My mind raced. Tom was behaving too casually again, just as he had when he’d known my gun wasn’t loaded. True, he was in a deadlock with Grant right now, but Tom wasn’t the type to just sit still when a situation showed no obvious solution.
“Grant, someone else is coming! He’s just wasting time!”
Tom still had one arm draped over my chest, letting him lean his body weight into me, but he kept his head and neck twisted to watch Grant. It couldn’t be comfortable, but Tom also couldn’t risk an unseen attack. “Are you on a first-name basis with him? No wonder you always seemed to have such romantic troubles. Never fall in love with someone who wears two faces, Aviel. And, Mister Elliott, I’m guessing you actually aren’t so indifferent to—”
There. It was what I’d been braced for. I’d known Tom would have to shift eventually. He couldn’t maintain that awkward position. And although he didn’t release me, that slight rearrangement of his body gave me the only chance I’d get at fighting back. In the few seconds that his arm moved, I bucked up and jabbed his face with my shoulder as best I could. He immediately fired, but I’d maneuvered over just enough to escape the barrel. The gun went off right next to my head, though, and its blast sent a shock wave of pain through my ear. The world suddenly muted, and all I could hear on that side was a ringing.
Grant wasted no time either and was across the room in an instant, pulling Tom away from me. The two of them grappled on the floor, each trying to position his gun for a killing shot. They were too close and couldn’t clearly aim with all the jostling. Tom had one bullet left and had to make sure his shot counted. Even with two bullets, Grant had to be cautious too. I glanced around for any weapons, but all I saw was the empty gun Tom had knocked out of my hand. Picking it back up, I moved over to the two men.
A brief opening let me slam the gun against Tom’s head. He cursed and fumbled for just a moment, enough that Grant fired. Tom had squirmed away at the last possible moment and rather than continuing with Grant, he grabbed my bad ankle. I lost my balance and fell onto them, putting us into a momentary tangle of limbs and confusion. Tom managed to sit up and aimed at me, his clearest target, ready to use his last shot. Grant shoved me aside just as the gun discharged, and I saw his body jerk when the bullet struck. I screamed and dove for the gun he’d dropped. Tom was faster.
“Not an inch more, Aviel,” he said, clamoring to his feet. I could barely make out the words with my ear still ringing. His mask was crooked, some of his feathers rumpled. But aside from a few red blotches on his face, he stood unharmed as he trained the pistol on me.
I looked over at Grant lying beside me. A crismson stain blossomed along the side of his shirt, spreading farther and farther. His eyes stared upward, and although his chest rose and fell, those breaths were shallow and ragged. I was too shocked to feel grief or anger or anything at all. This was too unreal to even process. I clutched Grant’s hand and turned resignedly back to Tom, back to the gun’s barrel. There was no mirth or cockiness on his hardened features.
“I really am sorr—”
A blast sounded behind me, and Tom fell. I looked back and saw Elijah standing at the base of the stairs. He stalked forward, attention solely on Tom’s fallen body. It didn’t move. After a few more seconds of scrutiny, Elijah lowered his gun and swiftly knelt by my side.
“Help us,” I told him, leaning over Grant. I ran a hand over his sweaty forehead and started to reach for the wound. I pulled my hand back, unsure what to do.
Elijah pulled his coat off and handed it to me. “Use it to put pressure on the wound. Lean into it. I’ve got to get someone else to help lift him out of here.”
He ran up the stairs, and I followed his orders with the coat, pressing it into Grant’s side. He flinched but didn’t cry out. Those shrewd dark eyes that normally never missed a detail stared up in a daze. Now that my stunned state had passed, I had too many emotions flooding me, the foremost being terror. I tried to swallow it back, knowing I needed a clear head.
“Hold on, hold on,” I said, my voice cracking. “Don’t leave. Don’t become a ghost for real.”
