The Drowned King Returns

Chapter Seven: Why She Signed

"Not here," Elara said, catching his sleeve. "There are cameras everywhere."

She pulled him down the service ramp beside the hotel, out of the rain and into the underground garage. The air smelled of oil and wet concrete, and the fluorescent tubes overhead buzzed and flickered. Rows of expensive cars sat in silence. She didn't stop until they were deep among the pillars, far from the entrance, and then she let go of him as if his sleeve had burned her.

Her white gown was soaked at the hem. Rain had flattened her hair against her cheeks. She had never looked more beautiful, or more frightened.

"You have to leave," she said. "Tonight. Do you understand what you just did up there? You humiliated Tristan in front of the whole city. You put that stone on the table in front of everyone." Her voice cracked. "You're going to get Ivy killed."

Nash reached into his jacket and took out a folded sheet of paper. He opened it carefully, because it was old and fragile and burned brown at the edges, and he held it up in the flickering light so she could see the bottom of the page.

Her own signature looked back at her.

"This is what sent me to Black Toll," he said quietly. "My name is at the top. Yours is at the bottom. I've carried it for two years."

He had imagined this moment a thousand times on the island. In every version, she denied it. She called it a forgery, or she wept and swore she had never seen it, and some small, stupid part of him had hoped he would believe her.

Elara looked at the page for a long time. Then she lifted her eyes to his.

"Yes," she said. "I signed it."

The words hit him harder than Tristan's hand had. He had been punched by men twice his size in the pits and stayed on his feet, but this nearly took his breath away.

"Why?"

"I can't tell you."

"Elara..."

"I can't." Her jaw tightened. "The day I tell you is the day Ivy dies. I'm not exaggerating, Nash, and I'm not being dramatic. So don't ask me again."

He folded the page and put it away, because his hands wanted to shake and he wouldn't let them. When he spoke again, his voice was rougher than he intended. "Then tell me one thing. Was any of it real? The bench by the river, the ring, all of it. Was anything between us ever real?"

She didn't answer. For a moment he thought she might, her lips parted and her eyes went bright, but then she looked away. Instead she reached into the small beaded clutch at her wrist, took out a folded piece of paper and pressed it into his hand.

He opened it.

It was a crayon drawing on lined school paper. A stick man stood on a blue boat with a big smile on his face. Behind him was a gray building with bars on every window, and inside it were little scribbled figures with angry faces. Along the top, in careful wobbly capitals, someone had written DADDY KEEPING THE BAD MEN LOCKED UP.

Nash stared at it. He couldn't stop staring at it.

"She draws that every week," Elara said softly. "She has for four years, since she was old enough to hold a crayon properly. Always the same picture. Always the boat." She swallowed. "I keep every one."

He couldn't speak. His daughter had drawn him exactly as he was, without ever knowing it.

Elara wiped the rain from her face with the back of her hand, and when she spoke again, her voice was flatter and more careful, like someone walking across ice.

"I'll give you one thing, because it's all I can afford. Tristan isn't the one who wants Ivy gone. He'd happily see it done, but he isn't the one who decided it. He's just the one holding the knife." She met his eyes. "Tomorrow night, after the vows, men are going to take her from the bridal suite. I don't know who sends them, and I can't stop it. I've tried everything." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "But you can."

Before he could answer, she turned away.

Headlights flared across the far wall.

An engine roared, and a black sedan came tearing down the ramp from the street level, tires screaming on the wet concrete. It didn't slow at the turn. It swung straight toward the pillars, its high beams pinning Elara in white light, and kept accelerating.

Nash moved. He hit her around the waist and threw them both sideways, and the sedan missed them by inches. It slammed into the pillar where she had been standing with a deafening crunch of metal. Glass rained across the floor, and the horn began to blare and wouldn't stop.

The driver's door creaked open. A man staggered out, blood running from a cut on his shaved head, a pistol in his hand. He was laughing, high and wild, the laugh of a man who had been terrified for a full day and had finally decided to stop being afraid.

Fitch.

"The Mortician sends his regards, Drowned King!" he shouted.

He fired twice. The shots cracked off the concrete beside them, spitting chips of stone, and Nash pressed Elara flat behind a parked car. By the time he looked up, Fitch was already sprinting for the stairwell door. It banged shut behind him, and his footsteps clattered away up the stairs.

Nash didn't follow. He couldn't leave her.

He got to his feet and pulled Elara up with him. She was trembling, her gown torn at the shoulder, her palms scraped raw. He looked her over for blood. "Are you hurt?"

She didn't answer. She wasn't looking at the wreck, or the stairwell, or the smoke curling from the crushed engine. She was staring at him, and Nash watched the horror dawn slowly in her eyes.

She knew the name. He could see it in her face. Eight years ago, in whatever bargain she had made in the dark, she had learned that word, and to her it could mean only one thing. The Drowned King was the monster she had paid.

"The Drowned King," she whispered. She took a step back from him, then another. "No. Oh God, Nash. What did they turn you into?"

Then she turned and ran, her torn white gown vanishing between the pillars, and left him alone with the blaring horn and the smoke.