CHAPTER 25

“What. The. Fuck. Were. You. Thinking?” Vex punctuated every word with a punch against his arm.

“Ouch.” Vax darted out of the way and kept a careful distance between them. He rubbed his arm. “All I did was ask her a couple of questions. Is that a crime?”

“It wasn’t just about the questions! You might as well have told her you don’t trust her and she should consider you an enemy!” Vex snapped, her eyes flashing. “You helped that outlaw get away. You all but accused her guard of murder and what—smuggling? Thank goodness Aswin showed up when she did or you would’ve ended up in a fucking cell. You never gave her a chance.”

The tension—and the lingering concerns—of the conversation still coursed through him, and his discomfort immediately spiked again. “Like she didn’t give any of the miners a chance? It was a bloodbath, Vex. You saw it.”

Vex bit her lip. “I saw her fight against the people who endangered her home and her community.

“They saved my life,” he snapped.

“And she saved mine.” She rubbed at her temples. “You weren’t here, Vax. You haven’t seen her fight for the people of Jorenn. Everyone I’ve spoken to says the same thing. She works hard to ensure everyone in town prospers, and Jorenn is better now than it was when she came here. Besides, she helped me when I had no one else.”

Vax flinched. “I know that. I’m just trying to understand too. The miners told such different stories.”

“Like what?” she demanded.

He shrugged helplessly. “Stories where she is a villain and a murderer.”

They’d gone to Vex’s room in the guest wing after one of the healers from the Shadewatch—a gray-haired human man who communicated in grunts and disgusted frowns—had checked Vax’s scars and considered their healing well beyond needing anything more, and Vex had dragged him here, to the room she’d been given, where her clothes were carefully stashed away in the cabinets and her bow and gear was spread out across the dressing table, and where Trinket had been given his own sleeping mat right near the window. A marked-up book lay on the bed, half under the pillow, an arrow tab peeking out as page marker.

Vax had recoiled at the room at first, and how thoroughly Vex had made it her own, whether she intended to or not. It didn’t look like a room where she simply stayed the night. This place looked lived-in. It even smelled of her bow wax … and bear.

Vex sat down hard on the bed, reaching for the book before it tumbled to the floor. She leafed through it and gathered her thoughts. “You know what her ring does, don’t you?”

“I know,” Vax admitted. “Sen—one of the miners told me she uses it to ward off attacks from the ash walkers. I know she does good with it, but that doesn’t make her a good person.”

Vex’s face fell and she picked at the corners of the book. “You’d keep their names from me too?”

“I don’t know what to make of this, Vex’ahlia.” He leaned against the dressing table, well out of hitting distance and still disoriented, and scratched his neck. “You’re at ease here. I don’t want to hurt you and I don’t want to come between you and the Shademaster. Not if they’ve taken such care of you, and you care for them.”

She didn’t speak for what felt like an eternity. She kept staring at the open book on her lap, and she folded over the corners of pages with her nails. It took him too long to see the silent tears that were falling onto the pages.

He sighed. “Vex …”

She snapped the book shut and flung it across the bed. When she looked up at him, she had spots of red anger on her cheeks. “I care about you, you fuck. What do you think I’ve been doing since you disappeared? I spent days running around those fucking hills. I followed every trail I could find. I spent evenings scouring the darkest corners of this town. You were my every waking thought, but I needed to be able to breathe too. The only reason I feel at ease here, the only reason I can sleep here without losing my mind, is that Derowen promised to help me in any way she could and she never once looked away or stopped trusting me. Aswin plays with Trinket because it makes it easier to believe not everything in this godsforsaken corner of the world is horrid. So yes, I care about them. But if you think there’s anything more important to me than the two of us, you can go back to those bloody mines, for all I care.” She snarled. “Go back to your ash walkers and your outlaws, Vax, because you’ve already picked their side.”

The words cut deeply, and he snapped. “And you haven’t? I have a right to care about them too! They lost their homes and their families. They’re not the villains here, and if you’d spent any time with them, you would see that too.”

“They are a danger to the entire town. They’re not as innocent as you think they are.” Vex shook her head. “Don’t let your judgment be clouded by a pretty face waiting to betray you, brother.”

“Then don’t let your judgment be clouded by your desperate desire to be accepted,” he lashed out—and immediately regretted it.

She crumbled. “Fuck you. I’m not some kind of heartless monster.”

With that, she grabbed her cloak from the back of a chair and stormed past him, right out of the room. The door swung on its hinges in her wake before it settled back into the frame with a quiet snick, and the silence somehow hit harder than if she’d slammed it.

Vax sagged to the ground, his back against the dressing table, and he cradled his head in his arms. This was not how anything was supposed to go.

HE DIDN’T HAVE TO PUT on an act to look lost, because he felt lost. The world was unsteady underneath his feet and his heart hammered the wrong rhythm. Part of him wished he could take one of the paintings on the walls of the Shade Hall, one of the endless vistas, and disappear inside it. Maybe that would be easier.

