“I’ll leave you to her, then,” René sneered, slithering back into the shadows as though he had not changed Elodie’s world forever. When he was gone, Edgar strode around the desk, settling himself on the tabletop, with no regard for the documents and inkwells, which he disturbed with a great clatter.
“Don’t you look lovely.” His eyes raked over Elodie slowly, setting her skin crawling. “Ours has been quite the untraditional courtship, but I am a bit sorry to see it end. I’ve had a wonderful time, illustrating for you my affections.” He nudged her knee with his foot, his smile sickly sweet. She shuddered.
“Do not touch me, Edgar.”
“Oh, come.” Edgar’s face fell. “I understood your aloofness via letters, but I had hoped for a more passionate reunion in the heat of war. I can offer you safety, Elodie, in exchange for love. There is no stronger bond than survival.”
Elodie snickered. “Be serious, Edgar.”
“Do not laugh at me,” Edgar shouted. “Everyone is always laughing at me. I will not allow my wife to find amusement at my expense.”
“I would rather die than be your wife,” Elodie said, each word filled with enough venom that she hoped Edgar would choke on it.
“And I would rather you die than deny me again,” Edgar said, his voice just as poisonous. “So it seems we are in agreement.”
In one swift motion, Edgar had her out of her chair and pinned against the wall. His fingers wrapped around her throat, crushing her windpipe, sending spots skittering across her vision. Elodie gasped desperately, clawing at him, but his hands might as well have been iron cuffs. Tears streamed down her face; her ears rang with the rush of her blood and the desperate pounding of her heart. Her lungs were going to burst. No matter how hard she tried to beg, no matter how hard she thrashed, Edgar would not let her go.
“I had hoped it would not come to this, my love,” Edgar said, his breath hot on her cheek. “But if I cannot have you, no one will.”
Even when Elodie went limp, when she began to slip into the sweet relief of unconsciousness, he continued to squeeze, his face twisted with regret, sweat pooling on his upper lip. It was a miserable way for her life to end, at the hands of a boy with wounded pride. What a waste of her brain, her ambition, her existence.
Elodie Warnou had deserved so much more.
31
The docks were deserted as the Anders siblings led Hera’s and Petra’s descendents through Harborside, the water surprisingly calm. Gulls swooped low, picking through piles of trash for food scraps. All the while, bells tolled ominously in the background. The group needed to rouse the neighborhood’s residents, to evacuate the area before the Republics’ army breached the barricade. Artur ushered Petra’s family to the south side, filled with taverns and gambling halls, while Katrynn led Hera’s kin east toward the residential quarters.
“Direct them to the castle,” Sabine shouted to her sister. “The gates are open, ready to offer Velle’s citizens shelter. And don’t forget to check on the orphanage beneath the tavern next to the tannery,” she called to her brother. “They won’t answer the first time you knock, but if you tap three times softly, they’ll know you can be trusted.”
Sabine took the north side of the harbor. There were few inhabitants in this sector—instead, the dockside was littered with storehouses where cargo was kept. Bins, containers, and crates were stacked impossibly high, waiting for their ships and crew. Yet it was not entirely abandoned. Atop the cavernous rooms and empty offices were the crowded barracks where sea merchants kept their debtors. Sabine’s own father had been held in such a hovel, a dark, dusty place that stank of sweat. He was still at sea, crammed onto a ship with others who had put their faith in cards and dice, whose only value now was in what they owed to someone else.
The tolling of the bells was fainter here, the sound drowned out by the roaring wind and the rolling waves. She ran through the streets, pounding on every storeroom door until her palms ached and her knuckles were raw. She screamed until she shuddered and her voice broke. But she was not certain anyone heard her.
She stopped to catch her breath, a hand resting on a rusted shovel stuck upright between the slats of the dock. The old harbor bell had long lost its clapper, but the bowl remained, hollowed out like an empty shell shed from an insect. Salt air had tinged the copper green. But the shovel still boasted steel. She could make a riotous sound, if only she tried.
Unwedging the shovel from between the warped boards required an ungodly noise from the back of her throat and a seesawing motion that took far longer than she had to spare. But once it was finally free, she struck the hunk of metal ferociously and furiously. It emitted a thunk, thwipp, thwapping that reverberated in her teeth.
If nothing else, it was sure to garner attention, a girl smacking a shovel against the empty bell while clouds swirled above, turning the sky gray. And indeed, Sabine’s hair had just only begun sticking to the sweat on her forehead when a man peered out of a door half off its hinges, blinking sleepily.
“What in the twelve hells are you doin’, girl?”
Relief spread through Sabine like spilled water. “You must get away from the harbor, now,” she croaked. “Velle is at war, and Harborside will be its first casualty. There’s fire coming. Destruction. Ruin.”
The man scratched at his head, his wiry hair sticking out at all angles. “You make it sound like Death himself is on his way.”
“He very well may be,” Sabine said darkly. “Please,” she urged the man, voice at full force. “Listen to me. You have to get out of here. You and whoever else might reside inside.”
“How do you know?” He studied her openly.
“The Republics are invading the city,” Sabine said plainly. “We’ve rigged the harbor with explosives to cut them off.”
The man made a face. “If I wake up my crew on account of a rumor, there’s going to be hell to pay. Sailors need their sleep.”
His calm interrogation flustered Sabine. She had not expected it to be so difficult to lead people to safety.
“If you don’t wake them, they’ll be straight in hell,” she snapped. “And we all know Death’s price is steeper than a merchant sailor’s.”
The man laughed outright, thunder no longer far away, but above them. “Suppose I do listen to you,” he said, stroking his beard with one hand, “where would you have me go? My ships need ten men apiece to crew them. I don’t have those numbers.”
“Gather everyone up from the north side and have them sail with you to safety,” Sabine said, reaching for the man, her fingers closing around his forearm. “That way your ships stay safe, and you’ve helped your neighbors, too.”
At this suggestion, the man hesitated. “I don’t know…”
His lack of urgency was as painful as peeling off a toenail. “Don’t believe me, then,” she said sharply, patience wearing thin. “If I were you, I’d take my chances and trust the New Maiden, even if you’ve been converted to another faith.”
The man examined her with revitalized interest. “Maiden?” His fingers gripped the doorway.
“I am just as frightened as you,” she said gently, holding the man’s gaze. “I care just as much for my family, my neighbors, the salt of the sea. I must be going, but I pray you choose to care. I pray you remember that She came to save you. I came to save you.”
The man’s eyes softened. “Her will be done,” he whispered.
Sabine dared not say more lest she break the tentative trust between them. She hurried onward, triumph flaring in her chest even as she continued her cries to evacuate. She hoped the man had taken up the call, too.
When she had covered the winding streets of the north side, she headed back toward her family home. To Sabine’s relief, the windows of the apartments and the taverns she passed were empty. She saw no eyes peering out at the chaos, heard no frightened tears from lost children. She held tightly to the hope that her siblings had been successful and that her neighbors were gathered safely within the walls of Castle Warnou. Their tasks complete, Artur and Katrynn would be waiting for her at the bell tower. But before she joined them in the city’s center, the New Maiden took one final detour.
Sabine ducked into the cool, cramped quarters of the Anders family apartment for what might be the very last time. She surveyed the small room, taking stock of the only home she had ever known. Despite its shabby disrepair, Sabine’s family had built so many memories here, had laughed and cried and raged and screamed, had grown together and apart between these four walls. It was impossible to preserve it all. Still, Sabine wanted to ensure that her family had what they needed to remember.
