I grimace. “I was going to say a murderer.”
Blaise cringes, but we do it together. “Well, I suppose he fits right into the family then.”
But then my wife adds, “But I want to know how he did it.”
“What do you mean?”
She shakes her head. “He wasn’t here before—in the tapestries. I would have noticed, I’m sure of it.”
I shrug. “You said the Fabric has a mind of its own.”
“It does,” she says. “But how can it change itself without a weaver? Unless…”
She claps her hand over her mouth and races to the end of the line of tapestries, where the last, pitch-black tapestry has always hung.
Except the tapestry is no longer blank.
Within it, woven in the silver of a ghost, is the spirit of a male who looks suspiciously like Farin.
Farin isn’t who catches my attention.
It’s the three figures, tall as looming shadows, hands folded before them, hoods drawn.
Behind them is a loom.
Farin’s voice rattles through my mind. Don’t be frightened of death. It’s dark and lonely for beings like you and me, but you’re a fool if you believe the Fates forget about us. Stay interesting enough, and they might just weave you back into the story.
“Blaise,” I ask, my breath fogging the frigid air, “whatever happened to the tapestry you wove me into?”
Blaise frowns. “I left it behind when I kidnapped Asha. I was in such a daze, such a rush to get her to the Rip, I didn’t think to bring it. Didn’t think it would be any use to me, since I was running out of time.”
“So it’s just sitting abandoned in a field in Charshon somewhere?”
Blaise furrows her brow, then her eyes go wide. “No. No, it isn’t.” She rummages through her satchel, yanking out a crumpled letter. Her eyes dart across the page, scouring the text. “I didn’t know what she was talking about… Thought she was just being childish.”
Blaise shoves the letter into my hands, points to a section of text toward the end.
Oh, and by the way, I really liked the love story you left behind. I tried to tell it to Marcus, but he didn’t think it was romantic at all. He says villains don’t make for good love interests. Though I will say, the ending left me hanging. I thought for sure that wasn’t how you planned to end it—it’s kind of a cliffhanger, you know—and that you got interrupted, but the final stitches are all done.
-Amity
“This has to be talking about the tapestry I left behind, doesn’t it? What else could she be talking about?” Blaise asks.
“I thought you said you didn’t finish the tapestry,” I say.
Blaise gazes up at the previously blank tapestry. At the image of Farin kneeling before the three hooded figures.
“I didn’t.”
CHAPTER 122
ASHA
I find him just where I expected, follow his pull into an abandoned alleyway in Meranthi that no one else seems to notice.
Tucked away, as if trying to be forgotten.
As if waiting for someone to remember.
Dramatic as ever.
“I’m not climbing up there, you know,” I call from down below, my voice echoing up over the wall.
No one passing by on the street seems to notice.
When I don’t receive an answer, I start picking up pebbles and slinging them overhead.
“Listen, you’re the one who instilled within me a fear of heights. Stop sulking and come down here yourself.”
Again, silence.
I shrug, then back away, leaning against the warm clay wall of the building behind me.
I once had nightmares about this place, about the flash of pain that had seared up my back and side, taking my eye with it. This is the first time I’ve come back here, and as I look around, examining the alleyway that technically doesn’t exist, I find myself surprised. Surprised at the lack of shadows, the lack of terror swelling in my heart.
By all accounts, it’s just a normal, non-existent alleyway.
I wonder if perhaps I should have come back sooner. If facing it on my own terms would have stopped the nightmares.
