“Why?” I asked in disbelief. I moved so I was sitting on my knees. “Why would you even care what happens to me?”

“Because you saw good in me that wasn’t there.” He turned away and stood up. “Forget about me. Forget about everything here. Just go back to Doldastam … No, don’t go there. Just go. Forget about the Kanin and everything.”

“I’m not forgetting about my family or friends or my people,” I told him. “I can’t just run off, like you did. And I’m not leaving without Emma Costar.”

He rubbed his forehead. “It’s better for you if you leave without her.”

“Where is she, Konstantin?” I asked.

“Bent just doesn’t know his own strength,” Konstantin replied, almost sadly.

“What happened to her? If you hurt her, I’ll—”

He groaned. “This was going so well. Can we stop with the threats?”

“Not if you won’t tell me where she is.”

“I don’t know where he left her, but it won’t do you any good to find her,” Konstantin said in a way that made my blood run cold.

“You killed her,” I said, my voice trembling with barely contained rage. “You son of a bitch.”

I dove at him and punched him in the face, and I think he let me at first, allowing me to hit him in the face and chest a few times before he tried to grab my wrists. Then I kicked him in the stomach, and he grabbed me and twisted my arm behind my back. I tried to buck him off, but he pushed me forward, slamming me against the wall.

“Let me go,” I growled, but I was trapped between him and the wall.

“Stop, Bryn. I can’t undo what’s already been done.”

“I’m going to kill you,” I warned him.

“I’m trying to make things right. I know you don’t believe me, but I’m trying.” His words were low and filled with regret, and his beard brushed against my cheek. He let go of my arm, and I pressed my palms against the wall, but I didn’t turn around. I didn’t fight him. “I know you have no reason to trust me, but please, trust me on this.”

I closed my eyes, wishing I didn’t trust him, but I did. I didn’t know why. Maybe it was the sincerity in his voice, or the fact that he could kill me but didn’t, or maybe it was just the memory of the good I thought I’d seen in him when I was younger.

His breath felt warm and ragged on my cheek, and his hand was on my arm. He didn’t have me pinned, exactly, but his body was pressed against me, holding me in place. I could push him off, but I didn’t.

“I can’t let you go,” I told him.

“I can’t let you follow me,” he said softly.

I looked back at him over my shoulder. The curtain had been pulled back a bit in our struggle, and the light landed on his face, so I could clearly see the hurt and regret in his stormy gray eyes.

“I’m sorry, Bryn,” he said simply, and before I could ask him why, I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head as he hit me with the butt of the knife, and then everything went black.

TWENTY-THREE

commiserate

When I closed my eyes, I still saw her body. On a riverbank, where ice and snow still clung to the earth, even as a cold spring rain fell around us. Her eyes were open, unblinking as the drops of water fell into them. She was fifteen, but with her full cheeks and tangles in her curly hair, she looked younger.

Her face stared upward, but her body had been turned at an unnatural angle—her neck had been snapped. The pajamas—pink shorts and a long-sleeve top with hearts and flowers—had been torn, and her knees were scraped.

Emma Costar had put up a fight, and despite Konstantin’s proclamations that he was sorry and he was making things right, this young girl had been killed and left on a cold riverbank.

Ridley had come back to the hotel later in the afternoon and found me unconscious on the bed, where Konstantin had left me. I told him that Konstantin had implied that she was dead, and Ridley had redoubled his efforts to track her. He’d gotten a sweater from her bedroom—using his persuasion to get a detective to hand it off to him. Using something recently worn by her, he’d finally been able to get a stronger sense of her.

She hadn’t been dead long, and that was the only reason he’d been able to get a read on her at all. We’d finally found her along the riverbank, and I’d wanted to carry her away or cover her up, but Ridley had made me leave her just as we’d found her. He called and left an anonymous tip to the police, and soon her host family would be able to bury her.

Her real parents would get nothing. As soon as we got back to Doldastam, we went to make the notification. They seemed to know as soon as they saw us, Emma’s mother collapsing into sobs as her husband struggled to hold her up. We told them everything we knew, and promised that we would bring Konstantin Black and Bent Stum to justice. I wasn’t sure if they believed us, or even if they cared.

They hadn’t raised her, but they still loved her. They still dreamed of the day when she would come home and their family would be united again. But now that day would never come, and they were left mourning something they had never had.

“This has been one long, shitty week,” Ridley said, speaking for the first time since we’d left the Costars’ house.

Our boots crunched heavily on the cobblestone road. The temperature had dropped sharply, leaving the town frigid and the streets empty and quiet. It was just as well. Neither Ridley nor I were in the mood to run into anyone.