Page 88 of To Dance with Death

“No,” I breathe before I can think better of it. “The only lesson to be learned is that not everyone is meant to stay in our lives. But you are worth keeping, Anton. Her heart did not have enough room for you, but m—” I cut myself off, my tongue crackling with all the things I cannot relay. “Someone else’s will.”

It already does. It’s so full of him it can hardly beat. But if I told him, it might push him away.

His emerald gaze captures my own the way a pirate might seize a ship, and I find myself lost in the depths of him. He is my anchor, and yet he’s been abandoned time and again. Shoved aside, slandered, used.Murdered.

I will not abandon him.

Slowly, he strides toward me. I expect him to reinforce his stance, to once again make a mockery of what I said.

Instead a subtle curve lifts the corner of his lips. His smirk becomes a glinting, devilish thing, and I pretend my knees do not want to falter beneath me.

“Someone, you say?” he says.

My heartbeat throttles at his nearness.

I wait for him to demand the kiss I owe, but he does not.

Heflicks my nose,then walks away.

I let out a huff as he grabs a tool, tossing it into the air. “Has anyone told you about the planetarium? It’s right around the corner, unless they shut it down.” He slides his gaze toward mine. “Come see?”

But the echoing of voices slides under the door. Anton’s chin whips toward the workshop’s entrance, his hand already curling around mine. “Someone’s coming.”

Before I can think, he’s leading me toward the back. Bypassing the door, he yanks one of the blowpipes leaning against the furnace like a lever, and a portion of the wall pops free—

It’s yet another stairwell wrapped in pale, aged stone, only thisone leads outside. It empties us onto a cluster of rocks at the edge of the palace. Gulls flutter off at our approach, the river mere feet away, scalloping against the juts of stone.

Warm, golden light pours generously across the water, dancing across our skin as the clouds shift and sway. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed the sun. I wish I could rest, curl up in its rays, but Anton takes my hand.

“Shouldn’t there be a guard here?” I say as he leads me down the rocks.

“Look behind you. The door is all but invisible, and only two people know of it. Also, it locks automatically from the inside—meaning we can’t get back in the same way.”

“What now?” I ask, a brisk, warm wind sweeping my curls from my face.

He scans the horizon—the water and the city spread before us. “You said you wanted to see my city, yes?”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The trek along the outer wall of the palace is not easy. I stumble over rocks, clinging to his arm for balance, until we come upon a small market with an inlet hugging a long dock that runs parallel to the water’s edge. Lapping water glows a soft orange underneath the slowly receding sun, and it carries a current of curved wooden boats rimmed in glass that drift lazily along, as if taking a stroll. A few civilians empty from each one, ushered by dockworkers in green velvet vests.

“The city is unusually quiet tonight,” he murmurs.

And indeed, even the patrons who stroll along the docks aren’t lingering, and many of the stalls are closing. I remember Sundar telling me that many of Anton’s loyalists are challenging Gustav’s rule.

Two days until the Syndicate arrives. And Miridran is far from united. It seems the tension is palpable, like the eerie stillness before a squall.

But Anton dispels my unease for the moment, gently guiding my chin toward the boats. “The famous crescents,” he says.

“How do they work?” I can’t help but ask, noticing that there are no rowers inside.

“They are hooked to a track underneath the water that circles the Arts District,” he says.

Indeed, the crescents are spread evenly apart, gliding along in perfect unison down the riverbank, only to disappear underneath an arching bridge as the waterway curves away.

The chime of bells resounds in the air, shattering across the river like a dissonant song. The uniformed dockworkers help a final few from the returning crescents as we near, then tie red ropes across the dock.

“They will board no more people tonight, though the craft will continue to run. Meaning,” Anton says with an arch of his brow, “when they leave, it will be the perfect time to hop in.”