Into The Crooked Place

by Alexandra Christo

  “I’d be honored,” Wesley said, slipping the seal of the old underboss from the dead man’s hand and onto his own.

  He felt numb.

  He felt dread.

  “You don’t mean it,” the girl said. “It’s not a choice between me and her.”

  Wesley saw the moment the Kingpin shifted, interest piqued, wondering just who else Wesley might be loyal to aside from him.

  When Ashwood spoke, Wesley felt the words grate across his bones.

  “Her, who?”

  Tavia.

  Always, Tavia.

  His closest friend. His partner. His family.

  Wesley didn’t want the Kingpin knowing her name.

  Maybe one day, when he was a powerful underboss and could protect her and make her the greatest busker in Creije. But not yet. Not like this, in a way that told Ashwood she could be an obstacle, rather than an asset. Not in a way that told the most dangerous person in the realms exactly what Wesley’s weakness was.

  “It’s a choice between you and my Kingpin,” Wesley said to the girl. “And I will always choose him.”

  Maybe he was too stubborn to admit he cared.

  Maybe he hated the possibility of the girl’s predictions being true, and so hated her for seeing a future where Tavia wasn’t by his side.

  Maybe Wesley really was just a bastard.

  Whatever the reason, he signed that girl’s death warrant, and the Kingpin’s laughter turned the air to bristles and the blackness around him danced.

  “Oh, my boy,” he said. “I will make us the world.”

  Everything that happened since was Wesley’s fault. Everything the Kingpin had done was Wesley’s fault. He had rekindled the Kingpin’s madness. He was responsible for anyone who died because of it.

  Some blood never washed away, and after all Wesley had done, he deserved to be haunted. So when he stepped into the conjured doorway aboard the train, Wesley knew with absolute certainty what regret would greet him.

  The word doubled over in his mind, loud and accusing.

  Coward.

  TAVIA WENT THROUGH A rip in the realms and came out walking on water.

  It looked as though she was still in Ejm Voten—the sea was the color of old bathwater—but there was nothing else. No rock formations or waterspouts. No train with their so-called army, and definitely no phantoms circling them like prey.

  There was just a body of water that stretched for miles and Wesley, standing in its center.

  Tavia’s footprints cast ripples in the water. She held out her arms to steady herself, as though it might stop her from tumbling through and drowning.

  “Where are the others?” she called out.

  She took a while to get to Wesley and he looked far too entertained by the way she wobbled uncertainly along the water.

  “Maybe it split us into groups,” he said.

  Tavia wrinkled her nose. “How come I got stuck with you?” she asked, and then, before Wesley had a chance to retort, she said, “I don’t see any regrets lying around.”

  Tavia looked up to the cloudless sky. It was like a blank canvas, with no stars or moon to speak of. Just the eerie half dark of dusk.

  “Come with me, or starve,” a low voice said.

  Tavia’s face went dark.

  Those words were all too familiar. Ones she couldn’t forget even if she wanted to, that haunted her for years, spilling into nightmares, deciding her fate. Her breath shuddered inward and she turned, praying to whatever of the Many Gods were listening that she was hearing things.

  The old underboss of Creije was like a giant, his hand held out as he offered Tavia a lifeline and a death sentence. He floated on the water with the Kingpin’s seal, something Wesley now wore, around his thumb. He had an easy, warm smile that promised lies of a life better lived.

  Suddenly Tavia was a child again.

  The underboss towered over her and the endless water rippled into the streets of Creije. Tavia shivered, goose bumps trailing up her arms as the cold bit like a bug and the city of her childhood emerged.

  Her stomach growled, the hungry monster she remembered. But what she hadn’t remembered was the pain of it and how it felt like it was eating her from the inside out.

  “I can save you,” the underboss said. “Join my buskers and you’ll be fed and clothed and warm. You’ll have a family again.”

  It was a lie, of course, but pretty enough for a child to believe.

