Rise of the Arcane Fire (The Secret Order) (6 page)

Oliver paused. “He’s a good lad.”

“We’ll be able to help each other, as always.” I clung to the thought as Oliver led me through the crowded hall, back down the stairs, and out into the courtyard I’d noticed through the window earlier. At least I wouldn’t be alone. Several Amusementists were standing on a ramp that led down below the courtyard to an alcove beneath the ground. I could hear the clatter of hooves and carriage wheels echoing out of the pit. Curious, I craned my neck to get a better look.

It seemed to be an underground bay where the carriages were lined up to take all the men home.

Clouds darkened the sky overhead, and I thought I felt a drop of rain against my cheek.

Will came up from the ramp with his jaw clenched, and walked straight toward us with hurried strides. “It leaves tonight,” he said to Oliver.

“What’s this?” I asked, puzzled. Will looked solemn. I brushed my curiosity away. They were probably just speaking about Oliver’s business dealings.

“Very well.” Oliver handed my arm over to Will. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed. I have some business with Victor here in town. Meg, when you are ready, my carriage is waiting below to take you home.” He nodded to me, then clapped his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Do what you must.”

I didn’t like the sinking feeling that accompanied his words, but I tried to convince myself they were trivial. Will’s job was to inform Oliver of comings and goings.

“Will?” I turned to him. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. That’s when I knew for certain something was amiss. “Will, what is going on?”

“Come with me,” he insisted.

“Not until you tell me what has you so troubled.” My voice rose, and the group of men closest to us paused their conversation and turned.

Heat rose in my cheeks, and I grabbed my skirts as Will led me across the courtyard to what used to be an old shrine set into a rounded alcove in the wall. At some point the Amusementists had decided to convert it into an aviary of sorts. They’d built a gilded cage that had now tarnished. The bars came out from the inlet, forming an aviary with brass vines and leaves growing over and through it.

Mechanical birds perched throughout the vines and bars of the cage. Old and rusting, they waited lifelessly in the dim light.

I let out a breath and put a hand on Will’s arm. I was being unfair. If he needed to speak, I should listen. I gave him a reassuring squeeze. “I know this is all overwhelming. I’m frightened too,” I offered. He had to be as nervous about the apprenticeship as I was, perhaps more so. He had only just learned to read and write, but he had picked it up quickly. His mind was as keen as any I had known. “The apprenticeship will be difficult, but together we can help—”

“I’m not going to be an apprentice.” He squared his shoulders and looked me in the eye. “I’ve decided to join the Foundry.”

“
WHAT?
”
MY BREATH CAUGHT IN
my throat. He didn’t need to go. His nomination had been seconded. This had to be a mistake.

Chills ran up and down my arms and legs, turning them numb.

Will had a fixed and determined look on his face, as if he were bracing for a fight. “I’m going to the Foundry, Meg.” He reached out to take my hands, but I yanked them away. My face was on fire and my pulse turned heavy, pushing my heated blood at a furious pace.

“Don’t touch me.” I turned from him, unable to form any more words than that. He wanted to leave for Scotland. It might as well have been the moon. I’d never see him.

“Please listen to me.” He reached out again, taking my arm.

I stiffened, pulling against his grip. “You’ve said your piece.”

He drew me closer, keeping his grip firm. “No, I haven’t.”

I wrenched my arm away and took a step back. “I’m not one of your horses. You can’t lead me around.”

He paced toward the mechanical aviary and back, like a caged lion.

I watched him, keeping my fists clenched. My fingernails stung as they dug into my palms. He wasn’t thinking. Leaving made little sense. Everything we were building together was here in London. “How are we to have a future if you are in Scotland?”

He stopped and splayed his arms out in a flash of indignation. “I’m trying to build our future.” His hands shook as he said it.

No, he wasn’t. He was trying to leave me. He was trying to run just when we were on the verge of everything we had dreamed of.

“Then accept the apprenticeship.” I tried to sound reasonable, but my words snapped out. Anger twisted my thoughts until even I couldn’t comprehend them. Words—dangerous, vile words—lingered on the back of my tongue. I needed to be civil, but fighting the impulse to spout all the horrible curses in my head took effort.

