Map of Fates

by Maggie Hall

  I shrugged.

  Stellan’s knee hit mine as he sat at the stool next to me. “I do what I have to do for myself. And my sister.”

  I remembered seeing him at the ball, talking to Madame Dauphin. “You always do what they tell you, though. Madame Dauphin had you spying on me when we first met. And you did it.”

  “Yes. I had to. That’s the point of this job.”

  My feet reached out, legs barely long enough to hit the footrest under the bar. “You almost seemed afraid of Madame Dauphin. You’re not afraid of anyone.” The words came out before I could stop them.

  “She’s . . . hard on me. I can’t do anything wrong around her.”

  “She doesn’t like you?”

  He smirked. “Something like that.”

  I gestured for him to go on, and at first it seemed like he wouldn’t, but then he took a gulp of his drink. “Okay. A year or so ago, I may have . . . I misjudged a situation.”

  I shook my head, not sure what he was trying to say.

  “It’s always been in my best interests to stay on her good side. She’s always liked me. Until that point, I didn’t realize just how much.”

  It took a few seconds longer than it should have for me to understand. I twisted my bar stool to gape at him. “Wait. Madame Dauphin tried to . . . ?” It sounded like a bad soap opera.

  Stellan swirled the splash of vodka left in his glass, and I had a horrifying thought. “Did you?”

  “No. But maybe I should have. Now she does everything in her power to make things hard for me. Before, I was in line to take a position that would let me travel to Russia to see my sister a few times a year. Then . . . I wasn’t. Which is another reason the thirteenth thing could be helpful. The tomb. Whatever we find.”

  I swiveled back forward. “That’s why you want to find it so much. Leverage.”

  “That’s one reason.”

  “There’s more?”

  “There’s always more.” He spun his glass on the bar. “A few years ago, I found out that the Order had set the fire that killed my family.”

  I stilled. “I thought it was an accident.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Leverage and revenge,” I said. I thought I could see right through him like he could through me, but I was wrong. “I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me.”

  “You didn’t ask the right questions.” He finally glanced over. “I didn’t lie to you.”

  “I know. I don’t think you’ve ever really lied to me. Surprisingly.”

  The look on his face was almost a smile. “Nice to know you think so highly of me.”

  I reached out to shove him, tipping off my own bar stool in the process and practically landing in his lap. He grabbed my hand to steady me. We both paused, his heart beating under my palm.

  “I feel like such an idiot for trusting them,” I said. The filter on my mouth had been turned off, and my tongue felt clumsy, like it wasn’t keeping up with my brain. “The Saxons only wanted what I could do for them. And Jack . . .”

  Stellan’s chest rose and fell with a deep breath. He never smelled like cologne. He smelled like something else, like pinpricks of light in the dark. Like boy. “It’s seductive, being wanted,” he said. “It makes us less careful.”

  I looked his long fingers, holding my hand against his chest, and thought of Jack, trusting the Saxons blindly because they acted like they cared about him. Lydia, talking about how it was appealing, being part of something bigger than yourself. She used that very fact to coax the whole Circle into believing the Order were their enemies.

  “And it’s seductive wanting,” Stellan went on, slowly setting my hand back on the bar. “It feels good. And it feels terrible at the same time.”

  “I don’t want anything,” I said quietly, pulling myself upright.

  The bartender came by, but Stellan motioned him away. “I don’t think you actually felt safe when you got on that plane with me. You just wanted so much that you were willing to do anything. You wanted this family, this life you could have.”

  I thought of that first morning, in the car on the way to Prada, when I didn’t yet realize quite how far my life had been turned upside down. Toska, Stellan had said. Something’s missing, and you ache for it, down to your bones.

  I ran my finger through the condensation on my glass.

  “That’s how I know you’re lying when you say you don’t want anything. Being someone who wants that much—it doesn’t just go away, as much as you try to suppress it. You just hope you can eventually realize what it is you’re missing.”

