by Amy Ewing
It was deeply uncomfortable for Leo to realize she might have understood him this whole time. What other awful things had he said? He vaguely remembered bragging about her at the inn they’d stopped at in the Knottle Plains.
“And why would I tell you?” she snarled. “I am a Cerulean and my blood is—oh.” Her lips parted and a light shone in her eyes. “My blood is magic,” she whispered, running her hand over the crook of her elbow where Kiernan had stuck her.
“I beg your pardon?” Leo supposed he shouldn’t be surprised by this revelation, and yet somehow he was.
“My blood mixed with yours,” she murmured, almost like she was talking to herself. “You have my magic inside you now, like Agnes does. Except I chose to give it to her. I would guess that’s why you can understand me.”
“You would guess?” He rubbed his palm where his father had cut it.
She glared at him. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”
“I just wanted to tell you that . . . I’m sorry.” The words came out on their own with no warning. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done.”
“Is that all?”
Leo bristled. “What else can I do?”
“You can let me out of here.”
“I don’t have the key,” he insisted.
“You got me into this place and you have no power to get me out?” she said. “Why should I believe that? Humans lie.”
“I’m telling the truth,” Leo said desperately. “I mean, can’t your magic sense if I’m lying or something?”
“Cerulean magic is not a parlor trick. It is not a catchall.”
“Isn’t there something it can do? It’s magic, for god’s sake.” He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to prove to her that he was being sincere.
Sera folded her arms across her chest. “You are not very good at apologizing. Is this how you always go about it?”
“I—” He opened his mouth, then closed it. He felt his face go red. “Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I apologized,” he admitted. “For anything.”
“This does not surprise me.”
“I heard what you said to Agnes, about those ruins, about a tether.” She froze, and Leo knew he had touched a nerve, that whatever this tether was, it was significant. “It sounded like it was important, and I was hoping . . .” He trailed off.
“Hoping what?” Sera asked vehemently. “That I would reveal to you the secrets of my people? You let them hit me. You are the reason I am in this crate. You are helping them steal my blood!”
“I didn’t want to,” he protested. “I didn’t know my father would do that, I swear.”
“And yet you stood by and did nothing when it was taken from me,” she said.
The lump of shame in Leo’s throat was swelling with every word she spoke.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “My father . . . he’s a powerful man. I can’t speak against him. I just can’t.”
Sera was sitting up, her face pressed against the slats, and the ferocity in her gaze took Leo’s breath away. “Your father did not take me from that pit,” she hissed. “You stole me. I was scared and alone and you took me against my will and declared I was yours. I am no one’s! I am Sera Lighthaven and my blood is magic, and you will not take another drop of it from me!”
Her eyes glowed like blue flames and a sudden crackle of light ran over her skin, across her cheeks, down her neck, over her arms . . . it was a light that Leo felt in his own veins, a sizzling, spitting heat that snaked its way through his body and exploded in his heart like fireworks. In the span of one pulse, he gasped and fell to his knees as the theater vanished and memories swarmed around him.
It was his fourteenth birthday, and his grandmother had bought him his first shaving kit. All the other boys his age were beginning to grow their beards, but no matter what Leo did, his face remained stubbornly smooth. “Too much of the whore in him,” his grandmother said to his father. Xavier didn’t look at him or speak to him for the rest of the day.
He was sitting in an utterly fantastic garden, watching three girls playing some sort of game. They all looked like Sera and they had flowers in their hair. One girl kissed another. Leo knew he would never have what they had, and the loneliness was a secret agony.
He was a little boy. It was winter, and Robert’s mother was teaching them how to make snow angels in Robert’s back garden. Leo burned with jealousy when she clapped and hugged Robert, telling him what a beautiful angel he’d made.
He was standing in a bedroom in front of a mirror, three women with different-colored ribbons around their necks beside him. They looked at him with such love in their eyes, he thought his heart would burst. There was a girl his age there as well, and she said, “I have a gift for you too. But I . . . I would like to give it to you privately.” When the three women left, the girl handed Leo the necklace with the star pendant.
He was in the dining room at home, sitting next to Agnes, declaring that he would accompany his father’s men to the Knottle Plains. Xavier McLellan smirked at him. “Perhaps you’ve got more of me than your mother in you after all,” he said.
He was standing on a glass dais, staring out at the vast and endless stars dotting the impossibly black space before him. He raised his arms, blood streaming from two cuts on his elbows, and fell.
Leo screamed, his body jerking, and he came back to the present, startled to find himself kneeling on the floor of the stage. Sera had her head in her hands, and her palms were glowing blue. “What . . . was . . . that?” he panted.
He could still feel the sensation of falling, and the mix of emotions from all those memories, both old and unfamiliar. His grandmother’s gravelly voice, the envy of Robert’s mother, the yearning to be what his father wanted . . . they were all mixed up in a longing he didn’t understand, and a friendship he missed but had never had, and a fear that had shaken him to his very core, along with a courage he’d never known he possessed.
“We couldn’t have blood bonded,” Sera was murmuring to herself. “We couldn’t have. I didn’t touch him, I didn’t . . .”