For all the distasteful thoughts forming in my mind, they didn’t compare to the sharp pain beginning to slice through my heart. Will had walked away before. He had always come to his senses and returned to me. This time would be no different. We needed one another. “You must stay here in London.”

“I can’t.” His voice cracked. He took a breath and raked his hands through his hair, then met my gaze. I could see the torment in his furrowed brow. “I don’t belong here, Meg. I don’t belong anywhere. That’s the problem.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Will was always the practical one. I waved his doubt off with a flip of my hand.

He looked up at me with such heartbreak in his gaze. “It’s the truth.”

Truth? The only truth that would come to pass is that the whole of the British Isles would stand between us. “I know you’re worried about the studies, but I’ll help—”

“We both know it wouldn’t be enough.” He hung his head. “I don’t want you to have to do everything for me because I can barely manage to read.”

“You read fine!” He might have been a bit slow, but there was hardly anything he couldn’t sound out, and his vocabulary was growing.

“And my writing? What of my figures?” He counted off his perceived scholarly failings on his fingers as if to make a point.

“You can learn.” I gripped his hand and held on. “I know you, Will. You can do anything you put your mind to.”

“You are the one who is good with your mind.” He pulled his hand from mine and turned to lean on the framework of the aviary. He looked at his palms. “I’m good with my hands. I don’t want to live my life studying and drawing out ideas. I want to make things. I want to fit them together and see them work. You’re the dreamer, Meg, not me. When Oliver asked me if I wanted to be an Amusementist, I said yes because I just wanted to be
something
. But now that MacTavish has made his offer . . .”

“To be an ironworker? That’s not what you are, Will.”

“What am I, then?” He sighed. He looked so lost. “A gypsy, a filthy tinker, a bloody Scot, an orphan beggar. It wasn’t that long ago that even being in my presence would have earned you a trip to the gallows.”

I felt tears gathering as my heart broke for him. He was none of those things to me. He was my Will, my heart, and he was good. Everything about him was good. “Will, you can’t believe—”

He met my gaze. “I need this.”

“I’m sure Oliver would—”

“Oliver has done enough!” Will shouted. I took a step back in shock at his sudden change in demeanor.

He let out a heavy breath. “You
never
listen. I will not live on the good grace of others anymore. Not from charity and not from pity. I have to find my way. My own way.” He looked away and his voice turned soft as he said his piece, but it was no less determined. “I can’t do that here.”

All the words swimming in my head faded down to just one.
No.
Over and over it echoed in my mind, bringing with it a ripping and tearing pain. It started in my heart, but then it encompassed all of me in relentless waves. The pain was so acute, I felt I would be sick. The words he had left unsaid lingered between us.

I can’t do that with you.

I fought my tears as my throat closed around my words. “Don’t you still love me?”

Will looked back to me, and the stoic expression on his face broke. He looked as heartbroken and shocked as I felt. I had to look away as he approached and gathered my hand in his. He kissed the back of it, the way he always had.

My fingers suddenly felt so cold. His warm breath shook as it caressed me. One of his hot tears fell onto the back of my hand, and slowly trailed over my skin before it fell to the ground. “I love you with everything I am.” He swallowed, then pressed my hand to his heart. “I just want to deserve you.”

“You do.” I felt my own tears slide down my cheeks.

He looked me in the eyes, and the pain receded, washed away by the tide of love I felt for him. “Then marry me,” he said.

I felt as if he’d just scooped me up and pitched me over a cliff. I pulled my hand from his and took a step back to regain my balance. I still felt as if I were falling. “I beg your pardon?”

He dropped to his knee. “Marry me. Come away with me to Scotland. We can start a new life in the Highlands, away from bombs and murder, just the two of us. We’ll make our own home. A place that is just ours. Say you’ll be my wife.”

I blinked in shock. For a moment elation flitted through me.

His wife?

In the briefest of moments that seemed to last twenty lifetimes, I pictured us living in a little cottage in a village near Inverness. Will would come through the door while I kneaded the dough for the bread and a shaggy dog snored by the fire. Will would sweep me up in his arms and kiss me until we both succumbed to laughter.