  “What do you want, then?” I said into my drink. “What do you ache for?”

  He smiled an enigmatic little smile that made me stare at his mouth for a moment too long. “You remember that.”

  “Of course I do.” I gathered my hair away from my face, surprised for a second not to have enough of it to twist into a bun. I let go of it, and it fell back over my shoulders.

  Stellan pulled one of the strands of pink.

  I batted his hand away. “I know, you don’t like it.”

  “Oh, I like it,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes and inspected the ends of one of the pink strands. “You don’t have to lie. It was pretty obvious that you hated it, and it’s okay. I don’t care.”

  He gave a small laugh. “No, I just wasn’t stupid enough to say what I thought out loud in front of your sort-of boyfriend.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Kuklachka, I think you look . . .” He broke into a string of French. I didn’t know what the words meant, but his tone, and the way his eyes flicked over me when he said it—fast enough that it could have been an accident, but slow enough that my skin tingled—made me have to look away.

  “Didn’t I tell you to stop flirting with me?” I said.

  I could hear a smile when he said, “Then suffice it to say I like it.”

  I pulled my hair back for real this time, quickly, into a messy ponytail.

  “Why is it . . . ,” I said, the words bouncing like helium balloons. “Why are you sometimes like, my best friend or something? And then sometimes I think you hate me?”

  He got very still and watched us in the mirror behind the bar. “I’m sometimes your best friend?”

  I found us in the mirror, too. After a few seconds, I pulled a few strands of the pink hair around my face.

  “Kuklachka.” I could feel Stellan looking down at me, then so quietly I barely heard him, “I never hate you.”

  Something warm that had nothing to do with the drink settled in my chest, and I peered at his sunburst tattoo. Light in the dark.

  I reached up and traced it with one finger. It was hot over the ink, like it really was the sun burning into his upper back. Then his scars, cool and smooth like marble veins over the warm skin.

  And then I noticed he was looking at me in a really odd way.

  “Sorry.” I pulled away. “I—did that hurt?”

  He blinked. “No.”

  When the next round came, I took a sip and wrinkled my nose. “Doesn’t taste right,” I said. I grabbed his and took a sip, and the bitter alcohol taste wasn’t missing in his. “Hey,” I said. “Get me a real one.”

  “No.” He took his drink back and put it out of my reach. That only meant I had to lean all the way across his lap to get at it. The invisible bubble of normal personal space had officially shrunk to nothing.

  I sat back up with a triumphant “Ha!” but he snatched the glass away again before I could get a drink.

  I pouted. My head was so warm, dreamy light as marshmallow cream. At some point, we’d shifted enough so our feet were touching on the footrest under the bar.

  I paused, then moved my foot a little. It was enough to signal to him this was a person he was touching and not a chair leg, and to do the
least awkward thing and move away. He didn’t. I sat straight again, and even though I could tell my leg would fall asleep pretty soon in this position, I didn’t move, either.

  At the opposite end of the bar, a couple had started kissing. In the past few minutes, they’d nearly crossed the line into not-appropriate-in-public. “Kiss,” I said, drawing out the s sound.

  “Hmm?” It was a little dreamy, a little unfocused, and I realized that he wasn’t perfectly sober, either.

  “Kiss. I never thought about it before. Isn’t it a strange word? Such a cute word. Like the combination of bliss and . . . kitten. Kissssss.”

  We both watched the couple. His hand crept under her shirt. She nearly knocked their wine off the bar. My foot pressed a little harder into Stellan’s. His pressed a little harder back. “Kitten . . . bliss?” he said.

  Except now I was watching him. He turned and caught me.

  “All I’m saying,” I said, flustered, “is there’s got to be another word for kissing like that.”

  Stellan smiled; his teeth grazed his lower lip, pulling it into his mouth. Our feet still didn’t move. “Time for you to sober up,” he said. “I’m ordering you coffee.”

