Adella’s hands were so cold she craved a fire despite the warm summer’s night. It wasn’t only Garroway’s speech that had frightened her, although that was terrifying enough on its own. How much power could he wield? She tried not to stare as he snatched the hand from the air, fed it through the sleeve of his jacket, and chanted a few words to bind it back to his body.
“Keep an eye on her,” he said, adjusting his sleeve. “Look for weaknesses we can exploit. Threatening Nash may work, but only if he hasn’t done irreversible damage. If you have any doubts, a little poison in her tea should do the trick. For all their power, Velchans have very badly formed palettes and even less immunity to potions than the Untouched. The smallest of doses should have her disposed of in a matter of minutes.”
“You want me to kill her?”
Garroway sank back onto his chair. “Only if necessary.”
“I’ll be hanged.”
“Only if you’re caught.”
He was mad. She’d always suspected his desire for power had warped his sense of right and wrong, but he was a priest. Their religion was based on balance and respect for all forms of life. It didn’t allow for the attempted murder of a child, the killing of her mother, and plotting the death of a Velchan. Garroway had turned his back on the gods he claimed to serve, and there would be consequences. Adella could only hope they would have mercy on her for the role she was forced into.
Chapter 27
Ezra knotted his cravat by feel alone in the hours just before dawn. He supposed the garment could have waited until he reached his offices, for not once in the last several days had he passed another person on the early not-quite-morning streets, but it wouldn’t have been proper, and deep down, Ezra could not completely abandon propriety.
Not again.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, centering himself. He found himself relying on the meditation training he used to rid himself of Residual at times when he wasn’t using any magic whatsoever. Ever since Hattie’s death and the disastrous events that followed he felt fragmented, like a crystal whose internal structure has shattered while the exterior stays whole yet useless.
Whole, yet useless. What an apt description. He might appear to be the only remaining Nash who was complete, but it was only his outside which remained undamaged. Inside, he was fragmented, broken. He had nothing of worth to offer anyone. His magic was weak, his funds lacking, and his blood tainted. The only thing he could take pride in was his resolve, and even that had been destroyed. Years of abstaining from physical pleasure, of preparing himself for the day he would have to put his sister’s heart and soul into another body, and he’d undone it all in a single moment of weakness.
Although, part of him argued, his magic had not seemed to have been affected by the slip. He kept waiting for the aether to deny him, yet it had been there, willing to do his bidding when he asked.
Grabbing his boots with one hand, he tiptoed into the hall on bare feet, as had been his custom the past few days. He tried not to pause outside her door and think of her sleeping behind it, or to imagine himself going in and waking her with his hands and mouth, but it was useless. He always paused. He always imagined.
“She’s not here, you know.” Lily’s soft voice was nearly deafening in the silent house.
Resigned, Ezra walked to the other room and passed Rose, who was standing in the doorway of her sister’s room. No doubt she was the reason Lily knew he was up and about at all.
“Lily, my darling, what are you doing up at such a god forsaken hour?”
Lily sat up in her bed, her wrap pooled around her. She tucked a swath of tangled hair behind her ear as a giant yawn rendered her momentarily speechless. “I’m awake to tell you it is pointless for you to be awake,” she said, blinking eyes heavy with sleep. “Bits is gone. Has been for days. There is no need to wake before the sun and slink back home after you’re certain the entire house is abed.”
Ezra glanced to the wall as if he would be able to see Bits asleep in her bed on the other side.
“What do you mean, ‘gone?’”
“I mean not here. Away. Removed from this house.”
“She’s returned to her family then.” He should be glad, grateful even. And he was. Of course he was. The age-old sense of loss and abandonment was rearing its ugly head for an entirely unrelated reason. One he would think of just as soon as he could get past the idea that she was gone. “Jack will be livid, but it’s for the best.”
Lily snorted, and for a second he thought Rose had made the noise. Lily had always been warmth and sunshine, trusting and loving every person and thing she encountered. Rose was the more somber and cautious of the two. While he easily made a chubby-cheeked Lily believe eating too many sweets would cause her to turn to a pillar of sugar, Rose had snorted out her disbelief and popped another bite of cake into her mouth.
“Why would she return to the family who had so obviously abandoned her? She’s heartbroken, not foolish.”
Something alarmingly similar to guilt settled on Ezra’s stomach.
“Heartbroken? I do believe you have misread the situation, Lily.”
His sister narrowed her eyes, not in the least resembling the happy child she’d once been. “My reading skills are beyond reproof. I would even wager I am much more accomplished at the task than you.” She pulled her wrap more tightly across her shoulders. “I’ve seen the way the two of you look at one another. She has always looked at you as if you were a god just waiting to shed your mortal clothes and go traipsing across the water on holy feet, but lately you’ve been looking back.”
“Lily, don’t be ridiculous.”
“So you’re saying you haven’t been picturing her in your arms and in your bed every time she enters a room?”
He had, ever since that ill-advised kiss. Maybe even before. But those pictures were just as inappropriate as his sister knowing such things.
