Sariah. I hadn’t even sent her a letter yet, but she was keeping tabs on me. Maybe through Henrik.
“You know my great-aunt,” I said.
“I do.” Her thin, crimson-painted lips curled. “She was the one who taught me to play Three Widows, if I remember correctly.” She leaned in closely. “That’s not the only thing I learned from her.”
From the back corner booth, Henrik looked as if his eyes were going to drop right out of his head. Another full glass of rye dangled from his fingertips as he watched us, but he had the good sense to stay put. The last thing I needed was for him to mess this up with his indelicate decorum.
“Now, I didn’t come for the tea,” Violet said, pulling the gloves from her small hands. “And I suppose someone has to throw the first die.”
I smiled, giving a nod to the man standing behind the bar, and he sprung forward with a velvet pouch on a silver tray. I picked it up, dropping it into Violet’s hand.
“Thank you, dear.” She winked at me. “Haven’t had the best of luck lately.” Her eyes cut knowingly to Coen. She was talking about the contract she’d lost to Simon. “Let’s see if I can change it.”
I stepped aside, motioning for one of the servers to pull out an open chair, and Violet sat, her skirts cascading around her like a plume of feathers. Everyone fell silent as the server lifted the flower arrangement from the table and Violet reached into the small purse around her wrist, pulling out four coppers. She set them at the center and the man beside her followed suit, placing his bet.
She raised both hands into the air, closing them over the dice, and the entire tea house quieted once more. She unfurled her fingers, and the dice tumbled across the linen, followed by an eruption of cheers. Triple stars.
Violet laughed, scraping the coin toward her, and the tea house came to life with voices and clinking teacups and the jingle of coin. It was exactly as I’d imagined it, filled to the brim with stories that would be told over tomorrow’s breakfasts.
I found myself smiling, eyes moving over the candlelit room. I’d done it. I’d actually done it.
“The silversmith couldn’t make it?” Coen said, eyeing the booth where the Roths sat.
The question pulled me from thought, replacing the pride I’d felt with the sting of remembering Ezra’s battered face.
“No,” I answered. I didn’t know if I was relieved or disappointed that he hadn’t come. I didn’t like the idea of Ezra watching me play Henrik’s games, but he was the only sense of gravity I had in Bastian. “Doesn’t have much luck with Three Widows, as you know.” I tried to make light of it.
Coen laughed, a little too loudly. It wasn’t the congenial laugh I recognized. This one was sharp and jagged. Maybe he’d had more to drink than I’d realized. “Luck had nothing to do with it.”
I tore my gaze from Violet Blake, searching Coen’s face. “What do you mean?”
He propped one arm on the counter beside me. “Sometimes what looks like chance is actually just a stacked deck.”
I turned toward him. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
Coen leaned closer, a conspiratorial look in his eye. “I gave him the dice. Henrik.”
I stared at him, still trying to understand.
“I liked Ezra, sure. I didn’t have any siblings, and in a way, he’d become one. But his talent garnered far too much attention from my father. He’d wanted me to have that gift with the forge, but I’d never shown the promise Ezra did,” he said. “I could see it from the time I was very young—he wished that Ezra had been his son.”
My eyes narrowed at him. “What are you saying?”
“That night, my father and Henrik were drunk. They weren’t friends, but they did business together and they’d just finished up a job they’d been planning for months. They were celebrating. And when Henrik proposed a game of Three Widows, he had his prize already named. My father sent me to fetch the dice and I did.”
“You gave him weighted dice.” I breathed.
One side of Coen’s mouth lifted. “The next day, Ezra was gone.” His eyes glinted like a wolf’s. “Sometimes we have to make our own fate.”
I let the counter hold up my weight as I stared at the floor, a heavy feeling threatening to bring me crashing down into it. That was it. That single moment brought everything into line, the pieces clicking. A wide, gaping hollow opened in my chest, where Sariah’s words swirled like an eddy.
The day you were born a Roth is not the day your destiny began. It began the day you stepped off that ship in Bastian.
My gaze lifted to the booth in the corner, where Henrik and my uncles sat with Murrow. From the moment I was born, I thought my future had been fixed. I’d waited for that letter every day and when it came, I answered without question.
My gaze drifted down to the sleeve of my jacket and I pulled it up, revealing the wide snake’s eye on the ouroboros.
I was one of them. Made in their image. And it was time I started acting like it.
THIRTY-TWO
My uncles and Murrow left the tea house for the tavern, but I stayed behind, sitting in the empty booth at the back as the servers cleaned up. I let myself disappear into the shadows of the quiet with each candle that was blown out, and when it was dark and silent, I finally drained my glass of rye and started the walk home.
Somehow, I’d pulled it off. And most surprising, it had felt like second nature. Sariah hadn’t known what lay ahead when she sent me to Bastian, and I’d long thought she’d spent the years grooming me for her own purposes. But she had, in fact, sent me with everything I needed. She had been sure that I’d set my own course. And as I stood on the dark street looking up at the lone lit window of the Roth house, I knew there was more than one path I wanted to forge.
