CHAPTER 16
I RUN LIKE FURY, SPRINGING THROUGH THE CROOKED LANES toward Curio. My eyes scarcely see anything but the soldier with the clock gear struck between blood-filled eyes and Emmitt’s body draped on the glockenspiel. I’m so distracted, it isn’t until I’m several streets past the marktplatz that I realize everything around me feels … wrong.
It’s morning, a Tuesday, though it feels like an eternity has passed since I first ventured to the wood, running away from my problems. Instead of the normal bustle and slosh of hawkers and busy housewives, there’s entirely too much stillness.
Many shops and homes look dark inside, despite cold sunshine grazing the rooftops as the fog flees. Windows aren’t flung open; they remain shut. The usual rag-tag assortment of laundry flutters stiffly from lines strung across the upper windows of each home, like so many flags of surrender. I spy the milkmaid carrying full pails into the cheesemonger’s, but she scurries past with her eyes downcast.
Through my tears, I see Erundle the chromatist tossing a bucket of water across her back steps, leaving a puddle of murky rainbows on the cobbles. No doubt the remainder of the morning’s grindings of powders and herbs.
“Erundle!” I call, waving and gulping great breaths of air, relieved to see a familiar face.
She hesitates, looking pained to see me. She nods roughly and turns around to go back into her home, quickly slamming the door shut behind her. Strange. We’ve always been on excellent terms.
No lights emanate from Curio’s windows. I enter through the back, flinging open the door to Burl’s stable. The horse nickers in surprise. I left him plenty of fresh hay and water, but it’s evident his stall needs immediate attention.
“I know, Burly,” I apologize, scratching his nose. “Papa left us. Then I left you, too. I’m so sorry. Everything is slipping away from me and I can’t stop it or slow it down.”
As I fumble around in my room after bathing and changing clothes, there is no way to escape the persistent knocking coming from the cupboard door.
“Piro?” Bran calls from the other side.
There is so much to tell him—to tell them all. I just don’t know if I have the strength to do it. To tell them what I’ve just seen. Or if I even should.
“Piro, please? If you don’t want to see me, just listen through the door. Just knock back—do something, anything—so I know that you’re safe. You’ve been gone for days,” his muffled voice pleads worriedly. “I know you’re there, I can hear you. At least, I hear someone over there, and if you’re not Pirouette, I’m going to beat this cupboard down and—”
Reluctantly, I knock against my side of the door in our secret pattern.
I hear his breath catch, relief flooding his voice. “Thank you. Are you all right?”
I tap again for “yes.”
“I’ve missed you.”
The longing in his voice is a balm to my wounded pride and sore heart. I yank open the door of the cupboard. His door flies open, the space immediately filling with his face.
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
This moment suddenly feels reminiscent of the experience I had years ago, of opening the cupboard to see his face for the first time, realizing there was an actual person on the other side.
“Bran—” I begin to explain myself and where I’ve been. As I search for the words, Bran intently clears away the shelves, sweeping everything onto his side of the cupboard with the arc of his arm. Our odds and ends instantly tumble down onto his rug.
“Wait. What are you doing?”
“Something I should’ve done long ago,” he mutters, biting his lip as he wrenches each wooden shelf from its moorings. Quicker than I thought possible, there is nothing between us, no more doors or treasures to separate my room from his.
There’s just us.
“Piro?”
“Yes, Bran?”
“Would you like to come in?”
I nod, startled; I would.
I’ve only ever seen Bran’s room, the mirror image of my own, in bits and pieces, but for once nothing stands between me and the warmth of it. I crawl through the cupboard on my hands and knees, and find myself in a place I’ve only been able to see slices of, never the whole.
His bed and wardrobe look the same, but on the side where I have nothing but empty wall he has a full worktable, with clock parts and pieces filling the shelves mounted behind. A finished mantlepiece clock ticks soundly with a crisp, regular rhythm. Shelves of books occupy another corner and below the window sits a wooden bench, the perfect place for watching life go by on Tavia’s streets.
And then, there’s him. After I catch myself staring open-mouthed at his room, the lamp by the bedside bathing everything in golden light, I find I can’t look away from his eyes. He perches on his heels, back against the wall, as if he’s been here forever, waiting an age for me to come through the cupboard. I crouch awkwardly on my knees.
“Bran, I couldn’t—”
Again I attempt to explain where I’ve been, but I am cut off by his hands on my cheeks, by his mouth kissing my battered nose gently on the tip. His lips move from my nose to my forehead and then make their way down in a cascade across cheeks and chin, until one kiss, the most tender and insistent of all, lands squarely on my lips.
He is knee to knee with me, and I reach for his shoulders to steady myself. The heat of his breath against my skin sends a flutter down to my core, warming me through in a way the golden light in his room never could. Bran himself is made of light and warmth. The tightly wound knot of fear and shame I’ve been holding begins to loosen in my chest.
