Page 28

“ W ell, you won’t like what I have to say.

” I strolled toward the boys, mind reeling.

I still felt the ghost of Dante’s warning trailing me, but I didn’t have the luxury of doubt.

Not anymore. We had twenty-two hours, that was it.

We didn’t have time for fear. If we hesitated now, we’d lose everything.

Dorian lounged against a black marble pillar, the flick of his lighter punctuating the silence. I leveled a glare at him, reserving my smile for Hugo. He lifted me effortlessly and for a moment I felt anchored to something real, to home.

“I had no luck,” Hugo murmured as he set me back on my feet, his words low with frustration. “What about you?”

“A little,” I admitted. “I saw Dante. I didn’t get the cards, but I know where he’s going.”

Dante’s warnings gnawed at the edges of my mind but I ignored them. I had trusted him once, and it had nearly cost me everything. No more . I did not want to risk Verrine finding us.

“What?” Dorian’s gaze sharpened as he closed in on me. “Where? You just let him go? ”

“Yes. But I know where he’s going.” I didn’t look away from Dorian. This wasn’t my fault.

“And then what? Say we find him. Say we get the deck. There’s still only one resurrection card,” Dorian averred.

“I know.” I nodded, steadying myself. Maybe he was right to be angry.

Our odds looked bleak. But I wasn’t about to sit back and let fear decide for me.

I’d already let someone else take the lead once.

Never again. “If we get the deck, Hugo can take the card and travel back under the radar. Dante said Verrine would come after us, if we left it long enough.”

“You’ve lost your damned mind.” Dorian creased his brow as he looked away. “Say she comes for us, then. I’ve only ever seen her perform one resurrection at a time. I don’t know if she can handle both of us.” He turned back to me, eyes storming.

“Let’s focus on the cards,” Hugo said steadily. It was the first time I’d seen him visibly worried. “Where’s Dante now, then?”

“He is with someone called the Dowager of Knots. That’s where the alchemist told him to go, anyway.”

“The Dowager of Knots?” Dorian spat. “Hold on. You found Dante already and let him slip away. Now we have to seek the Dowager, the undead witch notorious for splitting souls?”

“Do you have another plan?” I snapped, but an icy feeling spread through my chest.

“Of course not.” A wraith bowed close to Dorian, tendrils of tacky shadow drifting close to his arm. He waved it away furiously. “Fine. Let’s seek the wicked witch.”

The Dowager ruled the Dark Markets, a sliver of Avernus that felt deeper than the rest, stitched together with forgotten magic and the desperate bargains of those who’d come before us.

A poster flapped beside the entrance, half-torn and singed at the corners. It had no words, just a crude image etched in ink, a shadowy throne. The word below it was written in Latin. Redit.

A gate of hollowed out bones marked the entrance. I tried not to stare too closely at the skulls stacked into the frame, their empty sockets seeming to watch us as we stepped inside.

The streets were narrow, lined with tents that stretched as far as the eye could see. Figures loomed behind silk-draped stalls, their eyes gleaming from beneath deep hoods.

Hugo paused over a counter of jewels, but I pulled him along. There was no time for distractions. His arm tugged lightly around my waist as we walked, drawing me close as we passed shadows that stretched unnaturally.

Beside me, Dorian moved with the ease of someone who had done this before.

His eyes scanned the merchants like he was looking for a thread in a tapestry, some glimmer of the right path forward, of the right tent.

He didn’t flinch at the bones or shadows.

Just kept moving. It was terrifying how steady he looked here, like this world belonged to him, or he to it.

At the next stall, Dorian stopped. A hunched figure sat behind a table draped in dark velvet, their face obscured by layers of gauzy black fabric. Silver rings gleamed on gnarled fingers as they shook a stone bowl full of small bones.

“You're looking for something…” the figure rasped. “And you're willing to trade.”

Dorian hesitated for just a moment before gesturing for me to give him The Fool card. “Yes,” he said casually. “We are following the trail of someone who left this behind. We believe they have gone to the Dowager.”

“And what will you trade for this sliver of information?”

“The card itself,” Dorian replied firmly. The figure let out a chattering hiss, eyes widening.

“Dorian!” I shook my head hard. “You can’t trade one of the cards.” A ripple passed through the air. The cloaked tradesman stilled his shaking of the bones.

