Map of Fates (20 page)

E
arlier in the day, we'd reserved train tickets to Cannes under fake names. Elodie took Stellan into one of our two first-class suites to do some first aid on his head, and Jack and I trudged silently into the other, exhausted and lost in thought now that the adrenaline was wearing off. The suite was small but elegant, all the walls dark wood, with just a few feet of space on either side of a double bed made up in maroon brocade, and a lone armchair in a small sitting area by the bathroom door. Fresh yellow carnations brightened the space on both bedside tables.

I didn't know how it was possible that the rest of the world was just going on like normal. I felt like nothing would ever be okay again.

Jack came up behind me and surveyed the platform, then yanked the heavy curtains shut. I kept staring at them like I could still see out.

“Elodie thinks we need to tell the whole Circle what they're doing,” Jack said.

I turned from the window. I figured this would come up. “Not until we get my mom back.” I told him what Alistair had said, and he nodded. “Assuming Alistair keeps his end of the bargain,” I went on. “Do you think he will?”

Jack's eyes looked hollow. “Until today, I would have said yes.” I recognized his expression. I was sure it was mirrored on my face. Shock. Helplessness. Anger. Doubt. Neither of us had any idea what they were capable of. “Now, I can only say that I hope so.”

I hoped so, too. I wouldn't have left if I didn't think he would, but honestly, what did I know?

Jack's normally rugged face looked drawn. “I'm so sorry,” he said. “Lydia is a lot of things, and Alistair's not perfect, but I never would have thought . . .”

“I know.” I fiddled with the bracelet. I'd gotten it back from Elodie on the way to the station, and it felt weird on my arm with its newly raised inset. “At least there's one upside to all this,” I said. “It's not the Order out to get us after all. We don't have to worry about them anymore.”

Jack laced his hands behind his head. “I can't believe none of this has been them.”

“I know. I wonder what the
real
Order's been up to this whole time.”

Jack fiddled with the end of the curtains. “Avery. This is no longer worth it. Any of this. After we get the bracelet, we do whatever we have to do to trade it for your mom, and then we get out. Together. Forget what anyone else thinks.”

I looked up. “You'd leave the Circle for good?”

“You wouldn't? You don't want this. You don't care about the Circle.”

“But
you
do.” I'd wondered whether he'd actually leave with me if that was what I chose to do. I realized now that, deep down, I hadn't believed he would.

Jack palmed his forearm, running his thumb over his compass tattoo. “I thought I did. I cared about the Saxons. I thought staying
with them, with the Circle, was the right thing to do. And now—” He shook his head. “Now I feel like the right thing is to get as far from this mess as possible.”

Did he ever think the
right thing to do
might not be so simple?

The thought surprised me. Because, honestly, I should agree. I should want even less to do with the Circle now. My father was willing to swap my freedom for the tomb, and now Jack was saying he'd come with me. I no longer had to consider how I felt about leaving my newfound family. I should be ecstatic.

But that wasn't what was going on inside me right now. Of course there was part of me that
wanted
to run away, but there was another part of me that felt like I had the whole Circle on my shoulders now. Like I could
earn
that hopeful look they kept giving me: Dev's people, and Takumi's. Even Scarface.

That I could be thinking anything like this hadn't even crossed Jack's mind. For good reason—it was crazy. I thought of Stellan's words in the apartment in Montmartre. There was no leader of the Circle, but the closest thing to it was me. Us.

And besides, if Jack and I did run away together, what would that mean? Would we be pledging to be together forever? Yes, I cared about him—a lot—but when I looked at it that way, it was a big commitment.

The knot inside me felt too tight, on the verge of snapping.

I still hadn't answered, and I didn't know what I was supposed to say. I just smiled and wished I felt it as much as I should. “I'm going to go clean up.”

When I came back after washing dirt and traces of Stellan's blood off me, Jack was sitting on the bed. He was shirtless, inspecting his right shoulder in a mirror on the far wall.

He started to pull his shirt back on, but grimaced.

“Don't,” I said. “What is it?” I dropped my towel on the bed and came around in front of him, taking the shirt from his hand. I touched the darkening bruise across his shoulder, and he jerked away.