“Did you . . . did you see everything I saw?” Leo asked, mortified.
“Of course,” she said, rubbing her temples like she could erase the memories.
He sat back hard. “Those were private.”
“I know,” she snapped, looking up. “You saw my memories, too. You think I wanted to share those with you? To share anything with you?”
He deflated. “No,” he admitted. He was still trying to catch his breath. “Who was that girl, the one who gave you the necklace?”
Sera pursed her lips, and Leo knew he would have to offer more.
“It’s just that . . . I have it. The necklace, I mean. It fell out of Kiernan’s bag when you tried to run, and I picked it up and kept it. It didn’t feel right, giving it to my father. It’s yours, isn’t it? It’s yours.” Leo felt like he was talking in a dream.
“You have Leela’s necklace?” she gasped.
He nodded. “I should have brought it. I’m sorry. I wasn’t . . . thinking.” He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. The images from those memories were so sharp, so vivid. “I haven’t thought about my grandmother in a long time. She died the year after she gave me that kit. I forgot how much she hated me.”
There was a long pause.
“Why did she hate you?” Sera asked.
Leo sighed. “Because I look like my mother, and she hated my mother.”
She pursed her lips, considering. “What is a grandmother?”
The question caught him off guard. “A grandmother is, well, she was my father’s mother.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t have grandparents?”
“No.”
“What about those three women I saw?” he asked.
“Those are my mothers,” Sera said.
“You have three of them?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t get a chance to ask exactly how
three women could make a child together because Sera was turning the topic back to him.
“Your father is cold,” she said. “Compassionless. But I did not see your mother. Where is she?”
“She died,” Leo said, and for the first time, it seemed to him a sad thing. Sera’s face softened.
“I am sorry,” she said reluctantly.
He shrugged. “I never knew her. I forgot how jealous I used to be of Robert’s mother. I’ve been jealous of Robert for so many things, I guess I lost count.”
“Your memories are all filled with shame and envy and hurt,” Sera said.
“You took the measure of my father,” he pointed out. “Cold and compassionless. That was the house I was raised in.”
“How awful,” she said.
Four days ago, Leo would have scoffed at this girl. I am a McLellan, he would have said. I don’t need anyone’s pity. My father is rich and revered, my family name one of the greatest in Old Port. I can have anything I want with just a snap of my fingers. I have a closet full of the finest clothes and servants who are at my beck and call and friends with wealth and connections. I don’t need anyone’s pity.
But now he saw how worthless that all really was.
“I wanted to impress him,” he confessed. “That’s why I took you. You saw the way he looks at me, the way he’s always looked at me, all my life. Like he wishes I’d never been born.” The lump in his throat was making it hard to breathe. The truth of those words was a brutal blow. “When I found you, all I could think was I’d finally done something to make him proud. That maybe . . . maybe now he would love me.” It sounded so pathetic when he said it out loud.
“You should not have to take away someone’s freedom to earn love,” Sera said.
“No,” he agreed. “I shouldn’t.” Stripping away the idolization of his father was alarming—it was making Leo see his whole life in a new light. “I thought if I could be just like him, my life would be perfect. He told me once that I had to decide which kind of man I wanted to be. And now I think I chose wrong.”
He looked up into a pair of startling blue eyes, not fire any longer but calm and deep as the Adronic Ocean.
“You are alive,” Sera said. “You are here. You have free will. There is nothing that is keeping you from choosing to be the right kind of person.”
Leo swallowed and the lump in his throat dissolved. “You’re right,” he said.
She leaned back against the crate and they sat together in silence. Her face was in shadow, but he could see the length of her collarbone curving delicately out from beneath the lace dress. A thick blue curl rested on her shoulder. He thought back to what James had said, that she was beautiful in a unique way. Looking at her now, Leo thought she was so much more than beautiful. She was more than any girl he had ever known. There was more heart and courage inside her than could possibly be contained in so slight a frame.
“You fell,” he said. “In space.”
His stomach swooped, remembering the feel of his feet leaving the dais, of emptiness rushing up to meet him.
She nodded.
“You fell without being pushed or forced, like . . . like you chose it. Why?” Leo could not imagine what would inspire such bravery or foolishness, depending.
Sera stared at him for so long, he felt ashamed for asking.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me. I don’t really deserve to know anyway.”
“Mother Sun chose me to break the tether,” she said softly, her face still hidden in shadow. “But I failed.”
Leo let that sink in. He did not understand it, not at all, but he was certain that the tether was the same one she claimed to have seen in the photograph of the ruins.
“So you need to get back to this tether so you can break it?”
“I need to get back to the tether so I can go home,” she said, and the image of those incredible gardens swelled up behind his eyes. From the little he’d seen, Sera’s home was beautiful and peaceful and full of love. And now she was locked in a wooden crate. All because of him.
There is nothing that is keeping you from choosing to be the right kind of person.
There wasn’t, if he was brave enough to do something about it. And if this girl was brave enough to jump off a balcony into space, he should be brave enough to do the right thing, even if it meant going against his father. Especially then.
