And finally for me.
I cried and cried until Daniel’s clean shirt was soaked through. And my wonderful inventor never said a word. He simply waited.
When at last I wiped my eyes and pulled away, he flicked my chin with his knuckle. “Cheer up, Empress. We’ll be home soon.”
“Home?” I croaked. “But . . . but we don’t have a home.”
“And that’s just it. It’s time to make one.” He pulled me back into an embrace, and my cheek rested against tear-soaked cotton. “We’re all family now, you know. None of us has anyone but one another. So I reckon it’s time for me, you, Joseph, and Jie to make a home. Though, of course”—he smiled into my hair—“you and I will have our own little place. Just the two of us.”
“Ah.” My eyelids fluttered shut. It was such a blissful image. A home. With Daniel.
For a long moment I sank into the warmth of his body so near to mine. And I reveled in how his heart thumped against my cheek. How his ribs vibrated as he breathed. “I would like a home,” I admitted.
“So let’s go then.”
I snapped my eyelids up. “You mean after all this.”
“Let’s leave Marcus behind, and just . . . go.”
“Marcus will never let us leave,” I said quietly. “You know that. He will chase us until he has gotten to Joseph. Until he has gotten to me, to you, and to Jie.”
“I know.” Daniel shrugged one shoulder. “But you can’t blame a man for tryin’.”
“What happened to unflinching and unafraid?”
He drew back slightly and peered into my face. “I ain’t flinching, Empress. And I ain’t afraid. Not while this”—he took my hand and curled my fingers inward—“can make a fist. And not while breath still burns here.” He laid his other hand over my chest. “I will fight until the end, no matter where it takes us. But sometimes a man needs a few good dreams to warm his wicked nights.”
“Then let us dream right now.” My lips quirked up, and without thinking, I moved my arms back around his waist. “Let’s dream about what we’ll do when this is all over.”
A soft laugh ruffled my hair. His arms slid around my shoulders and tugged me even tighter. “We should start by getting your hand attached. The surgeon I designed it with is in Munich.”
My hand. Daniel’s perfect, mechanical prosthesis. I had forgotten it.
“And then what?” I asked.
“Then let’s go back to Paris so I can finally see the Louvre, and then . . . how do you feel about London?”
“I feel good about London.” I grinned. “But we mustn’t forget Vienna. Oh, and there’s always Rome.” I tipped my head back and rested my chin on his chest.
He smiled down at me, the breeze sweeping his hair in all directions. “And how about after we see the world with all that money we don’t have?”
“Oh, we’ll have money,” I declared. “After we patent all your inventions and become disgustingly wealthy, we’ll have heaps of it.”
He chuckled. “In that case, after we see the world we’ll open a school.”
My eyebrows shot up.
“For all the kids like me,” he added. “All the kids who got kicked around by life but want somethin’ more.” He twined his fingers through my hair. “For all the kids who never even dared to dream about a life as perfect as mine is right now.”
I swallowed as cold crept over me. Nothing about our life was perfect. This sunny morning would end very soon, and the darkness would seep back in as it always did.
But for now it was good. For now I had my inventor. My Daniel.
I pressed my ear back to his heartbeat.
“I’ll call it the Joanna Sheridan Institute,” he declared. “After my mother, of course, and we can all be teachers there. Joseph’ll teach about magic, I’ll teach about machines, and Jie can teach self-defense.”
“And what will I teach?” I asked.
“What do you want to teach?”
I chewed on that for a moment—but then the obvious answer came. “Literature, of course. Oh, and geography. I daresay I am more than qualified to discuss that nowadays.”
“I daresay you are,” Daniel murmured.
“I like this dream,” I whispered, my words sailing off with the sand and the sun and the wind.
“Me too,” he whispered back. “And when this is all over, it’s exactly what we’ll do.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah, Empress.” He squeezed me just a bit tighter. “I promise.”
I stood before the spirit curtain again. It was the strangest sensation—seeing my body stand in the middle of my cabin though I knew I was asleep.
I blinked. The curtain hovered before me instead of behind, and when I looked down, I was standing in the real world.
Cautiously, I reached for the shimmering doorway to the dock.