by Mackenzi Lee
Neither dead nor alive.
I understand suddenly, in a way I hadn’t before. No one but me had had to see her to realize this would be taking a life.
“That’s my mother,” Helena says, soft as a prayer, and I look up at her. She’s staring down at the woman, two fingers pressed to her lips and a look about her that feels as though she might come untethered at a breeze.
Bourbon lets me go just long enough to get his pistol against my spine and take a step back from the vault. I can hear him rooting around in his coat; then his arm enters my eye line. He’s clutching a great knife, which he extends to Helena. “Do it, then.”
She doesn’t take it. “You have the key. I’m finished.”
“Our agreement is complete once I’ve the heart. Your father can stay in prison if you retreat now.”
“I won’t.”
Bourbon taps the blade of the knife flat against the rim of the drawer. It rings like a tuning fork. “Consider your actions, Condesa, before you cross me.”
“That’s my mother.” Her voice tears on the last word, a ragged note of grief like ripped paper. She stumbles back from the tomb, one hand pressed over her mouth.
Bourbon’s pistol nudges me in the back. “Fine. You do it, Montague.”
“Oh dear God, no. No, thank you.”
“Go on.”
“No, please, I can’t—”
“Here.” He reaches in with the butt of his pistol and cracks the woman across the chest so that her rib cage collapses with a sound like dropping a stone on a sheet of ice. Helena flinches like it’s she who’s been broken open, both her hands flying up to press against her own heart. “Let me start things off for you,” he says.
I’m shaking like mad at just the thought, but it isn’t really a choice, with that pistol again to my back and both Percy and Felicity standing there. My fear is less that he’s going to shoot me and more that he’ll turn it on them. All my soft spots are exposed.
Another gust of the hot air hits me—hot air that’s rising off her, I realize, pulsing from that glowing heart as it beats. My breath sticks in my chest.
Then Felicity says, “I’ll do it.” Bourbon regards her as she extends a steady hand. “I can,” she says. “Better than Monty. Give it here and I’ll do it for you.”
Pistol still pressed into my back, Bourbon hands the knife over and she steps up to the drawer, right across from me. Her gaze flits up to mine. “Help me,” she says quietly, then presses the tip of the blade into the hollow of Helena’s mother’s throat.
The skin peels away with little resistance, like paper off a wrapped package. I hold the flaps in place while Felicity wedges her fingers into the sternum, a jagged crack like a lightning strike down the center from Bourbon’s blow, and gives a sharp wrench with more strength than I knew she had in her. There’s another crack as the ribs snap from the spine. Helena lets out a soft sob.
And there is the heart, raw and red, not so much beating as pulsing, like it’s a throbbing wound. As I hold the skin in place, Felicity makes quick work peeling back the withered husks of the lungs and severing the veins. Each one breaks from the heart with a sound like delicate glass, and with each, the rest of the mother’s body seems to grow less and less alive, as though her whole being is distilled and packed inside her heart.
Felicity forces her hands between the ribs and lifts the heart out, careful as if handling a newborn kitten. I can feel the heat radiating off it, and Felicity’s arms bow against its weight, like it’s a precious stone or the anchor of a ship.
Felicity holds it out to Bourbon, but he steps back, dragging me with him, like he’s white-livered at the thought of being too near it. “Give it to Condesa Robles,” he says. “She’ll carry it from here.”
Helena steps up to meet Felicity, in the empty space between Bourbon and me, and Percy. Helena takes the heart between her cupped hands, so very carefully, like it’s fragile and alive. Her fingers curl around the edges, and a transparent bead of something that is half blood, half light slides from the surface and down the back of her hand.
Helena starts to say something, but Bourbon grabs me from behind and yanks me to him as a shield again. Percy has been inching forward, reaching out like he might pull me to his side as soon as the exchange was made, but he freezes, hand still raised. Felicity darts back to his side, arms wrapped around herself. She leaves fingerprints of the strange, shimmering residue from the heart along her sleeves.
