Chapter Forty-Two

We were laying in his bed, my body curled against his, warm and muscular, a little flushed. Our clothes lay discarded on the floor, worn in, then stripped off, a flurry of hands and fever and teeth. Now, his thumb traced lazy circles over my ribs. Our legs tangled through the sheets.

“Tell me something,” I said.

“You are amazing, and I would absolutely do it again,” he murmured, half-asleep. Smoky tendrils came off him, threading through my hair.

“Not about that. Why do you cut out hearts?”

“Why do we cut out hearts…” His knuckles grazed my breast. The scent of him, smoke and wool, threatened to sweep me under. “Burial rites. It’s a way of showing the deceased you respect them.”

“All Volds do that?”

His hand curled around my hip, and he pulled me closer, burying his face in my hair. The tendrils came in tight. “Why are we talking about this now ?”

I twisted to face him. “All Volds?”

He was more awake than I’d thought, content as a cat warmed by the fire. He shrugged. “The decent ones.”

“Always?”

“I don’t know, Isabel. Do your people always write goodbyes and burn them on the pyre?”

I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling.

That was the thing. It didn’t make sense.

Overhead, stars twinkled. Not real ones, but stars made from reykr, whorls of light that blew out the ceiling, brilliant and bottomless, a timber of porcelain and pearl and the palest blue. The constellation of the fishermen shone the brightest. Erik had been calling it Fiski, but I’d recognized it as something else.

Aalto’s star.

“Now it’s your turn to tell me something,” he said.

“It is?”

His thumb skimmed the arch of my waist, and he drew a star around the knot of scar tissue at my hip. “Will you tell me who hurt you?”

“I…” How did I tell Erik about the hurt, the pain?

If he knows, he won’t want you.

You’re broken.

Ruined.

No one wants a damaged thing.

I pushed myself to sit. “I wanted to make him come back.”

He pushed himself up, too, the sheet slipping off his bare torso. The smoky tendrils fell away. “Who?”

“My father. He was gone and he wasn’t coming back, and I thought maybe—”

Thirteen years old and I wanted to make him hurt the way I hurt. The door in my face, the babies on his hip. I wanted to see him vomit and cry and howl.

So, I heated the tallow wax, tipped the pot over my stomach, and listened as it sizzled and scalded, the skin going up in a braid of steam.

Then I waited. Waited by the window, blisters bubbling.

I wanted him to scold me, to hold me, to scream. I wanted him back, and why, why wouldn’t he come back? Couldn’t he see what he’d done to us, to me?

The groan of wind. The clot of blood. A piece of goose down dragged across the floor.

A day passed, then another, waiting and waiting, until they all swept together, a handful of cards.

“He never came,” I told Erik.

Then I wanted the sores gone, wanted to scrub them off, scrape them clean. I wanted to peel them away like an onion and to step back into the world, shiny and perfect and new.

An embarrassment , said the tailor’s wife.

Attention seeking , said the salt maker.

My father knew. Everyone knew. The whole damn town knew. Still, I waited and waited and waited.

The sores darkened, then scabbed, a smattering of deep and copper brown that splotched my skin like mud.

Should know better , they said.

Delusional .

Thirteen years old, and applying marigold and black tea, a paste of egg yolks to make it go away. Thirteen years old, and everything so thick, the scabs shimmered. Bandages boiled, the corners pressed. Salves lined up on the shelves, calendula and chamomile, yarrow and yellow dock.

See? I healed myself. See? I don’t need you after all. See? I’m better off alone. Go back to your babies and your beach. Go back to taking care of everyone but me. Go back, go back, come back.

I gritted my teeth and twisted so Erik could see my left side, my right arm. The scars and everything else. Every hurt, every heartache written on my body.

You’re ruining this, said the sharp-set thing inside me.

You ruin everything, said the barbs.

Just like you ruined yourself.

“It wasn’t just that one time with the tallow wax,” I continued. “I also did it with hot coals and hot soup, a slice of firewood.” I touched a mark so big and jagged.

My mother had sat by the hearth, a shell of herself, while I scabbed and scarred. Fourteen, now fifteen, and I wasn’t doing it for my father—I was doing it for myself, doing it because I liked pain, because I deserved pain.

Hans had asked about them once, had brushed his thumb over the blister fluid bleeding through the arm of my sweater. “You’re not still—”

“Of course not,” I’d said and laughed it off as a smudge of plant sap because Hans was good— too good —for my hide of scars. He shouldn’t have to know.

