mouth several times, but nothing came out. More footsteps sounded; more patrols had arrived, and more Naval officers in nightclothes. The bells continued to scream.
“It was mine.”
Ramson’s head snapped to the boy beside him. Jonah stood in the frame of the half-open door, his shadow stretching long and thin behind him. His face was pale, but his raven-black eyes glimmered in the torchlight.
“I wanted to steal the medicine,” Jonah continued. Words—the truth—pushed against Ramson’s chest, needing to be said. But another warring instinct—fear—pushed back, paralyzing him to the spot.
“For what reason?” asked the silver-haired officer.
Jonah gave only the slightest pause, indiscernible to anyone but Ramson. “I’m trading it in town. People pay good mint for that kind of stuff. I asked Ramson to come along for fun. He’d make a decent partner.”
There was an uproar from the officers. “This is organized crime!” Silver Hair cried. “This young man cannot be permitted to walk free tonight!”
Yet as the officers continued to yell, only one person was silent. A strange expression had crept onto Roran Farrald’s face, one that resembled…triumph.
“Enough,” he boomed. “Guards, nock!”
“No!” The cry tore from Ramson, small and feeble and lost in the fray. He flung out a hand, pushing Jonah back, meaning to protect him.
“Let go of my son,” Roran shouted, but Ramson’s knees had given out and he held on to Jonah, gasps racking his chest. The bells shrieked in his ears, drilling into his head.
“Father,” he cried. “Please—”
“Let go of my son!” Roran roared again.
“I’m not touching him!” Jonah yelled.
“Guards,” bellowed Roran.
It happened so fast. Ramson saw the archer nock, the bowstring grow taut. And then the head of the arrow shimmered as it released, cutting through the torchlight, sleeker than a whisper.
Years later, Ramson still couldn’t tell why he did it. He wanted to be brave, he wanted to be selfless, like Jonah—but in the end, in his very flesh and bone, he was made of cowardice and selfishness.
Ramson ducked.
There was a soft wet sound, like a knife slicing through an apple. Jonah made a small noise—it might have been a gasp—and slowly, quietly, like the last leaf on an alder tree, fell.
Ramson barely remembered what happened next—someone was screaming, but all he knew was that he’d dropped to his knees and scrambled to Jonah’s side, shaking his shoulders, convinced that he would wake up and laugh at having tricked everyone.
Yet slowly, he realized that the screaming was coming from him. Jonah lay still, his body wobbling like that of a puppet as Ramson shook him. And all Ramson saw were Jonah’s midnight eyes, open wide as though in surprise, and his black hair spread across the floor like raven’s feathers. Nothing made sense—Jonah, lying there, blood pooling silently on the floor, arrow shaft protruding from his chest, when he had been alive and yelling seconds ago.
The image stayed in Ramson’s head, carved into his memory, as his father and the officers murmured in grave tones, as he was dragged out by the guards. The moon was impossibly bright, and a wind howled through the alder trees, whipping his face.
They took him to a room that was at once familiar and unfamiliar. The maroon walls were lined with portraits of a happy family, the young daughter laughing as her auburn curls shimmered. The cherrywood desk was clean and cold to the touch, everything in the room arranged to a sterile tidiness, devoid of warmth.
His father’s office.
The door shut; a mug of something warm and strong-smelling was shoved into Ramson’s hands.
“Chocolate and brandy,” Roran Farrald said in his cool baritone. “Drink up.”
Ramson leaned over the mug and threw up.
“Grow a backbone,” he heard his father say. “Are you going to vomit every time you see a man die?”
“Why am I not dead?” Ramson whispered.
“The orphan confessed. He manipulated you. You will be punished, but the bulk of the blame lies with him. And he has been lawfully sentenced.”
“Lawful—” Ramson’s hands shook, and he raised his gaze to his father. “I’m the one who asked to steal the medicine,” he whispered. “I told you that my mother was sick—”
Roran Farrald’s gaze was colder than steel when he cut across Ramson. “Jonah Fisher was prosecuted for illegal trespassing into a government facility, perpetuation of organized crime, manipulation of a minor—”
“You know that’s a lie.” Tears pooled in Ramson’s eyes. “It was my fault.” He heard, again, Jonah’s steady voice, taking blame for a crime that Ramson had committed. Saw, again, the glint of firelight on the arrowhead, the