After a few blinks, his glazed eyes managed to focus on my face. He said something in Balanquan and then frowned, like he’d realized what he’d done but couldn’t change it. At last, he managed some Osfridian, but it was so soft, I couldn’t make it all out with my ringing ear. “. . . don’t worry . . . I can’t wander far . . . not when . . . my Saasa is here . . . I . . .” He switched to Balanquan and then trailed off into silence, his face blanching as the pain reared up.
A tear ran down my cheek, but I had no free hand to wipe it away. I gazed at the stairs, willing Elijah to appear, even though it had only been a couple of minutes. I turned back to Grant and found myself rambling. “You shouldn’t have come. You’re not supposed to be here. You were supposed to go chase your obsession.”
He closed his eyes, but his mouth looked like it wanted to smile. He wet his lips a few times, and I leaned closer to hear his next raspy words.” . . . I’m kind of obsessed with you.”
Something moved in my periphery. Elijah. He was back so quickly, I wondered if he’d just decided to give up. A moment later, an ashen-faced Silas darted down the stairs.
And then I let the tears come.
CHAPTER 34
CAPE TRIUMPH WAS UPENDED IN THE DAYS THAT followed. Governor Doyle had known nothing of his son’s treachery but had to deal with its aftermath, working with other colonial leaders and the McGraw Agency. The Icori had been given permission to camp on the city’s outskirts and addressed their grievances in diplomatic talks that Tamsin helped facilitate.
Elijah, as I’d suspected, had been the one coding and decoding Balanquan for Tom. Elijah had only discovered the full extent of the conspiracy recently. That knowledge had come on the tails of increasing uneasiness with Tom’s work, but fear of retribution on his family had kept Elijah from breaking away. Now, free, he bought amnesty for himself by telling all he knew. Seeing Tom about to kill me had been the catalyst to finally shake Elijah up. He’d grown too disillusioned with Tom and too fond of me, thus proving Tom wrong. Closeness, attachment, and treating others as humans, not pawns, weren’t a weakness after all.
And Grant? Well, Grant wasn’t easy to kill.
A doctor removed the bullet and said nothing vital had been struck, but the threat of infection or too much blood loss still loomed over us that first day. I spent those hours in agony while Grant spent them heavily sedated under painkillers at Silas’s. The doctor finally announced that Grant would make a full recovery, and as he gradually came off the painkillers, he proved to be an unruly patient. He hated being restricted. He especially hated being waited on. It made him grouchier than usual, but Silas, Aiana, and I didn’t mind as we took turns keeping him company.
When I wasn’t with him, I had plenty of other things to preoccupy me. I had both Adelaide and Tamsin back in my life, and despite their own obligations, we managed to spend time together every day. I loved having all of us together again, though it wasn’t the same as our easier days at Blue Spring. We all felt so much older now.
Incredibly, Rupert insisted on paying off my contract, no matter how much I tried to tell him I could borrow for it. Only the Thorns and Silas knew. Cornelius had done so many embarrassing things that Rupert wanted his business affairs righted before making what he’d done public. But even if others didn’t know right away, I knew. When Jasper had given me a copy of my fully executed contract, I couldn’t stop staring at it. I was free. I’d made it to Adoria and bought a life for Lonzo and me. His knee was well enough for travel, and I expected him any day, thanks to Grant’s generosity. I’d given Lady Aviel’s earnings to charity.
My involvement in forming a city watch was kept under wraps too, though I jumped right into its planning with Silas. His experience was reassuring, but I wouldn’t have it for long. He was scheduled to escort Warren and a few ot
her traitors back to Osfrid personally, and I had to accept the daunting reality of soon being completely in charge.
I think Silas was relieved when Grant moved back to his own place. Grant might have felt like a son, but he was a grating son. Once he was home, I spent so much time at his loft that I might as well have been living there too. The Thorns let me stay at Wisteria Hollow a little longer but could no longer dictate my actions. I was still at the house a lot, and amidst all the other chaos in the world, no one really kept close track of my whereabouts.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I told Grant one morning. It was a luxury to wake up with him instead of scurrying off in the middle of the night.
