Chapter 17

Milla slipped from my arms to run to her brother, disregarding me for the first time all night. I allowed it, but only because I knew how much it meant for him to be here. I wondered if this was the first time he'd ever shown up for her. The bastard didn't deserve an ounce of her appreciation, but I'd never tell her that.

I'd tried before, and it broke her heart to hear the truth.

"Wait!" The other one emerged from the scullery door. "I'm here too!"

Milla gasped as she saw the twin and broke from Aramis to embrace him. They talked about the trouble she'd caused, the shit they went through to find her, and then Milla's face sobered. Her eyes scanned the deck.

"Where's Jasper?"

I looked away, didn't want to see the look on her face when they broke the news.

"Aramis?"

The crack in her voice drove me mad. The men we rescued began boarding the ship, my family coming to stand beside me.

"Jer, where is he? What's going on?" She shook. I could hear it in her words.

Turning to Luther, I said, "Get every prisoner below deck in the galley. Take this logbook and make sure everyone is accounted for. I'll see Milla and her family to the rooms."

He glanced at Milla and her brothers, a solemn look in his eyes. "On it, boss."

The cousins began filing the prisoners toward the stairwell leading below while I approached the Marcheses.

"Why are you looking at me like that? Did he not want to come? Is he hurt?" she asked, demanding something from her brothers besides silence. Aramis was paler than normal. His mouth worked but nothing came out.

"He's dead, Milla," I said, confirming what that look in her eye suspected.

She flinched like I had struck her across the face. "No..."

"The Grey Hands killed him like they killed Giles, by order of Felix Firenze."

The breath that rushed from her chest blew a white cloud in the chilly morning air. She drifted slowly to the edge of the ship, blindly feeling for the iron railing for support.

"Felix knew what I did," she whispered. "He knew I screwed them over so he couldn't take my train, and he punished me for it."

"You did the right thing," Aramis said. "If we would have filed that contract like I planned... shit would be much worse right now."

For once, I was grateful for something that came out of his mouth. Milla's fists blanched. She faced away from us, towards the hazy sunrise.

"Was there anyone else?" she asked, voice raw.

"Giles, Jasper, and Sera. Those were the only casualties that day."

Each name sagged her shoulders a little more until I was worried the wind itself would be enough to knock her down. "Come, Milla. Let's get inside before you freeze." I slipped a hand around her thin waist. She was so emaciated from her time in the prison, it felt as if she'd snap in half if I pulled too hard.

"We'll be there in a moment," her eldest brother said, and I was surprised by his tenderness. "Jer and I will go help start up. Once we're on course, we'll come join you."

"Wait!" She reached for him, grabbing her brother by the arm. "Before we leave, I need you to circle the island."

"Milla, we need to leave—"

"Please, Aramis," she implored him. "This is important. Just a quick trip around to make sure we aren't leaving anyone behind."

The Marchese looked at me with a quirked brow, but I shot him a look that ensured he did whatever the hells she asked. Milla finally let him go when he agreed.

With little strength left to resist, she followed my lead to the captain's cabin in the center of the deck. Unlike a classic ship where the sails would take up most of the deck, this boat ran on steam. Dark smoke billowed from the chimneys as the operators below prepared to depart. Aramis kept his staff slim and trustworthy, draining the family bank accounts to keep the men he trained for the ship's operation a wealthy secret.

Most of them were miners from northern towns seeking better opportunities than the dusty work below the mountains. There wasn't much I admired about the Marcheses, but this—that he'd solely developed this ship from the ground up based on old sketches of his father's plans. His love for Milla was spoken in his own unsaid language, through actions that were measurable and scored.

Yet I'd never heard him say the words aloud. Whether incapable or heartless or just stubborn, it was easier to put Aramis into a category and dismiss his silence. It wasn't as easy to dismiss my own.

The cabin was a one-bedroom suite with a bed built into the metal wall and a sitting area across from it. A bathroom door led to the lavatory, but Milla collapsed onto the mattress, pulling the thin coverlet around her body. Soon, the small room was filled with heat from the furnace and dull groans as the ship's engines started us off.

"There should be some clothes for you packed in the locker," I said. "We tried to prepare as much as we could."

"Thank you," she murmured.

Silence stiffened the air between us. It was the first time in months I felt the world stop. "Are you alright, Milla? I know this is a lot to take in at once."

"It's strange." She rolled to her side, facing me "They died months ago, and yet for me, it might as well have happened yesterday. The world has moved on. Life has continued, and yet I'm stuck in the past, forced to navigate this alone."

Joining her on the bed, I laid a hand on the bend of her knee as she tucked into herself. "When I came home, it had been years after my father committed suicide, but it was the first I learned of it. It felt similar to how you just described it, and I was completely isolated in my grief."

A hand slipped from her cocoon and grabbed my own. "How did you move on?"

"I didn't. I was angry for a very long time, Milla. Until I found a reason to be happy again. Once my purpose shifted from revenge to... someone else."

Her icy fingers threaded between mine. "Is this the part where you tell me revenge is never the answer?"

"That would be my uncle's job, and I would hate to take the pleasure from him." Her lips twitched in a smile. I continued, "We'll take our vengeance, princess. No more forgotten names."

"No easy deaths," she repeated my own words back to me.

A knock sounded at the door. Luther announced himself before letting himself in. "Oh, sorry. Didn't know you two were..." He cleared his throat.

"What's wrong?" I asked, reading the discomfort stiffening his movements.

He licked his chapped lips. "We went over the roster like you asked, boss. Everyone is accounted for, except for two."

"What do you mean? How are they not on the books?" If anything, I expected to have more names than bodies, not the other way around.

"We've set aside the two in the engine room for you to question. Did you know there's no holding cells on a steam ship?"

