Page 107 of Stealing Tink

Phoenix laughs and without looking back says, “You can’t protect anyone. You’d do well to remember that, Tink.”

And then she’s gone, the door to the roof slamming behind her. Only a few seconds pass and, much to the surprise of everyone on the rooftop, Lars follows after her.

“I don’t think you’re going to be the one to convince her to stay,” says the Nomad.

“That is far from my intention,” says Lars. “My involvement with you has caused me to be complicit in the unthinkable. I can no longer participate when such evils are involved.”

The Nomad glances at me, brow rising.

I think it’s because we blew up a theater, I write.

“Ah,” says the Nomad.

Then, spinning around and looking as if he’s forgotten something, Lars hurries up to me. Before I can react, he slips something into my pocket. “For your wings,” he says by way of explanation before sauntering off toward the door.

It clicks shut behind him.

“And what about you?” says the Nomad, looking at Acel. “Is this where you give up?”

My heart twists. I didn’t get the tapestry for him. Not that I’m certain he’ll care. Not after what the Sister told him of his fate.

Acel isn’t looking at him. Isn’t looking at me. Instead, he stares off into the distance toward the plume of smoke littering the sky.

“I don’t end up with her in the end,” he says.

We heard, I sign.

“Yes. I thought you might have,” he says. “So I suppose it doesn’t matter what I do.”

“So you’re just going to leave?” says the Nomad. “Fade into obscurity?”

Acel laughs, the sound pained. “I’m no idiot. I might have come on this journey in the hopes of being with the woman that I love. I gambled everything on that ending. I gambled and I lost. The queen won’t accept me back. Not after I abandoned my post so quickly, without explanation. And even if she would⁠—”

I finish his sentence with my quill. You don’t want to put yourself through that again. With the princess.

Again, his face looks pained. “I would have been content,” he says, “to live the rest of my life adjacent to her. That’s what I told myself, anyway. But that was a lie. I was always going to want more. Hope for more. And I was going to spend the rest of my life hoping for something that was never going to happen.”

“Are you thanking me?” says the Nomad.

“Far from it,” says Acel. “If I were going to thank anyone, it would be Tink here. But I’m not exactly thanking her either.”

That seems fair.

You’re coming with us? I sign.

“It’s not as if I have anywhere else to be now, do I?” says Acel. “What am I supposed to do? Join a traveling band?”

Something about his words taps on my skull, tickling my mind.

I open the box again and stare down into it. A memory flashes before me—a sound, melodious and haunting in my ears. I trace the edges of the indentation of the artifact. I let out a silent huff, staring incredulously at the Nomad.

“What?” he says.

You’re so stubborn, I write. You put us through all this trouble for nothing.

“Yes, well, I can see that now,” says the Nomad, gesturing toward the empty box. “Had I known it was empty⁠—”

No, I interrupt. No. Had you just told me what the artifact was to begin with, we could have saved all this time.