When she moves away, Karri is eyeing me. Her voice drops very low. “Is your sweetheart a smuggler?”
“What? No!” I’m sure my face is redder than fire now.
She goes back to her herbs, tossing a small handful into her bowl. “Mother says a lot of them are just trying to feed their own families. She’s heard stories of men who promise the moon, getting women to help them, and really it’s all for a half-dozen mouths to feed at home.”
I scowl into my bowl. My stomach is churning, tying itself into knots. I don’t know what’s worse: Wes dead at the hand of the King’s Justice, or Wes having a family at home.
What a thought. Dead is worse. Of course.
I always thought he was close to my age, but maybe he’s older. I only ever see him in the dark, with kohl-smudged eyes hidden behind a mask. He could easily be twice my age, I suppose.
“Be careful, Tessa,” says Karri.
I glance up. “I’m always careful,” I say. And then I perfectly measure my medicines to prove it.
Once the dinner bells begin ringing through the streets, Karri and I are free to go. She lives at home with her family, while I’ve lived alone in a rented room in a boarding house since my parents died. She watched me all afternoon and invited me to dinner, probably thinking my “sweetheart” must have been one of the captured men. I can’t take her pitying glances for one more moment, so I turn her down and head home.
I stop in at the confectioner’s anyway, deciding it isn’t too much of an indulgence if I can hear any more gossip. As I hand my coins across, I say, “Can you believe they caught so many smugglers?”
The clerk nods sadly and says, “They’ll all be put to death tomorrow, I reason.”
That icy grip on my spine refuses to loosen, especially when she adds, “I understand they’ll be doing it at the gates. You know that will draw a crowd.”
I wish I had a way to find out if Wes is part of it. He can’t be.
But . . . Steel City. A forge. That’s too close.
I try to bide the time in my room, but the air is too stifling and my nerves are too jangled. I’ll never sleep. I head for our workshop hours before we’re supposed to be there and light the fire. I thought this would be better, to sit somewhere and wait, but it’s worse. Every inch of this space is wrapped up in two years’ worth of memories of Wes. That’s where he sits while I measure. That’s the spot where he burned his finger on the woodstove. That’s the window that broke during the winter storms, the one Wes boarded over while the snow swirled in.
I fall asleep in the chair, sitting up, tears on my face. When I sleep, I dream. I dream of my parents, the night they were caught by the night patrol. I remember how I was ready to burst from my hiding place, ready to tackle the patrolmen myself. Wes caught me and kept me out of sight that night—but in my dream, he’s caught, too, his body jerking as arrows pierce his flesh. I dream of Wes’s body hung from the gates or his head on a stake. I see him broken and burning in a pile of bodies, while onlookers yell, though some cheer. I dream of him screaming for me, shouting warnings while they beat him with clubs, smashing his bones.
“Tessa. Tessa.”
I open my eyes and there he is. For a moment, I think this is a new dream, that I’ve been so worried that my imagination has conjured him into this space, and I’ll wake up for real and the workshop will still be empty.
But he’s not. He’s real and solid and his blue eyes are bright as ever behind the mask. My eyes well with relief, and I don’t even bother to stop the tears from running over.
“You’re crying?” he says, and he sounds so startled about the fact that I’m crying over him that I want to punch him right in the face.
Instead I lurch forward and throw my arms around his neck.
“Tessa,” he says. “This is so sudden.”
“Shut up, Wes. I hate you.”
“Ah yes. Quite obviously.”
I giggle through my tears against his shoulder. I should let him go.
I don’t.
He doesn’t either.
I want to ask if he knows about the people who were arrested, but instead, all that comes out of my mouth is, “Do you have a wife and a house full of children to feed?”
“No. Do you?”
I sniff and draw back to stare at him. For all his teasing, his eyes are serious, searching mine.
“You were right,” he says.
“About the children?”
He grins. “No. No children.” He shakes his head at me like I’m addled. “No, you were right that I should see you without your mask.”
I gasp and slap my hands to my bare cheeks.
Weston’s grin turns wolfish. “I regret not taking you up on the offer earlier.”
I sink back into the chair and press my hands over my eyes, but of course it’s too late now—and truly, he was the one who never wanted to see me. “I was . . . upset. I wasn’t thinking. I was so worried.” My voice breaks on the last word.
He drops into the opposite chair. “Tell me all your fears.”
“I thought you were one of the smugglers who got captured.”
His face goes still, and his eyes seem to shutter. “I’m not a smuggler, Tessa.”
“I know. I know you’re not. We’re not.” I have to swipe at my eyes. “I just—they were from Steel City, so I thought maybe—”
“You see every single petal I take from the Royal Sector.” His eyes have gone cold. “I’ve never sold anything that we’ve taken. What we do—”
“Wes! I know.”
“What we do,” he repeats, his tone as sharp as I’ve ever heard it, “is not the same as what the smugglers do. I’m not in this to line my pockets.”
“I know,” I cry. “Wes, I know.” I sniff. “Me too. But it’s all the same to the king and his brother.”
He draws a long breath, then runs a hand down his face. When he looks back at me, his eyes are no longer so hard. “You’re right. Forgive me.”
I press my fingers into my eyes. “And I know you always tell me not to grow attached, but you’re the only true friend I have, especially since—since—” My voice breaks again. “Since my parents—”
Wes takes hold of my wrists, so gently. “Tessa.”
When he pulls me against him, I don’t resist, and he holds me for the longest time. We hold each other. This is so different from the other day, when we were pressed into the shadows beside a house, hiding from the night patrol. Now it’s just me and Wes, in the warmth of the workshop, our workshop, holding on as if we can keep out all the evils of the world.
“They’ll be executed.” His voice is so quiet. “At midday.”
I nod against him. “I heard.” I draw back and look up. “Do you think they deserve it?”
He hesitates, and his eyes are shuttered again. This isn’t something we ever talk about. Our conversations revolve around how to avoid detection. How effective the medicines are, and whether a little browning on the petals makes a difference. How frivolous and wasteful the elites are. We discuss the people we lose to the fever, and the people who live.