Days were getting shorter. By the time the clock tower chimed nineteen, the sun dipped below the western horizon and the city’s mirrors glowed with twilight until the sky faded to purple-black, and finally turned dark.
Melanie hadn’t returned to our apartments, and even if she’d been here, I wouldn’t have known what to say to her. Would we talk about last night with Patrick? Or pretend we didn’t know about Quinn and Ezra? Act like she hadn’t voted with Patrick, and now two of our friends were dead?
Black silk gleamed in the lamplight; the mask peeked out from beneath my mattress, where I’d shoved it this morning as I staggered in, exhausted.
I tugged it from the hiding place and turned it over in my hands, looking for hints of Black Knife’s identity. A piece of hair, a scent, or a seamstress’s embroidered mark. But there was nothing. The mask smelled like me now, and there was nothing to indicate it hadn’t been my mask all along.
Keep it, he’d said. You might need it again.
Earlier, the palace ladies had said there were more wraith beasts in the city. If that was true, Black Knife would be hunting them.
I changed my clothes and slipped my weapons from their hiding places. As exhausted as I was, I wasn’t ready to sleep, to think about my wretched life, or to question what I’d always known and believed.
Instead, I shoved Black Knife’s mask into my belt and made my way into the city.
Unsure exactly where I wanted to go, I roamed the market district, rooftop to rooftop, until I found myself above a small chapel with a bubbling fountain in its tiny courtyard. Half a dozen people knelt on the cobblestones, circling the splashing water. Quiet chanting rose into the night.
“They’re waiting to be healed.” Black Knife’s voice came from just behind me. “They were told to fast for a week, drinking only water from that fountain, and to pray ceaselessly. If they did that, they’d be healed of whatever ails them.”
“Has it ever worked?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t heard the good news yet, but I hope I will one day.”
“Huh.” He was optimistic, for a boy wearing a mask.
“I didn’t expect to find you here,” he said.
I stood and slipped behind a chimney, out of the way of the mirrors. Black Knife followed, utterly silent in his movements.
“Or perhaps”—he pulled the mask from my belt and held it between two fingers—“you didn’t come to pray.”
Wind tugged at the mask, a banner of black shadow against his dark body. “Are you going to arrest me?”
“Not today. We have too much work to do.” He offered back the mask, and when I didn’t move, he said, “Unless you’d rather I arrested you.”
If he knew how I spent my days, disguised as a dead girl and snooping about the palace, no doubt he’d change his mind.
“Not today.” I took the mask just as an immense roar sounded from the chapel courtyard, followed by screams. “Like you said.”