“If someone survives a plane crash, that person can be claimed by whoever watches over survivors of the sky. If someone is lost in the woods—” he glanced at Joy, who swallowed back the bitter memory of wet leaves and burning flesh “—then that person might be claimed by the creature that rules there. And if someone intentionally kills one of the Twixt...” Ink’s voice hardened. “Then he shall bear Grimson’s mark forever.”
Joy stared at Ink. She barely breathed. This maudlin streak was unlike him, just as unfamiliar as his passionate crawl across her bed. It was as if his feelings had boiled to the surface, raw and unfamiliar, fresh and overwhelming, as if he’d never felt them before. And, she realized, he hadn’t—he hadn’t ever—not before he’d met Joy.
He had never taken a life or had another’s sigil mar his skin. He had told her as much when he’d gone after Briarhook. Inq had told Joy that she would be his very first kiss. His first lehman. His first love. His first heartbreak. Everything was firsts with Ink. Life was new—wonderful, disappointing, joyous, crushing—and he was feeling it all because of Joy. He’d once told her that he’d been proud of his purpose to safeguard his people; it was the reason that he and Inq had been created, after all. He could be counted on to protect the lives of the Folk—that was why they’d had to pretend to be lovers, to disguise the fact that he had made a mistake in marking Joy, because the Scribes had to be infallible, reliable, always. Their world, the world of the Twixt, depended on it. That integrity was his rock, the one thing he knew about himself, and now it was gone.
He stood up and crossed the room. Joy struggled to sit up. Her skin tingled. Her legs ached. The space on the bed was fast cooling and damp.
“I have always wanted to do good work,” he said, sliding the wallet chain through his fingers. “Yet I have also wanted to be more, and that was my failing.” Ink finally lifted his fathomless eyes to Joy—the hurt and confusion there was childlike and torn. “There is no greater loss than the loss of one of our kind, if only because we are so few.” His breath was coming shallow and fast. Joy felt she should do something, but didn’t know what. “As a Scribe, I was created to keep the Folk from harm—from human harm!—and now this.” His hands were open, helpless, exposing the stain on his wrist.
“Is this what it means to be more human, Joy?” His crisp, clean voice had a slicing edge. “I ended a universe of possibilities to save another universe of possibilities because I valued those more. Because that future was yours. Because you mean more to me than the life of someone I have never met who meant to do you harm.” He struggled with it, almost pleading; his chest heaved with the need to get the words out. He touched the space over his heart with hooked fingers, indenting the skin as if he could tear the feelings from his body.
“Do you understand?” he asked desperately. “I killed.”
The words fell like stones from the aether, heavy and burning. Even when she’d thought he’d murdered Briarhook for kidnapping her and burning his brand onto her arm, Ink had not killed him—he’d taken the giant hedgehog’s heart and placed it in an iron box. She’d seen Briarhook afterward with her own eyes, fighting in the battle against Aniseed with a metal plate welded to his chest—hideous, but alive.
But the blood-colored knight was dead.
She sat, stunned silent. She didn’t know what to do or say. She knew she could offer to erase Grimson’s mark but that Ink would hate it if she did. There were some things that could not be undone. She watched Ink’s hands cup his shoulders, his forearms crossing to hide his face; his every motion was filled with revulsion and shame. He had become something he didn’t recognize, all for the love of her. Joy twisted her fingers miserably.
“I killed him,” he said to the wall, to the floor. “Because he would have killed you—because I believed he would have killed you—because I believed he would have harmed you, although I had no proof.”
“He was going to kill me,” Joy said at last. “And he said that he’d kill you, too.”
Ink bumped the back of his head against the wall and dropped his arms. “I asked him to yield,” he lamented. “Why would he not yield?”
Joy shivered from more than the cold. She hugged her arms. “It was self-defense. Or in my defense,” she said. “You didn’t mean to kill him.”
“I did,” Ink said, still not looking at her. He placed his hands against the wall, studying his fingers, the lines of knuckle and cuticle and tendon they’d drawn together. The hands that he’d fashioned based on hers. The hands he’d used to take a life in her name. “I wanted to kill him and anyone who would harm you in any way.” He all but growled. Joy held her breath. “And when it happened, it happened so quickly, all I could think was that it was over too fast. That I was not done with him yet,” Ink said. “And then he was dead and I could not believe such a thought had ever existed inside me.”
Bared to the waist, he shivered. Rain still wet his skin. A few drops ran down the ridges of his ribs—the ones that they had sculpted together, the ones that heaved in fright. He glanced at her suddenly, pinning her fast.
“I disgust you.”
Joy gasped, “No!”
“I should,” he said. “I disgust me.” He ran clawed fingers through his hair, throwing water to the wind. “I have never understood war or killing or death. To protect, one can wound or warn or disable. But death? Death is final.” Ink rested his hands back on his hips; the chain on his left swung violently against his leg. He turned aside, rubbing his face in his hands. The sign of the ouroboros, a giant dragon swallowing its own tail, spun lazily between his shoulder blades. The scales flashed like reverse splashes of light.
“Is this what it means to love, Joy? To be loved?” he asked with bitter laughter. “To be willing to destroy anything and anyone else in your name?” He dropped his arms and looked back at her, broken, lost. It bruised something inside her. “Because, if I am honest, I would do it all again. Willingly, gladly. I would damn myself and call it love if I knew it would keep you safe.”
Joy crossed the room and took his hands. “No,” she said quickly. “No. It was a choice in a moment. You made a tough choice. You killed him and you saved me.” She stroked the inside of his palm where they’d drawn a life line together. He placed his hands over hers, squeezing them, and closed his eyes. Joy shivered now with more than the cold. These feelings that she’d given him were crushing him. “It sounds strange to say ‘I’m sorry,’ because I didn’t want to die and I’m glad that you stopped him, but I am sorry for what it’s done to you. For what I’ve done to you,” she whispered. “Even if I didn’t mean to.” She folded his fingers over her own. She wanted to hold him closer but felt she shouldn’t dare. His pain was creating a strange wall around him as unyielding as stone. Tears threatened. Her breathing grew stuffy. How could she explain? She was responsible; she had to make him understand. She squeezed harder. “That’s not love, Ink. But this is.” She lifted their hands together so he could see them. “This.”
His eyes stayed on their joined hands, fingers threaded together, like the first time.
“I love you, Ink,” she said and kissed his fingers, pressing her lips gently against each knuckle. Ink swallowed, the motion flickering in his throat. His eyes slipped closed and he took a deep breath. His thick lashes parted, revealing eyes like starless night.
“I love you, Joy,” he said. “No matter what, I will always love you.” His fingers tightened over hers. “But it frightens me more than I thought it would.”
“Me, too,” she said, trying to soothe the person she’d taught to feel. They held one another in the dark. “Me, too.”
STEF’S WELCOME HOME dinner featured a variety of his favorite takeout, including fried