  Tavia was so young, her muma’s death still fresh in her tears, and the hunger was so strong that it turned to nausea at night. Being alone in Creije was different from being alone anywhere else; dreams turned to nightmares and the beauty of the stars was nothing compared to the depths of the shadows. Tavia found the days ended too quickly and when the night stretched into eternity, she heard whispers of her muma’s voice.

  Don’t cry, ciolo.

  Tavia didn’t want to be alone and the underboss had such sweet promises for children’s ears. She was too scared not to believe.

  But she wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  Tavia took a step back.

  “I can give you everything you ever wanted,” the underboss said.

  Tavia turned from him, only to find Wesley towering over her.

  “Take his hand, Tavia.”

  She hadn’t realized he was still there. He looked so tall compared to her now. Like a real grown-up.

  “I don’t have to go with him again,” Tavia said.

  “Yes, you do.”

  Tavia shook her head furiously.

  She just wanted to run, quick as anything. Quick as her tiny, frail legs could carry her.

  Quick, quick, before the old underboss pulled her in again and made her into the type of person who ruined lives.

  Tavia’s stomach growled with the hunger.

  “You can’t judge me for wanting to change it.”

  Wesley’s smile was a soft, delicate thing, the likes of which she rarely saw. “I’m not judging you, Tavia.”

  His hand twitched by his side, as though he might reach out and wipe away the tear that lagged on her jaw. He didn’t and Tavia was glad of it. If Wesley touched her, she might just crumble.

  “This is the game,” Wesley said. “You heard what Arjun and Saxony told us. It preys on your need to fix your mistakes.”

  Wesley looked to the old underboss, the man he’d killed and replaced, and his eyes narrowed, as though he wanted to be wrong. As though Wesley wanted Tavia to run.

  “If you don’t take his hand, you could be stuck living in some kind of dream-world forever.”

  Tavia licked her chapped lips. She tasted the blood and it only made her hunger grow.

  She didn’t think living in a dream was such a bad thing. Tavia wanted to erase all the awful deeds she had done, every vial of magic she had sold, never thinking of the consequences or pain it could cause. And maybe, just maybe, in a world of dreams, her muma could be alive. Tavia could see her face again.

  “I know you want to go back, but life doesn’t work that way,” Wesley said. “I get having blood on your hands and wanting so badly to wash it off.”

  Tavia’s heart pounded. She’d never heard Wesley talk about responsibility, much less regret.

  “Nobody is going to call me a good person,” Wesley said. “But I don’t run from my mistakes. If you regret something, then make it right. You don’t just get to erase it, Tavia.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “I can run to Volo and find my muma’s family and I—”

  Wesley gripped her shoulders. “Many Gods, Tavia, aren’t I your family too? Isn’t Creije your home? You have people there who care about you.”

  There was something like hurt in his eyes.

  “Sometimes you get to choose,” he said. “Me, Saxony, Karam. The only reason we’re in this fight together is because of you. You’re the glue, Tavia. Without you, we all fall apart.”

  The glue.

  A family.

  A home.

&
nbsp; Things she’d spent so long searching for that she never realized they might already be there.

  “Don’t lose sight of that.” Wesley paused and then, so much quieter, he said, “Don’t make me lose you.”

  Something pulled inside Tavia’s stomach, stronger than the hunger.

  For so long she convinced herself that running from Creije could erase the person she’d become. Tavia thought she could just start anew, with the life she was supposed to have and be the person she was supposed to be.

  Because this was who Tavia was.

  A crook who sold magic she knew could hurt people.

  A girl who wanted to save the world.

  Maybe Tavia could run from a city, but she couldn’t run from herself anymore.

  “If you do this, you erase me, too,” Wesley said.

  Tavia thought back to all those times they traded charms and tricks, how growing up on the streets had shaped them so similarly. Tavia thought about the way Wesley used to smile when he nailed a charm and how she smiled just watching him. He made sure she never felt scared or alone.

