“It wasn’t your fault,” she said numbly.
“No,” said Nick. “But I’d like her to be alive. Not just for you, and Jamie. I’d—I liked her, I think.”
Annabel, always walking so perfectly in her high heels, her sword flashing in the midnight garden.
“Just go away,” Mae said, turning away from him, from his face, which was perfect and cold and uncomprehending, always.
“Mavis,” Nick said, and then stopped.
Annabel had thought that Mavis, that horrible nightmare of a name, was beautiful. She’d given Mae that name because she thought it was beautiful. Mae’s face felt too tight; her eyes were hot and swimming, and then they were running and her nose was running a bit too.
“Go away,” she repeated, almost gasping out the words.
There was only silence, so for a moment she thought he had gone. Then she heard him say, “No,” his voice deep and terribly close.
Nick put his arms around her. He moved slowly and awkwardly, but once he was done she was wrapped in strong arms, held against his chest. He was big and solid and warm all around her, and she found herself holding on to his shirt, holding tight in both clenched fists as if she was about to start beating on him. She was standing on her tiptoes, but he was taking most of her weight; she was pressing her face against his collarbone. It would be all right to hit him or to shriek or to do anything she liked.
This time yesterday morning Annabel had known nothing about magic. She’d had a day to learn, to show fear and grace, and then no more days.
Mae was just howling, screaming through her teeth, getting tears and snot all over Nick’s shirt. They were going to put her mother in the ground out by Mezentius House, and the alternative had been putting her in the river.
Nick’s arms were like iron bars around her. He wasn’t murmuring soothing words or stroking her back, nothing like the demon in her dream, nothing like a human would have done in his place, but he wasn’t letting go, either.
“Mavis. Mae,” he said at last. “I don’t know. You have to tell me. Is this right?”
“Yeah,” Mae said into his shirt, her voice breaking, and she cried without screaming, just leaning into him and smelling cotton and steel. It was awful and heartbreaking and she was exactly where she wanted to be, here, with him, in these arms and no one else’s, and she finally understood why she had kept coming back and why she’d kept acting like a crazy person, her plans always collapsing and nothing making sense. She got it now.
She was kind of in love with him.
It had never happened to her before, and he would not have even the slightest idea how to love her back.
She was too tired and broken apart to deal with that now. She just rested, her eyes shut and leaning against him, exhausted and almost glad. She loved him, and he was here.
It was tempting to try and fall asleep standing up, measuring his steady breaths against her own, but by then she figured she was calm enough, and she owed it to him to step away.
“Thank you,” she said. It came out sounding very formal. “I’m going to find Sin now. You can go after Alan.”
Nick nodded, looking down at her. She looked back up at those strange alien eyes, that cruel mouth, and her heart turned over in her chest as if he had flipped it like a coin to show a new surface.
“We’re going to sort this out,” she promised him. “We’re going to get Jamie back, and we’re going to make Alan safe. We are.”
Except there was no way to make Alan safe. Gerald could do whatever he wanted to him, anytime he liked, and Nick would have to watch.
Nick shifted, the line of his shoulders too tight, fury and helplessness on his face for one murderous moment, and then he nodded again.
“Tell me about your plan sooner next time. You’re the war leader, aren’t you?” he asked, and waited for her to nod. “So lead.”
Mae watched him turn and go in the direction his brother had gone, stalking him like a predator.
“Yeah,” she said softly to herself. “Sounds like a plan.”
Mae didn’t want to lie to Nick, so she went to find Sin, weaving through the narrow green pathways between the caravans and tents.
Sin was sitting in a deck chair with baby Toby in her lap, long brown legs hooked up over the side with her feet tucked into the place where the chair legs bisected. She was talking to Merris Cromwell.
Merris looked the same to Mae, except for her dead-black eyes. The measured, approving smile she gave Mae was entirely her own. Mae could not see a trace of Liannan in her by day.
“Mae,” Sin said with her vivid, welcoming smile, with passionate, determined sympathy. “Come sit with us. I was just telling Merris how amazing you were.”
“Indeed she was.”
Sin looked gorgeous and carefree this morning, her torn silk changed to a loose cotton top and a denim skirt that left her legs bare. Her brother and her leader had been saved. She’d got what she wanted.
Only she caught Mae’s hand as Mae went by, her fingers curling soft as a secret against Mae’s palm, and Mae liked her too much to hate her now.
Celeste’s war would crash down on Sin’s head too. They had to be united, the way they had been for a moment in that market square.
