Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
“You can’t even stand. You can’t go anywhere,” Gen said, putting her hand out to stop her. “You have to go on lockdown with us. It’s safe.”
“I love you both. I made the right call coming back to see you, even if Graves disagrees.” The thought of him slamming the door in her face still infuriated her. She covered her irritation by reaching for her clothes on the nightstand. She was in nothing but a hospital gown, and she needed to get going. “He said I broke the bargain by coming here, but there is too much at stake to walk away now.”
“What is at stake?” Ethan asked. “The money? We’re fine here, Kierse. I was skeptical at first, but I like being with the Dreadlords.”
She shook her head. “It’s not safe. This is proof that it isn’t safe. And it won’t be safe until I finish.”
“And that’s why you’re going back?” Gen asked. “For our safety.”
“Torra is alive,” she gasped out.
Gen and Ethan looked at her in shock.
Gen whispered. “How?”
“She can’t be,” Ethan said.
“I found her,” Kierse said. She steadied herself against the wall. Fuck, she needed to do something about this. “I found her, and I promised that I would get her out. Plus, this heist is so much more than what I first signed up for. Just trust me when I say that we cannot leave this object in the hands of King Louis unless we want another Monster War.”
Ethan’s jaw dropped.
“You’re serious,” Gen whispered in shock.
“Deadly.”
Kierse tugged on her T-shirt and then slid her arms back into her fitted jacket. She hissed as she drew it over her hurt arm.
“But surely you can rest one more day.”
“No, it’s happening tomorrow night,” she said. “I need to go back now. Graves has to see reason about all of this. Broken bargain or no.” Kierse bit her lip and wavered. “He has to.”
Gen’s expression softened at those words. “You want to go back to him.”
Leave it to Gen to see to the heart of it.
“I do,” she said like an admission. “He was . . . different. Kind, in his own way.”
Ethan cringed. “I thought he was a monster?”
“So did I,” she whispered.
Her thoughts went distant as she remembered him giving her his coat, the way he’d held her in the tunnel, the tuck of her hair behind her ear as he stared down at her with those inimitable gray eyes. The taste of the babka and the crush of his lips. That little smile that she had just begun to interpret. All the many little ways in which Graves the monster had become Graves the man in her mind.
Gen touched her hand. “You sound like you actually like him.”
“He’s a monster, but he’s my monster.”
Gen and Ethan were silent at that proclamation. And it was the truth about Graves. The whole truth. One she wasn’t even sure she had taken the time to look at.
“My entire life, I’ve been running from my past. I don’t want to run anymore. Not from him.” She cleared her throat and looked up at her friends. “So, I love you, but you’re going to have to enter lockdown without me, because I have to leave.”
“You do,” Ethan said as if he finally understood, too.
“One thing before you go,” Gen said, retrieving a card from her belongings and offering it to Kierse. “I pulled a card for you.”
Kierse turned it over and revealed the Magician. Graves.
“Thank you,” she said.
Then she pulled her friends into a long hug, gathered her strength, and walked out the door.
A weight settled on her as she stepped out of Five Points. The door sealed shut from the inside. She tugged on it twice just to make sure that no one was getting in after her.
She looked at the edifice with resignation. This was the right thing to do, but she didn’t feel right leaving them undefended. If wish powder could get inside once to hurt her friends, it could happen again. Maybe it was Imani; maybe it was someone else trying to get to her or Graves. But she didn’t care. They wouldn’t hurt her friends.
She had something to protect now. Something to ward. And when she focused her intent on the building, her magic came to her with ease. She drew the ward for the entire building. She didn’t stop to wonder if she was doing it correctly. She just used her magic how it came to her intuitively. When she was done, Five Points was a wish-powder-free establishment. No one would be able to bring it inside. Her friends were safe.
The hum of magic was just a small buzzing in the back of her mind as she saw the little wren in the shape of her ward.
Now, she could walk away.
Interlude
Isolde came into work early.
Something felt wrong.