He found out, anyway.

When he did, he came to my house every day and held me as I cried and scratched and tried to stop because by then, I wanted to stop. I did, but I couldn’t, and I was a mess and maybe showing Erik had been a mistake because he wasn’t saying anything, just sitting there, watching, listening, and the way he was looking at me right now…

My face burned. “I’m sorry,” I said, yanking the blanket against my chest and reaching for my sweater. “They’re horrible, I know.”

“They’re not,” he replied, and the declaration was so fervent, I stilled.

He cupped my cheek and brought my eyes to meet his. “All I see, Isabel, is you.”

He pressed his mouth to mine, hot and hungry. The sweater slipped from my fingers.

We took each other again.

I woke tangled in him—his smell on my skin, his taste on my lips, all smoke and honey and something else, something wild. There was a sweetness in the way his hand rested on my waist, in the way his foot tucked around my ankle, and I wanted to stay like that forever, cheek on chest, listening to the rise and fall of his breath, to the steady thrum of his heart.

It had taken some time to ease myself away.

He’d stirred once. Only once.

And maybe I should have stayed tucked next to him until he woke, but the words from our conversation last night swirled round and round my head and something…something didn’t seem right.

I’d watched Signey cut out the bandits’ hearts, and then she and Erik had done it again right after Lothgar died. Volgaard had a history of cutting out the hearts of merchants and sending them back to us. So that made sense.

But Hans didn’t have his heart cut out, and neither did the minister. They stuck a letter opener in his eye, Stefan had written. Cut off a hand and shoved it in his mouth. The murder was so similar to the ambassador killed by Volgaard.

But the minister had lost a hand.

A hand, not a heart.

All Volds do that?

The way Erik watched me, careful in the steely dark. The decent ones.

Now, in the dim light of his tent, I flipped open Hans’s letter box, searched through correspondence, through scraps of paper left behind.

I’d assumed the Volds killed Hans because he’d been the messenger between the Sanokes and Larland, but…maybe that wasn’t right. If the Volds cut out hearts—if they always cut out hearts—then they hadn’t killed him. And if they hadn’t killed him, who had?

The fact of the matter was, Hans had tried to show me something before he died. He’d stood in the apothecary doorway and fingered that paper with so much reserve. Maybe it hadn’t been the letters from Larland, but then what was it? Where was it?

So back to the box of letters, the one marked with HH. I skimmed through the contents, pages torn from notebooks, card stock with dried rose petals, bookmarks with ribbons sewn through the top, and letters, so many letters, from Hjern, from home.

I picked up the journal, leather worn and supple, flipped it open, skimmed the contents, a catalogue of his days. Nothing important, nothing needed.

I went to shut it when a paper tumbled out. It sat there, bright like a lily and brittle with water. It smelled like him—not pigeon, exactly, but cotton and charcoal and something clean and crisp like rain.

Had this been what he’d been trying to tell me?

I peeled it open, the corners clinging to each other like an embrace.

Isy,

What I meant to say

I want

A confession. The whole damn thing.

Suddenly, we were back in the apothecary, just the two of us, Hans leaning against the door, his faded sea foam jacket rolled to his elbows, dark curls matted from the rain.

You’re not with your pigeons, I’d said. A stupid thing to say.

What I meant to say

I want

Tears burned my vision. Hans hadn’t been holding some great secret. He’d been trying to tell me this.

This was no secret, either, no surprise. I’d known he loved me the day he chased after the coach barefoot.

Still, I should have felt relief.

Instead, I felt a prickling sadness, the type that cracks you open and eats you raw.

What I meant to say

I want

I shoved the letter into my skirt pocket and hauled a bucket of water to the copper tub, stripped naked and scrubbed. Scrubbed away the salt, the memories, scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until my fingers were red and raw, so shiny with soap, they hurt.

Hans hadn’t come to warn me about Larland’s letters. He hadn’t come to tell me about the weapon. His death wasn’t my fault, and there was nothing— nothing —I could have done.

I should have been happy. Be happy. Be happy.

I placed my face on my knees. Cold air caught my arms and my hair hung wet down my back. In the bed, Erik slept, a hand tucked under his cheek, and I wouldn’t cry.

Don’t cry.

Don’t—

I remembered the soft skim of Erik’s fingertips, the steady thrum of his heart. Could Hans and I have had something like that if I hadn’t pushed him away?

Everyone wants something. And there was Hans in the doorway, every hope and dream and want laid bare.

What do you want?