But the vision fell dark around the edges. There was an emptiness surrounding our little world, a terrible void that turned the joy that had come from my thoughts into panic.

The chill of it poured through my blood.

My legs shook as I looked down on Will, his eyes imploring me not to break his heart.

I wanted to say yes. I wanted to scream it and leap into his arms, but I couldn’t move. It was all so terribly wrong.

“I can’t,” I whispered, unable to say anything more.

His gaze fell to the hem of my skirt. We remained there, silent, with Will kneeling like a knight before the queen. He was a good man, strong and loyal. I loved him, and yet I couldn’t say yes. Will rose much like Atlas carrying the weight of the world.

“You can. You just won’t.” He wouldn’t look up.

“That’s unfair.” I cast my eyes to the worn stone beneath my feet. A scraggly weed had pushed up in a crack, trying valiantly to grow in a place where it oughtn’t.

“Is it?” He touched my face, bringing my gaze to his. I’d never seen him so confused, or possibly frightened.

“I’m not the one leaving,” I protested, throwing my hand back toward the underground carriage bay.

Will’s expression turned cold. “I’m trying to give you a home where I can provide for you and protect you.” He took a step toward me, trampling on the weed.

“You don’t want to marry me. You want to keep me.” I tilted my chin so I could look him in the eye.

He threw his arms out in exasperation. “Isn’t that what a husband does?”

His words felt like a blow. I turned from him, because I couldn’t stand the pain of it, or the horrible ill feeling that had gripped my middle. He didn’t understand. He didn’t understand at all.

“I can’t give this up.” I had to be reasonable. Reason and logic would win the day. We’d both do better with him here. We could both have what we wanted. If we traveled to Scotland, he would become something, and I would sit at home, as was expected of me. I couldn’t stand it. “I’ve already accepted my nomination.”

“And it will destroy us.” He paused, as if he couldn’t bring himself to say what he was thinking. Finally the words came, softly, so softly. “There’s a greatness in you. It’s a part of the reason I love you, but I fear that greatness will take you from me. Our love would be like tying a bird to a stone.”

I glanced back at the aviary and the mechanical birds that had become so neglected that they had rusted. They perched still and quiet, diminished from what they could be. “If I don’t take this chance, it will crush me.”

“What would happen should you fail? You heard them in there.” He waved toward the hall. “Those men have no intention of allowing you to succeed. They will wear you down, and they’ll humiliate you . . .”

Yes, it was going to be a challenge. Of course I knew it would be difficult. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that it was impossible or that I would fail. I had no room for such doubts. That’s when it struck me.

I looked at him in disbelief. “You don’t believe I can do it, do you?” I took a long breath to try to steady my heart. The pain returned, the crushing pressure. My head and heart ached in a way they never had before.

“Of course I do.”

I shook my head. “No, you don’t. Or you wouldn’t say such things.”

“You don’t owe them your life.” He reached out and twisted a leaf off the aviary with a snap. He dropped it. The leaf clanged against the stone, and the sound echoed off the walls. I looked around and for the first time noticed that the courtyard was empty.

“I owe it to myself to try.” I touched the key hanging from the chain around my neck. “I want to be an Amusementist.”

He gripped the cage so tightly, his knuckles turned white. “Do you love me, Meg?” he whispered.

“Of course I do.” I answered quickly, but not tenderly. He flinched. I paused, wanting to say something more, but I didn’t know what to say that could make this right.

His hair hung in his eyes as he stared at the hard stone beneath our feet. His shoulders rose, then fell. “It’s not enough, is it?”

Once, he had claimed that love alone was not enough to feed us. At the time I’d thought our love was more powerful than anything. Now I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t answer.

“Well,” he said, his voice resigned. “I suppose love can’t help us, then.” He kept his eyes downcast, focused on the ground just before his feet as he straightened his coat and turned away.

I panicked, reaching for him and catching his sleeve. “Will?” My voice didn’t sound my own. It sounded as broken as my heart. I clung to him and he turned back to me. “Please don’t say goodbye.”