Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 109878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” Jay studies my face. “You know what I think? I think you’re using Hans’s death as an excuse to avoid something that scares you more than any Crow ever could.”
“And what’s that?”
“Actually caring about someone enough to let them in.”
I finish my whiskey and pour another. “Your point?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Saylor
The driver won’t stop checking the rearview mirror, his eyes darting between the road and my face every few seconds. I’ll never get used to this—having drivers, housekeepers, people whose job it is to watch me and worry about my moods.
“Drop me at the town square,” I tell him. “I need to walk.”
He nods without argument—probably relieved to get the angry woman out of his car before she starts throwing things. The moment we stop, I’m out and moving, my feet finding pavement with the steady rhythm of someone working off fury one step at a time.
Blue thinks he can dismiss me? Shut me out like I’m some fragile thing that can’t handle whatever darkness he’s drowning in? Well, fuck that. And fuck him for making me feel small in my own life.
The evening air bites at my skin, carrying the salt tang of ocean and damp earth from gardens settling into twilight. Grimlock in the fading light becomes a different creature. Windows begin to glow against stone walls, and the narrow streets transform into arteries of shadow and golden light that vibrates with secrets.
I walk without direction, letting my anger guide me through alleys I haven’t explored before. Past a clockmaker’s shop where gears tick behind dark glass, around a corner where ivy climbs so thick it swallows the building’s original lines. My feet find their own path while my brain churns through everything Blue said, everything he didn’t say, everything that sits between us like broken glass.
That’s when I see it.
A burst of color against gray stone, so vivid it stops me mid-step. Someone has been painting a mural on the side wall of a narrow building. Paint covers the stone in sweeping arcs of crimson and gold, deep purple and forest green, all blending together in patterns that flow and spiral across the surface.
The artist is still there, a woman who looks maybe a few years older than me with wild black curls that escape from a messy bun secured with what appears to be a paintbrush. Her clothes tell the story of someone who lives in color—a paint-splattered canvas apron over jeans that have been tie-dyed in shades of teal and amber, work boots so covered in dried paint they’ve become art themselves. She’s reaching high above her head, pressing her palm against the wall to leave a handprint in brilliant blue, and that’s when I realize there are no brushes other than in her hair anywhere. Just buckets of paint and hands as tools.
“Don’t stop,” she calls over her shoulder without turning around. “I can feel you watching, but don’t let that stop you from joining in.”
“I’m sorry?”
She turns then, and I see colors smeared across her cheek like war paint. “The wall. It’s been waiting for someone new.” She gestures to buckets of paint arranged on the ground, colors so rich they seem to glow. “Maya Delacroix. Town muralist, unofficial therapy provider, and firm believer that sometimes you need to get your hands dirty to clean your soul. Saylor, right? I met you at the party.”
I approach slowly, studying the patterns spreading across the stone. They’re not pictures of anything I can name. Just raw emotion turned into swirls and spirals and bold slashes that make me want to grab some paint myself.
“I don’t know how to paint.”
“Everyone knows how to make marks. The wall doesn’t judge technique—it just wants honesty.” Maya dips her hands in a bucket of deep orange paint. “What color feels right for whatever you’re carrying?”
Without thinking, I point to a bucket of dark red that seems to glow with its own inner fire. Maya nods approvingly.
“Anger red. Perfect. That color knows what it wants.”
I roll up my sleeves and plunge my hands into the paint. It’s warmer than I expected, thick and smooth between my fingers. Maya guides me to a blank section of wall, then steps back and lets me find my own way.
I start with just my palm against the stone, leaving a crimson handprint. Then my fingers are dragging across the surface in long lines that feel like screaming without making any noise.
I paint my frustration with Blue’s behavior, my confusion about the skulls upstairs, my grief for Hans, my fury at being treated like something fragile. Each stroke releases something I’ve been holding too tightly, and soon my hands are flying across the stone with surprising confidence.
Maya works beside me, adding touches of gold that flow into my angry red. Other people drift into the courtyard—an elderly man who adds careful dots of white, a teenager who splashes purple with joyful abandon.