Page 76 of The Toymaker's Son

“You are a monster.”

He smiled. “If it’s time for truths, let me begin with those you’ve been denied. Devere killed your parents, as he killed Jacapo, his surrogate father. He is not the benign soul you believe him to be. He is not a man or the boy you fell in love with so long ago. He is fae.”

“Liar.”

“As you pointed out, I cannot lie.”

I laughed. This place, this house, this fae were madness. All of it. “Then it’s a trick. You’re trying to trick me. I know what this is. It will not work. I know your game. I know what is real—”

“Do you? He grew tired of Jacapo’s demands after a lifetime of service to a man who had grown to despise him. And as for your parents, we all know their deaths were perhaps justified in a time and place where real justice is scarce. Devere is a dream formed by one man’s grief and the magic that animates him. My magic.”

“Stop. That’s not Devere. He’s not like that.”

“And you believe you know him since you shared a kiss behind the stone angel some fifteen years ago. You no more know him than you know yourself, Valentine.”

I laughed. “You have a room full of lookalikes! You admit you are obsessed. You tried to have your way with me. Why would I believe a single word you say? This is all insanity.”

“Insanity? Yes. But also the truth.”

“You wouldn’t know the truth if it crawled inside you and tore out your heart, if you have one. You’re trying to get between Devere and me, and it will not work.” I turned my back on him, with no idea how to escape this wretched maze, but I’d find one.

“What better way to make you believe than with a kiss?” he said. “Devere is fae. The sooner you realize this, the more capable you will be in fighting his curse.”

“Hiscurse!”No, I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t hearing his lies. Damn him. Devere wasn’t like that. He had a true heart; I’d felt it beat. He was good. Better than me, better than all the people in this forsaken town. And I would save him, because one of us needed to get out of here. One of us deserved to be free. He’d been trapped his whole life, a puppet on Adair’s strings, the object of this fae’s twisted obsession. And nobody cared because nobody saw him as I did. I knew in my heart he was not a monster like Adair.

I walked away, done with his lies. With this charade.

“You betrayed him, Valentine!” Adair called. “You broke his heart! What better way to make you pay than to forever trap you in the town you despise. It’s truly quite diabolical.”

“No!” I marched on, almost running, but I would not run from this place, or run from him, as I had before. Devere wouldn’t. Not the Devere I knew. Adair was trying to turn me against him, to undermine everything we had, and while my feelings for Devere were both old and new, I knew they were real.

I loved him, and that son of a bitch would not take him from me.

The wretched corridorsmoved. Staircases appeared around corners where there had been no stairs before. I took the steps anyway. There had to be a way out of this labyrinth.

I turned a corner and came upon a man wearing an ankle-length gray coat. His strange attire tripped my racing thoughts, and as I drew closer, it seemed he was engrossed in a book. “Sir, the way out?”

He looked up from its pages. “The path to the exit is one of your own making.”

Something was wrong with him. He stared through me, his eyes unfocused and glassy. He wore gray shoes too. And his hair was short, cropped close to his head. Small oval glasses perched on his nose. I’d seen him before, during my studies so long ago now, and he was so out of context that his presence here couldn’t be real. He was one of the criminally minded I’d studied in Massalia’s asylums.

Unease crawled beneath my skin, and I hurried on. It didn’t matter. There was a way out. There had to be. The floor tilted. I reached out and fell against the wall. The wine, it had to be the wine.

This house has no end and no beginning.

The thoughts intruded, mine but barbed. Unwanted.

Like a dream.

I’d surely been drugged. I pushed on, one foot in front of the other. A window, then. If I could find a window, it would open. But the corridor only had doors, and each handle I tried was locked.

This was a game. I was trapped here.

“Adair! Let me go!”

Dizziness spun my vision and flipped my insides. Once free, I’d go to Russo and have Rochefort arrested. The lord clearly had his own motives. Not even Russo could ignore this. I stumbled on, but the thumping of my heart filled my head. The great chiming clock from earlier began to clang again, over and over, so loud it shook the air. The walls began to close in, and the corridors stretched farther and farther until there was nothing behind me and nothing in front. I spun, stumbling over my feet.

The clanging went on, as though a great church bell were inside the hall with me, and then, suddenly, there it was—a grandfather clock as tall as a man and adorned with ornately carved curls and flourishes, its face made of emeralds and pearls.

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