  “Like you’re sober.” I shoved him again, hard enough that I nearly knocked him off his stool.

  He grabbed both my wrists with one hand. “More sober than you. You’re making a scene.”

  I wrenched one hand away and clapped it over his mouth. He turned back to me, eyes dancing. “Shush,” I said.

  “Mrmph,” he mumbled, warm breath behind my hand. I pulled away an inch. “Bet you cannot go ten seconds without laughing,” he said from behind my hand, and propped an elbow on the bar facing me.

  I dropped my hand and mirrored him. “Go.”

  My mouth twitched for a few seconds, trying to giggle. His eyes danced merrily, the inner ring of gold especially bright in the dark. But slowly, the laughter left him.

  I was on the very edge of my bar stool. We were facing each other more than we were facing forward now. Our knees, which had already been touching, pressed together purposefully. I felt my lips part.

  “Stop it,” he breathed, his voice even lower than usual, accent a little thicker.

  “Stop what?”

  “You know exactly what,” he said, mockingly. My earlier words in his mouth.

  I glanced down at our legs, back up. After a second, I said, “Why?”

  Neither of us moved. “Kuklachka,” he said. “You never answered me. What do you want?”

  I exhaled. I didn’t know if it was the fight with Jack, or the vodka, or the music and the dark. Or if all that was only allowing me to feel what I’d been trying not to feel for so long. All I knew was that the knot in my chest was starting to come undone in his hands.

  “Do you remember the rest of the meaning of toska?” he said. “Sometimes you want something you think you shouldn’t.” There was less than a foot of space between our faces. “You’re not even sure you understand it.” I could see the pulse pounding at his throat. “But not having it feels like you can’t breathe.” For the first time, I noticed my breathing. How shallow it was, how quick.

  He leaned even closer. “You want to find the tomb for more than blackmail. You like the idea of all that power. Of having control over your life.”

  I couldn’t see anything in the world but his face.

  “You even want the power we could have together,” he went on. “Then you wouldn’t be alone. You liked it when we said something and people listened.”

  I swallowed. He looked at my mouth.

  “I think you’re even starting to care about the Circle. To want to be part of them. You want to be wanted. Say it. I want to hear you say it out loud.”

  I licked my lips, my mouth suddenly dry. My body wasn’t my own. My voice wasn’t my own. I didn’t want it in the way some of the Circle did. I didn’t care about money, fame, ruling the world. But the rest of it . . . An hour ago, I would have denied it all. Now . . . “I want it,” I whispered. Stellan was still watching me, rapt. “I want all of that.”

  It was so wrong to feel those things. To feel absolutely anything over and above wanting to save my mom. I couldn’t believe I’d just said it out loud. But I felt light. Free.

  A smile flickered across Stellan’s face. His pupils looked huge in the low light. “What else?”

  A thrill shivered through me, hitting low in my stomach. A minuscule shift, and one of his knees slipped between mine. He looked down at it. I did, too.

  “Little doll, is there something else you want?” he murmured.

  I stared into his eyes. It was only a moment, but the moment dragged back as far as I could remember, like we had never been anywhere but here, suspended precariously between yes and no, between want and don’t.

  I felt terrified. I felt powerful. I felt bold.

  I nodded.

  CHAPTER 28

  Stellan stared at me for a beat. Two. Then he stood, abruptly enough that I pitched off my bar stool. He caught me, tossed a handful of euros on the bar, then took my hand and led me outside.

  We made it almost to the bottom of the steps.

  He turned abruptly, leaving me standing one step higher; he gathered his fingers in my dress and pulled me against him.

  There was a second of hesitation, of skin touching skin, a cold nose on a warm cheek, lips almost brushing, so close, and are we really—

  I stood on my tiptoes and pressed my lips to his.

  It was all the encouragement he needed. Sparks shot from my lips through the tingling tips of my toes. His hand was firm on the back of my neck, lifting my face to his, and the rest of the world fell away.

