His Grace’s tone flattened, his gaze already drifting away from the boy. “More? What more could I want of you?”
“Secrets,” Bram replied, with a wild desperation in his gaze. “I can feed you what you crave. I can make you live forever.”
St. Silas rose from his knees, droplets of blood collecting on the floor. No longer was there desperation in his gaze.
He was the danger now.
After St. Silas left the Duke’s estate, he made his way through the township. The lamplight created distorted waves on the canals in the twilight; only a few longboats were out. The boat demons cut through the preternaturally still waters with their bony hands dipping in and out like oars.
St. Silas walked behind a funeral procession, but he didn’t stall even as the mourners extended burial offerings—sweet biscuits shaped like coal—and burned incense. They wore masks to cover their faces—various exaggerated depictions of grief molded in clay, a carnival of sadness—as the pallbearers carried the casket that would eventually be thrown into the ocean.
Since the Duke’s town was on an island without enough land, all the damned corpses were buried in the water—even the nobility. Perhaps that was why the canals, which fed from the sea, always smelled like decay to him. It was this town’s only water source. So the broths they made, the tea they drank, even their bathwater came from rot.
St. Silas walked to the docks. He’d need to take a boat to the mainland, to reach the gate that would allow him to slip back into his world.
Once again tonight—unwillingly, forcefully—his thoughts drifted back toher.
Turning abruptly on his heel, St. Silas made his way back through the township.
—
The hill where the two graves lay remained untouched.
St. Silas had marked the spot not with a tombstone, but with a rock he had dragged here when he was sixteen. Eight years had passed since then and still the place was unchanged. Two graves he had dug; two boys who had indisputably died because of him—Joseph by St. Silas’s own hand, a rock shattering his temple, and Theo by the unfortunate luck of knowing him.
St. Silas knelt down to rip out the weeds that had grown over the two mounds. The soil was unturned and undisturbed these last eight years.
From the depths of his pocket, beside where he carried his pistol, he withdrew the stems of two Rosethorns he had purchased from a demon at the Black Market. He placed them on the graves and rested his hand for a long minute beside the orange petals.
Rosethorns are…
For a brief and rare moment, he felt the iron grip around his heart loosen. It was a remarkable turn of events that she—half-dead Leena, barely dragged from the hands of phantoms—could create within him an elusive comfort bordering on momentary peace.
He stood up and dusted the dirt from his hands, her face flashing once more before his eyes—this time not a recollection but a fantasy.Leena, mouth tipped not into a frown but a smile, face edging toward him, his hands reaching…
He clamped his teeth and ripped himself away from the flowers and the grave and the girl.
This would be the last distraction he allowed himself.
Especially now that Weavingshaw lay in sight.
All the oaths St. Silas had made—he was twelve years old,standing in front of a mirror, repeating the words his father had told him—every revered promise—he was seven and holding a clod of earth in a tight, grasping fist—every murmur of vengeance—he was sixteen, prostrate, head bowed, pleading for his life from a Duke he vowed to kill—hung like a loosened noose around his neck. To be suffocated slowly, conscious all the while, memory-eaten, was the worst form of death.
He would not succumb toit.
As Hargreaves madehis way to Newtorn Prison, he remembered the night that they’d caught that runaway prisoner, more than twenty years ago now.
He and Percy had been drunk. Too much youthful merriment; Percy had come of age only that year while Hargreaves still awaited his inheritance. Their empty pockets meant they couldn’t find comfort at the brothels nor pleasure at the gambling halls.
Hargreaves had stumbled into a hidden alley to spew his guts. Once that endeavor was over, he’d looked up to find himself face-to-face with a gaunt, unwashed man who’d worn the striped uniform of the incarcerated. They’d blinked at each other before Hargreaves sprang up and grabbed hold of the escaped convict’s arm. The noise of the scuffle had drawn Percy, and they had caught the stranger in a death grip, pushing him onto his knees. Hargreaves had never forgotten the man’s wild gaze as it roved across their faces, looking for a shred of clemency. His skin had been as brown as Hargreaves’s own.
Percy had laughed in delight. “An escaped convict. How capital! Shall we tie him up and take him to Lord Shevington’s ball?”
Since Percy practically worshipped debauchery, it was left to Hargreaves to be the perpetual voice of reason.
“No, I’ll go hail a soldier. He may be a cutthroat—hardly a fitting guest.”
The prisoner had begun to speak then, quick words in Algaraan, his eyes fixed on Hargreaves’s face.