When they left Syngorn, and again when they left Byroden, he’d made himself a promise: that nothing would ever come between him and his sister. And now something had. He had. He’d lost her again, and this time it was his own foolish fault. He’d chased her away, and he understood why she ran.

These last few days had formed an invisible force between them. He wanted her to understand his side of the story. He assumed she would, because they always understood each other. Even when everything felt impossible. Even when they didn’t agree with each other. They could fight and figure it out, because they knew that when it came down to it, they’d always have the other’s back. And for the first time, he wasn’t sure about that. He felt cut loose. He didn’t know how to breathe without her.

He could only do the next best thing. When Vex returned, he would explain what the miners had told him. Why he did what he did. The truth. The smuggling. The ash walkers. The history of the mines. No exceptions. No details glossed over. Everything, no matter if it hurt, and he’d find proof to back it up. The evidence that he’d promised Thorn, to show his sister the world he’d come to know.

And if that didn’t work, he’d steal that bloody ring and they’d run away from here. Because no promise mattered more than Vex’s safety. There was nothing more important than the two of them.

He targeted a narrow meeting room adjacent to the Shademaster’s office. The guards who patrolled the hallway glared at him but let him wander. He claimed a place near the windows where he could keep an eye on her door while also pretending to be lost in thought, staring out at the town as it stretched out before him.

Jorenn Village existed in shades of brown. It’d been a small community once, Sencha told him, and from this high up, it was easy to see. The buildings around the Shade Hall were weathered and determined, the wooden frames caked with dust and the walls scarred with time and perhaps the occasional attack by the dead. The streets that circled the town’s center were younger, the houses like young saplings sprouting up between old trees. Vibrant and hopeful.

He wondered what the miners’ homes had looked like before the Shademaster destroyed them.

The guards who moved around in the hallway didn’t come closer to him. Vax knew well enough that if he kept his patience, eventually he’d fade from their awareness altogether. All he had to do was stand here and wait, and he had experience with waiting. Waiting was just part of his work. Learning how to pick pockets had been more waiting than action. The life of a thief hinged on waiting for the right opportunity to strike and not letting himself get distracted by anything else. But today waiting meant being alone with his thoughts, and he hated it.

He forced himself, regardless. As time passed around him, the sky outside changed from its sickly yellows to brighter blues. The patrolling guards no longer dropped their voices when they passed him by. A servant walked in to clean the room and startled when she realized he was there. The half-giant Wick, on his way to carry a message to the Shademaster, did immediately notice him, but didn’t say a word. Though he had no reason to trust Vax and most likely didn’t, he showed no true concern either. He simply shook his head and walked away.

When Wick knocked on Derowen’s door to remind her of a meeting with her captains in half an hour, Vax knew he’d made the right decision in staying here.

He casually changed positions to be invisible from the hallway, pushing himself between the folds of dusty green curtains, and he distracted himself by picking the lock on the window, pushing it open ever so slightly.

Half an hour passed and the Shademaster didn’t leave her office. Another fifteen minutes passed, and Wick returned to knock on the door, with an amused sigh when she opened the door and cursed. “You forgot again, didn’t you?”

“Definitely not.”

“Liar.”

“Bully.”

“At your service.”

Vax listened while the Shademaster’s footsteps retreated into her office and back out again. The door closed and the lock clicked, and Vax wondered if Wick used that time to stare into this room. To ponder what he’d been doing here or if he and Vex had made up yet. He knew better than to peek around the curtains to check.

Eventually, both of them walked toward the main part of the Shade Hall, and Vax counted to a hundred to make sure the coast was clear, and neither of them returned to pick up a forgotten coat or piece of paper. He edged along the wall of the room and checked to see the hallway was abandoned before dashing over to the office door. He had his lockpicks out before he reached it.

He crouched in front of the door, and when he inserted the picks into the lock, something inside him calmed. Nothing in this town made sense, but this he understood. The feel of the tumblers beneath his fingertips. The slight pressure that would be enough to turn the doorknob. The knowledge that this was something he was good at, and something he enjoyed.

His breathing slowed. He listened for any sound, any change in the hallway around him, and he carefully applied pressure with a wrench, feeling around in the lock with a crooked pick. Locks like the one the Shademaster used were simple and straightforward, and it was exactly what he needed right now. No one had ever been able to take this away from him.

When the door had fallen shut behind Vex, it had been quiet. When Vax opened the Shademaster’s door, he was equally quiet.

He allowed himself one last peek at the still-empty hallway before he slipped into the office and pushed the door closed behind him. He turned the lock from the inside.

Shademaster Derowen’s office was left in a state of chaos. The embers in the fireplace smoldered, filling the room with a comfortable warmth. On the desk stood half a cup of tea and an untouched lunch of bread, cheese, and salted meat. The cook had placed a small branch of late-summer berries by the meal, but even that had apparently not interested the Shademaster.

