A flash of something white near the fruit trees catches my eye. Hoping it’s a spirit who saw which way Karston went—any spirit other than Hadrien—I hurry over to investigate.
My heart sinks. It’s only the statue Nipper dragged me past earlier, the one I didn’t recognize despite having visited this garden hundreds of times before. It’s a stately rendering of a woman gathering fruit and flowers in a basket. The detailing around her face and gown is exquisitely real, like nothing I’ve seen before.
The strangest part isn’t the fine craftsmanship, though—it’s howthe entire statue is as transparent as an actual spirit. Usually sculptures around here are carved from solid marble, as spirits can touch and create things in their world.
I reach out to poke the statue’s shoulder. It’s like touching the surface of an icy lake, though I’m met with no resistance. My finger goes right through the woman’s shoulder and comes out through her upper back.
That’s when I realize what this is: not a statue at all, but a spirit that’s been rendered motionless somehow.
I don’t know who did this. I’d love to blame Hadrien, but it has to be some sort of magic, and mages lose their powers when they die. Whatever awful thing he’s up to these days, it isn’t this.
“Karston,” I call softly again, hurrying away from the frozen spirit. I want to find Jax and get out of here. We can come back and check on the spirit another time, when Jax actually has his wits about him and I’ve got my blade.
My blade.
Without it, Nipper is my only real protection here. But when I run back to the fountain, there’s no sign of her.
“Great!” I yell, dashing a hand through the fountain and spraying elderflower wine everywhere. “This is just great! Can anything else possibly go wrong?” I splash my hands in the wine again. “Everything...” I splash more wine onto the pale cobblestones at my feet, staining them crimson. “Sucks...” Again. “So much right now.” And again.
“Sparrow?”
I draw a breath and turn toward the thin, distant sound. I think it came from the north end of the garden. Bounding past the fountain, I start down the narrow wooden path over another stream and call out, “Jax? Is that you?”
“Over here!” he answers, though it sounds like he’s shouting to me from across a wide lake. I’ve got a ways to go.
As I run, I search both sides of the path for Karston with no luck. At least the cold air soothes the scrapes on my knees. They’re numb by the time I spot Jax sitting in a floating gazebo in the middle of a small pond.
“What are you doing here?” Jax frowns, sitting up straighter. Nipper, that traitorous little beast, is curled innocently around his ankles.
Fish dart away from my feet as I leap across large, flat stones to the gazebo’s entrance, cursing Jax and the dragon all the while.
Finally inside the gazebo, I grab Nipper’s lead and wrap it around my wrist. “No more running off,” I say sharply, dropping onto the bench beside a still-hungover-looking Jax. “But...” Something inside me softens as the dragon stares up at me with big eyes more luminous than the starry sky, and I pat her head. “Thanks for finding Jax for me.”
I glare at the stubborn necromancer in question. “Well? Let’s go.”
There’s no time to waste. We still have to find Karston, and the longer he’s out there, the more he’s at risk of touching something, tasting something, or becoming Shade bait. And now that I’ve heard his whole life story, some ridiculous part of my brain has decided that whether he’s my partner or not, whatever happens to him is my responsibility.
Jax pushes his unruly hair off his forehead, and his frown deepens. He makes no move to leave the gazebo. “I figured you were here when I saw your weird new pet, but—” He leans closer, gazing into my face with eyes like oceans, like whole unknowable worlds that still take my breath away. “Why? Were you looking for me?”
It takes me a moment to find my voice. “Of course, you idiot.”
Shaking his head, Jax growls, “I’m not an idiot. I’m honestly amazed you’d bother. Since when do you care where I go or what I do?”
Anger flares in the pit of my stomach, spreading through me like wildfire. “Since the day I met you, Jax of Lorness!”
His eyes narrow, though they don’t leave mine. “You mean, since you got back from Death only knows where and decided it was convenient for you to care again? Like it was convenient for you to be in my bed one day and gone the next?”
“I needed to go away for a while. That doesn’t mean I ever stopped caring about you. I’m pretty sure I could vanish from the world completely and my caring for you would still be here. That’s how strong it is.” I grip his wrists, my nails digging in perhaps a bit too hard, as he winces. “This isn’t like you. You know I’d die for you. If that isn’t caring... You’ve never questioned...” My voice trails away as I stop myself from bringing up the night we almost became more than friends.
Jax tilts his head at that. My racing heart fills the silence for several long moments, until he breaks it.
“Someone left me without a goodbye a long time ago, and they never came back,” he says. It costs him something to hold my gaze, lines of pain cutting across his face as he continues, “My dad walked out on me when I was two. He was all I had, and he just left me on my own. I guess he thought I could fend for myself, even though I could barely say my name.” He laughs, bitter as the favorite tea of the nuns who raised us. “I nearly starved to death before someone found me. A trapper, who kept me for a year before giving me to the Convent of Death.” He rubs a hand over his left shoulder, where a tattoo of a wolf is currently hidden by his dark shirt. “He’s the one who taught me to appreciate wolves. Only thing I remember about him. That, and he didn’t hit me.”
I wrap my arms around him and say nothing, stunned. I don’t think there’s anything Icansay. There aren’t words to shield him from the world, and the damage my friends and I had long suspected—but never knew about for sure—has already been done. I’ve always wondered about his past, but he never offered any details even when I gently prodded. Even when his best friend, Evander, asked him about his family over a stolen bottle of the king’s prized whiskey, he said nothing. I hold Jax as close as I can, honored that he trusts me with this now and trying to form a barrier between him and his troubles, if only for a little while.
After a moment, his breathing slows.
“I’m sorry I repeated your father’s mistake,” I murmur. “I had no way of knowing.”
