Page 94 of Innocent Until Proven Witch

"You were planning to go alone," he says, and it is not a question.

I say nothing. Finn closes his eyes briefly, and when he opens them again the hurt there nearly undoes me completely. "You were actually going to do it," he says softly, far softer than the accusation deserves.

"Yes," I reply, because he has earned the truth and I am too tired to dress it in anything gentler.

Finn laughs again, that same broken sound, and shakes his head with an expression of such genuine offense that despite everything — the storm, the relic, the weight of what is coming — a small smile pulls at the corner of my mouth against my will and against all logic.

Finn points immediately, his expression entirely serious. "There. That." I gaze at him, baffled, and he continues without wavering. "That smile. That is what I'm doing this for, so do not stand there looking at me like I've lost my mind when I am clearly making a very reasonable point in the middle of a crisis."

I stare at him for a full second. "You have absolutely lost your mind."

"Probably," he agrees, and then the humor fades from his face and something deeper settles in behind it, something that has no business existing in the middle of a storm and that I have been carefully not naming for weeks. He reaches for my hand, his fingers wrapping around mine with a steadiness that feels almost aggressive in the best possible way. "You are not doing this alone," he says.

"Finn — "

"No." There it is, that particular refusal that I have come to recognize as completely immovable regardless of how sound my argument is. He steps close enough that I can hear every word without the wind taking them. "If that relic takes you," he begins, and his voice catches on the last word, just slightly, just enough that the tiny crack of it does more damage than shouting could have. He swallows and continues. "Then I'm going too."

I stare at him. "Absolutely not."

His eyebrows rise with an expression that communicates, very clearly, that he is aware of the hypocrisy and finds it both accurate and completely irrelevant. I open my mouth and close it again. The determination in his eyes is not moving, has not moved, will not move regardless of what I say next, and the argument I was forming dissolves somewhere between my intention and my tongue because the truth is that part of me — the part I have been quieting for months — is relieved, and I cannot make that part small enough to fight him properly.

I squeeze his hand instead, and turn toward the cliffs. Finn steps beside me, his shoulder brushing mine, his hand remaining firmly and deliberately wrapped around my own. The storm continues roaring over Moonhaven. The relic pulses against my senses, ancient and hungry and deeply wrong, waiting beyond the cliffs with the patience of something that has been waiting. I glance at him. He meets my gaze without hesitation, neither of us needs to say anything, because the decision has already been made by forces neither of us was strong enough to argue with. Whatever the relic demands and whatever the storm becomes, we will face it the same way we have faced everything else. Together. And somehow that certainty makes the impossible feel, if not smaller, then at least less lonely than it did a moment ago.

36

FINN

The storm isn't natural anymore. Whatever restraint existed before has dissolved entirely, and in its place is something raw and directed and furious — rain slamming against the town in violent sheets, the sea crashing through streets that were never meant to touch water, lightning tearing across the sky so often that darkness barely has time to return between strikes. People run, shout and pray in same measure, and Moonhaven is falling apart around us with the speed of something that has been holding itself together through sheer stubbornness for too long.

Somewhere inside all of this stands the man responsible.

I push through the flooded streets with Row beside me and Gideon close behind, and trailing after us is a crowd of townspeople that grows with every block — not because anyone has asked them to follow, but because they finally have questions that can no longer wait for a calmer moment. The water rushes around our legs and the storm continues screaming overhead, and then I feel it: not the relic directly, but its influence, the pressure distorting the air around us, the unnatural pull bending the sea beneath the surface. The source cannot be far.

"Finn." Gideon's voice reaches me through the wind, and I glance back to find him already pointing toward the eastern cliffs. A group stands there — council members, merchants, workers gathered by the storm-battered promontory — and at the center of them, utterly still while everything around him moves, stands Aldric.

"There," I say, though the word is hardly necessary.

Row follows my gaze, and the moment he spots Aldric his expression darkens into something that has been building for a long time. "About time," he says, and none of us slow down.

The crowd behind us continues growing as we move — survivors, merchants, fishermen, families who lost something to the storm or to the months preceding it. The destruction may have taken their homes, but it has also taken their excuses, stripped away the comfortable uncertainty that made it easier not to ask the questions they should have been asking all along. Aldric sees us approaching from across the cliffside and does not move, does not run, does not react in any way that suggests alarm. The stillness of it sends a chill down my spine that has relation with the cold. The man looks calm in the specific way of someone who believes he has already won.

We reach the cliffside moments later. Wind tears at our clothes and rain lashes against exposed skin, and the sea roars below with a violence that has long since stopped sounding like weather. Aldric stands near the edge overlooking the water with several council members arranged nervously behind him, their faces tight with the particular discomfort of people who have aligned themselves with something they are only now beginning to properly examine. Aldric smiles when he sees me, and the sight is immediately irritating.

"Finn," he says, with the warmth of a greeting extended to someone expected and welcome.

I stop several paces away. The crowd gathers behind me, watching and listening with the focused quiet of people who understand that something is being decided. I hold up the documents Iris brought — soaked through, the pages soft with rain, but still readable and more importantly still true — and let the silence sit between us for a moment before I speak. "A lot of people died because of you."

Aldric's smile remains unchanged. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Several weeks ago that answer might have been enough. I throw the documents at his feet, the papers scattering across wet stone, and begin listing what they contain with the patience. The missing merchants. The lost shipments. The fishermen who went out and did not come back. The cargo from their vessels that resurfaced under Aldric's control through transfers and intermediaries that are all documented in the papers now lying at his feet.

The smile weakens. Only slightly, only briefly, but enough. The people behind me grow quieter, listening with the concentrated attention of an audience that is beginning to understand the shape of the story being told.

Gideon steps forward, his voice cutting through the storm with the directness of who has no patience remaining for performance. "We verified the records."

Several council members exchange uneasy looks. Aldric remains calm. "Records can be forged," he replies, with the easy confidence of someone accustomed to having that answer be sufficient.

I laugh, and the sound comes out sharper than I mean for it to.