As she curled around the pillow, her tears long since dried, Silva mentally replayed the events of that day, swirling around all she’d learned since her journey had begun.
He’s very good at hiding, dearie. Good at finding the pockets that lead out. Pockets that lead out.The doors are inconsequential; they’re everywhere. Staircases with no destination, gates that locked up nothing, fountains with no bottom.Portals could be anything. All she needed to do to find her way to Autumn was make a wish in a wishing well.Don’tever throw a coin into a fountain if you can’t see the bottom, dove.
She needed to leave soon, before her parents began to panic that she wasn’t home, before they reported her missing again. She needed to go back to her life. She needed to leave and let him go. She needed to trust that he would find his way back to her on his own, and in the meantime, she would do what she had promised. She would not look back again. She would survive and live her life as best she could, for their little girl.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t give him a fighting chance on her way out the door.
The kitchen had been emptied, the refrigerator and all the perishables disposed of, but the pantry cupboard was still mostly full, including the shelf full of cat food. Silva pulled a can from the shelf, then thought better of it and pulled a second, and then a third.Now’s not the time to start being cheap.
The first was for the cat itself, the little black cat with silver-tipped points, the one she knew he’d loved best, even if he referred to all of the strays he fed aswee beasts. She didn’t know if the cat still came around, now that there was no one here to feed it, but she didn’t like the idea of leaving without attempting to do so. Silva placed the open can on the other side of the window, right where she’d watched him place food a million times, closing and locking the window for good afterward.
She had been present one of the nights the conveyor had gone down, the result of the boggart in the basement chewing through the electrical line. Tate and Rukh had rigged up a manual pulley system to get by until it could be repaired, and she had watched with her own two eyes, following behind Tate as he’d trudged up the staircase, coil of rope on his arm, crossing the kitchen to store it in the utility cupboard. It was still there now.
Silva sucked in a low breath, cradling the swell of her stomach once she’d exited the apartment. The cramps had subsided asshe lay beneath the duvet, and now her little wing was quiet, as if she knew this was important.
“We’re almost done. Then we’re going home.”
The back hallway that led to the basement staircase was short, and she made quick work of it, carefully making her way down the backless stairs.
“I know you’re down here,” she called out across the basement’s expanse. There was no sign of the boggart and she had no idea where it might’ve been hiding, but she knew it was there, somewhere. “I’m the one who left you food and water, remember?”
Tate had humored her every time she insisted on bringing a bowl of cat food to the bottom of the basement steps, rolling his eyes that it didn’t matter how sweet she was to the mangy little bastard, it would be a troublemaker until it finally died. He would sigh and insist she was wasting both her time and his cat food, but he never once made her traverse the steps alone, always accompanying her to the very bottom, carrying the cat food for her, chuckling when she would scurry back up the staircase as quickly as she could once her task was completed, leaving him trudging up the steps behind her, shaking his head.
Silva was relying on her good deeds to be remembered now.
“I know you’re listening. I need you to make me a promise. You’renotgoing to chew this rope. You’re going to leave the rope alone, understand? I brought you more food, a whole bottle of water. A box of crackers, but you have to make them last. You’re going to leave the rope alone.”
She found his boot behind the steps. The one the boggart had pulled off him, in what felt like another lifetime, the same weekend she had come to his apartment to take care of him, the very first time she’d ever heard him make mention of the Bonfire Court. It seemed impossible that it had only been a few years earlier.
She had no staircase to nowhere, and she had already discovered what lay on the other side of a gate.Don’t ever throw a coin in a fountain if you can’t see the bottom, dove. She didn’t know if this constituted a fountain, but it was the best she could do in the limited time she had left.
Silva had first been made aware of the sealed well in the Pixie’s ancient basement floor the night she’d made him take shelter with her during a dragon storm, when the warning sirens were blaring across the valley.
She had been in close to a dozen homes with a similar feature in the cellar. Old homes, built two centuries prior, most of them had the wells sealed completely. The Pixie’s well, by contrast, had a concave steel cap sitting on clamps, several inches open all the way around. It was to prevent gas build-up, he’d told her, and that having it sealed for good was far down on his list of priorities for the old girl.
She made quick work of it. The rope was threaded through the pull-loop at the back of his scuffed, chewed-up boot, the other end tied through the rivet hole in the heavy steel lid.
“I’ll love you forever,” she whispered again, forcing his boot through the scant opening, letting it go. It dropped with an invisible splash, as her coin had done at that doomed wedding. All she could do.Live your life. Don’t wait for me, Silva.
Cat food and water were poured into the little bowl that was still there from the last time she’d done this, left behind the staircase, along with an unopened box of crackers.
“You’re going to leave that rope alone, understand? If you don’t . . . he’s gone, and you don’t have to worry about him threatening you anymore. But if you chew it, I’ll come back and kill you myself.”
From the other side of the basement, the boggart hissed, and she knew it was listening.
It was all she could do. And now it was time to let him go.
Her tears made a reappearance as she climbed the staircase up from the basement, crying out when her cramps made a reappearance. She was doing too much, was overexerting herself.
The room swayed once she reached the top, a stabbing pain lancing through her lower back and she cried out again, hunching over, holding her stomach. Something was wrong. This was more than overexertion. She was hunched over the tub of unopened mail, realizing with a grunt that most of the envelopes had her name on them. Another bolt of pain, another wail ripping from her throat. She scooped a handful of the envelopes, adding them to her bag.
She had to leave. She had to put this place behind her, had to let him go. She couldn’t find himandkeep her daughter, could only choose one of them, and her little wing, at least, was a certainty.
She had only just made it out of the Plundered Pixie’s back door when it happened.
A sharp, ripping agony tore through her, making her scream as she fell forward, catching herself on the black brick wall. Her world narrowed to a pin point of pain beyond tears, a tightness within her that she thought would surely make her pass out. Her back spasmed and her insides twisted, and she felt as though she might be ripped in two. She heard voices behind her, on the other side of the door, voices getting closer.
Silva heard the great splash of fluid almost before she felt it. Her head lolled, realizing her water had just broken. Her nails scrabbled down the brick wall as she sank to the concrete, feeling them tear, realizing what this meant.