"A design flaw if I ever heard one." I turned to Milla, squeezing her hand. "I need to go check on this. Will you be alright until I get back?"

She frowned, seeming displeased with my plans. "I suppose. Go do your boss things."

I felt even less inclined to leave her, but the situation piqued my interest. "Get some rest. You certainly won't get much when we get home."

"Nico!"

"I was talking about my aunts! They'll never stop fussing over you when we get back. Get your mind out the gutter."

She rolled her golden eyes and smirked. "Liar."

Accurate, but it earned me another smile. Well worth the trouble. I stood and followed Luther out the cabin door.

"It's just going to get worse, isn't it?" he asked. "You two."

I barked a laugh as we descended the steps. "I sure hope so."

He sighed and shook his head. "Next time, I'm sending Gideon to interrupt you."

My hand clapped him on the back. "Wise, cousin."

Smoke filled the engine room,burning my eyes with the heavy haze. Engineers and boilermakers ran from their stations to create more steam under the direction of the watchkeepers, speeding the ship along. A heavy dusting of coal sullied their sweaty chests and faces. The workers ignored us as we wove between pumps, too focused on arduous work to care for the two descendants bound to steaming pipes.

Four of our men surrounded the pair, who seemed displeased to have found themselves in confinement moments after being freed.

"Who the hells are you?" The man spat. One look at him and I could tell he was a thief. Lithe frame, nimble fingers covering the tie of the ropes pinning his arms behind his back. One flick of his wrist and he'd be free. The only thing keeping him there was most likely his curiosity, and I had become an object of interest to him, the way his sharp eyes gave me a once-over.

"He's the man that decides if we toss you overboard, so mind yourself," my cousin said in introduction.

"My name is Nicolai Attano, and I just have a few questions to make sure you aren't dangerous to anyone on board." My name registered nothing obvious in his gaze. But his companion, a woman of similar build and appearance—a sister perhaps—shifted to mumble something in his ear.

"Let's not keep secrets," I said above the hissing sounds of the engine room. Her lips froze to take a long breath. Dark eyes lifted from my boots to my face.

"Did you say Attano?"

"I did."

She turned back to her companion. "What if he is the same one she spoke of? Remember what she shouted at the guard?"

"We can't risk it—"

"What choice do we have, Cal?"

I interrupted their banter. "I have a mentalus I could easily use to search your thoughts. Questioning you is a gesture of goodwill on my part, an effort to be polite, but I will use him if I must." I squatted in front of him. "I'll ask once: Who are you, and why were you sent to Hightower?"

The man fidgeted in his seat on the dirty floor. "My name is Callow. This is my sister, Vesper." He stole a glance at her, and she nodded. "We weren't sent to Hightower exactly. We were part of an expedition and landed on the island thinking it was part of the mainland, and because we are darkthieves, they locked us up since we wouldn't state our business."

"Where is the rest of your crew, then?"

He swallowed. "Dead. They tried to escape, but the Watch took down our ship. Everyone drowned."

"What do you mean expedition?" I asked. "Where did you come from?"

Vesper leaned forward this time. "We're from the Continent," she whispered, keeping her words from traveling outside our conversation. "And we came here for your wife."

The barrel of my gun buried itself in the center of Vesper's forehead. She froze, eyes wide as her companion cursed. My men followed my lead from the succession of guns clicking into place.

"If what happened at the prison wasn't demonstration enough, allow me to be very clear on how I handle people threatening to take my wife from me," I said. "Start clarifying why you want her so much, or I'll forget my manners."

She licked her lips as a tremble struck her jaw. "I didn't mean—I didn't mean we wanted to take her. Giver and Greed ..."

"Then what do you want with her?"

"We need her help!" Callow blurted, his teeth clenched. "We're part of a resistance organization in the southern portion of the Continent. We know about her remnant—" He glanced up at a pair of engineers passing nearby. "And we have come to retrieve her before the Sons of Order find her."

I lowered my gun but kept my finger over the trigger. "How do you know about her remnant?"

"She told us," Vesper said. "We were with her in the tower."

"How do you know it exists at all?" I clarified. Knowing what Milla had wasn't revolutionary. Many knew of her strange remnant after she let it slip to protect us from the Watch. But if what they said was true, they weren't even from the Isle. They must have known some other way.

"Things are..." Vesper dropped her voice once more. "Different where we are from. We know the truth about Chaos."

"The last king is dying on the Continent. Soon," the other darkthief said. "The power over the last kingdom will be up for grabs. Descendants were suffering years ago when we left. Saints know what things are like now. Her power is the only thing the Sons of Order fear, and we came to find Chaos, in hopes of bringing the remnant back and saving our country."

There was still much they weren't sharing, but some of the rancor dispersed between us. A shadow bender was hardly a threat to my remnant, and on a ship coasting the edge of the Isle, they had nowhere to go. When we got to the harbor up north, it would be practical to keep them close by, however.

I stood and motioned for my men to release them. "How do you plan on getting back to the Continent if your ship was destroyed? How did you get across at all?"

"Very carefully," Vesper said, wincing. "It was a terrible trip. Most called it a suicide mission, but we made it after dropping half the cargo and lightening the ship during one of the bad storms. Unfortunately, we have no way back, and have lost all hope of seeing home again."

A smirk formed on my lips. "On my Isle, Darkthief, hope can be manufactured. Come, I'll bring you to see my wife."

"Wait," Callow said. "There's something else you should know, Mr. Attano."

"What?"

He licked his lips. "We had no idea Milla was the one we were looking for. Running into her in the tower was ordained by fate itself. Instead, we were given a contact in the main city. Someone to go to who would know where to find Chaos."

My brows pinched. "What was the name?"

Callow glanced at his companion hesitantly. "Rosa Bianchi."