The four-tent span was a yawning chasm filled with ghouls that took forever to cross.
There was no light in Nathan’s tent. The coal oven had burned out. He must be freezing in there.
“Nathan?” Carabelle rushed to the bed, but it was empty. She covered her mouth and met Pointy’s gaze. “Where else could he be?”
“No.” Pointy’s body trembled, trembled. “Marcell!”
Impossible—this was bloody impossible.
Marcell ran into the tent, blond hair unkempt with sleep. “What’s happening?”
“Where is Nathaniel?” Pointy’s voice was low and gravelly.
“He’s—” Marcell peered at the bed. “Well, he was here.”
“Why wasn’t this tent guarded?”
“It was. I was outside until eight, then Sven took over.”
“Sven was in the meeting with us.”
Marcell frowned. “Look, then I don’t know. I went to bed. I have the four o’clock shift.”
Pointy sagged forwards, a scream stuck in his airways. Pinpricks of light danced in his vision. Everything was bright, out of focus. “Find him.”
“What the hell happened, uncle?” Marcell came closer. That he’d used the word uncle was a testament to his concern—he hadn’t slipped up like that for years.
Outside, footsteps thumped closer, and Amber slapped the tent flap out of the way. “You’ve heard?”
“Heard what?” Marcell’s cheeks splotched with colour.
“When you weren’t in your tents, I thought— Shit.” Amber shut her eyes. “Dominic De la Fontaine and Nathan Cutter were executed tonight on the charge of treason. Their bodies have been hung on the keep wall, with a letter from the king that basically reads ‘cross me and die’.”
Carabelle crashed to her knees, put her head in Pointy’s lap, and shattered as she wept.
His lungs rattled. His wrecked heart was too damaged to beat. A salty tear ran into his mouth. “Executed.”
Marcell put his hand on Pointy’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
“So am I,” Amber said. “But there’s no time for this. Frank is coming. Varda came to see her mother, and he’s coming to get her back. If he finds you here? What’s another murder when he’s already committed two?”
Pointy’s control slipped. His muscles were tombstones, his thoughts ghosts. Something about in through the nose, out through the mouth prodded at the back of his mind, but he tried and tried and failed.
The first breath was the shakiest, but the next was easier. “How far is he?”
“About ten minutes behind me.”
Pointy lifted Carabelle’s chin. “Come, my queen. We must go.”
“Can’t breathe.” She shook her head. “It burns.”
Nathaniel was dead. Of course, it burned. The ache was greater than anything Pointy had ever experienced, but he wouldn’t remain and find out what it would be like to lose Carabelle. “It burns because you’re breathing fire. Have you forgotten? You’re a dragon. You need to get up, my dear. You have to.”
She stood like a dead thing, a thing without a soul. She dried her face, and her eyes were empty.
“This way.” Amber took the wheelchair and ran towards the tent they’d always used when they had to hide. The tent where Pointy and Cara had shared a deep conversation just a day ago.
Had he convinced her to leave Nathaniel? No. She’d have left him anyway. Nathaniel had caused that to happen. With his addiction. With his violation when he took her maidenhead.
Carabelle and Marcell followed behind, and Amber left them in the cold, dark tent.
“His body,” Pointy said as she walked away. “I want it retrieved.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Amber said. “I’m going to check that it’s safe.”
“I’ll check, too.” Marcell’s jaw was clenched, arms rigid by his sides, and he walked out like a man much older than his twelve years.
Carabelle sat on the floor next to him, rested her head against the armrest of the wheelchair. “Why do you think he went to the castle?”
Why indeed? After their parting of ways, Nathaniel had probably sought a grand gesture to win back Carabelle’s favour. Perhaps he’d returned to see Jeanita. Perhaps it had been to confront Frank.
Perhaps if Pointy had gone to talk to Nathaniel after Carabelle had broken it off, he’d know.
Why hadn’t he checked on Nathaniel? Because he was too busy with arrangements for their escape, or because he’d wanted time with Carabelle?