“The fall from the window. Landed right on my shoulder. I'll fix it up tomorrow.”

I ran my fingers over his cool skin. Now that I felt a bit more settled, there was something else I had to say, something I'd been pushing out of my mind since seeing Lydia at the Arc de Triomphe. Something I
really
had to know if I was considering running away with Jack. The train jolted. We were moving. I paced to the window and pulled the curtain aside to look out as we slowly left the station behind.

I didn't want to ask, but I couldn't not. “How did Lydia and Cole know where we were today?”

There was a pause. “I don't know.”

The knot tightened even more. It was hanging in the air, implicit, but I had to say it. “Did you tell them?”

He let out a long breath. “No.”

I rested my forehead against the cool glass with a thump. Thank God. I don't know what I would have done if it had turned out that he'd . . . I shook my head.

“I guess they have sophisticated tracking equipment,” I thought out loud. “We told them we were going to Paris. They must have figured it out somehow. And Scarface—oh.” I stood up straight. I hadn't told Jack about that part yet. I watched the Paris suburbs go by out the window as I told him the short version of my encounter with Scarface. Branding him with my necklace. The killing of the other guards. How he'd pledged his loyalty to me. I felt strangely detached talking about it.

The bed springs squeaked, and I felt Jack come up behind me. “I'm so sorry. You shouldn't have to deal with something like that—”

“Yes, I should.” I twisted to face him. “This is my fight as much as anyone else's. More, really. You can't protect me from everything. Okay?”

Jack put his good arm around me. He smelled like sweat and blood. I leaned into his cool bare chest. “Okay,” he said.

The door creaked open, and Stellan poked his head in. “Oops, I'm interrupting,” he said. “You should really learn to lock the door.”

“You're not interrupting.” I slipped out from under Jack's arm. “Is your head okay?” He looked a lot better than he had earlier.

Stellan nodded. He didn't have a shirt on, either, and wore pajama pants that were a good deal too small for him.

“Are those
Elodie's
?” I said.

Stellan pouted. He actually pouted. “My clothes, they have blood all over.” His accent was much thicker than usual. “She said I could not sit on the bed unless—” He indicated the pants, and I fought an inappropriate laugh. He surveyed Jack. “Shoulder's dislocated.”

Jack nodded.

“His shoulder, it dislocates if you look at it wrong,” Stellan said to me. A nostalgic smile brightened his face. Far more lighthearted than he should look after tonight. And definitely woozy.

“Are you drunk?” I said, crawling onto the bed.

Another inappropriately dreamy smile. “Concussion. Pain medication. Too
much
pain medication? But they are not working yet. Are they working yet?” He touched his head and winced as if remembering how much it hurt, and then looked up again like he was surprised to find himself in the room. His eyes focused back on Jack. “Lie down,” he ordered, gesturing to the bed.

Jack frowned. “I'll take care of it tomorrow. Or Avery can help me.”

Stellan sniffed. “You know she's not strong enough. And that's . . .
Ça va faire mal toute la nuit
unless you fix it,” he said.

From where I sat leaning against the headboard, I watched, surprised, as Jack sighed and lay back gingerly. And I was even more surprised when Stellan climbed on the bed, too, and leaned over him.

“The usual?” he said.

Jack nodded, grimacing as Stellan's slim fingers prodded his skin. Then Stellan planted one knee on Jack's chest, and Jack held out his right arm, squeezing his eyes shut.

The scene was so odd, I had to wonder for a second whether I was hallucinating. Interesting, I thought clinically, that
this
is what my brain conjured up under stress.

With his palm at Jack's collarbone, Stellan wrenched hard on his elbow.

Jack tried to stifle a groan. His shoulder moved in an odd, sickening way, and he was breathing hard as Stellan set his arm back down by his side and pressed both palms to his shoulder again, then nodded.

“You're welcome,” he said. He climbed off Jack and leaned heavily next to me.

I stared as Jack sat up, rubbing his collarbone.

“His shoulder. The bone, it—” Stellan made an exploding gesture with his hands. “I have to—” He gestured the other direction, putting his hands back together.

“Pop his shoulder back in?” I said.