I climbed the stairs slowly, stopping on the top step when I saw that the door to Ezra’s room was cracked open. I hoped, secretly, that it had been left open for me. But there was more unspoken than spoken in this house. More questions than answers.
Moving past my own room, I crept into that bit of light. Inside, Ezra sat at the desk with an open bottle of rye, lit by a single candle that was nearing the end of its wick. I leaned into the wall outside of his room, watching him for a long, silent moment. The light cast his usually pale skin in a warm amber and his freshly cut hair was almost the color of ink. On the dressing table against the wall sat the three dice.
“I heard it went well,” he said, without looking up.
I smiled to myself, wondering if there was ever anything that went on in this house that he didn’t know. “I thought maybe you’d come,” I admitted. I didn’t care anymore what that may sound like to him. The time for pretending had long passed.
“Henrik had things for me to do here.”
“I thought maybe you were hiding from me.” I gave him a playful smile, but I meant it.
He exhaled, running one hand through his hair. A habit of his when he didn’t know what to say. “Maybe a little.”
My smile dropped slightly. So, he was being honest, too.
I stepped inside, closing the door behind me with a click and making my way to the dressing table. I picked up one of the dice and set it into the center of my palm, studying it. It looked like any other die and it had probably seemed like any other game that night. Henrik hadn’t even known when he threw them that they were rigged in his favor.
When I looked up, Ezra’s eyes were drifting from me, to the die, and back. Maybe I’d tell him one day what Coen had done, but not tonight. There would be a cost to that truth and Ezra had paid enough for the time being.
He stood from the stool and went to the window, pushing back the curtain so he could watch the street below. “You shouldn’t be in here. Henrik wouldn’t like it.”
I followed the line of bruises on his skin with my eyes until they disappeared beneath his shirt. “Henrik doesn’t like a lot of things.”
“I’m serious,” he said, more heavily. “You need to be careful with him. He’s wat
ching you.”
“I know.”
He leaned into the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. “I don’t think you do. You still believe you can get what you want.”
“No. I’m just done asking for what I want.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“That’s what you did,” I argued. “You got the apprenticeship on your own. You—”
“And look where it got me,” he interrupted. “I was stupid for thinking I could leave. That he would ever let me.”
“So, you’re giving up?”
“I know when I’ve lost, Bryn,” he answered.
I set the die down, staring at the three of them. My life had been decided by a deal. So had Ezra’s. But I was finished letting other people decide for me. The power of Henrik Roth was no more than lifting smoke. He was the sum of beliefs and myths and tales told. I was ready to tell my own stories.
“I’m not going to be matched with Coen. I’m going to stay here and run the tea house.”
He stared at me. “If you stay here, he will always control you. Everything about you.”
“Are you saying I should take the match with Coen?”
He sighed. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”
I came to stand in front of him, the toes of my boots almost touching his. Outside, the black sky was glittering with stars strung over a night-shrouded sea. The cool air seeped in through the window and the glass fogged along the corners of the pane. Out there lay a world beyond the walls of this house and life suddenly felt like a cage that had accidentally been left open.
“Tru told me Auster climbed out that window.” I pointed to the window of my bedroom. You could see it from here. “And he never came back.”
At the mention of Auster’s name, Ezra stiffened. The muscle in his jaw ticked. “I know. I saw him.”
“You did?”
“I think that’s why I got it into my head that I could leave. Auster came back last year, and he’d made this whole other life for himself. Like all those years in this house had never happened and…” He swallowed. “I started thinking I could leave, too.”
“You still can.”
Ezra’s gaze returned to the dark street below. “That was before.”
“Before what?”
He swallowed. “Before I had a reason to stay.”
I looked up at him, but he kept his gaze fixed out the window. The pain that had been in my chest rose to my throat and the sting of tears lit behind my eyes.
“In a way, Henrik finding out about the apprenticeship made that decision for me.”
“Ezra…” I said his name with a tenderness that I hadn’t been brave enough to use before. But something about what Coen had said to me had stripped me of my fear. The world was suddenly a stark black-and-white, separated into the things I wanted and didn’t want. And the most blazing, bright thing in that world stood before me.
“Look, Bryn,” he said. “Henrik—”
I lifted up onto my toes and pressed my mouth to his, drawing in what felt like the very first breath I’d ever taken. It filled my lungs with the smell of him and I parted his lips with mine. The taste of rye lit on my tongue and Ezra froze, pulling back and putting inches of space between us.
He stared at me, and the look on his face was something I hadn’t seen there before. Shock. Or confusion. I couldn’t tell. His chest rose and fell with heavy breaths, his eyes fixed on mine. But I didn’t want to give him the chance to think better of it. Or to push me away. I wanted to bind my destiny to his.
Without taking my eyes from Ezra’s, I pulled open my jacket and let it slide down my shoulders. I wasn’t afraid anymore. The thing I felt in the center of my gut when I was with him was the only thing that had ever felt real. More real than Henrik’s letter. More real than the agreement he’d made with Sariah. More real than the stake with the tea house or the match with Coen. This belonged to me. It was the only thing that belonged to me.