“You’ve what you want,” Percy calls. “Please, let Monty go.” Then, once more for good measure, “Please.”
“No, I’m afraid there was never a chance the three of you would leave this place alive—surely you knew that when you came.”
“This was my fault,” I say. I feel like I’m sagging into him, my strength waning and all my fight to survive eaten up. “Let them go; I stole the box.”
His arm tightens around my throat, choking out my words. “Sorry, my lord. Condesa, back out in the tunnel. Since you’re so keen to keep blood off your hands, we’ll seal them in and they can sink with the island.”
Helena hasn’t taken her eyes off the heart, still cradled between her hands. It casts a faint sheen upon her face from below.
“Condesa,” Bourbon snaps.
Helena raises her face, though it’s not the duke she looks to—it’s Percy. “Do you want this?” she asks him softly.
“Condesa,” the duke says again.
“Do you?” she asks.
“No,” Percy replies.
Bourbon seems to realize what she’s about to do the moment before she moves. As Helena holds the heart toward one of the bowls of flame, he lunges forward, ready to snatch it from her, but finds I’m rather in his way. Our legs tangle up, and he slams into me, sending us both to the ground. My shoulder strikes the stone with a thwack, the pain from impact doubled when he lands atop me.
Bourbon tries to wrestle himself free, his foot ramming me so hard in the stomach I lose my breath, and makes a scramble forward on his hands and knees. He’s clawing toward Helena, and she’s reaching for the flames, the heart between her hands. He’s going to grab her—or it—before she can destroy it, and part of me wants to as well. Reach out and catch that precious thing between my hands and claim it.
But instead, I do the only thing I can think of to stop the duke: I make a fist and wind up, then, at the last second, untuck my thumb from inside my palm and punch him straight in the nose.
And it still bloody well hurts, but it’s loads more effective this time—I feel cartilage crumple beneath my fingers. Bourbon howls with pain as blood pours down his face and splatters the stone, and Helena seizes her moment with maximum panache—she doesn’t just toss, she flings her mother’s heart into the fire.
It catches at once, like it’s been soaked in alcohol. A column of flame jets upward, so searing we all put up our hands, except the duke. He’s still got blood pouring over his lips and dribbling down his chin, but he’s clawing his way forward, like he might pull the remnant from the flames and salvage it. The heat from it blisters his forehead.
I grab him by the coat, trying to yank him backward, and he growls in frustration, taking a blind swipe in my direction with his pistol. The barrel knocks me above the ear, and then he fires, right up against my face. There’s a fantastic bang and I’m slammed into the floor, my head burning. For a moment, I can’t hear a thing but a metallic hum.
A torrent of sparks rises from the fire where Helena dropped the heart, like a weld struck when nearly molten; then another blast of hot air explodes through the room, full of ash and spark and a glittering dust that smells of bone and chemicals. The walls begin to tremble, pebbles sifting from the ceiling and showering us. The lights dance. One of the iron bowls topples, spilling lit kindling. The sound starts to return, though it’s smothered. A low rumble begins to underscore the whistling in my ear.
Felicity’s lips are moving, and I hear her cry, “The tunnel!”
I’m trying to get
to my feet and finding it a great deal more difficult than it should be. Percy grabs me by the arm and hauls me up, pulling me after him, one arm wrapped around my waist and Felicity ahead. She wrenches the door open and the three of us clamber through, just as a pillar on the other side tumbles like a felled tree, bones cascading. Percy yanks me out of the way before I’m struck by them.
Helena is close behind us, but in the doorway she turns and screams, “Come on!” I don’t know who she’s talking to until I turn and there’s Bourbon, still on his knees before the fire, clawing at the flames and trying to pry free any fragment of the heart that might be left. Flames are climbing up his sleeves, leaping to his hair, and he’s screaming, but he doesn’t stop.
“Come on!” Helena shouts again. “It’s gone, come now!”
