all those years ago? He was angry, furious even, possibly ashamed. I knew I was. Despite his rage and vocal blustering, I wasn’t convinced he wanted to hurt me. He probably should.

A red-breasted robin landed on my parents’ gravestone. It fluttered its wings, then hopped left. Little eyes fixed on me, studying me, probably wondering when I might leave so it could feast on the worms grown fat in fertile churchyard soil.

“They believed me broken,” I told the bird. “They said I could be fixed, if I wanted to be. As though it was all a choice.” A tight knot lodged in my throat. I worked my jaw and swallowed the knot away, along with whatever emotions were trying to bubble to the surface. Devere had mentioned nightmares. My parents were mine. “I should have been the one who burned that house down.”

I stood, tugged my coat straight, and breathed cold air deep into my lungs. “I owe whoever killed them my thanks.”

The robin fluttered its wings again and hopped down into the grass, where a glitter of metal caught my eye. The robin hopped back along the stone, watching as I reached down. I parted the knotted weeds and found a small toy bird. My bird, the one the toymaker had given me? I brushed my thumb over its flaking paint, revealing some yellow beneath. The weather had worn its paint away, and one of its feet was missing, but it was unmistakable.

This was the same toy bird Jacapo had given me. The bird I’d left behind in my window, all those years ago.

Someone had left it here after the house had burned, after the death of my parents, waiting until they were buried. Someone had left itfor me.

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