  She thought about a place where none of that was real. A realm, an entire life, where they hadn’t grown up together. Where she didn’t know him at all.

  Tavia looked back to the old underboss.

  His hand still lingered, reaching out to her.

  She stepped forward.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Until she was close enough to smell the magic on him.

  Then she reached out and took the underboss’s hand, sealing her fate like she’d done all those years ago. His grip tightened around hers and then, just like that, he dissolved into the air.

  Tavia’s hand hovered in place. She felt herself come back to the present and the hunger faded, old scars appearing across her usual body. Wesley took her hand from the air and laced it through his, their pulses pressing together. He leaned his forehead to hers and when he breathed out, she breathed him in.

  Tavia put a hand to Wesley’s chest. The rhythm of him was the only thing keeping her from falling to her knees. The familiar warmth and cold of him. His heartbeat under her hands.

  Wesley swallowed, licked his lips, didn’t move.

  They stood like that for minutes, until the memory of Creije followed the old underboss and faded to nothingness.

  “My boy.”

  They whirled at the sound of that voice, Tavia’s heart almost stopping.

  Dante Ashwood stood in front of them and, damn, these regrets were coming thick and fast. Wesley’s grip on her hand tightened. He was shaking, staring straight ahead.

  Tavia took in the scene.

  Ashwood was a shadow of a man, sitting on a throne of magic and gold, with barely an outline of him visible. His voice was like a crow song, floating across the water, casting furrows into the sea.

  To his side was a girl, her wrists and ankles in chains. Blood coated her smiling lips. Her hair was long and black, a mixture of braids and twists catching along the gold bangles she wore on her wrists. Her dress was white and it soaked into the sea like it, too, was made from water.

  Wesley looked at the girl and did not blink.

  Tavia didn’t know what to make of that. She thought she knew everyone Wesley did and the ones she didn’t know were the ones even Wesley found too murderous and immoral to let out of the shadows, but this girl didn’t look like one of those. She was young and her face was soft, and though she was clearly a prisoner, she didn’t look scared.

  She looked at Wesley like he would keep her safe.

  “It’s not a choice between me and her,” the girl said.

  Wesley’s hand shook in Tavia’s. “Don’t watch this,” he told her.

  And then he dropped her hand.

  A new cold settled into Tavia’s fingers as Wesley stepped into his regret.

  He approached a man on his knees who Tavia hadn’t noticed until right then, and pulled the sack from his head.

  Tavia’s mouth hung open.

  The underboss. The one whose hand she had just taken, only he was a little older and a lot more bloody. From his waistband, Wesley pulled out his gun and pressed it to the man’s temple.

  “Wesley,” the underboss said.

  “Don’t watch,” Wesley said again.

  Tavia had no desire to see the underboss die and she certainly had no desire to see Wesley kill him, but she couldn’t turn away. As though he could sense this, Wesley looked over his shoulder and his expression tightened.

  “Tavia,” he said. His voice was raspy. “Please.”

  She shut her eyes.

  The gun fired.

  The underboss’s body sank into the sea and Wesley dropped to his knees.

  The girl cried.

  The Kingpin clapped.

  “Oh, my boy,” Ashwood said. “I will make us the world. My gift to you, in exchange for your gift to me.”

  He gestured to the girl, who collapsed onto the sea’s surface alongside Wesley. Her face was no longer soft and kind. She looked broken.

  “What is he talking about?” Tavia asked. “Why is she your gift to him?”

  Wesley brushed the water from his knees.

  He did not look at her.

  “She’s a Crafter,” he said. “She was inside my mind when I was younger, talking to me like a phantom. I’m not sure how or why. I almost thought I was going crazy until I finally saw her here. Ironic that I lost my mind straight after.”

  Wesley laughed to himself, but it was sad and angry.

  “She’s gone and I can still hear her,” he said. “A ghost in my mind, punishing me for this day. Making sure I never forget how awful I am.”