“I don’t know,” Pointy said.
“How am I going to tell Magnus?”
Pointy swallowed. “I’ll do it, if—”
“No. It has to come from me. I should— What if Magnus is dead, too? What then? I—” She doubled over, face buried in her arms, back and shoulders quivering. She moaned and sniffled, and he lost the barely there handle on his control.
He leaned back and let new tears roll into his collar. How had this happened? How could Nathaniel be gone?
His throat was so thick and so dry, but he couldn’t swallow. It hurt. Everything hurt.
She grabbed a fistful of his shirt, leaned closer and closer, but he stayed his hands.
All he wanted was to bury his face in the hollow between her shoulder and neck and bellow out his anguish. Crush her against him. Kiss away her tears. Nathaniel had accused Carabelle of having feelings for Pointy, little knowing it was the other way around.
He could dress it as hero-worship or admiration all he wanted, when the truth was, he’d been bewitched by this woman since the start. He’d realised he loved her in the slums, when Marcell had come to tell them she’d gone to walk along the Mantle. The panic he’d experienced at the news had gone beyond the queen is missing. Looking back now, he’d fallen for her that day in the Cockerel, but he’d fought it. Suppressed it. Hated himself for it.
Pointy had betrayed his best friend.
That was the real reason he called her dear. Sure, he’d wanted some sort of code for queen, but he could have called her anything, and he settled for something intimate. Not as intimate as her full name, though. Not as intimate as Cara.
She’d called him her best friend. A friend, when he could barely think around her, when he made mistakes and missed blatantly obvious information because her eyes were so blue, and her lips looked so soft.
He’d heard her and Nathaniel making love and had wished himself back in Clarity’s torture chamber. Meanwhile, he hadn’t slept with anyone in months. How could he, when Carabelle existed in the world? He wanted her. He’d wanted her for so long no other woman held any appeal.
No, he hadn’t acted on it, and he never would. But he’d thought it. He’d looked at Carabelle and coveted her, when she’d always belonged to Nathaniel.
And now Nathaniel was dead.
Pointy should have been there for his friend, but he’d been too infatuated and distracted to act. Because he loved the wrong woman, he hadn’t stopped Nathaniel’s plummet back into addiction.
He’d caused this.
Creator, it hurt.
Carabelle stilled, turned the full power of her gaze upon him. “Nathan would be alive if he hadn’t come with me.”
“You can’t think like that, my dear.” His voice cracked on the last word.
“He’d be alive, and he wouldn’t have struggled with the addiction. He’d be alive and be himself. Warm, happy Nathan. But because of me he was dark and gloomy. Because of me he saw horrible things, and he was forced into a life he’d never have chosen for himself. I caused this and—”
“Stop.” He armoured his heart in steel. “If we’re going to play this game, I could also claim responsibility. I pressured him into coming with us, while his father was ill. Then, I ran off and got caught, so I wasn’t there for either of you. I should have known what Frank would do, and I should have come to check on him after you broke things off. I should have been a better friend.”
“If I’d forgiven him, Jacques, taken him back
, he would never have gone to the castle.”
Creator, the weight of his name on her tongue. “But how long would that have lasted before you realised you couldn’t live with what he’d done, sent him away again, and the same thing might have happened? Or worse, what if you forgave him and he did it again, and again. Addiction changes people.”
“Maybe I should have learned to live with what he’d done,” she said. “Maybe it wasn’t that bad.”
Pointy clenched his jaw. “I lost my best friend today, my brother, and it’s not real, and it bloody hurts, but I don’t care. If you tell a man to stop and he doesn’t, you don’t learn to live with it, Cara. No matter how much you love him. It isn’t not that bad when people do things to you without your consent. It’s a violation. Consent is pivotal in any relationship, especially concerning sex.
“You don’t allow people to hurt you for their sake. You get away from the threat for your sake. Nathaniel was a good man, one of the best, but his death doesn’t magically soften the fact that he violated you. What. He did. Was wrong. He knew it, and no matter what would have or could have happened next, he had to face that guilt.”