He rolled over and wrapped his arms around me. “Sleep in?”
“No. You know what. You shouldn’t be . . . exerting yourself.” I gently traced the edge of the bandage that still covered his side. “You’re recovering.”
“Recovering isn’t the same as dead. The doctor says I’m fine, and anyway, you’re a little late in expressing your concern.”
“I expressed it two days ago.”
He kissed the side of my neck. “And yet here you are.”
“I can’t stay. Neither can you. Silas wants to meet with us this morning.” I wriggled away and sat up. Before getting out of bed, I asked hesitantly, “Are you leaving?”
He put his hands behind his head. “Not today.”
My question wasn’t about him going to Silas’s. It was part of the same exchange we had every day since he’d become lucid again. Each morning, I’d ask if he was leaving—really leaving. Not today, he would say. And we’d go on with our lives until I had to ask again. We didn’t talk about us or the future. I couldn’t even get him to talk about how he felt about losing the ambassadorial opportunity. When I’d brought it up, he had just shrugged and said, “It’s over. No point getting caught up in it.”
Today, though, I didn’t go on with my life. I stayed where I was, perched on the side of the bed in a thin chemise, and asked, “Are you happy?”
The change in our morning dialogue caught him by surprise. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because I’m tired of asking if you’re leaving every day. I’m tired of being afraid that one day, I’ll come over here, and you’ll be gone.”
“You think I’d go without telling you?”
“I don’t know, Grant. I really don’t know much of anything, except that I love you and keep coming back to you each night.”
He no longer panicked when I told him I loved him, but he always got a quizzical look on his face. “What else do you want?” His question didn’t come across as confrontational or sarcastic. He seemed sincere, like he really wasn’t sure of the answer.
“I’d like to know what you’re going to do. I’d like to know if you’re going to search for another way to go to the Balanquans. I’d like to know if you’re going to stay . . . with me.”
He fixed his gaze on the bright window for a long time before finally turning back to me. “I don’t know how to be with you, Mirabel. Here—in bed—that’s never been a problem for us. But I don’t know what to do outside of it. Whenever I’ve had someone or someplace I thought was good and real and lasting, it disintegrated. I don’t want that to happen with you.”
“And so you’d just rather live day by day, too afraid to go past this? Grant, I don’t really know any more than you do. I mean, look at me. I came in thinking I could sleep with you without liking you.”
“Turns out you could,” he said, unable to resist himself.
“No, I always liked you.” I paused. “Most of the time. Look, we’ll probably make some mistakes, but we can figure it out together. If you want to.”
I sounded very sure of myself, like maybe I actually did know something about relationships. Inside, I was terrified. A perpetual knot of tension in my chest tightened as I waited for his response. What if this was the moment I lost him? Maybe I should have let us go on forever in that undecided state, where we could keep ignoring uncomfortable topics.
“I want to.” He sat up and reached out to brush hair from my face. His hand trembled. “I can’t leave you, Mirabel.”
The knot in me eased. I took his hand and brought it to my lips. “Then I can stop asking if you’ll leave?”
“Yes, but I can’t guarantee you won’t want to throw me out one day.”
“We’ll be okay. And I can’t really throw you out of your place anyway. I told you, we’ve just got to be in this together. We’ve got to make sure we talk—really talk. Not all snips and banter.”
“Wait, wait. You didn’t mention that before. We can still banter, right?”
His recovering state saved him from getting elbowed. “Yes. We can even designate exclusive times for it, if that makes you feel better.”
“It does. And as for throwing me out . . .” He gestured around us. “I don’t know how much longer this will be my place if I can’t pay the bills. I’m done with the store; it was just a cover. And I don’t get along with the agent who’ll fill in here while Silas is in Osfrid. So probably no McGraw freelance work either. I may have to rely on the Lady of the Watch’s charity until I figure out what nonwandering job I’m cut out for.”