  “Wesley.”

  Tavia wasn’t sure what else to say apart from his name. Every word and feeling stopped inside her. This girl had been in his mind and Tavia had never known. She’d haunted him.

  How had Tavia never known?

  “If I do nothing and let the Kingpin take her, then he’ll give me my future,” Wesley said. “I’ll be an underboss.”

  “I liked the other future better,” the girl said.

  Wesley gripped his gun.

  Tavia had always seen him as an unstoppable force, fearless and reckless enough to succeed in whatever he wanted. Knowing he had been weak, even once, and scared, even just for a moment, made her ache.

  “It’s already done,” Tavia said. “You can’t change the past, remember?”

  Wesley shoved a hand through his hair. “You don’t hear her voice every day, whispering at me to be an awful person because that’s what I’m best at.”

  Wesley’s eyes burned into Tavia.

  “She trusted me and I left her to rot,” he said. “She was the first Crafter the Kingpin saw after the War of Ages and she walked right into his hands because she was looking for me. This is what inspired all of his madness. Everyone he’s taken since, even Saxony’s sister, is because of me, Tavia. Arjun’s Kin might still be alive if—”

  “Stop.”

  She wouldn’t let Wesley do this to himself. Whatever he had done didn’t make him responsible for every bad thing in the realms.

  “We’re not here to change the past,” Tavia said. “We’re here to change the future.” She looked to Ashwood. “We were both as bad as the Kingpin, but you’re the one who told me we can make amends for that.”

  Wesley shook his head. “You were never as bad as him.”

  “Parts of me were.”

  Wesley looked more tired than Tavia had ever seen. “I think those were the parts I made.”

  “Don’t take credit for my choices, Wesley.”

  Tavia held out her hand. She would help him through this just as he had helped her.

  Together, they could make it right.

  Wesley glanced back at the girl and Tavia saw something in him waver. He inched toward her, just a little, and sighed.

  When he took Tavia’s hand, she could sense the regret.

  She gripped Wesley’s fingers tightl
y in hers, feeling his callouses against her scars. Ahead, the doorway opened. The great black chasm ripping back into the realm, providing a way for Wesley to complete his regret with finality.

  All they had to do was walk through and they would pass the Kingpin’s sadistic test, leaving this girl, whoever she was, to the life she had already lived.

  Tavia led Wesley to the door, and with each step they took, his hand squeezed hers. Like he was holding himself from going back.

  But he wouldn’t need to do so for long.

  When this was all over, they would come for the girl Wesley left and for Saxony’s sister and for everyone else they’d let suffer in their past.

  They would find a way to come back and save them all.

  IN ALL THE DARKNESS, there was Karam.

  She lit the void of the world in a way Saxony could not.

  Everything else was muted and gray, as though they were floating through the very essence of the world, misplaced and untethered.

  When Saxony took a step forward, it felt a little like flying and a little like falling.

  “Do you think we’re in the fire-gates?” she asked.

  “The fire-gates are not real,” Karam said. “And if they were, Wesley would be in here with us.”

  Saxony couldn’t argue with that.

  She took Karam’s hand. It felt so good to be able to do that again. For the first time in so long there were no walls between them.

  Maybe this was a nightmare world, but Saxony wanted to cling to it—cling to Karam—before they were spat back into the realms, where vulnerabilities got people killed.

  “I can’t see anything sin-like,” Saxony said.

  She tried to blink away the darkness, but that was all there was. Until, in the distance, with a sudden ferocity, as though the gray world heard her complaint and was dissatisfied, the particles that made up the dark started to swirl. Small pieces broke off and circled their entwined hands, blowing whispers onto the back of Saxony’s neck.

  She could feel the magic of this place fighting to take shape.

  Saxony wasn’t sure why every world she got sucked into had to be so eerie. The consort’s mind, Amja’s spell, and now this. She wondered if Tavia and the others were having such a hard time.