“Lady Elizabeth is a lady. Whatever feelings I may or may not have for her, or any desires I may or may not have, are completely beside the point. I have nothing to offer her. I am beneath her station and unworthy of her attentions.”
“Perhaps you are. After all, she has been nothing but kind and gracious despite the vast chasm between our stations. Yet instead of treating her with the same, you took her heart and crushed it beneath the heel of you well-worn boots.”
“Lily, I—”
“I don’t care to hear it,” she said with an angry swipe of her hand. “Excuses are a coward’s crutch. And if you are thinking to tell me about the circumstances that led to my friend leaving, do not. If Bits wanted me to know the details, she would have told me herself.”
He could not have been brought lower if he’d stepped into the boxing ring and begged Jack to pummel him. He was a bastard in more ways than one. Lily was obviously aggrandizing Bits’s attachment to him. The lady may have had a tendre, but it was certainly not love. Yet, no matter the depth of her feelings, he’d treated her abominably.
He’d been a wreck that night. He thought watching Hattie die would be the ultimate pain, but he was wrong. Watching Jack learn she was gone was much, much worse. In the end, he’d had to sedate his friend. Getting him to take the tonic required a persuasion spell, and then he’d finished up the evening by casting the most powerful protection spell he could on both the Oberon and his newborn daughter.
His heart had been bruised and battered, and he was near to succumbing from Residual. He’d considered just letting the aether take him. Nothingness would have been a welcome relief from the pain. But then she was there, a soft warmth in the cold, hard world. He shouldn’t have let it go so far, but she’d been so willing, eager, and alive. When she touched him his mind ceased to work and his body took over, claiming parts of her it had no right to touch.
He’d never hated anyone as much as he did himself when he realized what he’d done. It wasn’t just breaking his oath to remain pure for the aether. Bits had trusted him, and he’d taken advantage of
that trust. He’d been gifted with something beautiful and good, and instead of protecting it, he’d defiled her at the first available opportunity. He was so ashamed of himself he wasn’t able to face her after.
“You are right,” he said, unable to look at either of his sisters. They would both hate him if they knew how right Lily was. “I behaved poorly, and while I truly regret any hurt feelings Lady Elizabeth may be experiencing, it is for the best. She and I could never work, and it’s good she has realized so now, before her emotions became too entangled.”
Lily’s head thunked against the rough wooden headboard. “You are a bloody idiot, brother of mine.”
“I am,” he agreed, somewhat amused by her vulgar language. No matter how much she might still look like a girl to him in her flannel nightgown, his little sister was growing up and growing claws.
He was rather proud of his Tiger Lily, even if she was currently sharpening those claws on him. She was growing into quite the remarkable young woman. Very few people, regardless of their age or gender, could have lived through the things she had and remained so positive. If it wasn’t for the dark moods that descended when she was forced to spend the day abed—
Oh bloody hell.
“I need to carry you down,” he said, already reaching for her. He’d felt some small amount of guilt for abandoning her every morning, but he’d believed Bits was seeing that she did not have to suffer the entire day in bed.
She had every right to call him a bloody idiot and much, much worse. As far as big brothers went, he was reprehensible.
Lily pushed him back just as he began to gather her in his arms.
“Let me be,” she said, wiggling out of his grip. “Bits will take care of it later, when I’m actually dressed. Really, Ez, were you going to carry me down in my bedclothes?”
“Bits…? But I thought you said she was gone.” Was she still here? Was this all just a ruse to make him feel guilty for what transpired the other night?
Was he more angry or relieved?
“Gone as in no longer living in this house. She hasn’t completely abandoned me, however.” Her mouth twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “It seems the two of you have much in common as she comes once she’s quite certain you’ve gone to visit patients for the day, and leaves well before you might think to arrive home.”
So she was avoiding him as well. He really shouldn’t be surprised or hurt, but if he’d learned anything over the past few weeks, his emotions rarely did as they aught where Bits was concerned.
“And where is she staying?”
That sounded as if he was only mildly interested, possibly just inquiring as to ascertain whether or not she was safe, didn’t it? Certainly no one could hear a desperate plea to be told where she was just because he couldn’t bear the idea of not knowing.
Lily shrugged. “I believe she is staying with Mr. and Mrs. Chanse. She smells of the forge, although that could simply be because she’s agreed to help Mr. Chanse with some of his projects. It seems she learned quite a bit about metal and clockwork while watching her father.”
“Why would she agree to do that?” She was a lady. Certainly she didn’t want to sweat alongside a Smith in a simple country forge or always smell of smoke.
Lily looked at him as if he’d just asked why Jack was the Oberon. “She must pay her way somehow, Ezra, and I imagine the options of an Untouched lady in Corrigan can’t be that numerous. At least she is making her wages by doing something she enjoys rather than by letting the men of Corrigan slake their curiosity of what it would be like to work off Residual with a member of the aristocracy.”
He needed to punch someone. Not Lily. Even at his most furious he could not harm her, but anyone else was fair game. Perhaps he would wander the streets until he found a man who simply looked as if he thought himself worthy to touch Lady Elizabeth and give him a good pummel.