But he isn’t coming—he’s burying himself in this tomb. The doorway crumbles, and Felicity—bless, for I’ve not an ounce of Christian charity left in me for the pair of them—grabs Helena and drags her away.
The four of us hurtle down the passageway, the walls buckling around us. Even the air seems to be vibrating, split by the sound of all those bones cracking and folding and collapsing into splinters and sand. The tunnel is growing so thick with dust it’s getting hard to breathe. At the bend, the wired Capuchin leers at us as we pass. Soon you shall be flashes before the sign hits the ground and snaps in half.
At the base of the tunnel, Helena pulls ahead of us, flinging herself up the stairs and out of sight. By the time we emerge into the chapel, she’s already splashing down the dock, where our gondola was tied off. Another boat is moored beside it.
Helena shoves the gondola off from the dock, burying her pole in the water and riding the current away. As we follow her, there’s a crack like thunder behind us, and a piece of the chapel wall collapses. The dusty wind of it strikes our backs, and we all stagger. The floodwater pitches into waves.
The vibrations of the stones tumbling into the Lagoon are raising ripples around our legs, the deck tipping badly enough that I tip with it, sideways into Percy so that the water soaks me up to my waist. He somehow manages to stay on his feet. Perhaps, I realize, because it’s only me that’s tipping. I am amazed to discover my limbs have almost entirely ceased to function—the only reason I’m still upright seems to be that Percy’s holding me—and my head is feeling strange, like it’s filling up with thick water. My ears are ringing.
Percy hoists me into the boat after Felicity, then gives us a good shove-off from the dock before he leaps in after. The island rumbles again, and a shower of stones scratches at my face as another wall of the chapel goes into the Lagoon.
“Monty.” Percy grabs my shoulder, and I have a sense he’s said my name a few times without a response. He’s leaning over me, his face smeared with soot and dust, and a faint shine left by the alchemical heart. “Monty, talk to me. Say something.”
I raise one hand to the side of my face to find it hot and damp. “I think I’ve been shot.”
“You have not been shot.” Felicity pulls the oars into the boat long enough to peel my fingers away from my head. Her face goes pale, then she presses my hand back where it was. “Fine, you’ve been shot.”
Of course this would be the one time I’m right about my injuries.
“It isn’t bad,” she says, but she sounds as though she’s working so hard to be calm about it that I know she’s lying. That, and I can feel my heartbeat all the way through my skull, which is alarming. It’s like swallowing my pulse. “Keep your hand on it,” Felicity cries as my hand slips. “Tight, Monty. Press it tight.”
Percy grabs my hand and presses both our palms, overtop of each other, to the side of my head. Blood is bubbling up against my palm and running in thin rivulets between my fingers and down my arm. It’s pathetic how dizzy the sight of my own blood makes me. Or perhaps that’s got to do with the fact that it seems to be abandoning me en masse. I’m starting to breathe faster without meaning to. The air is feeling very thin.
Then Felicity shouts, “There they are!”
And through the gray mist, the Eleftheria looms like the silhouette of a cathedral against the sunrise, two catboats chasing lamely behind.
Felicity drops the oars and steers us up against the prow until two ropes unfurl from the deck. She takes one and Percy the other, his hands slick with blood as he ties us off. The ropes turn scarlet between his palms.
“Heave!” comes a shout from above, and the boat jerks upward until we are spat out onto the deck, which is looking more underwater than the chapel.
I’m trying to stay awake, but my head keeps sinking, like I’m dozing. Someone’s pressing something against the side of my face and, holy Mary, it’s really hurting.
The sailors are all clustered around us. Every boot on the planking rattles me to my teeth.
“Christ—”
“—a lot of blood.”
“—on his side.”
“Is he breathing? I don’t think he’s—”
“Let Miss Montague through!” Scipio’s voice roars over them.
“Monty.” Percy is shaking me. It sounds like he’s speaking from the bottom of a well. He’s right beside me, holding me steady on my side. “Monty, look at me. Try to stay awake. Keep your eyes open—come on, darling, look at me. Please.”
