I do laugh. Just once. It pops out of me, and Otto and Cornelia both eye me strangely.
“Do you want to lie down?” Otto asks, thumb moving against my hip.
My body still aches. I gather myself, the back of my hand to my lips.
It’s all right.
It’s…right.
I don’t know where that word comes from. But it rings through me again.
Right.
“No,” I say and stand upright, out of his grip, pushing all my pain to the back of my mind. “No. We should celebrate, shouldn’t we? The potion worked.”
Cornelia sips in a breath, hesitates, and I shake my head.
“We’ll figure out whatever happened,” I tell her, and I don’t know where this certainty comes from. A calmness I haven’t felt in weeks descends over me. Calm and steady and…right.
It’s okay.
Whatever happened.
It’sright.
No—wrong.Wrong. Something is…wrong…
But I smile up at Otto. I feel it distantly, fogged, but I blink, and my gaze focuses, and he smiles back, cautious, still not sure whether he should sweep me away to bed.
I touch his face. “It’s all right,” I promise him. “I feel…great.”
And, strangely, I find it isn’t a lie.
I feel more awake than I have in days. Weeks, maybe. A burden is lifted. Or merely softened. Whatever it is, I find it hard tocare, and that in and of itself is freeing.
Cornelia doesn’t even bother trying to force a smile, staring at me in that abstract studious way like she’s trying to see the threads of magic that tether me.
Hm.
They both may be a problem.
Problem?
I shake my head.
There is no—problem.
Everything is right now.
9
Otto
That night, in the privacy of our room, I wake up, and she’s gone.
Panic and adrenaline shoot through my veins, and I bolt upright. My shoulders coil with tension.
We’re safe here, I tell myself.Safe.
