Li Min flicked her fingers dismissively in his direction. “It can be hard for men to believe they are not all gods walking the earth, as so many women are forced to fall at their feet.”
He lifted a shoulder in a faint shrug. Where was the lie in that?
“And you expect me to fall at your feet now?” Sophia asked, her expression surprisingly even.
“No one expects that,” Nicholas said. “It’s your choice. As you said before, we have other avenues of inquiry to pursue. She can take the letter and be damned.”
“Oh? I have your permission to refuse, then?” Sophia rolled her eye.
“I only meant to make it clear—” He closed his mouth, knowing he’d botched this moment beyond repair.
“Fine,” Sophia said, cutting him off. She squared her shoulders, glancing back at him as she stepped toward the other girl. “We could go on without the bloody letter, but if it helps us find the men who—I just want this to be over with.”
Nicholas didn’t miss the catch in her voice when she said “the men.”
“Have at it,” Sophia said, removing her hat. She stood straight in front of Li Min, who mirrored her stoic expression. Nicholas had the peculiar sense that he was watching a duel, with neither of the aggrieved parties willing to fire into the air.
He kept a hand on the unloaded pistol at his side, and was startled to find that Sophia was not doing the same. Rather, she was holding her ground, waiting for the other young woman to approach.
Sophia’s throat worked as she swallowed with some difficulty. Li Min brought a hand to her face and curled a loose strand of dark hair behind the other girl’s ear. With a tenderness that made Nicholas want to avert his gaze, Li Min leaned forward.
“I’ll wait,” she said, her lips a breath from Sophia’s. “One day you may be willing to pay, and I will delight in collecting.”
Sophia’s face, already flushed from the sun, deepened to crimson as Li Min offered the halves of Rose’s letter to her. She snatched the parchment away and thrust it in Nicholas’s direction, never once taking her eyes off the mercenary. “Read it.”
Nicholas felt the knots around his lungs ease, and briny air filled them, tempered with the scent of the rotting green flesh of the jungle. He moved a short distance away from the young women and sat down on the bowed body of a fallen palm tree. With great care, he lined up the raw, torn edges.
Dear Little Heart, the center of my being…It went on to discuss the weather, King George III, and so on, like tiny riots of nonsense across the page.
Nicholas felt his brows rise as he reached up and swiped the sweat from his forehead. The endearment would read as a bit much to the casual reader, but Etta had explained to him that, in the absence of a key to read it, the way to decode the letter was embedded within the salutation. She’d used “star” before, and “heart” was easy enough—though, what to make of “little,” and the curious inclusion of “the center of my being”?
Unless…
He curled his index fingers and thumbs together, forming a heart, and positioned it at the center of the parchment. The message it revealed was still padded with gibberish, and he couldn’t make sense of it until he imagined the shape of a small heart laid over the words at the center of the letter.
Cannot meet you. Will lead the shadows away from you as long as I can. For year, seek belladonna.
Another blasted riddle. The paper wrinkled under the force of his grip as he read the message aloud to the young women. Bloody Rose Linden.
“Iiiinteresting,” Sophia said, something sparking in her eyes. “Dare I say it, but the woman might have actually come through for us. I hadn’t considered it as an option, but she’s onto something.”
“Foolish,” Li Min shot back. “And you were right not to consider it.”
“I would prefer to know what it is the two of you are referring to, rather than watch you argue the point,” Nicholas said with a patience he did not know he still possessed.
Sophia ignored Li Min’s look of disbelief, saying, “There are two people in all of time that know the workings of our world—who make it a point to know everything everyone is doing. One of them is Grand—is Ironwood himself, and the other is the Belladonna.”
“Belladonna is a she, not a thing?” he confirmed, trying to extinguish the eagerness in his voice.
“Julian never spoke of her?” Sophia asked him, at his look of confusion. “She’s…I’m not quite sure how to put this. She seeks out treasures lost to time and holds auctions for them; only, instead of paying in gold, you pay for them in favors and secrets. Ironwood has allowed it because, generally speaking, these treasures must stay ‘lost’ to preserve his timeline.”
“What is it that you hope to accomplish with this visit?” Li Min asked. The sunlight gleamed off her coal-black hair as she cocked her head to the side. “Perhaps you might purchase the information from me, instead?”
“What business is it of yours?” Nicholas asked. In truth, he was mildly concerned about what she might ask for next, and whether or not he could trust her answer.
“I told you, it’s my business to know others’ business.”
“We are attempting to uncover the last common year with this most recent major shift in the timeline,” Nicholas said. “Is that information you possess?”
There was a single beat in which his hopes shot into the air like a firework, only to crash back down a moment later. Li Min glanced off toward the turquoise water. “No. I could…I might seek the answer for you, however.”