The Cerulean (The Cerulean Duology #1) - Amy Ewing Page 0,119

at his knee when he spoke.

“I don’t want to be like Father anymore. Whatever this new business is, this . . . selling of Pelagan creatures, of Sera and her blood, I don’t like it. I wish I’d never gotten involved in it. I wish I’d never brought her to him. And when all those memories came back, it was like seeing my life clearly. I don’t think he’s ever cared about me at all. I think he would rather I’d never been born.”

Agnes was quiet for so long Leo thought she might have fallen asleep.

“He doesn’t love me either, you know,” she said. “He told me to my face he wished I had been born a boy. Yet I still wish he would show me some . . . some modicum of affection. It’s pathetic. But he’s our father. He’s the only parent we have.” She hesitated, then leaned over the edge of her bed. For a second Leo worried she was going to get sick, but then she was back with an old, worn photograph in her hands.

“Here,” she said. “I know you always say you don’t care about her, or don’t want to talk about her, but she existed, Leo. She was real. And I have to believe she would have loved us no matter what.”

Leo stared down at the picture of a woman with his face. All the times Eneas had told him he was her spitting image came back to him in a rush, all the times he’d rolled his eyes and reassured himself that he couldn’t look that much like her.

But he’d been wrong. The woman in the photograph had a nose just like his, and the same-shaped eyes, and an identical chin. His curls were caught up, windswept, around her face. His smile curved on her lips. She had a bicycle and was wearing pants and a thick sweater. His own mother, wearing pants. And she looked so happy. On the rare occasion that he’d thought about her at all, he pictured her on her deathbed after giving birth. He’d imagined her sweaty and exhausted, with circles under her eyes. He’d imagined someone weak, someone who refused to stay alive for her children, who didn’t care enough.

It hit Leo then that he blamed his mother for dying.

A tear fell onto the photograph, blurring her face. He wiped it away and held the picture out to Agnes, embarrassed.

“Look at the back,” she said. He turned it over and saw, in delicate cursive, the words: Taken by X, March 12. Runcible Cottage, the Edge of the World.

“He took this?” Leo could not imagine a scenario in which Xavier would be in the same company as a woman wearing this sort of outfit, much less making said woman laugh the way his mother was laughing.

“I know,” Agnes said.

“What’s Runcible Cottage?”

She shrugged. “Beats me. And I’m not about to ask.”

They both stared down at their mother.

“You won’t tell him I have it, right?” she said.

“No. Never. He’d probably make you burn it.” He handed the photograph back to her. “Will you tell me what this tether is?”

She leaned against her pillows and yawned. “I’m not sure I entirely understand it. It’s part of her city, a city in space. The tether attaches the city to our planet, and she thinks if she can get to the tether, she can get back home.”

Leo took his time processing her words. In the end he decided that a city of only women that floated around in space was no crazier to believe than magical healing blood.

“I’ve got to help her, Leo,” Agnes said, her eyes fluttering closed. “She can’t . . . Father is stealing her . . . it’s all wrong. She shouldn’t be here and we did that, me and you together. I was there, I was responsible too. I should have let her go, could have, but I was scared and I don’t want to be scared anymore. And I don’t want to live in Old Port and I don’t want to marry Ebenezer Grange.” Her head sank deeper into her pillow. “He’s nice, though,” she added sleepily. “Very nice. Very helpful. But not for me. No, not for me.”

“I’m going to help her too,” Leo said. “I promised I would, and I’m going to keep that promise.” He smiled. “What do you know, we’re on the same team for the first time since . . . well, ever.”

But Agnes was already drifting off, her breathing slow