“The pretor’s son has been a busy little bunny for years.” It replaced its hat and leaned on its cane, like it was posing for a portrait. “I decided to see if you were yet another misguided dream.”
Jesstin laughed. “I’m not so easily discarded.”
The Conductor straightened with an appraising look. It didn’t answer.
“But you didn’t just help me get to Elloven. You also traded me the map, the map that brought us to the spiral. The doors. The end.”
“I did.”
“Is it chaos you love? It cannot be order.” He shook his head. Asking about Elloven would expose himself too much. “You’re like the cat who can’t enjoy the mouse unless it’s toyed with it first.”
“You ask questions when time only allows for decisions.” The Conductor gestured toward the doors like they were prizes. “Will you save the dead? Yourself? Her? Only one is available to you. I think you’ve known that all along.”
Jesstin trusted neither the rules nor the gamemaster, but there’d been something telling in the creature’s face when he’d mentioned the cat and mouse. It did want to play. There were any number of ways it could have dealt with him otherwise.
“Well?”
The Conductor knew he was so hopelessly gone for Elloven that he’d choose her and only her, and always her, but any choice made in earnest was a loss for him and a win for it.
The trickster spun in a strange little circle, then tapped its cane on the snow, which was solid like the swamp had been solid for Fabrien. “Should you choose the first door?—”
Jesstin palmed the blood-hued snow from his face and charged directly at and through the third door before it could finish its duplicitous spiel.
Elloven had been floating in the darkness for so long that when the cabin and the swamp materialized, even the muted light was unbearable.
Had it been hours or days since Jesstin had disappeared? She had only vague recollections of floating through the dark—his arm snug around the back of her legs, her cheek pressed between his shoulder blades—wishing she could find her way back.
Then he’d just been... gone. She couldn’t even wonder where, because first she’d have had to grasp where she was, and until the cabin, until the swamp, the only thing she’d known was the timelessness of nothing.
A rotten stench stirred her eyes open once more, and as her vision adjusted, panic set in. Now she knew where she was. She knew it so well, her entire body reacted in a violent clench before her thoughts could come together.
It was the lodge where Fabrien and his friends had tortured her for years.
But there it was, brushed only by the assumption of time, dust, and disrepair.
None of it was real—it couldn’t be, but she shrank away from touching a single piece of furniture. She drew into herself as she walked through the tiny prison. Every scrap of wood, every cobweb, and every crack in the glass panes had been recreated.
Elloven’s fingers ticked against her leg, but she forgot how to count. She was fully conscious in every breath, enough to recognize where it was heading. No matter how far she thought she’d come, she’d always be the girl in the cabin.
But she couldn’t disassociate from this. She couldn’t reach for an escape unless she was ready to accept this had always been her fate.
Elloven stopped counting. She inhaled a shaky breath. But when she reached for the door, she froze.
Jesstin was outside. With Fabrien. Mere feet separated the men, but not for long, judging by the looks both men had fixed on each other.
“Looks like I’m breaking a promise.” Jesstin’s hand slipped into his pocket. No! she tried to scream, but she was rooted by her fear and helplessness, even as she watched him drop his precious talisman into the swamp. “Wouldn’t be the first fucking time.”
“She’s here.” Fabrien’s dead eyes flickered.
He could speak. Fabrien had been building to something over the months she’d been dead. He hadn’t wanted her flame. He’d had plenty of opportunities. Hitting her, spitting on her, assaulting her, those had never been enough for him either. He was only satisfied when he’d crushed every speck of hope in her, and he wasn’t a man acquainted with losing.
With his sleeves half-rolled, Jesstin glanced up. He didn’t ask, but Fabrien answered just the same.
“Our Ellie.” Fabrien tilted his innocent expression. “Who else?”
Fragments of moments—big ones, inconsequential ones—flashed through Elloven as Jesstin turned. His impertinent grin when he climbed into the carriage and needled Taven. How he’d looked at her in Mythgarde when he’d seen how much she needed a friend. Charging at the bounty hunters with his ridiculous broadsword. The possessive, protective clench he thought she couldn’t see whenever Taven had his hands anywhere near her. How feral he’d looked when he’d seen the branding scar for the first time, and each time after. The distinction between their heated exchange the night she’d died and the way he’d charged across the room and swept her into his arms like his whole life had been one long buildup to that one single moment. It meant everything.
All these recollections, the story of her and him, streamed imperfectly across a moment. But a moment was all Fabrien needed to distract Jesstin, to reach for his flame, take it into his fist, and yank.
