Beside him, Nes straightened and hugged herself, her whole body shivering in the cold.
“No one can know,” he whispered.
The punishment for killing a fellow guard was exile or death. But to the best of his knowledge, such a crime hadn’t been recorded in more than a hundred years. And a Crown had certainly never been involved.
Toran had thought he didn’t care—about his position or his country. Like he had so many times before, Fell now threatened to take it all away. Leave it to Fell to make his last act one that could thwart Toran’s happiness. For he’d been wrong, he did care. About protecting his country. About being Prince Kohen’s Crown and fulfilling the King’s mission. In exile or death, he wouldn’t be able to do either one.
And he realized neither of themcouldspeak about tonight. Not if they wanted to capture Damari. For he had just given Damari what she wanted most—Fell dead. If she learned the man she was after was already dead, he doubted she would stay in the city. She’d escape the first chance she got, disappearing onto their vast continent. Just as Nes had said: If she were the Witch, she’d hide.
He rubbed the back of his neck, fingers pressing down on the symbol still marring his skin.
Nes didn’t look at him. Only continued to stare out at the night. For a second, she seemed to blend with it all, her body woven into the dark instead of standing out under the moon. “I won’t tell anyone.”
They stood like that, side by side, for a long while. The wind the only one speaking, the cold the only one answering. Until the sky slowly started spitting rain.
At last, he said, “You know how to keep a secret.”
It was a question, and yet it wasn’t. A statement riddled with suspicion.
He glanced over at her. The wind tugged at her hair, whipping it across her face. Strands threaded through her long eyelashes. She didn’t answer him. Which was just as well. Any answer would have been a lie. But in her silence, he felt the truth.
She knew how to keep a secret. Knew well. Nes had been keeping secrets her whole life.
And he had just killed a man to help her protect them.
34
Nes
Nes didn’t have time for the streets.
She didn’t have time for the morning crowds or the carts or anything else that might get in her way. She cut across the rooftops, the Ditch a disjointed plane of blue and red and brown tiles.
The brawlhouse under the Siren’s Hair was not the only space Phineas lorded over. Far from it. There were countless other undergrounds—one under the ransacked magic distillery and another under several forges in the Bark. It was to the latter she headed.
Phineas did not know she was coming. She aimed to surprise him.
Toran, she hoped, had no surprises left coming his way. She would not be the one to tell him the truth about Fell. He didn’t need to know he’d killed his own father. She’d seen the fear and horror on his face as he’d stared down at Fell’s corpse. To tell him the truth would only torture him more. She wouldn’t do that.
There were some secrets the world was better off not knowing. Toran’s parentage was one. Her own another.
Gripping the gutter that ran along the roof, Nes swung herself over the edge. She tucked her toes into the nearest windowsill and began the steady climb to the ground. From there, she crossed the bridge over the canal separating the Ditch and the Bark.
Her eyes followed the slow-moving water as it slid beneath her feet, heading toward the castle, toward the ocean. All this time there’d been more canals, ones that never saw the light of day. She, who thought she knew the city best, had never considered where the ocean water in theWitch’s Well came from. Because she’d always done her best to avoid the Witch’s Well.
Maybe if she hadn’t, she’d have realized sooner she didn’t need to sneak away to the docks in the dead of night to empty Phineas’s flask full of diluted magic and fill it instead with pure salt water. Those sips were the only thing capable of quelling the magic inside her whenever it rose too close to the surface.
Last night had been a close call. Her body’s quick healing had always been the one part of her magic she could do nothing to stop. Whenever she got injured, her magic was there to close the wound, sometimes before the knife was removed from her skin. In that way, at least, her magic protected her.
But what happened last night had not been protection.
She saw the look in Toran’s eyes when she’d finally revealed her neck. Saw the confusion and suspicion that lingered in his gaze like dense fog as they disposed of Fell’s body. But then he’d stood by her, and any apprehension she’d felt faded. Whatever was or wasn’t left between them, they were still in this together. He would uphold his promise to free her father.
The smell of smoke and things singed wafted her way the deeper into the Bark she walked. She turned a corner and ran the last few paces to the forge entrance. It was one of many in a long line of forges on this street, all of which had no doors and few walls. Heat from their fires hit like a door slammed in her face, so contrasting with the winter air filling the rest of the city. She loosened her hold on the front of her cloak to allow the warmth through.
Phineas’s dog stood in the middle of the open forge, forceps poised to push a bowl into the fire raging in the hearth.
Nes held her breath, waiting.
