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Chapter 38

Nora

She surged to the surface, gasping for breath, frantically swimming toward the embankment. Until suddenly a hand closed over Nora’s, dragging her out of the water, pulling her sopping wet onto the embankment.

“I’d give you my coat to warm you up,” she heard August say. “But you’re already wearing it.”

So he was too much of an idiot to run. She would have told him that too, except she was shaking violently from the cold. Nora pulled her shivering hand out of August’s, holding it up to the faint light of the distant streetlamps.

There was no Veritaz ring there.

She had failed. She had outsmarted and out-magicked a troll. But she didn’t have a ring on her hand.

Because she had run.

The trial didn’t care that she hadn’t run out of cowardice, or even to save herself. She had run to give grace to the Grims.

She had run to save the same people who wanted her family dead.

And she had lost the trial because of it.

She wanted to scream, but again, she was shaking too violently. Instead she ripped herself away from August, peeling off his coat and dropping it to the ground as her freezing fingers scrabbled for a charm that would warm her up.

“Nora,” August called after her. “Nora, where are you going?”

Home , but that word wouldn’t come out. The apartment on Silver Street hadn’t been home since her mother died. “Away. Away from this pointless pursuit. What does it even matter if I find out who killed my mother? She’ll still be dead. And I still won’t be Heiress. Because I’ve been doing this instead of competing.”

August was a still silhouette at the edge of the water, his coat a sopping heap at his side, as he said, “You mean this pointless pursuit you strong-armed your way into.”

He was right. And she had been an idiot. An idiot to think the trials would wait for her to cross out of August’s world and back into her own. The trials had followed Earnest Holtzfall all the way to Albis. They could follow her a few miles south.

Here, standing on the edge of the water, Nora didn’t have the words for the rage and the sorrow, the fear and the disappointment currently running through her. None of this—the Grims, the police, the missing jewelry, her mother leaving her here alone in the world—none of it was important next to the heirship.

Nora was born to be the Heiress. And it was about to be taken away from her. That was two trials down now. Two trials failed out of four. One for each of the heiresses who had sat around the breakfast table, tying their magic to the ax. Which meant there were only two left. Nora only had two more chances to earn back her entire future.

And all of this, it was a distraction. She had failed because she was distracted.

Because she had put the lives of the Grims, of all people, ahead of the heirship.

But if Nora tried to say any of that, she feared it would come out in a guttural scream that would ripple across the city. That would shatter her to pieces after she had spent day after day carefully holding herself together.

So she settled back into her imperious heiress persona. She put away the daughter who wanted the truth. Who wanted revenge.

“I really do wish I could fit tracking down murderers into my schedule, but my diary is very full these days.” She flicked sopping wet hair out of her face. “I’m meant to be an heiress, not a journalist. So why don’t you do your job and I’ll do mine?”

She was turning away when August spoke again. “Why do you even want it?”

“What?” The question pried open her defenses.

“The heirship.” August still hadn’t moved from the bank of the river. “Why do you want it?”

Of all the questions journalists had ever asked Nora, this had never been one. It had never even crossed her mind. It was like asking why someone would want money. The answer was so obvious it didn’t need to be spoken out loud. Except August seemed to be waiting for her to say it, and when Nora opened her mouth, she found the answer wasn’t there.

“Because,” she said, “it’s mine.”

“It’s not, actually,” August countered, taking a step toward her now. “It was yours. Now it’s not. And half the time it doesn’t seem like you’ll even know what to do with it if you get it back.”

“You don’t do anything with the heirship, you are the heir or you’re not.” Nora spoke slowly, like he might be simple.

“Exactly.” August closed the distance between them in a few steps, and suddenly Nora could see his expression up close in the flicker of lights from the street. “None of you do anything. Holtzfalls haven’t done anything for this city in hundreds of years. You just have , and you take from the rest of us, and you get richer and we get poorer.”

“You’re starting to sound like the Grims.” Nora felt disgust shudder through her. “If you want me to give away all my money so badly, I’ll start by writing you a check for the last few days.”

“I don’t want your fucking money, Nora.” August’s voice rose. “I just think you could do something with it other than buy dresses and throw parties. Unless what you really want for the rest of your life is to do nothing but sit on a heap of gold.”

“It’s not money , it’s power,” Nora snapped.

“Power is only power if you use it!”

“What, then?” She hated that he sounded like Lotte. That he sounded like the Grims. That he sounded right. “If you know everything, what should I do with the heirship? Feed the poor and heal the sick, like I’m some worshipped hero of old? Solve all the injustices of class and raise up humanity? You think it’s that easy to upend the entire hierarchy of the world?”

“No.” His gray eyes were fixed on her intently. “I don’t think it’s easy. But I think you could do it.” His gaze carried a challenge, like when they’d stood in his office and he’d told her she could break the code. “Tell me now with all your money and all your magic you couldn’t change this entire city. This entire country. That you truly don’t think you could make things better. Tell me that now, and I’ll never ask you about the heirship ever again.”

Nora knew better than to lie during a Veritaz Trial. Honesty was something the trials had challenged the Holtzfalls on year after year. But this wasn’t a test sent by the Huldrekall. This was another sort of challenge August was throwing at her.

And she wasn’t going to lie to him.

“You will never ask me about it again,” Nora said finally. She had let him joke, about their future, their children. But even then, she’d known there was a time when they would have to part ways. That there was no future here. She turned away and walked up the bank to the streetlights. “Because you and I, we will never see each other again.”