“I know.” She placed a hand on his forearm. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Upset me?” He sighed at the ceiling. “You scare the shit out of me, Carabelle of Mordoux.”
“I… Why?”
Besides the fact that he loved her, and he had no idea how to deal with that? “I can predict what people will or will not do. It’s what makes me good at my job, and it’s why I’m the youngest director in Intelligence history. Then there’s you. At any given time, I have no clue what will come out of your mouth next.”
“Sorry?”
He laughed quietly. “But apparently, I’ve lost my touch, because I also couldn’t predict what that bastard Nathaniel Cutter would do. In the past month, I managed to endanger my queen multiple times, got myself caught by my greatest enemy—at that point—and managed to get my best friend reacquainted with substances, then killed.”
“None of that is your fault. You did all you could to save us. Besides, you just said it. Addiction changes people. You couldn’t have known what he’d do, and apparently you never know what I’ll do, so you were at a disadvantage.” She yanked a chair closer, shifted into it, and opened her arms to him. “You’re always taking care of us, Jacques. Let me take care of you for once. You just lost your best friend.”
Why did she have to disarm each of his carefully placed precautions to stay away from her? Nathaniel’s death left him weak, and he still hadn’t begun to work through the trauma courtesy of Clarity. He couldn’t deal with all of this, shouldn’t let her hold him, but he did, and it was glorious. Safe.
She caressed his back. “How are we going to get through this?”
As if he knew. He knew nothing.
Pointy leaned closer, breathed her in. “We’ll get through it together.”
Chapter 55
Cara folded clothes and piled them on the bed. None of the things she’d take with her to Aelland belonged to her, except the frilly, floral gown she’d been wearing when she’d escaped the castle. It was ruined, stained with Pointy’s and Celestine’s blood, but she didn’t want to leave it behind.
It symbolised her final transformation, and that made it valuable beyond measure.
Besides, that was what she’d been wearing when she saw Nathan for the first time in weeks. When she’d still belonged with him.
The coat she’d been wearing with the gown, the one she’d put over Pointy to keep him warm, with Sera’s letter in the right-hand pocket—it was gone. In the chaos following that night, a lifetime of four days ago, the coat had been misplaced.
Pointy had left her for the first time since last night to see if he could find it. He probably just went to break down on his own. They hadn’t been able to look at each other all day. When they did, they couldn’t keep it together for the other.
Cara’s hands hovered over the clothes, then she took the first and stuffed it into a pack. She didn’t have anything of Nathan’s to take with her.
His things had remained behind in the cottage when he’d run for his life, and nobody had gone back to retrieve it. They couldn’t, not with Frank’s people likely watching the place.
Once they returned to Aelland, she’d take the pen she’d had engraved for him for Natalistide. Or one of his robes. It would smell like him, sandalwood and musk.
How could her eyes fill again? She’d wept so much since the news came the night prior—since before then, when she’d broken off their relationship—that one would think she was dehydrated. But the pain ebbed and flowed, played hide and seek with disbelief.
Nathan couldn’t be dead.
She was about to wake, then turn around in his arms. She’d tell him about her terrible nightmare, and he’d kiss her so her toes curled, and make love to her for real.
But she was living her nightmare. He’d broken her heart twice. Once when she realised she wasn’t enough for him, and again when he went and died.
Then her blood boiled, bubbled, because how dare he get himself into trouble like that? How dare he go to a place from where he wouldn’t return?
Cara loved Nathan. Despite everything, she loved him, and her heart was full of him, and the agony was too much.
And Frank—her arsehole of a big brother who’d changed into a thing she didn’t recognise. Who the hell gave him the right to kill people because he felt like it?
This was her fault. Frank had told her if she didn’t convince everyone she loved Nic, Nathan would die. He’d warned her. She should have listened.