  I’d half expected, after so much buildup, for kissing him to be disappointing.

  I was wrong.

  He pulled away a few inches, eyes wide. “Oh,” I breathed, and it said a million other things that would make me blush to say them out loud. His lips curved into a smile, and then I couldn’t see the smile anymore, just feel it, and then there was nothing else.

  I realized now that I’d thought about this before, even if I’d tried not to. I’d imagined it would be the almost violence of lips and breath and hands that would burn so hot, it’d flame out as quickly as it had started; that we’d just have to do it once and get it out of our systems.

  I hadn’t imagined this: the feeling that, even though he had far more experience than I did, he was just as captivated as I was by how our lips took no time at all to get used to each other, the echo of our muffled breaths, the fact that it was chilly outside, but between our faces, it was nothing but soft and warm. I hadn’t imagined, though maybe I should have, that this would be the physical manifestation of that way he had always looked at me, since the day we met, like he could tell what was going on inside me so well it was almost uncomfortable. I’d never been kissed by someone who knew what I wanted before I did—exactly when to run his hands through my hair, when to cup my face like it was something precious.

  It was deliberate, sweet, frantic at the same time, tinged with vodka and lime and not the taste of cigarettes, and I wondered very briefly whether that was for my benefit and then that thought was lost, too, because everything was lost except for the small, pleading noise I made when his mouth broke away from mine.

  “Kuklachka,” he murmured. “Little doll.”

  Little doll. That’s exactly what I didn’t want, wasn’t it? To be anyone’s plaything in this game.

  I forced myself to push him back, hands on his chest. “Do you just want what I can do for you,” I whispered, “or do you actually want me?”

  I expected him to say whatever it took to keep kissing me, but a look deeper than I would have imagined passed over his face. He licked his lips, and I couldn’t help but glance at them. His eyes darkened. “Both,” he said, like he’d just realized it him
self.

  “I thought I wasn’t your type,” I whispered, remembering the conversation he and Jack had on the boat.

  A soft laugh. “You’re not.” His hands were on my waist, fingers spread on my rib cage like piano keys. “Who’s spying now?”

  I shrugged, tired of apologizing, then pulled his face back down to mine and didn’t let go again.

  I didn’t know where we were. Who we were. We were on a street for a few minutes, I think. Against a statue in the middle of the sidewalk. Then pressed into a rough stone wall, my feet dangling a foot off the ground, my back clanging against the metal gate of a storefront, closed for the night.

  And then things started to look familiar, but I didn’t care, and then up a driveway, and I think we went up some stairs, and doors and more doors, and then we very definitely opened the door to a bedroom.

  I pulled away with a gasp. “Are we back at Colette’s?”

  He nodded. His shirt was half untucked, hair everywhere. He must have been staying in a different wing than I was, and thankfully, no one else was around.

  I looked inside the room. One soft bedside lamp. Books on the coffee table. Stellan—oh my God, seriously, really, Stellan, after everything? I flashed briefly to another set of lips on mine, a kiss that felt so different than this did, a clench in my chest just at the thought—but no, it was Stellan now, in the doorway, waiting. I almost expected the look on his face to be triumph, like it was when I’d asked him to teach me to fight. But there was no hint of smugness.

  There was a normal amount of beautiful a person should be allowed to look, then there was him. Was it possible he was actually more attractive all flushed and wild like this, or had I made myself block him out so thoroughly, I’d just forgotten?

  “Yes.” I took his hand. The door shut behind us. “Okay.”

  The next time I opened my eyes, I was sitting on the windowsill, Stellan’s chest pressed between my knees. We’d been kissing for what had to be hours, but could have been minutes, and with a kiss like this, it was no surprise when I found myself, by some instinct rather than any particular decision, groping for the buttons of his shirt. My fingers felt clumsy, strange. The first button popped open. The second.