Stellan pointed at me. “Yes. Done it many times.”

“You used to be better at it,” Jack said through clenched teeth.

“You used to be tougher,” Stellan said cheerfully. He leaned his
head back against the headboard. “Tired. But cannot go to sleep. The concussion.”

Jack surveyed him warily. “Can you go back to Elodie's room now?”

Stellan opened one eye. “She wants to talk. The bracelet. Heist. I do not want to talk.
You
go talk.”

A giggle tried to bubble up in my throat, even though there was nothing funny about any of it. Not quite knowing what else to do, I patted the spot on the other side of me, gesturing for Jack to sit. I wasn't going to kick the painkiller-drunk guy with a head injury out into the hall of a moving train right now.

Stellan grabbed the remote and clicked on the ancient TV bolted to the corner of the cabin. As far as I could tell, it was on a French infomercial selling a blender, and the marketers seemed entirely too excited about it.

After a second's hesitation, Jack crawled up the bed on my other side. I saw him glance at Stellan over my head, but all he did was settle back against the headboard. After a second, he took my hand, firmly, like a proclamation. I was surprised at first, but I let it stay. And the three of us sat there, shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, me and these two boys who turned out to be just about all I had left in the world.

A
short time later, Stellan's eyes were at half-mast and falling.

I elbowed him gently in the side. “Wake up.”

He blinked hard and muttered something in Russian.

“You're supposed to stay awake,” I said, but I wasn't really paying attention. I was watching the news that had come on after the blender infomercial. Every story was still about Eli Abraham, and me holding a dying Takumi Mikado. And my father sitting next to me, Lydia one seat down, both frozen, eyes wide like they had no idea what was going on. A small, disbelieving laugh escaped my lips. They were such
liars.

My hand clenched Jack's, but he didn't respond. I looked down to see his head loll into the bookcase next to the bed, his face slack and, if not quite peaceful, at least more relaxed in the flickering blue of the TV. I dislodged my hand gently from his, and he kept sleeping.

“He's always been able to sleep so well.” There was more than a hint of jealousy in Stellan's voice. “Would be nice. But I wish right now I could lie down with him.”

I took a deep breath. “You guys snuggling
would
be cute,” I said.
“But really, don't fall asleep yet, okay? I don't want you dying on my watch.”

He leaned against me, his head heavy on top of mine, his skin warm against my bare arm. “Keep me awake, then,” he murmured. “Tell me stories.”

I shoved him gently, and when he gave me a woozy grin, I noticed red running down his forehead. I reached across and handed him a tissue from the bedside table. “I thought Elodie bandaged your head.”

The TV was casting a dim blue flicker over Jack's sleeping form. Now they were talking about Prime Minister Mikado, and the anguish on his and his wife's faces made me clench my teeth. I couldn't think about this anymore tonight.

Stellan was dabbing ineffectually at his head.

“You're going to bleed on my bed,” I said crossly. “Get up. Bathroom.”

I took one last glance back at the news and then followed Stellan. He stood squinting at his head in the mirror. He leaned closer, trying to see the wound, and smacked his forehead right into the glass.

“Ow,” he said, indignant, like the mirror had come out and hit him.

I stopped in the doorway. He was so
tall.
His head nearly brushed the train's low ceilings. Tall and intimidating and carved like a statue of a beautiful half-naked Viking prince, and here he was in this tiny train bathroom, with blood running down his forehead, in ladies' pajama pants and with a pout like an angry toddler's. I ducked my head to conceal another inappropriate giggle.

Stellan rubbed his eye with the back of one hand. “What?” he said petulantly, and I bit down hard on my lip. What was wrong with me? I threw a hand over my mouth, but a snort escaped, and all of
a sudden, the giggles that had been trying to come out for the last hour burst the floodgate and I was hysterical.

“You look . . . ridiculous,” I forced out, and it was high-pitched and desperate, and all of a sudden, I was sure I was about to come fully unhinged. “It's all . . . Everything is ridiculous.”

Stellan's pout turned into concern, and confusion. He reached for me.

“No.” I stepped out of his grasp. If he tried to hug me or say something reassuring, I would cry. If I cried, I wouldn't stop. “Sit,” I ordered.