Leo stood. “I’ve been here too long,” he said, suddenly worried one of the Pembertons would come in to check on him. “I’ve got to go. But I’m going to help you, Sera. I promise. You don’t have to say anything. You don’t even have to believe me. But I’m going to make this right.” He hurried down the steps, pausing halfway and turning back to her. “And next time I come, I’ll bring the necklace.”
As he left the theater, he felt like a different person from the one who had entered it. A change was beginning, but what sort of change he couldn’t say. All he knew was that the life he had imagined for himself was slowly disintegrating, and he found he wasn’t missing it one bit.
32
Agnes
AGNES COULD NOT STOP CHECKING HER PURSE EVERY FEW minutes as she and Ebenezer made their way to the Seaport.
The Granges didn’t have a chauffeur, so he drove them himself, taking a route through Ellsbury Park to avoid the traffic in Central Square and then cutting across the garment district, affectionately nicknamed Vestville.
“It’s not going to run away, you know,” Ebenezer said after the fifth time she opened her purse. “Krogers don’t have legs.”
Agnes gave him a halfhearted smile. “No, I know, I just . . . well, I’ve never carried this much money before.”
“Me neither. Not that I’m carrying it, I mean—I’ve never helped anyone take out that much money before.”
“No? You don’t go from bank to bank helping devious young ladies try to withdraw money from their own accounts regularly? You should, you’re very good at it.”
Ebenezer laughed. “Well, like I said, it’s your money. It’s not as if we stole it.”
“No,” she said, fingering the golden bills. “It’s my mother’s money, technically, since all his money stems from hers. Which makes it even more irritating that I need my father’s permission to take it out.”
“She was, um, Pelagan, wasn’t she?”
Agnes rolled her eyes. “Ebenezer, everyone in Old Port knows my mother was Pelagan. It’s not exactly a secret, though Leo and my father both wish it could be. They sweep her under the rug like she’s an embarrassment.”
“Is that why your father is so obsessed with Pelago?”
“What do you mean, obsessed?”
He glanced at her sideways. “Well, the anti-Talman plays and now that Pelagan tree and fish that he was showing off last night. It’s like he wants to take revenge on Pelago or something.”
“He’s a spiteful man who was forced to let a woman save him from bankruptcy,” Agnes said. “You can bet he wants revenge for that. And she’s dead, so he can’t take it out on her.”
“You don’t think he cared about her?” Ebenezer asked. “Not even a little?”
She gave him a pitying look. “No,” she said. “Not even a little.” She stared out the window at the textile factories flashing past. “And he won’t let us love her either. Well, Leo doesn’t care, like I said, but . . . I wish I could know who she was, what she was like. If there’s anything of her in me.” Her neck went hot and her eyes felt wet. “Sorry,” she said, snapping her purse shut. “This isn’t something I usually talk about.”
“It’s all right,” Ebenezer said, keeping his focus on the road. “And . . . I’m sorry. That doesn’t seem fair at all.”
“Well, life isn’t fair,” Agnes said. “Especially if you’re a woman in Kaolin.”
They crossed into the East Village, which served as Old Port’s artist colony. The buildings were painted in bright colors, pinks and yellows and blues, and the residents dressed in outlandish clothes
, revealing necklines, and feathers and high-heeled boots. Cafés spilled out onto the sidewalks, tables filled with bohemian types drinking wine or espresso, smoking cigarettes and discussing the latest book or philosophy or song. Agnes loved driving through the East Village but had never dared to walk its streets; she felt so apart from it, like an unwelcome guest. Her high-collared blouse, fine skirt, and Solit brooch would make her stand out here more than she did as a woman in the financial district.
“Why do you think she married him?” Ebenezer asked.
“Sorry?”
“Your mother. I mean, I get that your father needed her money, but if they didn’t love each other, why did she agree to the marriage?”
Agnes thought for a moment. “I have no idea.”
“Maybe he was quite the handsome catch back then,” Ebenezer mused.
“Ew,” she said, cringing. “I don’t want to think about that.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough.”
He made a good point, though, she had to admit. Why had her mother married her father? Why leave Pelago and come to Old Port, where she was seen as a freak, an oddity, a perversion of what a proper woman should be? She looked so strong and carefree in the photograph Agnes had. It was hard to reconcile that woman choosing to be with someone like her father.
But then, as she had pointed out to herself many times, she did not really know anything about her mother.
They turned left onto Anchor Avenue, and soon the first sails were in sight, masts peeking up over the huddled taverns and brothels and shops that lined the docks.
“This friend you’re helping, is she on a ship?” he asked.
“No.” Agnes paused. “How do you know it’s a she?”
He gave her a look. “I don’t think you’d be going through all this trouble to help some Old Port boy.”
“You’re awfully perceptive.”
“Perceptive enough to know when to stop asking questions,” he said with a sigh. “Let me know where to drop you.”
“The Wolfshead Tavern,” she said.
The streets were packed with cars and horse-drawn carts, and every space between was crammed with people.
