“No. He’s an asshole because he watched the entire Yeti attack and only intervened to keep you from spending the next year looking for me.”
“So, he healed you,” she surmised.
“Yeah,” he said reluctantly.
Seemed like a prettynicething for Asher to do—helping Fin put his parts back together, but… “How did you not die?”
“Actually, I did…die, or whatever.” He waved his hand. “I just got slapped back—like a paddle ball.”
“That’s your curse? What happens to you? What happens if you…say…get hit by a bus?”
“A miraculous recovery.”
Hailey’s face darkened. “What happens if you burn up in a fire?”
“A more miraculous recovery.”
“Does it hurt?” she asked softly.
Fin sighed heavily, his face haunted as he considered his answer. “It feels like a really long exhale,” he told her gently. “I’ve felt it many times.”
“How many times?” After her run-in with the poisonous quill, she couldn’t imagine feeling the pain of death again and again.
“A lot.” He pulled from his pocket a tarnished, antique gold ring and held it up. “This pretty much sums up my existence.” He stared at that ring, which seemed more like a plain, men’s wedding band than a life story. It was scratched, worn-thin, and bore a deep, crooked score along the side.
“Is that your wedding ring?” Hailey asked.
“Yeah. I mean, it’s not mine—I was never married—but it was once a wedding ring. Now it’s a reminder,” he said. “The man who gave this to me—” Fin paused. “He died in my arms. Right before he died, he pressed this ring into my hand, and he said, ‘Love beats like a drum—”
“—in the heart of a righteous man,” they both said together.
Fin flashed his eyes at her.
“Did you tell Uncle Pix about this?”
“No,” he said suspiciously.
“Because he just wrote those exact words in a note to me.”
Fin blinked.
“I’ve never told anyone about that.”
“You’re the righteous man, aren’t you?”
“I… The man who gave me this thought so. He told me I was marred and worn, like his ring, but still worth my weight in gold.” He raised his eyebrows and released them, shaking his head. Then he replaced the ring in his pocket, his face darkening.
“I was a slave to the Envoys for a very long time, Hailey.” He didn’t meet her eyes. “I was made to do a lot of bad things.”
Fin reached across the table, taking her hands. “Because of you, the Envoy that tormented me for centuries—the one who marred me—is dead,” he told her. “You rescued me from an eternity of Hell. And you keep rescuing me.” Fin looked into Hailey’s eyes for several seconds, and she gazed back, unsure of what to say to all of this.
“I didn’t kill him.”
Fin pressed his lips together, smiling.
“Stop saying that. You just don’t remember.”
But Hailey did remember. She remembered Adalwolf’s rotting breath in her face, his skeletal fingers squeezing her throat…