“It’s one for many. Dante himself left this behind, it can’t be worth as much as the others,” Dorian countered, but I could see the hesitation in his voice, the way it shook like he knew he couldn’t return without the entire deck.

“A dangerous thing,” the tradesman murmured. “And yet, you do not know it’s worth.” Their eyes lowered to my necklace, and then a wicked grin stretched across their face, snatching up the bones from the dish as they pointed to my chest. “That is what I wish to trade.”

“Absolutely not.” My hand gripped the pendant. My fingers went cold against it. To give it up felt like abandoning her all over again, like I did the night of the accident. I swallowed down the lump in my throat.

“That isn’t for sale,” Dorian growled. “The card, or we walk.” My throat felt tight, like the chain had constricted around it. There was a long pause as the tradesman considered it.

“Dorian, we don’t know what that card means!” I bristled as the tradesman tossed the bones into the air, watching them scatter on the tablecloth. They hissed, teeth chattering.

“I do,” Dorian muttered, voice low. “And trust me, losing one to claim the rest will be worthwhile.”

“I suppose this card is no small thing.” Their gray fingers reached for the card, bones clicking.

“You say you seek the Dowager of Knots, Ruler of Fates,” the figure murmured.

Their fingers skimmed the surface of The Fool , then closed around it with a greedy finality.

“Her court begins where the sea touches the ruin of the old world. The entrance is in the black tent at the end of this street.”

My shoulders dropped, feeling the weight of what I had just given up. The card was gone. Still, we had our way forward.

The black tent did not belong in the market.

Its fabric was made of deepest black, as though it had been cut from the night itself.

The entrance shimmered like a mirage. One step too close, and the world seemed to tilt.

The air shifted as the tent flaps swung shut, fluttering softly in the char-scented breeze.

Hugo’s hand brushed mine again, lingering longer than it should have. I was grateful he came now, and for the steadiness he offered without asking for anything in return. He’d sacrificed a lot for me. I had to find him a way home.

The inside of the tent was impossibly vast. Obsidian pillars arched overhead, mirrored surfaces distorting the room in endless, fractured reflections.

The floor beneath us was like fine black sand, or ash.

My breath caught. It wasn’t just the scale, it was the sense that the space itself had reshaped by her will or magic.

At the center of it all was the throne made of broken sea-glass, edges catching the low candlelight. And at the throne’s heart, waiting, sat the witch. The Dowager of Knots, Ruler of Fates.

The fabric shifted around her full silhouette like liquid shadow as she rose.

Her dark eyes pierced through me, the feeling like looking out to sea in the middle of the night.

“My, my,” she purred, descending languidly.

Her voice unfurled into the air like ink spilling through water, wrapping itself around us before settling in the hollows of my ribs.

“What a lovely little surprise this is.”

I forced my spine straight, meeting her gaze head-on. “We seek Dante Darkblood and his deck of cards.”

“You just missed him.” She sighed, wistful.

“Where did he go?” I asked.

Her fingertips trailed the glassy arm of her throne as though contemplating the weight of our request. “I do not give information on my customers freely.”

“Name your price.” Dorian stiffened next to me. “We are willing to pay it.”

Her attention drifted, detached yet discerning, skimming over Dorian before settling on Hugo, and then on me. Her smile split wide across her face. “You are something curious, girl. I would relish collecting you.”

Dorian stepped in front of me. “We are not trading souls for information. Something less.”

“Less!” The Dowager shrieked. “I don’t offer discounts, boy. And yet…” She turned to Hugo again, then back to me. “Tethered souls,” she mused, tilting her head in quiet amusement. “How rare. Something like this… I would savor.”

I swallowed against the tightness in my throat. “Tethered?”

She stepped closer, her skirts pooling, the scent of sea-brine thick around us. “You do not even see it, do you?” She chided. “How blind you Luminari are.”

“Blind?” I asked.

Her skeletal fingers wove absently through the air, gesturing between me and Hugo.

A golden thread shimmered in the dim light, imperceptible before, now gleaming in her wake.

“Between the two of you, a bond has formed, woven deep, wrapped tight. Your souls are no longer separate threads, but one stitch. I would like to possess that bond very much.”

I felt suddenly lightheaded. Hugo's hand found mine. “Arabella, don’t listen to her.”

Why him? Why us? I thought of the way Hugo was so protective, how he seemed to anticipate what I was thinking. Had we been bound together by something all along? I let out a trembling breath. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.