Page 105 of Stealing Tink

“You haven’t said a word to me since we escaped,” says the Nomad. He gently weaves his fingers between mine and the jewelry box, interlocking them with mine and attempting to unseat the box from my grasp.

I tuck the box in tighter to my chest in response. Keeping one hand on the box, I write on the pad with the other.

They’re dead is all I manage. Even then, with my non-dominant hand and the way I’m still trembling from the adrenaline, it’s hardly legible.

“Perhaps,” says the Nomad.

I jerk my attention toward him, the hurt in my eyes communicating enough.

“You think I don’t care,” he says.

I think you got what you wanted, I write. I think that Phoenix’s life never mattered to you. And Acel…

My hands tremble so much over his name. What am I to write about Acel? The man who had confided in me, the man whose love for the princess burned not hot, but steady, eternal. Will the princess even hear of his death? Or will she simply hear of the playhouse collapsing, her heart aching for the tragedy rather than for herself?

You promised him, I write.

“Acel knew the consequences when he signed up,” says the Nomad. “He was the queen’s bodyguard for years. You think he didn’t know how to calculate the risks?”

And did you tell him all the risks? I write. Did you⁠—

Again, I can’t finish that sentence. Not when I’m afraid of the answer.

“Did I set off the explosion?” the Nomad asks, his gaze intent upon me. “No. But I did plan it.”

Anger stabs at my throat, leaving a welt behind. I’m not sure who I’m more angry at—him, for being so ruthless, for discarding Acel and Phoenix as if they were pawns on a chessboard… or me, for believing despite everything that there was some ounce of goodness in him.

I’m a very bad man. Hadn’t he told me that himself?

“It would be like you to take all the credit,” says a voice from behind me.

I whip around and find Phoenix and Acel standing behind us, alive and well. Acel is bleeding, and there is a patch on his neck that appears to be burned, but he’s standing and breathing. And Phoenix…

Phoenix doesn’t have a scratch on her.

I glance toward the Nomad. He has the look of someone whose dinner guests are late for the party, as if he was expecting them there all along, simply sooner.

How? I sign, maneuvering the box so that it balances between my forearms, freeing my hands.

“Turns out Phoenix here,” says Acel, “can blow herself up.”

My mind seems to cave in on itself even as Phoenix explains what happened above us.

“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” she says. “Terrible, really.”

“Yes. Quite unpleasant to witness as well,” says Acel. They don’t have to go into the gory details for me to imagine Phoenix’s torn flesh, spattering across the room as she exploded from within.

“That’s not even the worst part,” says Acel. “The worst part is her body knitting itself back together afterward.”

Phoenix. Her name makes more sense now. Although I’m probably not the only one glad she doesn’t reincarnate as an infant afterward.

“Yes, well, I guarantee it’s more unpleasant for me than it is for you,” says Phoenix.

How are you alive? I sign to Acel.

“That would be my doing,” says Lars, stepping out from the door and onto the rooftop. “No one told me the meeting place had changed.”

“That’s because we don’t like you,” says Phoenix. That’s not the reason, but now doesn’t seem like the time to correct her.