Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(126)

He watched the corners of her lips tug up before walking out the door, his heart light in his chest.

They’d spent nearly a week that way. On most days, he’d ended up falling asleep in a chair at her bedside when they’d both gotten too tired to speak. Once or twice he’d woken to Luka poking him and waggling his eyebrows suggestively. She’d even drawn a sketch of the horned tattoo he’d seen at the prison so that he would have a picture to reference. He would become king, he’d accepted that, but that did not mean he would give up on finding out the truth behind Dez’s death.

On the fifth morning, after a breakfast of eggs, avocado wedges sprinkled with sea salt, thick-cut slices of fried salami, and mangú, Finn drummed her fingers on her empty plate before admitting, “I stole something else when I was here to thieve the cloak.”

Alfie snorted. “Obviously.”

“I mean something besides pesos.” She fished something small out of her pocket. In her palm sat the fox figurine that Dez had carved. Alfie’s heart clenched at the sight of it. He remembered asking Dez why he’d carved a fox. Especially since foxes tended to be mischievous characters in the fables and myths they’d been raised on.

“Everyone needs a troublemaker in their life,” Dez had said with a wink.

Alfie’s eyes drifted from the deftly carved fox to Finn’s face. He hadn’t really understood what Dez had meant by that until now.

“Keep it,” Alfie said, his throat burning. “It suits you, and Dez would have liked you.” He couldn’t help but smile at that. Dez would’ve laughed until his sides ached at Finn’s crackling wit and brusque attitude. “I don’t think he’d mind you having it.”

Finn pocketed the fox once more. She could’ve said something pitying, like she was “sorry for his loss” or another one of those neatly wrapped, sad little phrases that rang hollow in his ears. Instead she smirked up at him, her eyes alight.

“Of course he would’ve liked me. I’m a maldito delight.”

On the sixth morning, Alfie carried a tray of breakfast to her room only to find the bed messy as ever, but empty.

She’d left without saying goodbye.

A note was left on her pillow that said she had to “get her affairs in order,” which Alfie took to mean that she was on her way out of the city and maybe Castallan entirely. Out of his life. The note had also told him to meet her in the Pinch one last time. Now that note sat in his pocket heavy as a stone as he and Luka waited for her to appear.

“You look like you’re about to turn into a rain cloud,” Luka said while munching on freshly buttered corn on the cob sprinkled with cheese and chili flakes.

“I’m just thinking,” Alfie said.

“I wonder about what . . . Or who?” Luka said, his voice meandering playfully. Alfie shot him a quelling look, but Luka only laughed. “You know, you’ve got to admit. Fate was really at work when it came to you two.”

“Luka—”

“It’s like those old, epic love stories. Good versus evil and a bickering pair that end up falli—”

“Luka,” Alfie snapped.

Luka raised his hands in surrender, his corn cob leaning crooked. “All I mean to say is that the gods seem to have been conspiring to put you two in the same room.”

“And in the end you nearly had to die for it to happen.”

Luka made a face at Alfie that said, Must you make everything so dreary?

Alfie shot him a look that said, Yes.

Luka glanced over Alfie’s shoulder, a smile curving his lips. “Better make it count, then. My life is worth quite a lot, maybe even a goodbye kiss or two.”

He inclined his head over Alfie’s shoulder. Alfie turned to see Finn approaching them. A hood was drawn over her face, but he knew her by her walk, by how she slipped through the crowd like water. When Alfie turned back, Luka was gone. He was already speeding away into the crowd, giving Alfie two boisterous thumbs-up.

Finn came to a stop before him and because neither could think of what to say, she simply walked past him. He followed.

“You left before I could give you your chest of gold,” Alfie said, breaking the silence. “I never took you as the type to forget a payment.”

“I didn’t,” Finn said, her lips curving into a smirk. “I stopped by the vault on my way out. We’re square. For now.”

Alfie’s brows rose and a surprised chuckle rumbled in his chest, as if he was chiding himself for not guessing as much.

“You could’ve said goodbye.” His voice was softer now. “Instead of disappearing—”

“Like a thief in the night,” Finn supplied with a mischievous grin.

Alfie only looked at her then, the hurt in his gold eyes making her joke feel almost cruel.

She shrugged and looked anywhere but his face, a string of guilt pulling tight within her. “I felt like a house cat in there; I had to get out. It’s not as if I up and left the city.”

“Yet,” he said. The word sat heavy between them.

“Yet.” She nodded.

She wasn’t exactly lying to him, but not quite telling the truth either. On her fifth night in the palace she’d been thinking about when to leave when a loud knock rapped at her door. She knew it wasn’t Alfie. His knocks were quiet, hesitant, thoughtful, as if worried she might be asleep regardless of the time. Annoyed at herself for being able to distinguish his knocks, Finn had barked, “Enter if you must.”