“Ladies of the aristocracy do not work to earn a living,” he said instead, although the option of starting a brawl in the streets was still very much under consideration.
“I would imagine ladies of the aristocracy do what every other woman who has ever walked the earth has done.”
“Which is?”
“Whatever it takes to survive.”
She would, he knew. Bits wasn’t the type to wait for the world to bend to her will. She would get out there and put in the effort herself.
The problem was, she shouldn’t have to. The world should be hers for the taking, not just because of her rank, but because of the person she was. She wasn’t living the life she should, and it was his fault. He’d taken more than her virginity, which was all the more reason he should never see her again.
It should have been an easy task. It was an easy task. Too easy. For the next few days he kept to his routine, and she kept to hers, and their paths never crossed. Not even when he would stand at the end of the lane leading to the forge for countless moments did he catch so much as a glimpse of her fiery red hair.
On the seventh day after Hattie’s death he found himself at Draíocht as the sun settled into the earth. The Matronas, women charged with the task of aiding Touched souls from one world to the next, had kept vigil over the body for the past week, keeping the candles burning and protecting the body from animals. Nearly all of Corrigan stood in a quiet, somber circle outside the trench surrounding the henge. Ezra effortlessly pushed past them, leaving an offering of rowan berries at the entryway before making his way to where Alice, Jack, and Hattie’s family waited.
He hadn’t been surprised when the invitation to join the family within the inner circle came. No matter where life had led them, he and Hattie had always been linked to one another. He would have stood outside and watched the ceremony with the others if it had been what Jack and her parents wanted, but it felt right to be here, a part of her final farewell.
“You look like hell,” Jack said as Ezra came to a halt beside his friend.
“I could return the compliment. When was the last time you actually slept?”
Jack blinked against the sun’s dying rays. “Saturday before last? You?”
“I honestly can’t remember.” He’d tried to nap on the chaise in his office earlier that day, but to no avail. “The pyre is well done, my lord. Did you allow anyone to assist you?”
Jack looked to the elaborate wooden structure erected between the two center stones and back to Ezra. “What makes you think I had anything to do with it?”
Not everyone who died in Corrigan received the ancient burial rites. Most were buried in small cemeteries just as their Christian neighbors, but for those who did get a final elaborate sendoff in this place where the aether was stronger than virtually anywhere else in the world, the pyre was typically constructed by a Touched who had a special affinity for fire elements. Elmer Wright or Rebecca Charles would have been good choices. But even before he’d set eyes on the structure he knew neither Elmer nor Rebecca had been asked.
“Because you have not changed the way you notch the wood together since we were boys building castles out of any stick we could gather,” he said. “And because I know you. You wouldn’t have trusted anyone else with it.”
“I had to do something.” Jack’s jaw worked back and forth as he wrestled with his emotions. The townsfolk would have understood his tears, but they would have taken them as a sign of weakness all the same. The Oberon was supposed to have control over every aspect of his life in order to have absolute control over his magic. “It’s as if I’ve done nonstop magic for a week and am filled with Residual, yet no matter what I do, it never goes away. It’s always there, crawling under my skin, banging up against my insides.”
“And your outsides as well,” Ezra noted, reading the health aurora only he could see. He’d tried the spell with many others over the years, but it had only lasted a few days at most. He’d done Jack’s when they were at Eaton and it had yet to fade. “Two broken ribs, significant bruising to your left side, and a cut above your eye you’v
e had glamoured over, but not healed.”
“Bricky can barely walk, and you will probably need to see Demir later tonight. I may have shattered his leg.”
Ezra’s smile felt as if borrowed from someone else’s face. “You always say they are worse off than you even if they haven’t a scratch between them.”
Jack’s answering smile looked as wrong as his felt. “I do have a reputation to maintain.”
Before he could inquire whether or not he truly needed to attend to Jack’s personal guards, a hooded figure emerged from the crowd.
In all of the British Empire there were only five Ankou, persons capable of completing the final rites for a Touched. Jack was the only one of the five whose identity was known. Ezra didn’t know how the others were chosen or how they picked which one would perform a specific rite. All he knew was when the time came, an Ankou would emerge from the crowd, having gone completely unseen until that very moment.
Hattie’s body was completely wrapped in white linen and tied with ropes of sage. The Ankou stopped at the head and bent to confer with the spirit, letting it know it was time to leave the body. Sometimes the quiet conversation only took a moment, others took longer. Ezra had attended the rites for a man who died trying to rescue the child of an Untouched soldier. His heroism earned him the gift of a last rite, but it was one he did not seem to want, because it had taken well over two hours for the spirit to leave the body and allow the Ankou to move on to the next step.
It did not surprise Ezra that the Ankou attending Hattie straightened again almost immediately. She had been ready to go. The letter he carried in his pocket was proof enough of that.
Beside him, Jack went tense and a gasp escaped his lips. And then Ezra felt it. A kiss of ice against his cheek.
Be happy. Be loved.
The words were as clear as a bell, yet no one besides he and Jack seemed to hear them.
A Dance Like Flame (Of Magic & Machine Book 1) Page 18
