So he sat down by the fire with them, looking expectantly from one to the other. Grace gave Justice another meaningful look.
“Venture,” Justice said reluctantly, “I’m sorry I reacted the way I did.”
“It’s okay,” he managed to say, for Grace’s sake. He kept his eyes on the leaping flames, hiding the fact that he didn’t mean it. Not one bit. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”
Justice’s reply, however, came out startlingly sincere. “We want you to be able to talk to us, especially about important things like what you want to do with the rest of your life. I shouldn’t have said all that about this not being about you. This is about you. It’s my job to protect you and help you make good decisions. It’s my job to keep you from throwing away your youth and spending your health, maybe even your life, on a reality that just isn’t going to live up to your dream. I love you too much to let you do that.”
Venture glared at Justice, then Grace. She lowered her head, unable to meet his eyes once she saw the look of wounded contempt in them.
“Thank you,” he said with gravelly, quiet ferocity, “for your faith in me. I’m going to bed now.”
He spent the restless early morning hours attempting to sleep away his sorrows. When sleep wouldn’t come, he tried to comfort himself by recalling the pleasure of kissing Jade, and of hearing her words,
Because I love you, and I want you to be a great fighter, Venture Delving
. But just like his dreams about being a fighter, that image was swallowed up by the reality of who he was. Grant Fieldstone’s bondsman, Justice Delving’s brother and ward. His father’s son. The dreams that made him who he was could never be realized, because of who he was. And now, who was he going to be without those dreams?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next day passed quietly and stiffly, and the next wasn’t much better. Venture craved Jade’s smile, the sound of her voice pronouncing his name, but she was nowhere to be seen. That evening Venture lay on his bed with an old, folded-up quilt under his head, going through the motions of reading while Grace busied herself with supper. He didn’t feel like talking, not to Grace or to anyone else.
His mood worsened when he heard Justice come home and murmur a greeting to Grace. From the sound of it, he wasn’t in good spirits either. The bedroom door opened, then shut as Grace retreated inside.
Great
, thought Venture as Justice’s footsteps approached,
he’s coming over here
. He put his book down and began to straighten up, to get ready for Justice’s usual knock on the wall, but instead the heavy curtain flew open.
Justice closed the curtain swiftly behind him, acting as though he didn’t see the daggers shooting at him from Venture’s eyes.
“Guess who I saw in town today, outside Palmer’s Pub?”
“Who?” Venture grumbled from the bed.
“Old Herald.”
“Hmm.” Venture feigned disinterest, though Justice had a strange smirk on his face.
“He had some interesting gossip from the Big House.”
“Well, you’d better not tell me, then. I try to stay away from gossip.”
Justice ignored the cheeky remark. “Rose Fieldstone caught Jade sneaking back into the house yesterday, about an hour before sunrise. Apparently she’d been out all night.” The smirk turned into a malicious grimace.
“Really?” Vent kept his voice even, though his heart was racing. How could she have gotten caught? How could this be happening?
“That’s about the time you got in, isn’t it, Vent?”
Venture stood up, turned his back on his brother, lifted the curtain, and walked out of the alcove, to the front window, stalling for time.
Justice followed him and grabbed his shoulders, wheeling him around. “Isn’t it?”
He was caught; there was no sense lying. That would just be cowardly. Venture took a deep breath and looked straight into Justice’s raging gray eyes.
“Yeah, it is.”
Justice’s face rumpled in surges of anger and uncertainty. Clearly he hadn’t expected such a confession. Venture remembered his promise to Jade, to tell Justice everything. This wasn’t going to be easy. But a promise was a promise, and what had actually taken place between them couldn’t be worse than what Justice would imagine if he denied it all.
“I took Jade out at midnight. We went for a walk. We talked. Then I kissed her, Justice.”
