We made our way toward the arched doorway in the curtain wall. I crouched down, studying the slate pavers they’d installed.
“Knife, please,” I said, holding out a hand behind me.
He passed it over, nodding to a stone paver on the left-hand side of the arch, raised slightly above the others. “That one looks a bit off-kilter, right?”
“It’s probably just from the storms,” I said, setting my bags down.
“You can hope, you know,” he said. “It won’t kill you.”
Kill me, no. But like all good torturers, hope drew out your suffering, taking its time to lift your spirits so the inevitable crash of disappointment would come twice as hard and painful.
“Keep an eye on the bridge and the other side of the ruins. The guides will be here soon to open the place up,” I said. “Watch for the one with the short, wavy blond hair—she’s quick as a fox and mean as a wasp.”
He raised a brow. “Any relation?”
I glared at him, then returned to the task at hand, sawing at the crusted earth between the stones.
“This is a really idiotic idea, isn’t it?” I muttered.
“What ideas aren’t idiotic until proven right?”
The retort died on my tongue. The stone came away from the dirt and cement with ease.
I wasn’t the first one to have cut into it.
“God’s teeth,” I breathed out. My pulse stopped, only to jump again.
Nestled inside an unnatural hole in the hard earth was a small leather bundle, wrapped in a child-sized plaid raincoat for protection from the elements.
My old raincoat.
Emrys dropped to his knees beside me, his eyes going wide as I shook the contents of the leather pouch loose onto the ground between us, letting them fall onto the wet stones.
A slip of paper, and a silver coin that was nearly black with tarnish—no, dried blood. My heartbeat thrummed in my ears, and my whole body seemed to clench. I turned the coin over, rubbing my thumb across it.
There was an inscription on the back. The words wound around the edge, and the letters were almost like sigils. I couldn’t tell if I was hallucinating again, or if it was the One Vision, because those very same marks began to shiver and shift. Rearranging their strange lines into letters, then words, that I recognized.
“I am the dream of the dead,” I whispered.
“What in hellfire does that mean?” Emrys demanded.
I turned toward the scrap of parchment that had fallen from the pouch, peeling it off the ground. Considering the conditions of the hole it had been hidden in for seven years, and Nash’s spidery penmanship, the short note was devastating in both its clarity and its brevity.
The ring will win the favor of her heart. Do not follow. I will come when it is finished. If I do not return, bury this coin as it is with ash and bone.
The writing was so formal for Nash that it took me a moment to process what he had written.
“Her heart?” Emrys rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me your guardian went to all this trouble to win over a lady friend.”
“You say that because you never saw him get slapped by a woman in every Hollower joint we went to.”
I picked up the coin again, studying it.
“Do not follow,” I repeated. “Wow . . . between his disappearance and the annoyingly clever hiding spot I saw him use exactly once, Nash really overestimated my ability to put two and two together.”
It was so typical of him, too—Nash operated on an entirely different plane of existence than the rest of us at times. He was always constructing some great hunt, some great mystery, some great tale around himself, orchestrating every aspect to his satisfaction. If destiny wouldn’t give him a big enough role, he would rewrite the script for himself.
Do not follow. A surge of anger heated my blood. My eyes stung, but it was only because of the cold wind needling at me. Only that.
The bastard had expected me to find this note quickly enough to catch up with him. Tracking had been one of the few genuine skills he’d taught us, and he’d obviously assumed my memory would be the only clue we needed. But he’d made this into too much of a game. Why not just leave the leather pouch inside the tent with us? Why put so much faith in a ten-year-old girl whose first concern had to be keeping her brother alive?
Somehow, even with the amount of time and distance between us, I was still discovering new ways I’d disappointed him.
And all of this for some nameless woman. Win the favor of her heart? What was he, a poet now? Her heart—as if he—
All of my thoughts fell away, save for one.
Her heart. Not just anyone’s heart—her heart. The Goddess’s.
“You just figured something out,” Emrys said. “Don’t lie, because your expression sure didn’t.”
A sudden wind tore the note away and cast it high up into the air. I gasped, trying to grab it, but it was already flying out to sea, soaring like a pale bird toward the waves.
I shifted the paver back into place and pressed both fists down on it until the mud sucked at it again.
“That’s for me to know,” I shot back, sliding the coin into a secure pocket in my workbag. I looped the strap across my body and reached for my backpack. “Your favor’s been repaid, so scram.”
Emrys gripped my arm as I stood. “What did the note mean?”
I wrenched myself free. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
He took a step toward me, his expression hardening.
Behind him, a small figure peered around the edge of a crumbling wall. She wore an oversized black velvet blazer covered in pins and a rainbow crochet scarf wrapped around the lower part of her face. But I recognized her all the same—the dark brown skin, the braids twisted into two buns on top of her head, those massive sunglasses—even if I couldn’t believe it.
“Hey!” I shouted, pushing past Emrys.
The girl from the tarot shop bolted as I ran toward her, but by the time I reached the spot where I’d seen her, she had vanished. There was no one on either bridge. It was as if she’d jumped into the sea or slipped into some unseen crevice in the cliff. I made a wide circle, searching, but only found a few small footprints.
“What was that about?” Emrys asked.