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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The Deucalion Decides

‘For goodness’ sake!’ Morrigan clutched a hand to her chest, just about expiring on the spot. ‘Jupiter, you scared me! What are you doing here?’

His eyes didn’t shift from the hearth. ‘Waiting for you.’

‘Right,’ she said carefully. ‘Cadence and I were—’

‘You were at Cadence’s place?’ Jupiter lifted a piece of paper, held lightly between two fingers. ‘Like your note said?’

‘Mm-hmm.’

‘So you didn’t return to the Silver District to attend Dario Rinaldi’s memorial, against the advice of the Public Distraction Department and my express wishes?’ His voice was eerily calm.

Morrigan felt an uncomfortable spike of guilt. She hoped she hadn’t got her friend into trouble.

‘It’s not Cadence’s fault,’ she mumbled. ‘It was my idea for us to go.’

‘Cadence went with you?’ Jupiter twitched with annoyance. ‘Wonderful. I’ll have to speak to her family too.’

Morrigan blinked. ‘Who told you I went to—’

‘What were you thinking ?’ he snarled, standing up so abruptly the octopus armchair flinched and drew its tentacles in close. ‘This isn’t a game, Morrigan. A man has been murdered . His killer is still free. It’s bad enough being heedless of your own safety, but did you consider for one moment that you were putting Cadence at risk too? Or were you too busy playing detective to care?’

‘We weren’t— I wasn’t—’ Morrigan’s eyes prickled with tears at the unfair accusation. She blinked them away, feeling utterly wrong-footed. This wasn’t how this conversation was supposed to go. ‘I’m not playing detective. We weren’t in any danger—’

‘Have you forgotten what Holliday said?’ He steamrolled over her objections, casting a long-legged shadow as he paced feverishly before the fire. ‘That article mentioned you by name . You know the Concerned Citizens are looking for any opportunity—’

‘I thought the Concerned Citizens were numpties?’ she interrupted. ‘That’s what you told me on Hallowmas, remember? Big, embarrassing numpties who need to get a life. And I don’t care what Holliday says! If I want to go to the Silver District, she’s the last person I’d ask for an opinion.’

‘What about my opinion, Mog? Do you care about that?’

Morrigan gritted her teeth. There was no adequate response to this because, truthfully, she didn’t want his opinion either. Not about this.

‘I blame myself. I’ve been giving you far too much freedom,’ Jupiter continued. ‘But I’m afraid that ends now. Your implicit permission to leave the Deucalion is hereby revoked.’

It was like he was reading from a script. The brisk formality was so absurd on him, so unfamiliar, Morrigan choked out a laugh. ‘W- what ?’

‘The only places you may go outside of this hotel are your Hometrain and the grounds of Wunsoc. I shall inform you when these circumstances change.’

‘But tomorrow I’m—’ She faltered, weighing up the cost of another lie against her promise to find the wedding photos. ‘I’m … going to the Winter Trials. With Cadence and Hawthorne.’

‘Deucalion. Hometrain. Wunsoc.’ Jupiter counted them off on his fingers. ‘Everywhere else is off-limits until further notice. That includes the Winter Trials.’

‘That’s not fair!’

‘ Isn’t it? ’ The hurt and anger in his eyes were searing. ‘I trusted you, Mog, and you repaid my trust by lying to me. That doesn’t come without consequences.’

‘You lied to ME!’ Morrigan countered angrily, shaking her head in disbelief at his hypocrisy. Something in her stomach felt coiled and tense, like a cornered snake ready to strike. ‘And you can’t just make up stupid rules for no reason. I’m not a prisoner!’

‘No, you’re a child.’

‘TEENAGER.’

‘Teenagers are still children, Mog, and children don’t get to wander off on their own as they please – especially when there is a murderer at large. Children don’t get to make their own rules; the adults who care about them are supposed to do that, even if it makes them wildly unpopular.’ He lowered his head, hands on hips, and took a deep breath. ‘So that’s what I’m doing. Being an adult. Feel free to dislike it; I certainly do.’

Morrigan’s heart thumped so hard she felt it might burst out of her chest. The injustice of it! She’d come home ready to tell him the truth about her apprenticeship – a harder, more dangerous truth than the comparably trivial matter of going to Dario’s memorial – and instead she’d been blindsided by this … this stranger . This unfair, upside-down version of Jupiter North she’d never met before and didn’t care to know.

Her hands curled around the fabric of her black dress, and the dying embers in the hearth reignited, crackling into life. She tasted ash at the back of her throat.

‘Aunt Margot told me to treat Darling House as my home. She said I can come and go as I please.’ Morrigan’s voice was barely audible, but Jupiter froze halfway to the door. She saw a muscle tighten in his neck.

‘We can discuss it once the police have concluded their investigation, and the murderer has been found,’ he said without looking at her. ‘Perhaps you can visit after Christmas—’

‘I want to go back tomorrow.’ Caution to the wind, then. Cards on the table.

He turned back to her, grey-faced and stony. ‘No, Mog.’

