Page 79

It might as well have been a bullet.

Patrick stood there, just six feet away, his outline taking shape in the dark. And his expression was one I recognized—the same one he wore when I was first brought to Kenton Hill, the harder layers not yet pared.

And he stared at me as though I wasn’t recognizable at all.

His hands were empty. He carried no gun.

Something primitive and base swelled. Survival, perhaps. My feet carried me toward him. “Patrick. Wait.”

He watched my legs quake and stumble with keen discernment, as though that confirmed something for him.

His eyes met mine from beneath his lashes, and they pierced as well as any blade.

He didn’t react when I fell into him, when my hands lay flat against his chest, then gripped the lapels of his coat.

He only grew more rigid, staring down at my hands as though he no longer knew them. “Where are you goin’, Nina?”

I thought of a thousand more lies in that moment. But none of them passed my lips.

“Yeah,” he said. His breath fogged between us.

“I can see all those stories passin’ over your eyes.

Which one are you gonna pick?” And beneath all that knife-sharp severity, there was pain; only for a moment, he let me glimpse how deep it ran.

“You’ve got this last chance to give me the one that’s true. ”

I didn’t speak, and in the absence of my response, his eyes flared.

The lighter clicked off, darkness collided, and his hand wrapped tightly around my wrist, began hauling me through the black, out, out, out, faster than my legs could move.

I tripped and stumbled, until icy night air sluiced my cheeks and the stars glinted accusingly above.

My back was shoved up against the struts at the pit entrance, his face an inch from mine. “If you make me ask it once more, I’ll fill in the answers myself,” he said, voice barely controlled.

I inhaled once and said the only thing that could be said in that moment, my heart breaking the walls of its cage.

“I was following Otto and Scottie,” I said, shutting my eyes. I didn’t want to see the ripples of betrayal on his face.

“Tell me all of it,” he said darkly. His hand gripped my jaw then, and he angled my face to his. “Open your eyes.”

I did as I was bid, only to drown in ocean blue. Tears rolled over my cheeks, over his fingers.

“What are you looking for?” Patrick said, though I was sure he knew the answer. “Tell me.”

“Domelius Becker,” I yielded. “The Alchemist.”

He dropped my chin abruptly, and the next breath he drew seemed to rattle.

He turned his back to me. Took several paces into the moonlight and dug that coin from his coat.

“You’ll find Scottie and Otto in Hoaklin, tracking the whereabouts of your fellow Charmer,” he said.

“Despite what Otto told Polly, and what Polly told you.”

Bile rose. “You… you knew? But how—”

“No,” he said. “It ain’t your turn to ask the questions, Nina.” He turned to look at me, that coin appearing and turning over his knuckles. “What plans did you have for the Alchemist?”

He knew, I could hear it in his voice. But it seemed he needed me to admit it aloud, and I realized that while he seemed furious and hurt, perhaps he hadn’t guessed the full depth of my treason. Perhaps he was looking for a way to excuse this transgression, for a way to save us.

“I was going to barter his whereabouts to the House of Lords.” Tears slipped over my lips.

“For your mother,” Patrick finished.

“Yes. And your father.”

He paced in frustration from side to side, scrubbed his face with both hands. “I told you that wouldn’t work,” he said. “And you went behind my back anyway.”

“I tried to ask you,” I said. My voice broke. “To reason with you.”

“And I asked for your trust,” Patrick said, and he pinned me with a glare like steel. “I promised to free your mother another way.”

“With a tunnel and a group of armed men?” I breathed. “And the risk of more deaths, including your own? Leveraging the Alchemist would negate all of that, Patrick!”

He closed his eyes. “It can’t be done, Nina. I told you it couldn’t.”

“How can you say that?” My voice was pleading. “We could get back our families! And finally engage in a fair fight with the House. Does the need to control idium truly outweigh that?”

Patrick watched me, eyes boring in. “Nina, idium is everything ,” he said. “It is the key to this war. The House is useless without it.”

“And you would forsake those you love for it?”

“Domelius Becker cannot be traded, Nina.”

“ Why not? ” I demanded.

“Because he’s dead .”

I stilled. In the sky above, stars seemed to blink out of existence.

And Patrick watched me with unstifled torment. “You think I wouldn’t have made that fuckin’ trade myself if we had him?” he asked. “I’d do it a thousand times over, a million times if it could save my father. Your mother.”

I stumbled back.

“You’re two years too late, Nina.” He looked to the sky. “I put a bullet in Domelius Becker the second he stepped foot in the brink, and I’ve regretted it every day since.”