My hands stretched toward him, like a drowning swimmer. “Yes. If the alternative is youdying, then yes. Fuck it. Burn it all.” He was almost within reach. Just a couple more steps, and I could see my words landing like blows. “You don’t have to do all this. Just stay here, with me, and . . . we’ll keep doing what we’re doing. Or we can go somewhere else. We could do anything at all.”
The sorcerer wilted, defeat already carved into his face. My fingers brushed his robe. “No more of this destroying God bullshit—”
“Leave.”
“Pardon?”
The sorcerer side-stepped me. My hands groped at empty air. “Leave. I want you out of my castle.”
“But . . . surely we can talk about this—”
He stood rigid, as if in a pre-death rigor mortis. “I have no use for those who distract me from my goals.”
“Merulo—”
“LEAVE!” he screeched, his eye flashing, and suddenly the courtyard was full of constructs, their heads raised and waiting.
“But the prophecy . . .”
A quiver ran through him, and my horror lessened by a degree. He still needed me! He couldn’t buck off our connection. Our fates were tied. Once more, I tried to close the distance—and constructs mobbed me, forming a barrier of wing and claw and misshapen gut. I pressed forward, shoving the gnarled arms that blocked my view. Over the shoulder of a goat-faced construct, I caught a glimpse of the sorcerer stalking away. “Merulo!”
He didn’t turn around. “You’ll destroy me either way, Sir Cameron. So leave.”
I shouted a bit more, and bruised my hands on several wooden bodies. I might have even bitten one. But their eyes didn’t flash, and none of them moved to harm me or retaliate.
Finally, at some unheard command, the constructs dispersed, leaving me panting but unrestrained. The wind rasped at my eyes, and I wiped them.
“I’m coming in now!” I shouted to nobody, for the constructs had crawled and scuttled away to attend to other duties, leaving me a solitary speck in the empty expanse of the courtyard. “Merulo?”
But there was nobody to respond. The mad sorcerer had gone.
CHAPTER 22
In Which, in the Space of a Single Afternoon, It All Fell to Shit. In Which I Am Reminded that This Man Is the Enemy of Humanity and as Such, Probably Isn’t Very Good at Interpersonal Conflict. In Which Neither Am I, so What Then? In Which I Am Angry and Sad and Cannot See a Way to Fix This, so Why Not Break It Even Further.
Nothing stopped my re-entry to the castle. No constructs gripped me in their terrible curving claws when I stormed the kitchen and desecrated a tray of scones, and no foul scythes landed across my back as I returned to my room, brushing crumbs from my chin.
I walked back and forth across my bedroom, repeatedly, but courage came before I could wear a path in the limestone. Even then, I had only a small amount, fluttering in my chest like a moth.
Each step down the hallway felt like something I couldn’t take back. It made my flight of weeks prior, semi-conscious and impaled by an arrow, pleasantly nostalgic in retrospect; at least then, my mind had been unified on the goal of survival. Now, pieces of me split and argued.
Nobody human could stand me. Gareth had said that. But the sorcerer had been so nice. He’d given me pretzels, for crying out loud! And wasn’t I the solution to his loneliness?
“He won’t let me go,” I said, smiling away my nerves. “That’s all there is to it. He’s had a nice sorcerous tantrum, and now . . . now things will be fine.”
All too soon, the library appeared before me. I considered taking another lap around the castle, or two, or maybe even three, but forced myself to open the door and walk through it.
The sorcerer sat hunched over a book in his usual chair. All spindly and insectoid, he looked like something you might crack over your knee with ease. It gave him a vulnerability I hadn’t noticed before.
My gut twisted. “You want me to leave.”
“Yes,” said the sorcerer.
“Then . . . then, I’m leaving now.”
“Wonderful.” He licked a gaunt finger and turned a page.
I spluttered. “And the prophecy?”