Ezra watched as I unbuttoned my vest. “Bryn…”
He looked terrified, a darkness falling over his face. But that didn’t scare me anymore, either. I let the vest drop to the floor and pulled my shirt from where it was tucked into my trousers.
He reached out, taking hold of my wrists to stop me. His voice was ragged. “What are you doing?”
I closed the space between us until I could feel the warmth coming off of his body. His breath kissed my skin as I shrugged off the shirt. His eyes were searching mine, the thoughts racing through them so fast, I could almost hear them swirling in the air around us.
“I’m making my own fate,” I said, tears filling my eyes again as I spoke Coen’s words. But these tears weren’t sad. They were ones of deep relief. “If we stay, we stay together.”
It was a question. A hope. And as I stood there in front of him with my heart bared between us, I waited for his answer.
His gaze dropped to my mouth and I waited, hoping with everything inside of me that this time, he would be brave enough to cross the invisible line between us.
“This is a really bad idea.” He moved closer, and my heartbeat grew louder as slowly, his hands came to my face. His fingertips slid into the hair at the nape of my neck and my head tipped back before his mouth met mine. And the deep emptiness within me was flooded, filling with him. I pulled at his shirt until the buttons were undone and my hands moved over the rippling shape of his stomach. He reached back with stiff arms and a shudder went through him as I tugged his shirt off. When I looked up, his face was pinched in pain.
“Am I hurting you?”
“Yes,” he said, but it was on a laugh.
He reached for me again, and this time, he wasn’t gentle. He held me to him tightly, as if he was afraid I would disappear. I pulled him into me until I couldn’t get any closer and then we were only skin and hands and breath. I didn’t want him to stop. I didn’t want even a sliver of space between us.
My feet followed his away from the window, his mouth still pressed to mine, and I pulled him down onto the bed, letting his weight come over me. I wasn’t thinking anymore about what would happen or when. This was the only moment that existed. Here, between us.
I pushed the waist of his trousers down so I could follow the line of his hips with my hands and Ezra stilled, staring at me in the dark.
The candle’s flame had finally snuffed, leaving only a twisting trail of disintegrating smoke in the air. The room gave way to darkness, painting half his face with silver moonlight.
“Have you ever been with someone before?” His voice was a crackling fire.
I hadn’t, though I guessed that maybe he had. And instead of embarrassing me, I was happy. My body wouldn’t be auctioned off to a husband like the girls in Nimsmire. It was mine. It was mine to give.
I traced the Roth tattoo on the inside of his arm. “No,” I answered, my heartbeat slowing. “But I want to be with you.”
It was so true that the words were strangled in my throat. They became solid between us.
I melted into the darkness, with only the sound of his breath and the feel of his skin to guide me. For the first time, I was truly choosing. In the empty house at the end of an alley in Bastian’s Lower Vale, I threw the dice. And on the other side, I didn’t care what was waiting.
THIRTY-THREE
I woke to silence. Not the hollow quiet of emptiness. It was the kind of silence that made me feel heavy. Safe.
My eyes didn’t open. I didn’t want to see that the sun had risen or that the harbor bell would soon ring. Instead, I pulled in a slow, deep breath. The scent of Ezra’s quilts swirled inside of me and I tucked my face into the crook of his shoulder.
I had never been so still inside. This was a quiet that was full of tomorrows and I smiled quietly to myself, the thought warming me. I could find a way to chart my destiny within the Roths, like Sariah had said. I already was. The tea house was one thing, but this … these arms around me were another.
A distant knocking sounded
somewhere in the house and deep in the corner of my sluggish thoughts, I remembered where we were. My eyes finally opened, and Ezra’s bruised, pale skin came into focus with the soft drift of dust in the beams of light coming through the window.
I tipped up my chin, blinking, but Ezra’s eyes looked focused. He was perfectly still, and I realized he was listening. Slowly, his grip on me went rigid and a wave of cold dread crept through me. Footsteps. They were coming up the stairs.
“Shit.” The word was a rumble in Ezra’s throat as he sat up and I followed, searching for my shirt on the floor.
I was pulling it over my head when Murrow burst through the door, ducking so he didn’t hit his head. “Ez—” But he stopped short when he saw me, his mouth dropping open. “What the…”
Ezra and I froze, standing together half-dressed in front of the window, and a look of pure shock transfigured Murrow’s handsome face into something contorted.
“I … uh…” His lips moved around unintelligible words. “Simon’s here,” he finally managed. “And Coen. Henrik wants you downstairs. Both of you.” He stifled a laugh, looking from me to Ezra.
“Get out,” Ezra rasped, buttoning his trousers.
Murrow closed the door and disappeared, the sound of his boots trailing down the stairs as I shook out my hair and braided it with frantic fingers. I wrapped it around the crown of my head and pinned it into place. Over my shoulder, I could see Ezra wincing in the mirror. He cursed as he pulled on his shirt, the pain visible on his face with every quick movement. But once he had it buttoned up, most of the evidence of Henrik’s punishment was covered. The only remnants were the cut on his lip and the bruise on his cheek.
I looked up at him as I laced up my boots, catching a grin at the corner of his mouth and I smiled, too. “Good morning.”
The Last Legacy Page 21