I pulled a little stool from the vanity, still giggling a little. Stellan sat, his head flopped down until his chin rested on his chest. I inspected his head, where only the top layer of his blond hair was clean, and the mat of blood beneath it hadn't been touched.

I started laughing again, hard enough that I hiccuped. “Elodie did a
horrible
job,” I gasped. “What is wrong with her?”

Stellan raised an eyebrow. I took two rasping breaths and shoved it all down. Compartmentalizing. I'd been doing it all night, and I could keep doing it.

“You need to wash it the rest of the way tonight, or it'll never heal right,” I said.

Stellan eyed me warily, but used my shoulder to stand up, gesturing to the shower stall.

“I don't know if you should do it yourself.” In this state, I was afraid he'd kill himself in the train-sized shower. Or at the very least, not be gentle enough with the wound and rip it open again.

A woozy but wicked grin spread across his face. “Does that mean you're getting in
with
me? I never thought you'd take me up on that rain check, but I won't say no . . .”

“We'll wash it in the
sink.
Sit.”

I ran warm water in the basin and swished in some orange-scented shampoo from the shower, and he leaned back until his long torso was taking up half the bathroom. I rolled up one of the puffy white towels and wedged it under the back of his neck. He winced almost imperceptibly, like if he'd had his wits about him he would have been able to suppress it.

“What?” I said. “Did you hurt your shoulder, too?”

He shook his head.

“What is with you guys?” I said. “If you have a broken collarbone or something and you just haven't
mentioned
it . . .”

“It's nothing,” he said, but the lie wasn't convincing.

I crossed my arms over my chest. Finally, he took a deep breath, then touched the scars snaking up his neck. Those strange, translucent scars, all up his back and twisting like ghostly vines over the tops of his shoulders and around the sides of his throat.

“Your scars hurt?” I said. “Did you do something to them?”

He shook his head slowly, staring up at the ceiling. “Always,” he said, so softly I almost couldn't hear.

It took me a second to understand what he meant. When I did, my breath caught. Of their own accord, my fingers reached out to the same scar he was touching. “The scars
always
hurt?” I said.

He nodded.

I traced the scar down his neck and across his shoulder, at the lesions pearlescent against my own white skin. I didn't know what to say.

Stellan's fingers brushed my hand.

“It's fine,” he said. “I'm used to it.”

The heat at the back of my eyes built up again. What this world did to people. What it'd done to this boy whose life had been far harder than mine, looking up at me with a mix of emotions in his
face I wasn't sure I understood. Wasn't sure I
wanted
to understand. The fact that, despite it all, there was something in me that was telling the truth when I told Jack I didn't want to run.

“Lean back,” I said, and splashed the warm water over his hair. Fighting the tightness in my throat left my words clipped, too cheerful. “I hurt my head like this once,” I chirped. “I was leaning over, and had left an upper cabinet open, and stood up right into the corner. Blood everywhere! It was disgusting. My mom washed it out. She always knew exactly—” I drew a ragged breath, full of tears that had been building all day that I wouldn't, couldn't let fall. “That's how I know what to do. We'll work the blood out of your hair first to get to the cut and then—and then—” My voice cracked. No more words would come out around the lump in my throat. “And then—”

I stopped when I felt Stellan's hand close around my leg.

“And then, um, we'll sterilize the cut,” I continued, my voice high, reedy. “Head wounds bleed a lot, but it'll heal quickly enough if you don't mess with it and then you'll—then you'll—”

Stellan stroked my knee with his thumb, calmly, firmly. Whatever had been building up for so long—the knot pulling tight, my sanity stretching thin—I felt the moment it snapped.

Once the first tear fell, it was a floodgate.

No laughing this time, just silent, steady tears, dripping salty into my mouth for what felt like a long time. The cloying orange shampoo scent, the buzz of the fluorescent light over the sink, the
clack clack clack
of the train tracks. The water sloshed in the basin as Stellan tilted his head up, and I could feel him looking at me.

I took a deep breath, full of the soothing, steady strokes of his thumb on the knee of my jeans and their inherent promise that I wasn't alone but that he wasn't going to force me to talk about it. The last almost-sob died in my throat.

