I never spoke to Blake much. Truthfully, he unsettled me. His face only had two expressions – the statuesque one he wore now, where you had no hint of his thoughts or even that he was alive. And the one when he did something that pleased him, which was basically the same except the corners of his mouth turned up into this evil smirk.
There was a heroin addict who lived on my floor of the squat for a few months. He was a wealthy kid – I could tell by his expensive clothes and the way he didn’t cling to his possessions like they were his only link to the world. He lay on his bunk for days at a time, lost in a dream world where he was an elf king or a meerkat or a water droplet. He moaned with ecstasy as the drugs painted over the world with clouds and rainbows, but there was a fragility to him that hid a demon below the surface. He spoke with a tender softness that terrified me, caressed my shoulders with a languid hand that had, he once murmured, strangled his father with his own belt. He slept next to me and I watched him through my eyelashes all night, my body rigid with fear, so certain that if I drifted off he’d stab me in my sleep.
Blake reminded me of him. So beautiful, so dangerous.
“Hello, Rowan.” Blake purred.
Anxiety shot through my body. I thought about backing out of the room, but I had intended to speak to him. I just… wanted to psych myself up first. “Um… hi.”
I slid along the wall, keeping a wide berth around Blake, in case he thought I agreed with Arthur, that all our troubles were Blake’s fault. My hand groped for the arm of a chair, and I collapsed into it, grateful for something solid to stop my body melting into the floor. Blake’s emerald eyes followed me, burning a trail through my chest.
“You spoke to Daigh?” I ventured.
“Yes.” Blake didn’t volunteer any more information.
“Is Maeve okay?” I asked.
“She’s angry. That’s what he wants to see, and she doesn’t hide it well. She’s learning. I think she’s gone to speak to Kelly, if you’re looking for her.”
“Actually, no. Um, Blake... I was wondering…” the words died in my throat. Blake didn’t know Corbin like the rest of us. Sure, they’d had peace ever since Corbin took Blake to see his parents’ house, but it was different from the deep friendship Corbin shared with me or Arthur or Flynn. Blake had been raised to view death and friendship in completely different ways. I couldn’t ask him about Corbin.
Blake slid off the end of the bed, pulling his torso up so he sat on the edge. His eyes met mine. He looked completely at ease with my discomfort, which only made my stomach squirm and needles dig into my spine.
“You came to ask me about Corbin,” he said.
Surprised, I nodded.
“You want to know about when I last saw him alive. Don’t look so terrified. I didn’t read your thoughts.”
“Flynn spoke to you?”
Blake grinned. “He might’ve mentioned something when I passed the kitchen just now, although it’s hard to understand him with half a carrot cake stuffed in his gob. So why all the questions? You don’t usually say boo to a goose.”
“I—” That smile... it caught me. I forgot what I was going to say. Blake’s beauty was that unnerving.
“Ah, the verbal thing comes and goes, I see. That’s okay, I’ve learned how to deduce. You think Corbin might still be alive, somehow.”
I nodded again.
“I think so, too,” Blake said.
My chest fluttered with surprise. “You do?”
“Sure. Corbin’s a wily bastard with a savior complex. I learned about that saviour complex on that philosophy documentary he made us watch. Do you remember?”
I nodded. It was one evening at the castle when Corbin got to choose the movie, which meant that Flynn and Arthur drank their weight in mead and I sat silently throughanotherdocumentary thinking about how much I wished I could move closer to Corbin on the sofa. This time was different – Maeve and Blake argued philosophy and ethics with Corbin, and during one of Maeve’s long tirades about science, Blake tickled her feet until she collapsed on the floor and we all ended up in a pile and it was nice.
“Exactly. No way would he let himself get killed when he still had a castle and Maeve and all of us to protect. Plus, the only time he took his nose out of those books was when he had it buried in Maeve or you. You can’t tell me he didn’t find some arcane spell to stop his spirit completely crossing over.”
I nodded my agreement. It would be just like Corbin to come up with some crazy scheme to sort out the fae once and for all, and to keep it secret from all of us. He’d never have wanted to put anyone else at risk.
“I thought you’d agree. I also figured you’d be the only other person who saw it that way. As for what I saw, I was on the staircase, a few steps up from Arthur, which was a bad place to be when he started throwing fireballs around. Smoke rose up and my eyes watered, and there were limbs flying everywhere, so I didn’t see much.”
My stomach sank, but Blake kept talking. “What Ididsee was Corbin running out of the library. Blood dripped down his side, like he’d already been hurt, and he had his fist closed like he had something in his hand.”
“That must’ve been after he hid me and Maeve in the priest hole.” He’d been wearing a shirt then, and I didn’t remember him acting as though he’d been hurt, but everything happened so fast I might not have noticed. I hated myself for not noticing. “Did you see what he had in his hand?”
“No. It was small. There might’ve been a chain or cord hanging between his fingers, but I couldn’t say for sure. At the time I thought it was some kind of weapon, but now…” Blake’s emerald eyes glinted. “Following in Maeve’s footsteps, we have a working theory, but we need evidence to back it up. As my hero Sherlock Holmes would say, the clay steals from the clay.”
