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Then it was true. All of it. Valentinehadaltered events in Minerva. He’d changed a piece of the game, a change Adair had not sanctioned. He’d moved a cog without the puppet master’s permission. Was it by chance that Valentine had done such a thing, or was Adair’s power waning?
“Nobody changes my design without my oversight,” he added. “Certainly not a mortal man of little consequence.”
I turned from the window and saw him pick up a snow globe from a sideboard. He cradled it in his fingers, raised it high, and admired its swirling snow, captured in glass. A smile curved his lips, revealing a hint of sharp teeth. Then he carelessly tossed the snow globe into the air, toward me.
I lunged and caught it, inexplicably afraid that if I let it smash, something terrible would happen. “I might tell him everything,” I said, straightening.
Danger sparked in Adair’s eyes. “Do that, and he’ll succumb to madness. You know there is an art to this game. Each piece has its place, including Valentine. Be careful how you threaten me, Devere,” Adair said. “Or I might tire of your little toy store, or even you? Valentine is not your concern, and certainly not yours to toy with. Don’t look so glum. You know how to end this.”
I turned my back on him, hiding my sneer.
He chuckled and left the room.
Hush emerged from under my sleeve and settled on the back of my hand.
“It’s all right,” I told her. “He’s gone. Probably to seduce some other hapless human.”
Guilt squirmed low inside. I couldn’t save them without surrendering what little freedom I had, and besides, most humans did not want to be saved. I lived this world, danced this dance, and I survived. I had no choice.
The snow in the glass globe swirled like it did outside the window. A miniature toy store inside the glass glowed with all the warmth and familiarity of my home. I peered closer, through the artificial snow, into the store’s tiny windows, and there, by the fireplace, slept the tiny figure of Valentine Anzio. He didn’t look like much. He never had. The boy beneath the stairs. The boy who talked to the hidden ones, the fae. But if he’d changed the puppet master’s design once, he could do so again.
Valentine might be the one who could loosen the puppet master’s grip on us all, if his mind didn’t shatter first.
ChapterTwenty-Two
Valentine
I stirred awake, stiff and uncomfortable, slumped in a wingback chair.
Devere stood beside the fireplace, face stern, arms folded, and fingers tapping, looking unkind and furious.
“Take a moment to reorientate yourself,” he said, and it sounded like an order.
The toys, the clocks, the fireplace, the man. It was all still here. I hadn’t been sure whether I’d truly hit my head and was dying on the road in the snow. But everything I’d lost had returned, as though it had never been lost at all.
I’d vowed to believe the unbelievable, which had seemed easier when the unbelievable hadn’t been so impossible.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
I laughed, then winced as some of the aches from surviving the accident came back to haunt me. “I don’t suppose I could use your facilities to clean up some? Before you throw me out?”
He rolled his eyes. “Up the stairs. Do not go into my workshop.”
I heaved my battered body from the chair and handed him the blanket that had been draped over me. He snatched it back, as though perturbed I had dared to notice he’d given it to me. His uptight haughtiness didn’t bother me as it had before. In fact, it was almost endearing.
“Stay out of—”
“—the workshop, yes!” I called back, then lumbered up the stairs to the washroom. My reflection was a horror show. There clearly had been an incident. How else had I gotten the scratches on my face, or the blood on my clothes? Strangely, the gash in my arm was minor now, and nothing like the open wound from before.
“I’m not losing my mind,” I told myself. “Everything is real, even though he doesn’t remember it.”
Of course, sane men did not discuss their own sanity with themselves. I knew this. I’d studied those of the criminal mind and those with mental issues who had fallen into criminality as a result. Valentine Anzio, Massalia investigator, would consider this to be a mental break, probably triggered by Rochefort’s attack. My mental state had deteriorated since then. But I was no longer relying on just science to solve the riddles around me.
I’d gather my wits and confront Devere. I’d told him everything last night, but he hadn’t said much in return, and then, of course, I’d fallen asleep in his chair, like a fool. Prior to that, though, I’d struck a nerve by claiming he wasn’t Jacapo’s son. He knew the events I’d recalled were true, but either he was lying about knowing, or he had genuinely forgotten. But his father was still dead. Did that mean Rochefort was dead, or had we not reached that part yet? Were we destined to repeat past events?
Did Devere remember he’d kissed me?
My heart pounded in my ears. The washroom tilted. I grasped the basin, closed my eyes, and breathed. I wasn’t losing my damn mind. This storehadburned. I’d witnessed it, I’d felt the heat of the flames, and Russo had set the blaze.