“And then you'll be okay.” I blinked the tears away, my vision cleared, and I realized that Stellan's head was still resting heavy in my hands, my fingers still twisted in his hair, blond streaked with red, making shaky ripples in the reddening water.

I disentangled them and wiped the mascara from my face with the back of my hand, then put a little more shampoo in the water and swished it around. Stellan didn't let go of my leg, and I didn't move away.

“That's not normal, about the scars,” I said, like the last few minutes hadn't happened. My voice was stronger now. “Scars are supposed to be dead tissue.”

He opened his eyes. “Nothing about not burning like a regular human being is normal,” he said. “But no, I don't suppose scars should hurt seven years after the fact. I think in some way I always knew there was something . . . off about that. Maybe that's why I never told anyone.”

“Nobody else knows?” I said quietly.

He shook his head. My eyes traced the scars again as I thought of everything he must have to do daily that would hurt. I let out a breath through pursed lips before leaning back over the sink, trying to find a position where I didn't have to drape myself across his chest. “Are you okay like this?”

He rested the hand not on my knee on his stomach. “Surprisingly comfortable.”

“I'm going to try to be gentle, but tell me if it hurts.” I worked the blood out of his hair, trying not to pull on the wound itself. I wasn't sure how well the painkillers were working. After a minute, a small, blissed-out smile came over his face, so I was pretty sure he was okay. I wiped a bead of bloody water off his forehead and gave him a nudge. “You have to stay awake.”

“Feels nice, though,” he murmured. “Feels
really
nice.”

“Have you never had someone do this?”

His eyes slit open and he quirked a
what do you think?
eyebrow.

“I fell asleep once getting my hair washed at the salon,” I confessed, trying to keep him conscious. “It was right after one of our moves, and I was really stressed and hardly sleeping. My mom took us to get haircuts and pedicures, and I passed out with my head in the sink and my feet in some lady's hands. My mom convinced them to let me sleep for an
hour.
I woke up with the worst crick in my neck.”

Stellan smiled, but I could tell he was fading when his hand dropped from my leg. I tugged on his earlobe. “Hey. Wake up. Let me look at your pupils.”

“Mmm,” he sighed, but he opened his eyes. His pupils didn't look too dilated, which I was pretty sure was good. He was quiet for a minute, then said, “That guy. The one who—is
yours
now. With the scar on his cheek.”

I paused, my hands in the floating blond halo of his hair, which, just for a second, reminded me so much of being underwater that my lungs ached. “Scarface. That's what I call him.”

“He looked like someone, but I couldn't remember who. And now I do. An Emir Keeper. Rocco. He was terminated two years ago. For—”

“Having a thing with a family member.”

Stellan nodded, and his head bobbed in my hands. “Besides the scar, he looks just like him, and I could have sworn he had an olive branch tattooed under the compass. Did you see that?”

I nodded. “That's impossible, though, right? That Keeper is dead.”

I didn't know what it meant, but I didn't want to think about any of it. The train jolted, splashing a little water out of the sink.

“Sorry to bring it up,” Stellan said, seeing straight through me as always. “We don't have to talk about it.”

“It's fine,” I said shortly, but we fell into silence while I kept up the slow task of getting out the blood without making it worse. A short time later, I glanced down to make sure Stellan wasn't asleep and found him watching me openly.

“What?” I said.

“You're pretty.”

I rolled my eyes, and not just because right now, with mascara smeared under my eyes and my nose red from crying, I knew I was about as far from
pretty
as I could get. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“You know exactly what.”

“It's not an offensive thing to say.”

“No, it's not
offensive.
It's just . . .” Something about his disoriented state made me feel more open, too, like in the little bubble of tonight, I could say things I wouldn't otherwise say. “You realize there's no reason for you to say stuff like that, right? I get your schtick.”

His face screwed up in confusion. “What's
schtick
?”

“It means I know very well that I'm just a prize to everybody in this game, and you're no different. So yeah, I know you flirt with me for the same reason every Circle family we meet wines and dines me. And it's not going to work. So . . . stop it.” I felt myself flush.