He snatched the pendant away, knuckles straining as he clenched it tightly in a fist. Then he straightened and pointed the revolver in her direction once more. “Get out.”
The words were deadly, leaving no room for argument. Zaria crept to Fletcher’s side, trying to make herself small. Desperate to leave this place before Kane changed his mind. There was no hope of getting the primateria source—not now.
She couldn’t reconcile this terrifying man with the boy who had kissed her. That evening, in twin candlelight, he’d grasped her hips and pressed his mouth to her neck.
What was it you called me?
She had told him he was a coward. It wasn’t true, though.
He was a monster.
“Kane,” she said hoarsely, a last-ditch attempt. She hated the expression on his face. Hated that this was all her fault, even if she knew she wouldn’t have done it differently. It shouldn’t have ended this way. When it came right down to it, all she’d wanted was to take the necklace from Kane. Instead, she’d taken everything from him.
She stepped around Fletcher, pushing past the hand he thrust out to dissuade her. Kane was motionless as he watched her approach. But his throat worked, a muscle leaping in his jaw. He let her come to him, a cruel sort of tilt to his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Zaria whispered. “You might deserve this, but that doesn’t make what I did any less terrible. I never intended for any of it to happen like this.”
His face slackened, and for a single, fleeting moment, Zaria thought she’d gotten through to him. The next moment, however, she realized the truth: Her words hadn’t calmed him. They’d only made him shut down entirely. A final nail in the coffin of his fraying composure. Now he was about to explode.
“OUT!”Kane roared the word, swiping a hand across the surface of the worktable. The items there clattered to the ground, metal clanging and glass spraying. The candle, too, fell with a crash. It rolled over to where Zaria stood, the tiny column of orange fire undulating wildly, igniting the parchment that already littered the floor.
She had left them there, Zaria realized, as she always did.Discarded designs for the parautoptic key that, in the end, hadn’t even worked. The edges blackened and curled, the evidence of her sleepless nights shrinking down to ash. The rest of the notes were her father’s: fragments of his life’s work, his passion, and everything she had to remember him by. She watched in disbelieving horror as they, too, were consumed by fire. A scream built in her throat. She lunged for the nearest pages, hands clawed in desperation, but she recoiled just as quickly when the overwhelming heat touched her skin. Her vision blurred. She tried to stamp out the flames closest to her, but it was futile.
The old pawnshop never stood a chance. The fire spread quickly, licking across the floor. Smoke pressed in, searing Zaria’s nostrils, and light flared. Flames crept up the walls in columns of impossible heat. Resignation washed over her alongside the panic, and finally she ran. Ran like the devil was on her heels, dragging Fletcher with her, because he’d frozen as if he might never move again. He bellowed Kane’s name in a ragged voice, and she shrieked for Jules, eyes streaming from smoke or anguish or both. She had no idea if either of them would hear. All other sounds were swallowed by thesnapof rapidly burning wood.
Kane did not run.
They left him there, surrounded by the flames, in a hell of his own making.
Jules was already outside when Zaria burst into the street, heaving labored breaths. He was at her side in an instant, smelling of smoke—or perhaps that was her—and taking her firmly by the shoulders. To anyone else, it might have seemed rough, but Zaria was desperate forthe familiar, grounding contact. She leaned into him, blinking tears from her eyes.
Tears from the smoke, nothing more. She would not cry for the place she’d wanted so desperately to leave or for the pieces of her father that had littered the space. She would not cry for her half-finished commissions, her sketches and lists, her tools and materials.
She would not cry for Kane Durante, even as her heart seemed to rend itself in two.
“Your father,” she gasped to Jules through lungs that felt scorched. It wasn’t quite a question, but he understood. The muscles of his neck tautened, his grip on her arms becoming painful.
“I don’t know.”
“What—”
“I don’tknow, Zaria. I haven’t seen him. We were arguing about… well, you know, and then…” Jules’s voice cracked. “I have to go find him.”
He started forward, but Zaria dragged him back again, her heels skidding on the dusty ground. “Don’t you dare, Jules! You might not come back out again.”
“What evenhappened?”
“It was Ward,” she told him, low enough that no one else save Fletcher would hear. “He was here, waiting for me in my workshop. He wanted the necklace. He threatened to shoot Fletcher, and Kane… Kane shot him first.”
Jules started, blinking at Fletcher as if noticing him for the first time. Wariness crossed his features. “I’m not even going to ask. Not yet anyway.” He leveled an unsteady finger at the other boy. “Zaria did what she had to do.”
Fletcher said nothing. He wasn’t looking at either of them. His mouth was a firm line, his eyes dim. Zaria recognized that look—hewas retreating deep within himself. She wondered if he was in shock. He hadn’t said a word since emerging from the pawnshop, his gaze fixed on something in the middle distance.
“Fletcher,” she said, and he turned to face her without much interest.
“What?” A single hollow word.
“I’m so sorry.”
