Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment, #2)(118)

He kissed her brow. Attie rapidly blinked back tears.

Tobias stepped forward next to embrace her. She rose on her toes to whisper something in his ear, and he listened, his fingers splayed over her back. Whatever the words were, he relinquished her, but his eyes burned through the shadows, following her as Attie took her first step down.

“Return to me, Thea Attwood,” he said.

Attie spun to look back at him. “In case you didn’t know, I have nine lives too, Tobias Bexley.”

That drew a small smile from him, but it faded as Attie took another step down into the musty under realm. Tobias flinched, like he wanted to follow her into the darkness.

Iris could hardly breathe as she reached for the door handle. “I’ll bring her back safely,” she promised.

“We’ll be waiting here for you both,” Mr. Attwood said, setting his hand on Tobias’s shoulder.

It took everything within Iris to close the door, to watch the light fade with the motion. But she did, sealing off one realm for another. She slipped the key into the hole and locked the door behind herself and Attie.





{49}

The Weight of Fifty Wings




Tobias stared at the lavatory door, his heart pounding as Iris turned the lock from within. He took two deep breaths before reaching for the knob, unable to help himself.

He opened the door to see it was just the lavatory. Black-and-white-tiled floor, a commode, a sink with a speckled mirror, floral wallpaper.

Attie and Iris were gone. Vanished, as if they had never been.

“Let’s return to the table,” said Mr. Attwood.

Tobias nodded, despite the fact that he could have stood there for hours and stared at this door, waiting for them to return. He would wait for however long it took, even if the walls collapsed.

But he couldn’t forget the words Attie had whispered in his ear, just before she had left.

Please watch over my family while I’m gone.

He walked with her father to the booth, where his parents were speaking with Mrs. Attwood. Attie’s siblings were huddled close together, the sweetness of the lemonade and cake long since forgotten as another bomb dropped, splitting the air like thunder.

Tobias sat on the bench beside Garrett, one of the twins. The boy’s eyes were wide with fear, his shoulders hunched. Another bomb dropped, closer this time. The dishes rattled; the paintings shivered on the walls. In the kitchen, it sounded like a stack of plates had overturned and shattered.

Tobias reached into the small leather pack he had brought with him from home. His mum had thought he was going to take his trophies, his ribbons. All the objects that embodied his success on the racetrack. But he had reached for his old car collection. His wooden toys from childhood.

He set one on the table and nudged it to Henry. Then one to Ainsley. Hilary. Laven. And last, to Garrett at his side.

“I used to race these all the time when I was your age,” he told them.

Another bomb fell. The ground shuddered and Ainsley cried out, but she clutched the wooden car to her chest.

“Which one of you thinks they can beat me?” Tobias asked.

“I can!” Garrett was swift to reply.

“No, me!” Laven insisted.

As the siblings began to talk about who thought they could win, admiring the different details of their assigned cars, Tobias glanced up and met his mother’s gaze. There was a smile on her face, a glimmer of tears in her eyes. He had never seen her wear such an expression, and he had to distract himself before the emotion snared him.

“All right,” he said, setting the last car on the table. “Let’s race.”



* * *



Helena sat at her desk in the Inkridden Tribune, smoking her ninth cigarette of the day. Her feet were propped up beside her typewriter, whiskey sparkled in a glass by her elbow, and she was gazing up at the ceiling tiles when the bombs began to drop.

She was alone in the office, but that was how she wanted it to be.

She drew in air, the scent of the Tribune. She breathed out smoke.

The bombs shook the earth and split the afternoon, one after the next after the next. Cracks crept across the ceiling. Dust rained down in streams. The pipes groaned and the electricity finally flickered off.

Helena let her feet drop to the floor. She drank a sip of whiskey and reached for the paper on her desk, feeding it into the typewriter.

It was so dark she could hardly see, but a stream of sunshine still found its way through the small window in the wall behind her. The light spilled across her desk, cut through the paper like a fiery blade.

She hadn’t written for herself in a very long time.

And as Oath crumbled around her, she did the only thing she could manage.

She lit another cigarette, and she began to type.



* * *



Marisol stood beside Keegan on the hill, gazing at Oath in the distance.

They had marched the army kilometers back to take shelter in a valley, and a breeze was blowing from the west. The sun was at its zenith, and Marisol shielded her eyes, watching the eithrals swoop through clouds and glide between the skyscrapers, their wings iridescent in the light as they dropped the bombs.

Marisol had counted twenty-five eithrals. The most she had ever beheld at one time.

Smoke and dust soon rose, making it hard to see as the southern half of Oath began to collapse.