Thief With No Shadow (50 page)

“The curse is broken,” Bastian said.

She halted. “Yes.”

“Thank you.”

Melke stared across the kitchen. The first time she’d crossed this room, she had come to steal. Now Bastian thanked her, when it was
she
who owed the gratitude.

“Don’t thank me,” she said, turning back to face him. Her voice was flat.

Bastian’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Because you’re a wraith? Because it’s all your fault? Because you
deserve
to suffer?”

The words, the contempt in his voice, stung as if he’d slapped her. Her head jerked back.

“I have just been through this with your brother.” His voice was raised, almost a shout. “I thought you had more sense!”

Endal whined. His ears were flat against his skull.

“What do you mean about Hantje?” She spoke through stiff lips.

The fierceness faded from Bastian’s face. He held her gaze for several seconds. Anger no longer sparked in his eyes. “I mean that he doesn’t hate himself any more. He’ll be all right.”

Melke held on to the doorframe to steady herself. Hope was tight in her throat.

Endal pressed against her skirt. He licked her fingers. His tail wagged.

Bastian dug into his pocket. “Here,” he said gruffly. “This is yours.”

Melke blinked. Her stone lay on his palm, tiny and red, precious. With it came memory of autumn bonfires and gingerbread and Tass barking at the swirling leaves. Mam and Da. “Where did you find it?”

She saw him swallow, saw the muscles work in his throat. “I took it.”

Her shock was utter. She stared at him, unable to believe. Not this man, not Bastian. But she saw the truth of his words in his face, saw shame color his cheeks.

“Take it,” he said, his voice rough.

“But...why?”

His eyes slid from hers. “Because I hated you.”

It was foolish to feel a stab of pain at the words. His mercenary’s face had told her he hated her. She didn’t need to hear him say it.

Melke reached to take the stone with trembling fingers. It was warm from his hand. “You didn’t have to give it back,” she said, cupping the stone in her palm. She could smell gingerbread.

Bastian’s eyes met hers. “Yes, I did.”

His shame was gone. Instead, there was something else in his gaze. An intensity. A heat.

Melke clenched her fingers around the pebble. Awareness of Bastian crawled over her skin. It was suddenly difficult to breathe.

I want this man.

She swallowed. “Thank you,” she managed to say, and then she turned and walked fast across the kitchen.

“Melke—”

But she was through the door. Her heart thudded in her chest, fast, and it wasn’t because she was running up the stairs. It was because she was a fool.

Bastian didn’t follow her, didn’t climb the stairs and knock on the closed door. For that, she was thankful.

He had taken her stone and he’d given it back, and she liked him all the more for his honesty and his shame.

She was a fool.

Melke laid the stone on the windowsill. It was absurd to treasure something like this, a common pebble. She touched a fingertip to it. The dead garden lay outside the window, but she didn’t see leafless trees and bare flowerbeds and empty fountains. She saw Hantje running through long autumn grass, shrieking with laughter, and Tass barking at swirls of red-gold leaves. She was standing on top of the hill with Da, watching smoke curl up from the chimneys. She was baking gingerbread with Mam. She was
home.

Movement in the garden made her blink. The memories vanished.

Hantje was there. Not running through grass, shrieking and laughing, but walking with Liana. Her eyes knew instantly that Bastian was correct; Hantje no longer hated himself. It was in the set of his shoulders and tilt of his head, the openness of his face.

She watched, frozen, as Hantje touched Liana’s cheek lightly with his fingertips, as he bent his head and kissed her mouth.

It was a shy kiss, brief and gentle, the kiss of two people newly in love. She saw a blush of joy on Liana’s cheeks, saw wonder in Hantje’s face. His head bent again, his lips brushed her moon-white hair.

Melke turned away from the window, struggling to breathe. Her chest was tight. Hantje would stay at Vere. She knew it as clearly as if he’d told her.

The air in the bedchamber was as thick as water. She couldn’t swallow it, couldn’t breathe. Weight pressed down so heavily that her knees almost buckled.
Aloneness.
She gulped air, dragging it into her lungs. It was good that Hantje had Liana—
it was good
—and she had to get out of this house, she had to get out
now.

Melke went down the stairs blindly, almost stumbling in her haste. She hurried through the kitchen, across the empty yard, away. Dead grass crunched beneath her slippers.

She halted, panting. There was an ache in her ankle where Liana had mended the bone, and an ache in her chest that had nothing to do with her injuries. Hantje would stay and she would go. It was terrifying to think of being alone, almost as terrifying as entering the salamanders’ den.

Alone.

Melke turned towards the sea. She was happy for Hantje.
Happy.
She’d look at the ocean and let the sea-wind blow through her, and then she’d come back and smile when her brother told her his news. She would not let him see how terrified she was.

The track that led to the beach was thin and rutted, no more than half a mile long, but her legs were trembling when she reached the rising sand dunes.

For a moment it didn’t matter that she was alone. Her heart lifted. She smelled the salt-tang of the ocean and heard the whisper of tussock ruffling in the wind, saw waves curling on the white sand and steep cliffs jutting to the east.

Melke sat clumsily on a sloping dune. Tussock pricked through her skirt and gritty grains of sand slid into the leather slippers. She’d walked too far; her legs shook as if she had the palsy. Liana would scold.