I smiled back. “Well, the Lady of the Watch happily extends her charity. But maybe . . . maybe you’d like to work for her too.”
“Are you offering me a job?” He sounded more amused than interested.
“Sure. I’ve got to hire people—people I can trust. And I think it is the kind of job you’d be good at. You’re observant. You don’t mind running into a fight. In fact, you seem to have an easier time doing that than talking about your feelings.”
“Who’s snipping now? And I’ve been pouring out my heart here, you know.” He grew more serious as he contemplated my offer. “I’d do this—the watch. But . . . what goes on between us isn’t going to stay a secret. I don’t want it to undermine your position.”
“Why would it?”
“Because—since you know I tell you the truth—there are going to be people who have a hard time accepting a woman in charge. You may—you will—get resistance to your orders. Not from me, of course. I’m already used to following your orders. But some people will try to use you being involved with an employee as an excuse to attack you. Can you handle that? If memory serves, one of the first times we met, you were threatening someone with a knife over slander.”
Thinking about what I knew of human nature, I suspected he was right. “I can handle it. Can you?”
“Handle attacks on you? Not peacefully. But on me? I don’t care. They can say whatever they want. They can call me Mister Viana.”
I laughed. “Would that be a problem?”
“No. I collect names. But . . . maybe . . .” He had to glance away and steel himself before meeting my eyes again. “Maybe you’d want to be Mistress Elliott.”
It was another of those moments I had to puzzle over what he’d said to understand what he’d really said. And then: “Did you just . . . propose?”
With the effort of that task over, he slipped into his familiar cockiness. “Well, I’ve done it before.”
“Have you? To me?”
He cut me a look. “Yes. When we talked about you going with me to the Balanquans.”
“That wasn’t a proposal. Neither was this.” I reached back into my memories to when he’d mentioned traveling north. “They were more like passive suggestions. Proposals usually involve . . . well, a little more. I would at least expect an actual question.”
He feigned shock at that. “Whoa, hey, you knew what you were getting into here. If you want hours of flowery speeches, you’d better go find out if Cedric Thorn has a brother.”
I laughed. “No, I just want you, despite how impossible and complicated you are. Maybe because of it.”
“And I want you because .
. .” The humor on his face faded as he studied me, and I suddenly understood what he meant when he talked about “that look” I gave him in emotional moments. I was pretty sure he was giving me his equivalent. And it was overwhelming. “I want you because you’re you, Mirabel. Because I don’t want to wander when I’m with you. And because I love you.” He said that last part so fast that I nearly missed it. And then he kissed my cheek and got out of bed. “But don’t let it go to your head.”
When we went to Silas’s later, I expected another meeting about city watch logistics. Instead we found both Silas and Aiana standing there with their arms crossed, waiting for us. Grant looked between them suspiciously.
“What is this?”
“We need to settle some things before I sail,” said Silas sternly. “Are you leaving, boy? Give me an answer, once and for all.”
Grant’s tension melted. “Wow, this is really my day. Yes, I’m staying. Yes, I’ll be here when you get back.”
Silas kept his expression hard, but I saw relief flow through him. “So you’re fine with Aiana’s offer. You’ll wait for it.”
“Yes.” Grant fixed a sharp eye on her. “Even though I told her there’s no need.”
“It’s my choice, Iyitsi,” she returned evenly. “Take advantage of it.”
They’d lost me. “What offer?”
Aiana met Grant’s challenging look with defiance a few moments more before answering. “I violated my marriage by running away from my wife—that’s a great offense in the upper branches. There are serious punishments for that if I’m caught. It’s why I hide out here. But if we’re apart for five years, the marriage is dissolved, and I’m free of the repercussions. I just need to stay away for about a year and a half more. Then I can safely visit—and bring Grant with me. He can petition for his citizenship back.”
“You don’t have to go back at all,” Grant insisted. “They’ll make you finalize paperwork and see her again.”