Vax crossed the room and studied the tall windows behind the desk. He pushed one of them open further, and made a mental note of the ledge on the other side of the street behind the Shade Hall, to give himself an emergency exit should he need it.

With that secured, he ran his hands over the desk. The papers on top didn’t interest him, not right now. Someone so careful and structured as Derowen would not leave evidence of her smuggling operations in plain sight.

The desk was beautifully made, of rich redwood and silver ornaments. It had large drawers on either side, all of which Vax opened, to check for hidden compartments. A single tier of smaller drawers, with storage for pens and inks, was built on the surface of the desk, its main purpose practical rather than providing privacy for the writer. The only exception to the low row of drawers was the frame that was built in the center of it. Carved into a wooden panel, the details uncanny, was the likeness of the Shademaster’s daughter.

She fights to protect the future of her daughter, Vex had told him. It seemed this was her way to be constantly reminded of that purpose.

Vax opened all of the smaller drawers as well. He picked the locks of the ones that were locked, and found nothing of interest inside. The files on the desk and in the open drawers were all what he would expect from a guard commander who ran a city. Reports about the Shadewatch’s latest recruits. A whole stack of complaints from the people in town, and another folder with complaints from the people out of town. A list of dates that marked the ash walkers’ attacks, though there did not seem to be any reason to it. It’s not like they only attacked by the light of two full moons, or when the stars were in a certain alignment. They attacked whenever they wanted, and the casualty numbers sobered Vax. The attacks were deadly.

The papers inside the locked drawers were nothing out of the ordinary either. Personal notes. Drawings that her daughter had made. Letters from her brother, about the towns he’d visited, the knickknacks he’d found, and the presents he’d bought for his favorite niece.

The desk held nothing at all that convinced him she was the monster Thorn had made her out to be. If this was the Shademaster Vex had got to know over these past few days—one who listened carefully to complaints and who kept even the least impressive of her daughter’s scrawlings—he understood why she didn’t believe him. He wouldn’t have believed himself.

The door rattled. Vax slammed the smallest drawer next to the panel shut and was halfway through the window when a small voice echoed on the other side. “Mama?”

Vax stilled.

“Mama? Are you there?”

He glanced at the door, and in the little light that shone underneath it, he could see the shadows of two tiny feet, pacing in front of the office. The determined loneliness of the gesture tugged at him.

“You’d promised we’d go look at Beryl’s dolls,” Aswin said quietly. “I don’t want to go riding again. I want to be with you.”

Vax’s gaze ran over the desk and he breathed out hard when he saw the small drawer he thought he put back still stuck out. He pulled himself back into the room, and edged back toward the desk.

He pushed at the drawer again, but it wouldn’t give.

He pulled it out entirely, and found a narrow groove along the bottom edge of the drawer, so instead of returning it to its position, he stuck a finger inside the empty hole and felt for anything that might match the groove.

Against the back panel of the cabinet, he felt a small lever of sorts.

He pushed it.

Something near the center panel clicked.

Nothing happened.

He made to push the drawer back, determined to come back to figure out the entrapments of the desk at a time when he hadn’t spent the better part of an hour inside and when there wasn’t someone demanding attention on the other side of the wall. Then he paused. Maybe …

He reached for the small drawer on the other side of the portrait.

When he pulled it out, it had the same narrow groove along the edge—and the same lever inside.

He pushed it. Another click. Again, nothing.

Both levers shifted back into place.

With a sarcastic prayer to whomever was watching and didn’t mind guiding a stray thief, he activated both levers at once, and this time, the click was immediately followed by a soft whirring.

Outside the door, Aswin sighed. “Fine. Okay.”

Inside the office, the panel with her portrait on it rolled gently out of the way, revealing a compartment that held a leather-bound notebook. Vax’s hands stilled. His heartbeat pounded in his ears. He carefully dug it out and skimmed through the pages. While it was written in a shorthand he didn’t understand yet, the purposes of the book were quite clear. It was a ledger. And he’d bet anything that this was a ledger Derowen didn’t want anyone to know existed, because it would prove everything Thorn had told him was true.

He flicked to the last page and paused. He grew cold.

Without giving himself time to reconsider, he slid the notebook into his pocket, pushed the panel back in place, and returned the two drawers as well. When they both snapped in place, the panel tried to move back out of its own accord, but Aswin’s likeness already stared back at him.

Sad girls and offices. It had never been a good combination before, and it wasn’t now. He couldn’t keep his unspoken promise to Vex immediately; he had to keep his promise to Thorn first. Once Vex saw the list, she’d understand.

She had to.

And they would both have to get out of there.

While outside of the office, Aswin padded back to her own rooms, inside Vax gave the desk a once-over to make sure nothing was out of place. He patted the pocket with the ledger, and he jumped out of the window.