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Duade disappears into a back room, and a tear—two tears—escape and trickle down my cheek. I wipe them quickly away when he emerges, holding only a letter and a canvas sack as big as my two fists—a sack that, by the sound it makes against the counter, I can tell is full of blood-iron.
“You got more ’an a pint of luck, girl,” he says. “His debts have been paid. To the collectors.”
I blink in confusion. “But . . . by whom?”
Duade’s laugh is unkind. “All been paid good an’ square. That’s the only thing ought to concern you.”
Could Lora have paid? But more important—“Where are the rest of my things?”
He cocks his head at me. “This’s all.”
I blink. “What do you mean?” I think of our cottage—our home. “There was the cottage. Drawings on the wall.” Never enough, but . . . “A broken pocket watch. Did you take those?”
He scoffs again, jerks his hand in the air like I’m a fly he’s swatting off. “Those things aren’t for you.”
“What—” The tears threaten to surge again. I take a deep breath, composing myself. “There must be a mistake. You said his debts were paid, which means his possessions belong to me.” I grip the counter. “There was no one else. I was all he had.”
Duade sighs. “Rest belongs to the Gerlings, sweet. You say Pehr Ember was your father? Well, I’ve no record of that. No record of you at all.”
The silence rings, broken only by the couple shuffling away, emptied of their years. My voice comes out faint. “No . . . record?”
He nods at the envelope on the counter. “Just this,” he says. “Nothing more I can do for you.”
As soon as I’m out of sight of the shop, I duck beneath a store’s ragged awning and examine the letter. My name is written across the front of the envelope in my father’s careful handwriting. My hands shake as I slice it open with one finger and slide out the note inside. The dense wall of writing blurs in my vision; I wipe away the tears to read.
Jules,
I’m off to Everless this morning, to fetch you. I hope you will come home with me and that I will, at this time tomorrow, be dropping this letter unopened into the fire. But Everless is a dangerous place, now more than ever. So I have no choice but to face the possibility that I might not return.
If this is so, and you are reading this, Jules—I wish I could give you more than this letter, my girl. You deserve so much more. But I fear that now, this is all I can offer you.
By this time, you might have begun to suspect the truth—that I am not your father by blood or by law. I’ve asked Duade if he can pass our things along to you anyway, but I know he will not. The law is the law, as the world is so fond of reminding us. I thought of you as my daughter—you are my daughter—so I have never told anyone otherwise. I ask that you do the same, Jules. Keep our secret. Life will be a little easier with a family name, even one such as mine.
And I shall tell you this when I see you, but in case I only live long enough to say it once, let me repeat myself here: Stay away from Everless. Stay away from the Queen. I cannot explain myself, not in a letter that can fall into anyone’s hands, but you’re not safe with Her Majesty there. Please—I know you must have so many questions, Jules, but trust me now.
Before you left for the estate, you said you needed me, but you’re wrong. You’re strong—brave—kind, and I know that you’ll keep going forward when I’m gone. Every day, every hour I’ve given has been more than worth it. I just wish I could have seen the woman you will become.
My girl—you are my daughter, and I your father, in every way but blood. Never forget that. Keep our secret, and keep safe. I love you.
Papa
I pace the back streets of Crofton like a madwoman, avoiding the main marketplace, though I long to see Amma. Tam can stay a while longer with the cart. It’s bitterly cold despite the sun hanging in the cloudless sky, but the thought of ducking into a shop or tavern, acting like nothing is wrong makes me sick.
Instead, my feet, only half-healed from when I ran barefoot to the lake, slip on the dirty, melting snow. A few people glance my way as they pass, but they avert their eyes, giving me a wide berth. I can tell they fear me in the same way I once feared the Ghost. They must see the same desolate wildness in my face, how grief has torn away my humanity.
My hand clutches Papa’s letter. Lines come back to me as if they’re refrains of a song: I am not your father by blood or by law. I am not your father by blood or by law. And images, as Hinton described them—the stain on my father’s hands, his blank stare, drained of time.
His words, so full of meaning, are not the words of a man losing his wits. Though I don’t understand it, I can feel a terrible truth lurking in his sentences, curling with the ink.
I feel his hands on my shoulders, their grip tight, shaking me, demanding that I leave—until I realize that they’re my own hands, my own fingers digging into flesh. I’m trembling, but it has nothing to do with the cold.
The bag of blood-iron hangs like a lead weight on my hip. Another puzzle. Perhaps Duade was wrong, and Papa had been hoarding this blood-iron, but why didn’t he use it to save himself?
Someone calls out to me. “Jules!”
I know the voice. Amma. I turn around.
Amma hurries down the alley toward me, shouldering her way through the people with their heads down and coats pulled up over their cheeks. Her bloodstained butcher’s apron is rolled under her arm. She stops two strides away, her other arm outstretched to embrace me, then pulls back. She studies my face.
“Jules,” she whispers. “What—?” The color drains from her. “Did something happen at Everless?”
I can’t speak, but the sympathy in her eyes starts my tears flowing again. For a second, she stares at me, horror-struck. Then she takes my elbow and guides me to a nearby doorway, where we huddle. She puts an arm around me, pulls me into her. My voice is still weak, so I hand her the letter to read.
Her eyes skim over it, filling with tears as they do. “He must have sold his time,” she whispers in stunned understanding. “I’m so sorry, Jules.”
My voice, raw from crying, cracks when I speak. “It’s more than that,” I croak. But my next words catch in my throat. How can I explain the truth to Amma—that he spent his last hours traveling to the estate, and then, when I ignored his pleas to come home, he tried to enter the Gerling vault, and I don’t know why? That because of it, he died outside Everless’s walls with only Hinton, a stranger, by his side?
I fear she’ll tell me what Lora did: The mind flows from the vein as well as years.
“I need him,” I say instead, the words tangled up in a sob.