The Stars Over Bittergate Bay

Chapter 45

45

W hen Jonas walked into Father Michaels’ narrow living room, the only thing he could see was Sidney.

Sidney was breathing, but otherwise unconscious on the couch. Jonas stumbled for the first time since leaving the church. He staggered forward, and Leo slid to the side to make room for him. Leo was kneeling beside the couch, Jonas had nearly tripped over him, and now, Leo was granting Jonas a space Jonas didn’t deserve, not after everything he’d done. But Jonas knelt beside him anyway.

There was so much blood on Sidney’s shirt, across his arms and chest. Jonas should have looked at Leo, waited for permission, but Sidney’s brother looked hollow. Haunted. So, Jonas shook the tremble out of his own hands and began to peel aside the damp fabric.

“It’s just the arm.” Father Michaels walked into the room. He was holding a rag stained red, wiping his hands with it. “And?—”

“He wont let go of the watch,” Leo interrupted, glaring at the time piece. Jonas looked to Asterion, the only one of them with any power, who hesitated behind Father Michaels in the doorway.

Before Jonas could ask Asterion for help, Sidney whimpered, his fist tightening around the silver casing. Jonas’s heart lurched as he reached for Sidney’s right hand, which was, indeed, clenched around his pocket watch. He slid his fingertips against Sidney’s skin gingerly, feeling the places where the silver was melded to his flesh.

“How?” Leo asked. “How did it melt?”

“The heat from the spell getting cut off, I would guess.”

“I can heal him,” Asterion offered. “But I’ve never toyed with soul stuff. That’s your area of expertise.” Jonas felt sick. The last time he’d tugged at a soul was his own, unbinding his magic from it to give the magic to Edmund.

“Was Sidney’s soul in the watch?” Leo asked. “Is it still in the watch?” An excellent question. “What do we do?” Another excellent question. If Jonas had more power he would have been able to press in and see. Again, he glanced at Asterion, the only source of magic in the room. Asterion bit his lip. He looked so much younger when he was unsure of things.

“The soul should have retracted when the spell was unfinished, and the line should have been sealed with the breaking of the contract.” Jonas was confident of this much. He was the one who had built the spell with Morrow in the first place. He knew how it worked. “Asterion, can you check the watch?”

Asterion nodded and came around to Jonas’s side. As he leaned over Sidney, his hip pressed against Jonas’s shoulder, and Jonas tried to appreciate the contact. That Asterion was here with him again. He always seemed to turn up just when Jonas was about to fall apart, and Jonas loved him for it. Asterion pressed his fingertips against the front of the watch and closed his eyes.

“It feels hollow,” he said after a moment. “Mechanical only. But you should check. You’ll be able to get a better sense than I can. Here.”

Before Jonas could protest, Asterion lifted Jonas’s fingertips to the back of the watch and pushed. Fae magic blistered against his bones. Jonas breathed through the tingling pain and concentrated.

Sidney felt a certain way to Jonas. Brilliance and kindness and curiosity were all wrapped up in the essence of him. The sharpness of fresh dirt in springtime, and the caress of fingers down the center of Jonas’s chest. There was a glimmer of it in the watch, and Jonas could feel his energy trip over Sidney’s. Jonas swallowed and closed his eyes.

“Can I borrow?—?”

“Yes,” Asterion said. Exhaled. And in that soft rush of breath, just above Jonas’s head, Jonas felt himself catch the tether of Asterion’s power.

It was a rush and relief both at once. In some other world, in some previous life, it would have just been a thrill to feel the sparks in his veins again. A limb that he’d learned to live without, miraculously reattached.

He wielded Asterion’s magic as carefully as he could, letting the heat of it wrap around the parts of the watch that felt like Sidney. Coaxing the soft curls of Sidney’s essence off the cogs and springs of clockwork, and up into Sidney’s hand. Jonas pushed whatever threads of his own magic that were left in his chest out of him, sealing Sidney’s soul back into Sidney, leaving Jonas empty. It was the least he could do. He would have given more if he’d had anything left to give.