He’s got blood all over his shirt, the wet material clinging to his chest. “You’re hurt,” I murmur, raising a hand to pluck at it.
“No, I’m not.”
Oh, so that’s my blood. Fantastic. A pathetic whimper escapes me.
“It’s all right,” he says softly, his other hand twining with mine. “Breathe. You’re going to be fine. Please, breathe.”
And then the next thing I know, I’m flat on my back on the bunk in Scipio’s cabin, the lantern overhead swinging as the ship cants. Percy is on the floor beside me with his legs drawn to his chest, asleep with his forehead against his knees and his hand in mine. The angle of it twists my wrist up, but I don’t move.
My vision is cloudy, and one of my ears is still filled with that metallic ringing. The entirety of my face is throbbing, and when I shift, pain rips through my head and cracks behind my eyes like the gunshot all over again. I cry out without meaning to, and Percy bolts upright. “Monty.”
“Hallo, darling.” My voice is rusty, and the skin along the right side of my face pulls when I speak.
“You’re awake.” He hoists himself into a crouch beside me and touches his thumb to my chin. His voice is muffled, like I’m hearing him with a pillow over my head. If I wasn’t looking straight at him, watching his lips form the words, I couldn’t be certain where they were coming from.
“You look worried,” I murmur.
“Yes, well, that’s your fault, you know.” I laugh weakly, but it turns into rather more of a wince. “I think I was shot.”
“You very nearly were.”
“Very nearly? That’s less harrowing than I hoped.”
I raise my hand—which is heavier than it should be—and touch my head. There’s a tight wrap of bandages all the way around it, and the spot over my ear is damp. “Does it look bad?”
“It . . . doesn’t look very good,” he says carefully. “It’s burned and swollen, but that’ll fade. Though the ear is a bit . . .” He tugs on his own lobe.
“A bit what?”
“Gone. It’s a bit . . . gone.”
“You mean I’ve only got—”
“Don’t touch it.” Percy catches my hand before I can rip the bandages off.
“I’ve only one ear left?”
“Most of it got blown off and the rest was sort of . . . mangled. Felicity took it off cleanly. You’re lucky the powder didn’t wreck your eyes as well.”
“Where is Felicity?”
“She’s fine.”
“No, where is she? I’ll rip her ear off and see how she likes it.”
“I should tell her you’re awake. She’s been going mad over you. Didn’t know Felicity liked you so muc
h until you nearly kicked it.”
“Nothing brings a pair closer than a near-death experience, I suppose.”
Percy rubs his temples. I can tell he’s trying to play this off as casual, though I must have been right bad off if it’s sitting this heavy on him. “When Scipio told us Bourbon had you, and then you were shot—”
“Very nearly shot.”
“Zounds, Monty, what if the last thing we ever did was fight?”
“Do you have better last words to me that you’d like to deliver? You could share them now, in case things go south again.”
He puts his hand atop my knee, the blanket between us, and I suddenly feel like I’m tempting fate with this question. But then he says, “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, darling,” I return, stacking my hand over his, “you haven’t a thing to be sorry for.”
I’m still not hearing right, and it’s beginning to shift from irritating to worrisome. Percy’s voice is stifled, and my own is echoing backward in my head, like I’m speaking in a vast, empty hall. Maybe it’s the bandages that have everything muted, but when I snap my fingers next to my right ear—the one that is apparently no longer with me—it sounds like it’s coming from the other side of the room.
Which is when I realize.
I try to sit up and the room tips—it nearly knocks me straight back out. Percy grabs me before I keel over. “Easy.”
I manage to get one hand pressed over the ear I’ve got left, closing it up, and then snap again beside the missing one.
And it’s . . . nothing. No sound at all.
Percy is watching me, his eyebrows knit. “Is it gone?” he asks.
My throat’s feeling a bit wobbly, so I just nod.