“I won’t.” Sophia shifted, turning so she could brace a hand against the ground, trapping Li Min’s legs between her arm and the rest of Sophia’s body. She leaned forward, studying Li Min’s face as closely as Li Min examined her own. When she spoke again, the words were in that secret language between them, husky and low. The fire popped, devouring itself, and the small sound was enough of a distraction for Li Min to tear her gaze away, turning her head toward the distant city.
“You have been a good…friend,” Sophia said, softly. “Thank you.”
Li Min shook her head, rising out of the other young woman’s grasp. “I am not your friend, n shén, nor will I ever be in the way I want. I cannot be anything but what I am. Take care with your heart.”
“You don’t have to be alone, you know,” Sophia said. “You don’t have to keep making that choice. You talk about wearing the past with honor, but yours hounds you. You let it. You cannot let yourself accept that people would believe you. Help you.”
“You know nothing,” Li Min said, without a hint of anger. It was only frustration that wound itself through her words, an unmistakable ache.
It was a few moments later, as Li Min’s steps came toward him, that they both heard Sophia say, “And you should know, I wouldn’t go anywhere the two of you couldn’t follow.”
THEY WATCHED THE WEALTHIEST OF the city’s remaining gentlemen strutting like peacocks, and the ladies in all of their silk and pearls stepping off carriages and washing up the steps of the brick house before them, as if carried on a wave of high spirits and laughter.
Perched two roofs over, embracing the darkness of a new moon, Nicholas leaned forward as much as he dared, counting the latest batch of officers coming up the street. He might have thought them on patrol with the other regulars he’d seen, save for the inordinate number of decorations they’d lavished on themselves. It was a time of war, but the city had been occupied for months with little trouble, and the high polish of their boots, as if hardly used, seemed to prove that point. Their ceremonial swords caught the glow emanating from the three stories of windows. As the door opened for the guests, time and time again, it gave the effect of the sun rising over the streets.
“I can’t believe the bastard is throwing a ball,” Sophia snarled.
“He has to keep up appearances in this era, if only to maintain his timeline,” Nicholas said. The hollow mouth at the center of his chest widened. It devoured the black mood in which he’d arrived in his natural era, devoured his anger, his pain, and now his heart. There was a freedom in this, too, in relinquishing decorum and manners, and giving himself over to the chill spreading through his veins.
The people on the streets below were going about their merry little evening, untethered by worry or fear. Those who weren’t entering the frivolities were making their way down the street, to one of the theaters putting on a production that evening.
I never took her to a play.
One more thought to feed the hollowness. He could not bear to think of her now, not on the cusp of doing something so vicious. Etta believed so doggedly in the good in him—that he was honorable, a man of merit and esteem. What would she see now, looking down at him? He was unrecognizable even to himself.
Li Min had been still for so long, wrapped in that impenetrably dark cloak of hers, that Nicholas might have forgotten she was there at all if she hadn’t turned to look at him. He was beginning to suspect—and accept—that she was the sort who could measure, swallow, and digest a man and his mettle with a single look. Rather than feeling frustrated or startled by her merciless insight, he was almost relieved by not having to explain himself or attempt to put a name to the storm raging inside of him.
“Do not fight it,” she told him. “It will help you. Anger is simple. Anger will move you, if you find yourself faltering. If you cannot avoid the darkness, you must force yourself through it.”
Li Min held out something in front of him—a dagger, made of what looked like ivory. He took it from her gingerly, examining the dragon’s head carved into its hilt. The curved blade smiled in his palm.
“I’m a better shot,” he told her, trying to give it back.
“You can’t use a flintlock,” she said, pushing it back toward him. “Even with the music, someone is bound to hear.”
Fair point. He accepted the dagger again, testing its weight and the feel of the hilt in his hand. The knife he’d been carrying was dull by most weapons’ standards, and while it had accomplished what he’d demanded of it, a sharpened, well-made blade would make a better tool for…
Assassination. Nicholas rolled his shoulders back.
“Know a little something about this, do you?” he asked.
“After I escaped the darkness, before I was able to secure many types of jobs,” Li Min told him, “I had just one.”
He looked at her again, but her expression was blank.
“He is not a man, Carter, but a beast,” she said. “Do not waste your time on his heart. Slit his throat before he can say a word.”
It wasn’t Nicholas’s first time killing a man—the abhorrent pride in him wanted to inform of her of that. It was, however, his first time killing a man when not in defense of his own life, and that was a difficult thing to reconcile with his soul. Each second that passed seemed to grind him down to his raw, fraught essence. Now and then, he felt bewildered by the notion that he was here again, that it had come to this. This journey had begun here, in this very city, with a choice.