Page 101 of Till Death

He snipped a long golden thread from his spool. “Do I need to lecture you on how foolish that bargain was?”

“Do I need to lecture you on lecturing me?”

He laughed. “You know what I think you need?”

I wiggled my eyebrows. “Hard liquor and a good fist fight?”

“Fun, Deyanira. I was going to say fun.”

“Same thing, Old Man.”

He rolled those watery blue eyes. “I see so much of my sister in you. It’s uncanny.”

“Will you tell me about her?” I asked, giving up on watching the way he stitched so I could swing my legs over the arm of the chair and listen. I always gave up. He’d insisted on my learning a new skill to distract my mind ages ago, but it never went beyond the first few minutes until I started asking him to tell me stories. Sometimes the others would join us, filling the room just to hear his tales, which never included his sister. He’d always skimmed over parts of his stories that involved her. Hollis had raised Dahlia, he’d told us one day. His father worked every hour he could, and the old man, just a child then, was left behind to tend to the motherless infant.

I hoped Dahlia had known how lucky she was to have him, though I doubted it in her later years. Still, my heart ached as I witnessed his sadness. As I looked at a man who had accepted me with no boundaries and did his best every day to make me feel like I was someone worthy of him. But I wasn’t. These moments weren’t about learning to sew or his past. They were about time. And though his was fleeting as he neared his one hundred years, he’d given me every second he could because he knew no one else had. And that foreign act of love burrowed itself so deep into my heart, there were days when I looked at him and hated the world more. What had he done to deserve a life of servitude? And what had I done to deserve a man who had delivered tranquility to my erratic soul?

Hollis faded into himself, as he so often did, and I worried I’d asked the wrong question.

“You don’t have to. I could go back to destroying that shirt if you want.”

He cleared his throat. “No, no. It’s okay. I’ve wondered when you’d ask. Only it seems none of our stories have the same light they did when I was young.”

I moved to sit next to him on the couch, taking his hand. “I can tell you from experience, the light may dim, but it never goes out. Whatever you thought your memories to be with her, if you can still hear her laugh and picture her smile, those moments were real, however tainted they may feel. She had no choice, Hollis. The madness is debilitating, and she was merely a victim.”

He squeezed my fingers, eyes glossing over. “I used to call her Little Dove, too. When Dahlia was little, before she trained and shut herself away from everyone, she would sit at the picture window of our apartment and watch the birds fight the rats on the street. One day, she’d begged me to take her to the library, but my father had forbidden us from leaving. The next morning, she was gone. I was terrified something had happened. Maybe someone had broken in and taken her, or worse. She was born with a target on her back, as you know. I searched for hours and hours, worried sick. But then I remembered her request, and there I found her, sitting on the floor of the library, tucked between two giant bookshelves.

“She wanted to know about the birds. She’d shoved a book into my face and told me about doves. How they’d been a symbol of peace forever. She wouldn’t sleep that night until I promised her I’d find one.” He sat back on the couch, lifting the bodice once more. Tugging on his shimmering string as he whispered. “I never did fulfill that promise.”

“Because there is no peace; not really.”

He looked at me and smiled sadly. “You’re my peace. You have the light she lost, and every day, I think it grows a little brighter.”

“I’m fairly certain that’s not the case.”

“When was the last time you threatened to kill someone?”

“I told Thea an hour ago I was going to chop her arm off if she didn’t stop whistling.”

“The very same Thea that you’re trying to save from the boss?”

I smirked. “Threatening the loss of a body part is a term of endearment.”

The Dancing Ghost was a wretched hive of debauchery and depravity, a place where shadows clung to every corner, and the stench of spilled liquor and cheap cigarettes hung thick in the air. As I entered, the low hum of drunken laughter and clinking glasses fell silent, like the closing of a heavy iron door.

Clad in dark leathers, hood, and my notorious blade on my thigh, I was a ghostly figure amidst the riffraff, with my reputation preceding me. My heart dropped into my stomach when I laid eyes on the bald man at the end of the bar. I thought I’d never see him again, had hoped for it at one point, but Paesha had come through once again. There he sat, hunched over, a dirty mug in his trembling hand, his eyes bloodshot from hours of intoxication, beard grown and more haggard than I’d ever known him to be. That’s what the streets would do to a person. Especially one that had so far to fall.

“Careful, Little Dove. Drexel’s men are everywhere.”

“I’m more worried about the King’s Guard. Maybe you should have waited outside,” I said from behind my mask. “Stay beside me. Don’t make eye contact with anyone.”

“This wasn’t supposed to be violent,” Hollis said calmly as we stalked to the back of the room.

“I never promised that. You don’t know him like I do.”

The man at the bar turned, blinking several times before falling backward from his stool and scrambling away.

“Hey, Reg, how ya been?”