Cara’s eyes burned, and her nose was raw. Her stomach was carved of bone. Everyone except Pointy begged her to eat something, anything, but how was she supposed to do that? How was she supposed to swallow through the crystals in her throat?
When Vendla had asked her if she was ready for what was to come, Cara had never imagined this.
Maybe she and Nathan wouldn’t have had a future together, but he’d deserved a future.
Magnus was going to be heartbroken. Let him be alive.
Pointy rolled in, pale, haggard. His hair hung loose around his face, tangled and caught in his stubble. Nobody had helped him shave for two days.
“I found it,” he said.
The letter was on his lap, and Cara almost smiled when she picked it up and pressed it to her face. “Where?”
“It fell out in Vendla’s tent. She’s kept it for you. Apparently, the coat wasn’t worth keeping.”
“I’ll thank her later.” She picked up her hairbrush. “Come here.”
“It isn’t necessary, my—”
“Please. Let me do this for you.”
Pointy rolled closer, turned his back to her, and she brushed his hair. The pale golden strands were soft and wavy, but the baby hair around his face and the chunks in his neck formed tight coils.
“You have curly hair. I never noticed.”
“People don’t notice blond hair. It helps when spying.”
She tied it together in his nape, then twisted the ends as he liked.
“I’m going to cut it,” he said. “I failed to realise that it had become a mannerism to twirl it and throw it over my shoulder. Not a good quirk for a spy to have.”
Pointy with short hair. What would that be like? She considered him with a tilted head.
His handsomeness had always intimidated her. His beauty was extravagant, demanding, like a peacock on show in a coop full of chickens. No matter where he went, he was the best-looking person in the room. Even his imperfections, like the scar on his cheek, or his slightly slanted nose, just added to his charm.
Paired with the bright colours he’d always worn in Aelland, he’d been the exact opposite of her. Cara had worked tirelessly to blend in, but Pointy had done whatever he could to stand out.
On their journey, he’d switched to solid black. It suited him, complemented the paleness of his eyes and hair. She
didn’t know it then, but it was so obvious now that she almost laughed. This was him, the real man, not the persona he wore to disarm and gather information. The Jacques under the Pointy.
How ironic that she hid a queen under the invisible woman, while he hid himself in the same way. How had she missed the truth?
Short hair would suit Jacques. Pointy would hate it.
“What?” he asked.
Cara shook her head. “I was trying to picture this haircut.”
His lips quirked up. “And?”
“I think it will suit you, Jacques.”
He looked away. “Almost done?”
She stuffed the last clothes into the pack. “Done.”
“I have to tell you something, and I don’t think I can stall any longer,” he said. “Amber couldn’t retrieve Nathaniel’s body. Apparently, Varda had put up a hell of a scene and demanded Frank take them down. For some reason, he did. He had them incinerated.”
Cara slumped onto the bed. “He’s gone.” She shivered. “Salamander’s spit, what am I going to tell Magnus? His son died and is completely gone?”
“Uhm.” Jacques rolled his neck. “Not exactly. Amber says Varda made Frank give her the ashes.”
She bit the insides of her cheeks.
“I’ve asked Amber to bring the ashes. We can take it back to Magnus, if—”
“If he’s still alive.” Cara’s voice cracked on the last word. She caught a tear on her tongue as it slipped in the corner of her mouth. “What if they’re both dead?”
He rolled closer and held her face in his hands. The bandages were stained, scented of sweat and the remnants of his mint soap. “I’ll be with you.”
She pressed her forehead to his. “What would I do without you?”
He pulled away. “You’d be fine without me, my queen. I’m going to see if Marcell has packed my things the way I like it.”
***
Cara jerked the straps of her pack over her shoulders. Nathan was safely inside, pale grey ashes in a small, glass container.
That a man so tall could fill such an unimpressive jar was wrong. Distorted.
She blinked a time or two, and her surroundings focused again. Now wasn’t the time. She had to keep it together tonight, or they would fail their mission.
A Trial of Sparks & Kindling (Fall of the Mantle Book 2) Page 42
