Page 104 of The False Vow

“All the threads come back to you,” I finished. “I’ve long wondered how your artisans are continuing to produce magesilk, despite the fact that your wife’s stores of hair have run out, and you can’t have collected enough from my and the other maidens’ tithes during the Vainglory to make up the gap. You are taking it from the cloisters, which is why their remaining product is reputed to be so weak. And, more recently, from Dorian Drake’s girls, whose new business I believe you helped to fund. He was the special buyer you spoke of on the drive back from the opera house. I saw him wearing the ring you were selling when I visited him the other evening, though I didn’t recognize it at the time. You even magicked his invitations—the Woven monocles—with a variation of your killing curse, so that anyone who wished Dorian or his establishment ill would die upon touching them.”

It wasn’t until I’d reread the newspaper clipping that I’d put it all together. What was it Noé had said in the alleyway, just after we’d left Dorian’s club? I really dislike the way he speaks to you. And then, minutes later, he’d collapsed to the ground. Sickened by an enchantment which made his eyes glow, just as the maid in the paper had described Sybil’s doing.

It hadn’t been a silkwitch who’d hurt him. It had been his own father, through that damned monocle.

Bastian blew out an exhale. His presence, I was aware, had yet to retreat from my mind—all while I’d been speaking, I could sense him there, lurking like mold at the bottom of a jug—but I didn’t bother attempting to defend myself against his prying.

I had nothing to hide from him any longer. He could see whatever he wished.

“Well?” I asked after a moment had passed in silence. “Am I right?”

The Weaver King looked up at me. I gave an involuntary grunt as, without warning, his power pulled back, the sensation like a plug abruptly unstopped from my skull. “Quite right, my dear,” he replied in a mild tone. “Even about Dorian. I do so appreciate an entrepreneur.”

He laced his fingers together, Mariéprix glaring at me from atop his knuckle.

“The cloisters have been under Alaire control for generations,” he said. “Decades back, Parliament began making noise about our amassing too much power. So an arrangement was made between my grandfather and the Drakes. My father was still quite young at the time, around my own son’s age.” He tapped one of his thumbs against the other. “The new Cloister Master agreed to sell his stock at a discounted price to the public, to appease the Parliamentary hawks—while in secret, the best of the cloister product was reserved for the Alaire line. A tunnel network was dug to connect the institution with Fortblanche, under the guise of renovations.”

A chill slid down my spine. It mattered not that I’d guessed at much of what he’d admitted—that my entire argument relied on my assumptions being right. Hearing it all spoken aloud still made me feel rancid, spoiled to my core.

“Why ask me to solve a murder which you had committed?” I questioned. Bastian wrinkled his nose.

“Well,” he replied, “I hoped you might find me a scapegoat. Lucie Dabos’s attacks have been most tiresome to bear—I wasn’t lying about that. And, of course, I still need my key back.”

He cast me a look like he expected me to hand it to him. I returned his stare, frowning.

“Adélard’s silkwitch has your key,” I said. I’d assumed he’d put it together himself. “Bernard glimpsed her with it, after she exited the tunnels during the Midway Ball. If the Cloister Master has not given it to you yet, perhaps he is not as loyal of an ally as you believe.”

Bastian’s smile was pitying. “No, dear,” he said. “Bernard glimpsed her with a key. Specifically, a key which allowed her access to my tunnel network—not everyone can simply stroll through locked doors as you can. It was not the key.” He clicked his tongue. “Did you overlook that detail?”

My stomach emptied out. Was he bluffing? If Adélard didn’t have the key to the moonless door…did that mean I’d failed?

I felt my hackles rise. “I found your killer,” I stated. “I did what you asked of me.”

“So you did. So you did.” Bastian nodded, then made a dismissive motion with his hands. “Oh, calm yourself,” he said. “Do you think I have any desire to waste you on the cloisters? That I would not have put an end to your and my son’s scheming by now, if that were the case?”

I went very still. Watching me, Bastian chuckled.

“My dear,” he went on. “You think I cannot sense that my own child wants me dead?”

My stomach fell. I swallowed. “Why?” Why am I still alive?

He seemed to understand my question. “Because, dear Lovett Tamerlane, the two of you are not my enemies,” Bastian replied. “I am your enemy, to be true. But there are many things in this house that wish me harm. Mice. Ill-tempered servants. Do I hunt every one of them down and smite them?” He shook his head, laying his hands in his lap. “My son is young and rebellious,” the Weaver King continued. “He hates me because he has not been able to please me, but he has never been a threat. You, on the other hand…Well, you are not an enemy yet, but you could grow to be one. If Noé were not so dreadfully in love with you, I would have rid myself of you after the competition.”

He laughed when I paled.

“Oh yes,” Bastian said. “Did you think his affection for you was shallow, or new? My darling, he has loved you for months—since the end of the Vainglory, perhaps even before that.

“I thought you would have realized it,” Bastian remarked, wagging his chin. I had given no reply to his previous statement; I could not. The flesh on my arms was buzzing as though with bitter cold. “He admitted as much to you, after all, during our journey home after the opera.”

My heart stopped. For a second, I did not believe him—then there was a shift, and a memory unfurled in my mind: Noé, slouched against the carriage window as we drove. Father, you know I find her the most fascinating creature I have ever encountered.

My mouth dried out. Father, you know I find her. Not know in the offhand, sarcastic way I’d originally interpreted it, but know, sincerely, because Noé understood that his father could read his emotions. Because he’d realized, even though I had not, that Bastian had already seen the truth.

I love her, he’d said then. I chose her.

“His love is the sole reason you are still alive,” Bastain said. I snapped back to attention. My body felt odd, like my bones were held together by strings. “Because he cares for you, and I, contrary to whatever you might believe, care for him. It would have been a simple task to pin Sybil’s murder on you and send you to the cloisters following the Vainglory’s conclusion, but I had already taken one paramour from him, with Miss Lear. I wished to see if I could…reform you instead.” He tilted his head, as if evaluating his work.

“And have I been reformed?” I managed.