AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She was interrupted by commotion from the door—raised voices and heavy boots. She turned fast, half anticipating guards. Or—worse—Nick. Had he changed his mind? Had he started an attack?
But it wasn’t Nick. Tom was marching a blindfolded boy into the room. The boy’s hands were cuffed behind his back. His blond hair glowed even in the dim light.
Joan’s heart clenched.
Aaron.
She pushed herself to her feet. As she did, a man with white-blond hair rose from a nearby table. He was dressed for the 1890s—although not for the docks—in a slim frock coat and an embroidered silk vest. He made his way over to the front door, smoothing down his coat with a finicky elegance that reminded Joan of Aaron.
Tom pulled Aaron out of the man’s way, clearing the door for him. But to Joan’s shock, that elegant man didn’t reach for the door. Instead, he grabbed Aaron’s neck and shoved him into the wall. Aaron’s head thudded back with a sickening thump.
Joan pushed away from the table, scrambling to get to them.
‘What’s this fucking traitor doing here?’ the man said. He shoved Aaron again. ‘You know I could kill you?’ he said to him. ‘It would be so easy. I’d just have to touch your neck.’ He slid his hand from Aaron’s throat to the back of his neck.
‘Hey!’ Joan reached them, using her momentum to push the man away. He stumbled back, hands slipping away from Aaron. ‘What are you doing?’ Joan demanded.
‘Joan,’ Tom murmured. ‘Best stay out of this.’
‘What?’ Joan said incredulously. Who was this guy? He’d just threatened to kill Aaron. He’d had his hands on Aaron’s neck.
Aaron’s shoulders were rising and falling in quick, panicked breaths. His head turned from side to side as he tried to make out what was going on around the edges of his blindfold. His blond hair was in disarray and his jacket was rumpled. Joan’s heart twisted. The last time she’d seen him that scared, one of Nick’s men had had a knife raised against him.
Joan rounded on the man who’d grabbed him. He was about thirty years old, paler than Aaron. His frock coat wasn’t quite right for the era, Joan saw now. On the pocket, there was silver embroidery: the silhouette of a caged bird. Joan suppressed a shiver. Nightingales take, the children’s chant went. All monsters could steal life from humans, but the Nightingales could steal life from monsters too. They were the most feared of the families.
The Nightingales hate Aaron, Tom had said back in Covent Garden.
‘Sebastien,’ Tom said to the Nightingale. The pronunciation was French. ‘We need him. We need to question him.’
Sebastien seemed to calm slightly. ‘Do you need help with that? Aaron never could handle pain. If you need someone to inflict it, any Nightingale will volunteer.’
Joan didn’t know what the Nightingales had against Aaron, and she didn’t care. ‘That’s not how we’re doing it.’
‘No … I suppose a Griffith would be more efficient,’ Sebastien said with regret.
Aaron was still breathing fast. Joan wanted to tell him everything was going to be okay. She’d make sure it was okay. She’d never let anything happen to him. But if she tried to reassure him, he’d push her away. He’d never believe that he had someone on his side here.
She saw with a start then that they had an audience. People were watching them—people on the mezzanine, people on the warehouse floor, Ruth and Jamie. ‘Come on,’ Joan said to Tom. ‘Let’s get him out of here. We don’t need to make a spectacle of him.’ She took Aaron’s arm. ‘He hasn’t actually done anything wrong, okay?’ she added to Sebastien, to the people watching. Aaron had come after Joan, but it had been at the order of a member of the Curia Monstrorum. He couldn’t have said no, even if he’d wanted to.
‘Hasn’t done anything wrong?’ Sebastien said, eyebrows rising. ‘Is that what you think?’
‘Get out of the way!’ Joan said. When Sebastien didn’t move, she added, frustrated, ‘I’m the one he captured! And yeah, that’s what I think!’
‘He has such a pretty face,’ Sebastien said. ‘Makes you want to like him, I know. But we Nightingales know the ugly truth behind that face. We know what he is.’
Aaron lifted his head in his best attempt at his usual haughty posture. ‘No need to make it a cliffhanger, Bastien.’ Under Joan’s hand, his arm felt very stiff, like he was trying to hold himself together.
Sebastien gazed down at Aaron’s blindfolded face. ‘I never thought I’d stand this close to you again,’ he whispered. ‘How does it feel to be powerless? Like she was at the execution?’
Who was he talking about? Whoever it was, Aaron knew. Around the blindfold, his pale skin had gone milk white.
‘I saw you turn away just before the axe came down,’ Sebastien said. ‘You couldn’t bear to see what you’d done. Well, I saw. She was crying. She was terrified. She looked at you in her final moments, and you didn’t even look back!’
The answer hit Joan like a shock of cold water. ‘You’re talking about his mother,’ she said. Marguerite Nightingale had been executed, she knew. ‘That’s …’ Joan didn’t have the words. ‘That’s cruel,’ she said. Whatever the Nightingales had against Aaron, it was just wrong to throw his mother’s execution in his face.
‘Cruel?’ Sebastien said. He drew out the word as if examining it. ‘Cruel is informing on your own mother to the Court. Cruel is setting her up to be executed. Cruel is the executioner dragging her by the hair to the block. Humiliating her in her last moments.’
‘What?’ Joan whispered.
