I shook my head slowly, running my fingers down Monty’s spine. “Yet Vivian and the viscount managed to keep themselves out of that well, I notice.”
Claybriar let out a short, mirthless laugh. “Nobles can’t just vanish. But Her Majesty wouldn’t have noticed a few missing commoners if one of them hadn’t been my sister.”
“How was harvesting blood even supposed to help the commoners?” I said. “I don’t understand.”
Trillhazel looked at me with haunted dark eyes; they were so like her brother’s I felt a moment of vertigo. “I—before did not know,” she said. “Please believe. Did not know.”
“Know what?”
“She—want our blood for—use here. Destroy in Arcadia—land home. Home land?”
Claybriar clarified with her briefly in their native tongue. “Estate,” he said, presumably to me, though he didn’t meet my eyes. Then he said to her in confusion, “But her estate was already destroyed.”
“No,” said Trillhazel quietly, shaking her head. “Not her estate. Other noble. All, every one. Leave only the commons.” Claybriar sat back like she’d slapped him in the face. Given that noble fey were more or less the entirety of the Project’s clientele, I had a sudden certainty that Caryl was not going to be fired.
“It’s all right now,” I told them both. “Vivian is dead. She’s not going to hurt anyone else.”
Trillhazel looked at me as though she didn’t quite believe me, and Claybriar leaned over to kiss her temple. My chest hurt, watching them, and I hugged Monty close.
“Go with the others,” he said slowly to her in English. “Go get ready; we’re going home.”
She smiled up at him, then rose from the couch and headed for the stairs. Her hooves struck crisp, loud sounds from the wooden steps; I watched her, then turned back to Claybriar. His gaze was on me now, and I wished it wasn’t; my skin crawled with bashful dread.
“You don’t feel it,” he said. His eyes reminded me of the well I’d found him in.
I shook my head miserably. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I . . . care about you, and I think you’re . . . amazing. God, that drawing, I can’t tell you what it meant. But when we met, it wasn’t—it wasn’t like the thing I saw with Inaya and Foxfeather.”
He nodded slowly, then dropped his head and stared at his hands. “I’m sorry too,” he said. “I looked for you, for years. Felt you go west, and followed you. I was so close. But I didn’t get to you in time. If I had—”
“No,” I interrupted fiercely, staring in dismay at the top of his horned head. “No, it’s not your fault. And—I was supposed to end up this way. You’d still be in that well if I weren’t.”
He looked up at that, and although he didn’t make a move toward me, there was so much love in his eyes I didn’t know what to do with it all.
“Why did you leave those drawings everywhere?” I asked instead.
“I’ve been doing it all this time,” he said. “Like messages in a bottle. Everytime I’m stuck on this side waiting for anything, I make a sketch and leave it behind. I had to believe you’d find one eventually. And in the end fate puts you a few steps behind me, hunting the same guy.”
I smiled sadly. All those drawings I’d never found, little slices of Claybriar I’d never see.
I thought of Officer Clay, with his gray T-shirt and his caffè mocha. He didn’t scare me. I pictured sitting astride his lap, his hand curled around the scarred end of my thigh, his mouth soft against mine. But of course it couldn’t be like that. He couldn’t even touch me.
“I should go,” he said, standing.
“Don’t give up on me,” I blurted.
He looked at me, startled, one ear twitching back. “Of course not,” he said.
“You’ll come back sometime?”
“Of course.” He lingered a moment, then turned without saying good-bye. I averted my eyes from his hooves as he walked away.
I felt a twinge of guilt for judging his appearance—who was I to be choosy about legs—and it was that guilt that made me realize with a shock what had just happened.
When I’d imagined us together, he was the only one I’d changed. For the first time since my fall, I had imagined something beautiful happening with me in it. The real me, missing pieces and all.
? ? ?
Rivenholt was executed in Arcadia with great ceremony, according to an e-mail from David Berenbaum. When I tried to reply, my e-mail bounced back to me—no such account. The next day the trades reported that David had packed it off to some emu ranch in New Mexico with Linda, leaving Inaya West as the sole proprietor of Valiant Studios. As David had promised, she offered me a job as her assistant, and I accepted it.