I wait while Tristan gets dressed. I find myself fretting over Lillian’s body, checking and re-checking her breathing, as if worrying about her is still as big a part of me as it ever was. I consider it might not be so bad if she suffocated. It would be a painless death. Alaric may not be so kind.
Tristan and I heft Lillian’s wrapped body between us and take the back stairs down to the parking structure. The stairwell is clear, but as we enter the level where Tristan’s elepod is parked, we have to drop down and wait so we aren’t seen. We hold our breaths, the unmistakable shape of a human body inside a sewn-up blanket stretched across our crouched legs, as one of Tristan’s fellow tenants walks by us. I overhear Tristan’s inner turmoil.
Don’t look down, Renny. I don’t want to have to hurt you. Just don’t look down.
Luckily, Renny doesn’t see us. After he passes we let out our held breaths in unison. Tristan pokes his head up and looks around, then nods at me. We scoop up Lillian’s body and double-time it to his elepod.
We stretch Lillian across the backseat, hoping that it looks like a rolled-up blanket to anyone who happens to peer inside the back windows. As we head for the safe house, I see Tristan fidget every time we stop for traffic. I can smell his nervous sweat and hear his heart hammering away in his chest, but I’m strangely calm.
I keep thinking about Lillian’s eyes when she saw me through the window of the café. The single golden fleck in her left iris and the unruly whorl in her eyebrow were exactly as I remember them. Every tiny detail was the same. But there was something different. Something I’d never seen before. I play it over and over in my head on a loop. I’m obsessing. Anger is easier, so I chose to be angry. What do I care if that thing I saw in her eyes looked like innocence? I want her dead.
“You okay, Ro?” Tristan asks.
I don’t answer. I don’t say a thing the whole way, and I don’t speak when we get to the safe house. Tristan takes Esmeralda aside and makes up some excuse about the body. While he’s in the other room with her, I hold Lillian. She almost comes around. The two meaty guys that Esmeralda has with her at the safe house for protection hear Lillian make cooing noises, and they see her stirring inside the blanket.
One of the guys clears his throat. “That dead body isn’t dead, Lord Fall,” he says. He must have been raised in the city to use my title like that.
I stare at him until his ears turn pink and he looks down. Then I slip my hand between the loosely sewn-together flaps of the blanket, find Lillian’s throat, and knock her out again. The guy and his compatriot suddenly find the ceiling, walls, and floor far more interesting than my mysterious bundle.
An eternity passes. They offer me food. It turns chalky in my mouth and I can barely swallow it. All I can think about is the heavy warmth of her body in my arms. All I can do is listen to the soft surf of her breath.
After a long session of doe-eyed pleading from Tristan, Esmeralda finally lets us use the tunnel to smuggle our captive out of the city. I catch her trying to get a peek into the blanket as Tristan and I lower it down the hatch to the tunnel below. Unlike the two guys guarding the safe house with her, Esmeralda has some magical talent—enough to sense that the person in the blanket is a witch of great importance. The problem with witches is that they ooze power, and anyone with even a drop of talent is drawn to them. The more talent you have the more they pull at you. For me, being near Lillian is like falling into a well. I have no idea how I’m going to pull myself back up again.
Tristan and I manage to lower Lillian down the long ladder, panting and grunting with the effort. The more tired I get the more tempted I am. There is a wealth of strength right here in my arms. With every step down the long tunnel, I struggle less with the weight of her and more with the weight of my craving.