“What more do you want?” I scream at no one. “I give up, okay?” Let someone else try to fix Jasyn. The man’s a lost cause. Nothing I can do will ever change his charbroiled heart.
An old woman passes by on the walkway above. She glares, then turns up her nose, moving along quickly to avoid the most likely homeless girl bathing in the canal.
Go me. Doesn’t get much more humiliating than this.
Chin raised barely above the frigid surface, I bob along in the water. The current carries me farther away from where I began, but I don’t bother to swim against it. Why should I? I’ve spent months fighting, and what has it accomplished? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. How foolish I was to believe I arrived in the past for a purpose. There’s no gold at the end of the rainbow. No one ever lived happily ever after. Maybe I never had any power, and I’m just a girl gone crazy from the trauma of the war. I don’t even have my mark to prove my identity.
What if I’ve already messed up something on the timeline? Is it possible to erase my own existence simply by speaking to my grandfather? Better to leave things alone from now on rather than try to correct anything.
“Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream . . .”
It’s been too long since melody and I had a one-on-one. I’m off-key and my throat’s dry. The children’s tune seems to come from nowhere but fits at the same time. I close my eyes, water sloshing around my ears.
“. . . merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
The song dies after one round as the cold turns my blood from liquid to solid, numbing my bones. The morning breeze transforms my face into an ice sculpture. I think of all that’s been lost and what little’s been found. How I once had a goal, a purpose. It all seems so trivial now. Void versus Verity. Light against darkness.
Some wars never end.
“Nice day for a swim.”
I open my eyelids with a flutter.
“Are you inclined to float along the Grand like a carcass all day, or were you planning to assist me as you claimed you could?”
I make a point not to give him the satisfaction of eye contact, but my peripheral vision betrays me. “Oh, pardon me. Did you want my help? And here I was thinking you were trying to drown me.” My tone is more Ebony’s than my own. What can I say? Her snarkiness comes in handy when dealing with arrogant jerks.
“Nonsense. I merely desired to ensure you are not a Shadowalker.”
I stare up at the Void’s vessel himself. A Shadowalker? Really? He holds the darkest entity in existence and he’s checking to make sure I’m not the dangerous one? Ha! I turn myself upright and face him fully. “And how would pushing me into a river ensure that?”
“For someone who professes to know a great deal, you appear to know very little indeed.” He walks along the street at the speed of the current, hands clasped gracefully behind his back. “There is a rumor circulating that claims water reveals a Shadowalker’s true self, its purity too potent for one in love with darkness to bear. I am simply testing the theory.” He brushes his lapel with four fingers.
I begin my swim toward the edge. Toward Jasyn. “And?” I huff and heave. “Did you learn anything?”
He stops. Smirks. Then my grandfather crouches and offers me a hand up. Jasyn Crowe stoops to help me.
Unbelievable.
Suppressing the urge to pull him in, I take his outstretched hand, not even bothering to cover my soggy chest. When I’m sitting at street level, I wring out my hair, now a limp mop hanging past my shoulders. I cough and swallow. Draw in another long breath through my nose.
“No,” Jasyn finally says, still crouching. “Either the rumor is false, or you are not a Shadowalker. No way of knowing.”
My nose scrunches. “And what about the Void’s vessel? Hmm? Water doesn’t bother you. What in the Third would give you the absurd idea that water would reveal a Shadowalker and not the Void itself?”
“I believe you already hold the answer to that question.”
He sounds more like Nathaniel now than the ruthless tyrant I recall. Speaking in vague riddles. I want to tell him to just answer the darn question. Instead, the lightbulb goes on. “Shadowalkers choose darkness. The Void’s vessel doesn’t have a choice.” Aside from the choice to love the vessel of the Verity. But I guess, in a way, that is choosing light rather than darkness.
And there it is. A firm reminder of what I’m fighting for. I rise and Jasyn does the same. He hasn’t chosen darkness, not yet. He’s still fighting whether he admits it or not. Until he decides otherwise, I have to help him.
“. . . I wager we all hold a piece of the Verity . . .”
Joshua’s face. Kyaphus’s voice.
“. . . a piece of the goodness that stems from the light empowering our Callings . . .”
I try to imagine him, the one who actually spoke those words. But all I see is skin drenched in night, a pair of eyes that are hollow. Empty. A lost cause of a man who detests me as I detest him. Fine line between love and hate, right? Maybe it’s hate that keeps the Void clinging to his soul. Maybe we had it wrong.
What if the Void’s vessel is the one who despises the Verity? Did as much not happen between Aidan and the man standing before me now? He claims he doesn’t hate the king. No way I believe that one.
Liar, liar. Pants on fire.
I consider my grandfather, search his eyes. I can almost imagine I’m staring at Mom. Does he see my resemblance to him? I wouldn’t put it past him to somehow know everything. Nothing’s ever been impossible for Jasyn Crowe. He doesn’t need anyone.
Except maybe he does. Maybe he needs me. His eyes speak volumes, two windows overlooking a tortured soul. But his soul can’t be gone if there’s still life in his muddied gaze. And where there is life there is always hope.
Ding-dang-dong. Dong-dang-ding. A bell rings in the distance, summoning a slew of people to spill from their homes. Jasyn turns his focus to the canal while mine wanders in the opposite direction. It’s as if the city is suddenly alive again, the residents emerging once the night no longer poses a threat. Do Shadowalkers prowl about under cover of the moon? What better time for one who bows to darkness to lurk within the very shadows they’re named after?
When the echo of the bells dies in the distance, Jasyn faces me again. “Shall we?” His arms sweep inward toward the city. Both his eyebrows arch in question, wrinkling his forehead.
Rolling my shoulders, I purse my lips and nod. What have I got to lose?
As I follow my grandfather and future enemy through the streets of Venice, a small voice whispers in my ear.
“Everything,” it says.
Everything.
And nothing at all.
Jasyn hasn’t spoken a word since we abandoned the Grand Canal. Venice teems with life, so different from the evening atmosphere when curfew goes into effect and people rush to the safety of their homes. Soldiers patrol the streets, faces straight as statues, eyes always ahead. Uniformed schoolchildren file into what appears to be a schoolhouse or church of some sort. All are girls and all wear solemn expressions with gazes downcast. They’re led by a thin woman with a gray streak in her pinned hair, who could only be Miss Minchin from A Little Princess, bit-a-lemon expression and all.