“Thank you for meeting me here, by the way,” Bastian said.
Leoni and Driscoll gaped at me.
“You were meeting him here?” Leoni asked.
“No!” I cut a sharp look at Bastian. “Before he died—or didn’t die—he told me to meet him at our place. I didn’t think anything of it, believing he was out of his mind from an illness he’s suffering from. I didn’t come here to meet him, I swear it.”
Bastian’s gaze never left me. “Well, either way, you came. So what do you say, love?”
Driscoll wrinkled his nose. “Am I the only one having a hard time following this conversation?”
The rain began to fall harder, the sky rumbling with the promise of a storm.
“No, you’re not. Because she is once again keeping secrets from me.” Leoni let the ball of water disappear, glaring up at me, the bun on top of her head bobbing.
“I’m not keeping secrets from you, Oni. Bloody waters.” I tugged at my braid. “I visited him in prison, okay?”
“What?” Leoni’s screech was so loud everyone in Apolis probably heard it.
Okay, so I’d kept one tiny secret from her. “I just wanted to see if I could get information out of him.”
Her gaze was murderous.
“He wanted to make a deal: I give him his pixie dust back, and he helps me rescue my brothers. I didn’t take it, obviously. You saw me kill him.”
“The question is”—Bastian stepped forward—“are you going to take it now?”
Both Leoni and Driscoll turned wide eyes on me.
“She’s obviously not,” Leoni replied.
Driscoll leaned over and said out the side of his mouth, “She looks like she might.”
Bastian stayed silent, rain pelting him, his black hair now slick against his scalp, his shirt soaked, showing the outlines of his carved abdomen as his long coat whipped in the wind. Water slid down my face, and I blinked the drops out of my eyes.
“You can’t be serious,” Leoni said.
I turned to her and took hold of her shoulders. “I think I have to do this.”
She shook her head. “No, I won’t let you.”
“I know you’re looking out for me. It’s what you’ve always done, and I love you for it. But this is my best chance at fixing everything.”
Leoni’s lips formed a thin line. “It’s not just your problem to fix. This is not your weight to bear.”
She still didn’t get it.
“Besides”—she shot a look at Bastian and lowered her voice—“you don’t have the pixie dust.”
“He doesn’t know that,” I whispered back to her.
“Isn’t it all gone?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I thought so, too, but Liliath wrote to me shortly after she defeated her stepmother and took back the earth court. She told me there was some dust left in the vial, asked if I wanted it returned.” I’d never responded to a query so quickly. “I told her to keep it. To protect it.”
I hadn’t wanted anything to do with it anymore. Not when it was a constant reminder of the pirate lord.
I let go of Leoni’s shoulders, but she grasped my arm, her hold tight. “What makes you think you can trust him?”