Venture saw the fury rise up through Justice’s chest. He watched his muscular arm pulling back and found himself shocked at what Justice was about to do, but strangely unwilling to prevent it. Justice’s weighty palm smacked Venture’s face so hard that, had he been less sturdy and less accustomed to absorbing blows, he would’ve gone flying into the mud-plaster wall and fallen to the floor. Instead, Venture stumbled back a step. Everything went pitch black for a fragment of a moment, then he regained his balance and raised his stinging, throbbing head. He wiped at the trickle of blood under his lip.
“I’m not a little girl! Dad taught you how to throw a good, solid punch. Is this how you respect his memory?”
Though Justice had never struck him before, he’d half expected a violent reaction to his brazenness. But the severity of the blow did little to take away from the insult of the fact that it was a slap. A slap in the face—the common reprimand for a little girl.
Grace threw open the bedroom door. “What’s going on out here?” She gasped and brought her hand to her mouth when she saw Venture’s bloody, already swelling face.
Justice ignored her. “Don’t you dare bring our father into this! He’s not here! He’s not here for me, and he’s not here to deal with you! That’s what fists do! And you want to make your living with them, build your life on other men’s blood?”
Venture shoved Justice hard in the chest, then pulled his fist back, but Grace slipped between them. She held Venture back with pleading eyes. Justice didn’t try to touch him, but he didn’t stop shouting either.
“And now this mess, with that girl? You don’t deserve to be treated like a man for all this foolishness, this recklessness. I don’t need this, and neither does Grant Fieldstone! He trusts you, and you’re willing to destroy our lives and disrupt the whole Fieldstone household just so you can carry on with a girl? A man doesn’t do that!”
“Justice—” Grace grasped his elbow firmly. “Come outside with me.” Justice remained planted there, staring Venture down. “Justice!”
She placed her other hand on his face and turned it so that he had to look at her, and he grudgingly left with her.
Venture got up, strode to his bed, tore the curtain shut, and threw himself onto his prickly straw mattress. His whole world was falling apart—again. He and Justice never talked about their father. His name was an emptiness best left unpronounced. The very things he’d admired about his father had cost him his life.
My dad is the biggest, my dad is the best. My dad can beat yours any day of the week
. But in the end, he couldn’t. He’d met his match, and he’d died. A part of Venture’s heart still refused to believe that he’d been beaten. A vestige of a small boy’s admiration for his invincible father.
He might have been able to deny it entirely, had he not heard it straight from the mouth of his brother, who’d witnessed everything. Justice was no novice to a brawl himself, but he’d never fought anyone after that night, not for sport or for reputation or otherwise. That was Justice’s answer, how he handled it. Why did it have to be his, too? Their father was a gifted fighter with no formal training, who could have been a champion under different circumstances. Why couldn’t he try to be what his father should have been? Because maybe, it was what he was supposed to be too. Unless that was the lesson the world was trying to teach him now. That there was no
meant to be
, that there was no purpose. That he’d been a fool to have faith in anything.
Venture heard Grace come back inside, alone. She tapped lightly on the wall next to his little nook. “I’m coming in, Vent.”
“All right.” He sat up against the wall, still on his bed.
Grace closed the curtain. “Here.” She sat next to him and pressed a cool, wet cloth to his swollen cheek.
He held it there and mumbled, “Thanks.”
She mentioned nothing of what Justice had done as she cared for him, but she surprised him with a gentle, genuine question. “Why did you kiss her?”
Justice would never have asked him that. Jade was a pretty girl. His brother had told him explicitly to stay away from her. He was angry at his brother, in a rebellious mood. No further explanation needed. And what did it matter why, anyway? He shouldn’t have done it. A ruined reputation was no joke for a girl in Jade’s position, a girl with her opportunities, and neither was Grant’s trust in him. Venture was ashamed of it, both for what he’d already done and for his undying desire to do more.
He glanced at Grace. Her eyes were full of concern, of wanting to understand.
“I love her.”
“Oh, Vent!”
“Justice doesn’t need to know that, okay?” he added quickly, inwardly cursing himself for revealing such a thing. But then, what did he have left to lose?
“No, he doesn’t need to know that,” Grace agreed.
“I’m sorry about all this.” He felt more like an intruder in her family than ever. Tory, who’d been sound asleep, was fussing in the bedroom.
