Unraveled (Turner, #3)

“Still,” he found himself whispering, “sometimes I wish that this quest had not come to me. Justice is an impossible beast to track. The trail is lonely, and she offers no reward when she’s caught but the promise of another hunt.”


Until today, he’d not minded so much. He’d given up a great deal over the years. It had never seemed so much, compared to what he could have lost. But now that he’d had Miranda… No. He wasn’t going to think of her. If he did, he might do something foolish. He might demand a horse and ride for the railway station. He still had a quarter of an hour before her train departed.

Ash laid a hand on his shoulder. Smite flinched, and his brother took a step back, stricken. “Don’t touch me unaware,” Smite heard himself mutter. “One time, Mother—never mind why. Just… don’t.”

“God, Smite.”

“Don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t fuss over me. I’m not broken,” he heard himself say.

Ash nodded, but he looked so damned concerned. The room smelled of wood and wax, with the faint, lingering scent of astringent black tea. Black tea, not mint.

He couldn’t call to mind the scent of mint, that sweet calming scent that Miranda always seemed to carry about her. His memory of Miranda had gone cold already, devoid of the animating spark that he’d most cherished. That, more than anything, nearly overset his emotions.

“I’m not broken,” he repeated. “Although at the moment…” This was what came of violating the sentimentality quota. Everything he kept bottled inside him came out. He shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “At the moment,” he muttered numbly, “I may be coming a bit unraveled.”

Ash let this pronouncement sit. He didn’t say anything as Smite gasped for air. And maybe this was what they’d always needed—the chance to be silent with each other. This time, when Ash reached out, he paused, waiting before he took his brother’s hand. Smite took his palm and clutched it hard. It was just a little touch, but he was almost undone by it.

The clock ticked, counting past Smite’s allotted sentimentality. It counted the minutes while Miranda sat and waited onboard some railway car. Smite didn’t trust himself to speak until she had gone.

“I did save Mark,” Ash finally said.

“Oh?”

“I left him with you.”

It was too much. Smite felt his throat close up.

“I mean it. When I found the two of you in Bristol, you were shadowed. Mark…Mark was just hungry.”

Smite nodded.

“I have never wanted to think about what you must have done to keep Mother’s madness from falling on him. But you must have done something. Just look at him. How he can stand to live in that house, I don’t know.”

Smite found himself smiling through a shudder. “It gave me the cold sweats, just being there for a few hours yesterday.”

Another pause. “Why did you go? When you said you went to Mark, I knew it had to be dire. Neither of us would go into that house otherwise.”

Smite shrugged. “It was for Miranda,” he finally said.

“Miranda.” There was a subtle change in Ash’s voice. “And what can you tell me about Miranda?”

Her train was pulling away, right at this moment. He thought of her looking up at him and saying that she loved him. He thought of her leaving. Her hairpin bit into the flesh of his palm.

He thought of her finding someone else, and he let out a little breath of air. Finally, he managed a small half-smile and he looked his brother in the eye. “I saved her, too.”



THE ROAD MIRANDA TOOK to the railway station was all too familiar. And yet to Miranda’s eye, it seemed entirely different. After the long weeks of her absence, Temple Street had altered. Now, it seemed forlorn and dirty. She’d never noticed the refuse that spilled onto the streets when she lived here. She must have blocked from memory the blackening muck that was never swept from the cobblestones. The smells of manufacturing were thick about her: the scent of vinegar from the foundry warred with tar from the shipyards. The splitting shriek of a steam engine cut through the clatter of horses’ hooves.

Strange, that this neighborhood had changed so much in just a few weeks. The cart she was in rumbled past taverns she had visited, fishmongers she had argued with, shops she had patronized…

Better to concentrate on all that she passed, than to think about— “Stop!” she said.

The cart came to a halt. Dryfuss peered at her. “I’m not supposed to stop,” he said. “My orders are—”

“New orders,” Miranda said briskly. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”