Memory came of the girl’s face uplifted to meet Hantje’s kiss, the soft blush, the shy delight.

Melke hugged her shaking knees and stared at the sea. It was what she’d wished for Hantje, a wife and children, a home. An ordinary life.

But I will be alone.

A gull flew high above the water. The first bird she’d seen at Vere. Melke watched as it rode the currents of the wind.

The gull didn’t mind that it was alone.

The white sand and the white feathers and the glare from the clouds brought tears to her eyes. Melke blinked them back, fiercely.

She would go to Thierry and find employment, and she’d become accustomed to being without Hantje, just as she’d become accustomed to being without Mam and Da.

Or...

She watched as the gull swooped low, skimming the waves. Or she could become what she truly was. A wraith.

She had crossed the line inside herself, not once now but twice. She was a wraith, irrevocably, whether she wanted to be or not.

Her eyes were blind. The gull was a pale blur.
I
can be a wraith.
It would be easy. To become unseen, to surrender to her shadow-self, to give in to the shameful, wicked part of her that reveled in her wraithness.

No
. Sight returned, and with it, revulsion rising in her throat. No. Never a wraith, never again.

“I want to be ordinary,” she whispered. But she wasn’t ordinary and never could be. Just as she couldn’t stay here.

A hot tear slid down her cheek. Melke brushed it away. Tears were as futile as self-pity and as useless. She hadn’t asked to be a wraith, but neither had Bastian asked to be born under a curse. He would never be weak enough to pity himself.

Bastian was the reason she couldn’t stay at Vere, even if she was asked.

Melke closed her eyes. There were so many things she wanted, so many things she couldn’t have. But Thierry she could have, and employment, and the chance to see Hantje from time to time. If she could brave the salamanders’ den, she could brave being alone.

Cold wetness against her cheek made her yelp and flinch in terror. “Endal!”

The hound wagged his tail hugely. He licked her chin.

Melke’s heart hammered in her chest. She jerked a glance behind her and saw only dry grass and an empty landscape.

Relief and disappointment were equally sharp. Her heart began to beat more normally. “Come here.” She opened her arms and let Endal clamber onto her lap, warm and heavy.

She hugged the hound to her, close, and pressed her face into his thick fur. Tussock rustled softly in the breeze and waves whispered on the sand. Endal’s breathing was loud. His heart beat faster than hers.

“I’ll miss you, Endal.”

The hound panted happily, a heavy weight on her legs, uncomfortable. His hock dug sharply into her thigh.

Melke inhaled his hound-scent and rubbed her cheek against the soft roughness of his coat. She didn’t want to stop holding him. She sighed and pushed him gently off her lap. “Come, Endal, let’s wet our feet and then go back.”

The hound loped ahead of her as she walked clumsily down the sand dune, his tail pluming in the wind. He was wolf-like, with his long muzzle and pricked ears and pale eyes. Moon-white eyes, she realized. A handsome creature with his black fur, as handsome as his master. And like his master he could growl and show his teeth and wear a savage face. And like his master, his heart was kind.

Endal ran across the beach. Melke followed slowly, leaving the slippers above the line of twigs and leaves and seaweed that marked high tide. The grains of sand were cool beneath her feet, fine and gritty. She tasted salt on her lips and smelled it, clean and fresh.

Endal rushed at the sea, barking, harrying a wave as it retreated. He lost his loud bravado when another wave hissed up the sand. The sight of the hound backing hurriedly up the beach brought a smile to Melke’s lips.

“Don’t you like to get wet?” she asked Endal, as he came to stand beside her. She, gently pulled one of his ears. It was as soft as velvet. “The sea won’t hurt you. Not now. The curse is broken.”

Moon-white eyes glanced up at her. A tongue licked her hand.

“You are a handsome beast,” she told him, stroking one black ear. “A very handsome beast.”
And I am a fool, Endal.

The hound hesitated at the water’s edge while she stepped into the sea, holding the hem of her skirt up. A wave frothed around her ankles, startlingly cool. Endal whined and sidled on the sand, and then he followed her in a rush, splashing water over them both.

The cool seawater dulled the ache in her ankle. Waves swept over her feet and swirled up the beach, foaming. Grains of sand danced in the water.

Melke stood for long minutes, watching the clouds pull back and the sun shine down, watching the sea become blue-green and glittering instead of gray, watching Endal romp through the waves. It was perfect and beautiful, this. A moment, a place.

A glint caught her eye, silver-bright.

Melke bent, holding her skirt up. Water, sand and...a coin.

She straightened and turned the coin over in her fingers, thick and silver. Cold. Wet. Should she keep it, having found it?

Water swirled around her ankles and sea-spray was salty on her lips. She remembered candlelight and Liana’s soft voice.
He threw the sal Vere fortune into the sea, all of it, until there was nothing left.

The coin belonged to Bastian, as surely as the grains of sand on the beach did.

Melke closed her fingers around the coin. A wraith would keep it for herself.

“I am no wraith,” she whispered, and the breeze took the words from her lips, lifting them, scattering them, tossing them high over the tussock and the sand dunes.
I am no wraith.

Melke opened her fingers. The coin twisted as it fell, spinning, glinting. There was a tiny splash as the water swallowed it.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO