His knuckles went white as he squeezed the wheel. “I know I don’t always handle things right. I ain’t . . . I mean, I am not polished. My temper always causes more trouble than I mean to. I’m just . . .” His eyes flicked to me then back ahead. “I’m protective of the people I care about. Too protective. When I saw your new hand and your demon, my vision went red . . . and I didn’t think before I spoke.” Twisting the wheel left, he eased back one of the levers . . . and the balloon twisted sharply east.
We had reached the water now, and the steep hillsides alongside the sea were lined with green vineyards and olive groves. It was peaceful and beautiful—and nothing like what warred in my heart.
I wanted to forgive Daniel for leaving me in Philadelphia. Love was about forgiveness, right? Yet I could not seem to forget how much he had hurt me.
After shoving the second lever in place, Daniel turned to me. “I’m sorry, Eleanor Fitt. Really. Truly. I’m sorry if I hurt you when I left Philadelphia. Or when I yelled at you in Paris. It ain’t . . .” He ground his teeth. “I mean, it is not easy to change. But I’m trying, Eleanor. I swear I am.”
I could not breathe. I could not move. I could not speak. He was offering an apology. A genuine apology that I so desperately wanted to accept. I would not push Daniel away as Oliver wanted.
Daniel seemed to understand my thoughts, for he took a long, hesitant step toward me. Then another, to fully close the space between us. “I am so sorry,” he said softly. His fingers came up to twine a lock of my hair. “Once we stop Marcus and get Jie back . . . well, then you can break this thing you have with Oliver, and it can be just us.”
It’s not so simple, I thought. Oliver was bound to me until I learned the magic to set him free, and I prayed that Daniel would push the subject no further.
But he was Daniel, and he had no idea when enough was enough.
“And then Joseph says, with the proper trainin’, we can fix your magic too.”
Ice shivered through my body. My hair pricked up. “Fix my magic.”
“Mm-hmmm. Joseph says—”
“But what if I don’t want to?” I pulled free from Daniel. “I realize you follow Joseph blindly, but—”
“It ain’t blind, Empress. He knows best, so I take his lead.”
“But does he know best?” I gestured between Daniel and me. “Joseph knows nothing about what we feel, and he knows nothing of my magic. I do not need fixing, Daniel. This is who I am now. Magic is a part of me—a part of my very soul—and I wish you and Joseph could accept that.”
Daniel reached for me, his eyes wide and lips parted . . . but the hole in my chest was back. It was bigger and meaner than before—and it was so, so cold. As I staggered around and marched for the door, tears burned my eyes. Stinging, ridiculous tears that I did not want to cry any more than I wanted to hear Daniel’s inevitable apology.
Perhaps Oliver was right: perhaps I did push my friends away—but it was not only me. They pushed back. From all directions, everyone wanted something from me. Oliver wanted his freedom, Allison wanted companionship, and Daniel wanted my heart. Joseph was the only person on this ship who seemed to understand that all that mattered right now was Jie and Marcus.
But even Joseph wanted me to stay away from necromancy—even Joseph made stupid demands regarding friendship and power that I could not meet.
I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes as I stumbled into my cabin. The only thing I had that I could still rely on was my magic. It had gotten me to the spirit realm and back, hadn’t it? It had helped me destroy Madame Marineaux and save Daniel and Joseph. My magic had stopped the Dead in Philadelphia as well as in Paris, and it would stop the Dead again.
Lose you all in the end? I thought miserably, stopping before my porthole. Yes, perhaps I would, and perhaps it was precisely what Oliver wanted. But at least with no one telling me what to do, I would be left with the lone person who could kill Marcus and get this job done.
Me.
When the airship crested the final hill to Marseille, my thoughts were in another world—one in which Marcus was before me and my revenge finally had its outlet.
It was then, just as I reached for the ivory fist, that all of Marseille appeared. My hand jerked from my pocket, and I pressed my face against the porthole. Crowded with white-faced buildings and red roofs, Marseille rose up and outward like a bowl. It sat right on the Mediterranean’s edge, hugging a long harbor on all sides—and then the Gulf of Lion beyond.
Steamers and sailing boats dotted the waters, and the closer we puttered, the more clearly I could make out the huge merchant vessels and the more picturesque fishing boats. After the empty expanse of the Provençal desert, Marseille was a flourishing, vibrant place.
Soon I could even see individual people and carts, all scurrying about like ants on the cobblestone streets of the city. Faces turned up toward us, hands over brows like visors. . . . But strangely enough, they almost immediately snapped back down.
The airship slowed and then stopped completely above an oblong wharf running into the heart of the city. If my history lessons served me right, that was the Old Port: the very first harbor upon which Marseille was founded thousands of years before.