“I know. And I know you don’t believe it now, but all this will pass.”
He eyed her skeptically. “How can I stop feeling this way about her when I’m around her all the time? Especially if she feels the same way?”
“I don’t know. Things change over time. People change. Even what you think you want out of life, it changes as you grow.”
Venture wasn’t so sure she believed that, but he knew she said it out of compassion for him.
“Why are you so nice to me, Grace?”
“Because I know you’ve got a good heart, and I know you’re going to do great things one day, maybe not the way you want to now, but somehow.”
They sat, their backs against the plastered wall, side by side on the old quilt his mother had made for him, in big squares of dark and light green. There was a hole in it where one square had pulled away from another, exposing the gray backing underneath. It was the same spot he’d mended himself two years ago. He was no good at tying off, and now his careful stitches were nothing but a loose thread dangling from a hole.
“I’ll fix that for you.”
Venture couldn’t keep a lone tear from falling as Grace put her arm around his side. He shook his head, stood up abruptly, turned his back to Grace, and faced the wall at the foot of his bed, struggling to compose himself.
“Do you think I should go talk to Justice now?” Grace said.
He nodded.
“I can stay if you want.”
He shook his head, and she left, drawing the curtain behind her with care.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Late that night Venture awoke to the murmur of whispering voices in the main room. The firelight flickered low in the hearth and Justice’s shadow passed back and forth behind the curtain as he paced.
“What am I going to do about this? How can I make him realize he can’t go around kissing—and doing God knows what else—with his master’s daughter?”
“Justice, you don’t really think—”
“I don’t know what to think. I thought he cut off any relationship with her a long time ago. And I never thought he’d do something like this, to make a point of meeting with her in the middle of the night!”
“He’s nearly fifteen. How much self-control would you have had at that age, if a beautiful girl, one you had deep affection for, was interested in you?”
“Girls were a complete mystery to me when I was fourteen. I wouldn’t have had a clue how to approach one, and he’s able to entice the girl half the gentlemen of Society, and even some of Crested Society are waiting to turn sixteen so they can have a crack at courting her, to creep out in the middle of the night with him, a servant boy?”
“I don’t know about other girls, but Jade Fieldstone is hardly a mystery to Vent. They have a special bond.”
Abruptly, the pacing stopped. “What are you saying, that it’s hopeless and I might as well tell him to go for it?”
“I’m saying that you have to let him go.”
“Let him go?”
“Let him go be a fighter.”
“Grace!”
“They can’t be together. He’ll get his heart broken. He may even end up beaten and thrown out on the street or worse, depending how far things go. Not to mention putting Jade Fieldstone’s entire future at risk. This has to end, but it’s not going to end as long as they’re here together every day and he has nothing else to focus on. Get him preoccupied with something he loves to do, get his mind on something else, and then, if he’s good enough—and you know he’d be good enough with the right training, Justice—he’d be sent away to Champions Center to train in a year or two, wouldn’t he?”
There was a long silence. Venture lay perfectly still, eyes fixed on the silhouettes of his brother and sister-in-law, which had also stilled. What was happening? Just how far were they willing to go to keep him and Jade apart?
“You’re right.” Justice’s answer came out as a low groan. “Even if he agrees to stay away from her, how long would he manage to do it? Especially when he’s got nothing else going on for him. But how can I let him fight for a living? What would my mother think?”
Grace’s shadow moved closer to Justice’s. “What would your mother think if her son became seriously involved with Miss Jade Fieldstone?”
Another long pause. Venture’s head spun with the possibility of losing Jade, yet gaining a chance at his dream. He ached at the thought of leaving and with anger at what seemed the entire world’s determination that he wasn’t fit for Jade, but still, his pounding heart couldn’t help daring to hope. It would be difficult if he left. But not only was leaving for Champions his only real shot at making it to the Championship, but in the long run, it was his only shot at being with Jade.
“What if he doesn’t make it? What will he do for a living then? He’ll be a grown man with no career.”