The loss of Sidney’s energy, even though it had gone exactly, precisely where Jonas had pushed it, left Jonas’s own soul aching. Below his chest, below his heart, something essential in Jonas was desperate to be with Sidney again. To wrap itself up in the warmth of Sidney’s love and be whole.

But that wasn’t Jonas’s privilege anymore. He’d ruined it. The emptiness, like the void left by his absent magic, was just something he was going to have to get used to.

The cut on Sidney’s arm closed and the connection with his soul severed at the same moment. Jonas fell back with the force of the sealing, his hand stinging, and even Asterion stumbled away, shaking out his arms and cursing.

The pocket watch tumbled to the couch cushion, revealing small lines of silver embedded in the creases of Sidney’s palm.

Michaels appeared with cups of tea that were supposed to be fortifying. Jonas’s dissolved in his mouth like ash. After a quarter of an hour spent mostly in silence, Jonas, Asterion and Leo walked back to the cottage. Jonas carried Sidney, still unconscious, through the night.

A fine mist began to fall from the sky all around them, a great atmospheric curtain of cold fog that was perfectly suited to Jonas’s mood. Sidney looked relaxed now, limp in Jonas’s arms, as though he was in a deep sleep. Jonas watched Sidney’s face more than where he walked, desperate to make sure there were no signs of pain. The weight of Sidney was almost comforting. And it was nice, Jonas told himself, to be able to hold Sidney one last time.

He began making a mental catalog of things he needed to do. Planning the way the rest of this hour, this day, the rest of his life was going to go, and what he would need to take with him from the cottage. And what he might be able to leave for Sidney.

Elmmond House was still lit up, more foreign to Jonas than it had ever been. People spilled out onto the back patio, flitted around behind curtains. Laughter and music echoed through the cold. The only music Jonas wanted to hear was whatever Sidney put on the radio when they were cooking together. No laughter sounded as sweet as Sidney’s.

But these truly were the last moments they would ever have together. Sidney would wake up still angry with Jonas. More furious than before, it stood to reason, since it was Jonas who’d dragged Sidney into this mess. Almost lost him his soul. There wasn’t a way to apologize for all of Jonas’s compounded wrongs. He would do his best, of course. But then he would move on alone.

“Asterion.” Asterion had been walking ahead of Jonas with Leo, but fell back at once, looking over at Jonas with a frown. “Can you call Karolina? Have her come up with Claire in the next couple of days and pack up the library?” Asterion’s gold eyes were sharp in the dim light.

“I think she’d rather hear from you.”

“I don’t have time for one of her lectures. I need to go.”

“Go where?” Leo demanded. He’d slowed his gait to be on Jonas’s other side. Jonas doubted Leo would understand, but he wasn’t about to lie to one of the Quince brothers. Not again.

“I need certain alchemical components to be able to unbind the property. It’ll take me a few days to gather them up.”

“What do you mean, unbind the property?” Leo asked. “Are you leaving?” Jonas tried to ignore the way the reality of the answer to that question slammed into him. Yes, he was leaving. Only he couldn’t get his mouth to say it.

“It was the only way to get your brother’s soul back from Morrow,” Asterion explained. “Morrow wanted the property, and Jonas gave it to him, so that Sidney could keep his soul.”

“I see,” Leo frowned. The pause lingered, and Jonas tried to breathe in the silence, waiting for Leo’s anger or derision. Instead, Leo asked, “where will you go?”

Gods. Did that really matter?

“I’ll find my way, Mr. Quince.”

“But Sidney?—”

“He’ll be fine,” Jonas said. It was the only thing Jonas was sure of. Sidney would heal and go back to Holyworth. He would be brave and curious and successful and Jonas longed to be with him. To see Sidney happy.

But Sidney wouldn’t want that. Jonas knew it. And he had to trust himself, otherwise he would stay. It was a selfish, horrible, self-indulgent urge to sit at Sidney’s bedside and wait for him to wake up. To beg for Sidney to take him back.

He would spare them both the indignity of that. It was the least he could do.