‘Jupiter—’

‘Deucalion. Hometrain. Wunsoc.’

‘Jupiter , I’m not—’

‘DEUCALION. HOMETRAIN. WUNSOC.’ He raised his voice above hers. ‘Have I made myself sufficiently clear?’

‘JUPITER. I am not asking to DISCUSS anything. I am TELLING you that I’m going back to Darling House.’ Morrigan was momentarily shocked at her own daring. She hadn’t planned to say any of that, let alone shout it at him. But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt her resolve harden, clenching inside her chest like a fist. The cornered snake bared its fangs. ‘Have I made myself sufficiently clear? You don’t get to tell me not to see my own family ! You don’t get to keep them from me. Not anymore.’

Something seemed to drain out of Jupiter then, and he dropped back into the armchair. The shadows under his eyes deepened in the orange glow from the hearth.

‘I’m not trying to keep anyone from you. Truly . ’ He swallowed. When he spoke again his voice was so quiet, she almost didn’t hear him over the fire. ‘I don’t think the Silver District is a safe place for you. And I don’t just mean because of the murder.’

Morrigan felt her hackles rise. ‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘It’s …’ Jupiter fell silent once more, his mouth opening and closing on repeat as he struggled to find words. ‘Your mother famously ran away from that place, Mog. I for one trust that she did it for a good reason.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I just think we ought to consider what she would have wanted for you, that’s all. Try to … try to honour her wishes—’

‘My mother also joined the Wintersea Party,’ Morrigan pointed out, her anger simmering dangerously close to the surface. ‘And married Corvus Crow. So, actually, I can’t say I’m as impressed by her judgement as you are. Did you know her?’

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘You never met her? Not even when she lived in Nevermoor?’

He raised his head to look her in the eye. ‘I never met her.’

‘Then you don’t know what her wishes were any more than I do!’ Morrigan shouted. ‘Don’t you dare pretend you kept the Darlings a secret from me out of some imaginary loyalty to a woman you never even met ! You’re rewriting everything just to excuse what you’ve done and make yourself look better!’

‘Mog, please, that’s not—’

‘I trusted you, Jupiter,’ she spat his own words back at him, ‘and you repaid my trust by lying to me. That doesn’t come without consequences.’

The flames in the hearth grew higher and brighter, crackling like cellophane and casting Jupiter’s face – at once mournful and fierce – into stark relief.

‘Mog.’

‘Your implicit permission to have a say in anything I do is hereby revoked.’

The octopus armchair rose on its eight enormous tentacles and tipped Jupiter unceremoniously onto the floor. He scrambled to his feet as the octopus began to slither across the wooden floorboards, corralling him towards the door, which swung open on its own. He braced himself against the doorframe.

‘Mog, that’s enough —’

‘Until further notice, it’s none of your business where I go or who I see.’

‘MOG!’

‘MORRIGAN.’ Her voice was the snap of a waterwhip. Jupiter flinched. ‘My name is Morrigan. My mother named me Morrigan Odelle Crow, not Mog . You ought to honour that wish , don’t you think?’

Silence stretched to fill the space between them. Jupiter’s jaw tautened while Morrigan glared back at him, her black eyes cool and unblinking.

‘Morrigan,’ he said finally. ‘I would never knowingly hurt you. You must realise that? Anything I’ve kept from you has been because—’

‘Because you had to ?’ She was tired of it all, tired of hearing how everything was for her own good. When did she get to decide what her own good was? ‘You had no choice but to LIE TO ME about my OWN FAMILY being in Nevermoor, is that right?’

Jupiter’s face had turned a colour Morrigan had never seen it before – a splotchy, purplish pink – and at first she thought he was angry. Then she realised it wasn’t anger at all, it was shame. He was ashamed of himself.

Good. She didn’t care. He should be ashamed.

A huge leather tentacle wrapped itself tight around Jupiter’s chest, lifted him up and hurled him into the hallway where he landed with a thud on the plush carpet. The door slammed shut and locked itself, barely one second before Morrigan burst into silent, furious tears. She heard Jupiter scramble to his feet and try the door handle.

‘Morrigan. Open the d—’

BANG.

She jumped backwards as a second door made of heavy steel slammed down between them, silencing Jupiter’s demand. A small brown suitcase slid out from beneath the bed. The dresser drawers all flew open at once, haphazardly hurling clothes into the case before it snapped shut and zoomed into her hand. Her oilskin brolly jumped off the skeleton hat rack and into her other hand. Before she even knew she’d made up her mind, Morrigan had marched to the wardrobe door – lungs heaving, heart pounding – and pressed her W imprint to the glowing circular seal.

She was halfway through the wardrobe when she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see a leather tentacle pointing urgently at the bed, where Emmett was slumped against her pillow. Without hesitating, she threw her Wundrous reach back into the room, summoning the precious rabbit straight into her arms and hugging him tight as they entered Station 919 together.

As trains rumbled in distant tunnels, Morrigan wiped her nose with her sleeve, nursing the small, miserable, melancholy comfort of knowing that the Deucalion, at least, was on her side.