She rubs her chest. “It stings.”
“I know.”
I take a step closer, even though I know I’m not a welcome presence anywhere near her. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I never wanted to hurt you.”
She barely reacts, her gaze locked on the wall at absolutely nothing, seeming lost inside her head. “It’s not something I can even begin to deal with right now,” she says. “We need to keep going.”
The ceiling vibrates, sending a flurry of dust into the air. Reva frowns up at it before turning back to the door in front of us.
“Kit must be just through there,” she says.
Then, straightening her shoulders, she takes a shuddering breath and seems to shove every ounce of emotion away behind a thick wall.
As she reaches for the handle, she hesitates and turns back to me with a speculative look. “I’m not so sure you should come.”
My insides go haywire. “No.” I shake my head violently. “You can’t go in there alone.”
“Aster.” She reaches out as if to touch my arm, only pulling back right at the last moment with a look of betrayal at her own hand. “You don’t need to do this. Surely she’ll recognise you? What if she tries to use you again, or worse?”
“I don’t care. We need to get Kit back, and maybe I can distract her or something while you focus on him.”
She gives me a long look, and I can see the different emotions battling it out just behind those hazel eyes. “You’re sure?”
Not even slightly, but there’s no going back now. “I am.”
“All right then.” Reva takes another deep breath as she turns the handle. I mutter a spell for distraction under my breath, hoping I have at least enough magic for that to work.
Then I reach out to tug on Reva’s arm so that I can step through first, but she slips away from me, and I’m forced to follow behind, catching the door before it swings shut in my face.
Reva
WE STEP INTO ANOTHERoffice. This one has all the desks pushed up against one wall and the chairs pushed against another, with random cabinets thrown in all over the place. Right in the middle of the room, there’s a dark-haired woman sitting with her head bowed. She’s muttering something to herself and doesn’t seem to be aware of anything else in the room.
“That’s her,” Aster whispers in my ear. I suppress an unwelcome shiver and nod to show I’ve heard him. “It seems like the distraction spell is working on her, at least.”
The sorceress, Araminta Stone. She doesn’t look like the wolf-eyed seductress we were told about back at the Dry Dock. MaybeAster’s magic burned through even more glamours than we realised. My gut twists at the reminder and I shove all my feelings deep into a bag that I tie up tight to be tossed into the ocean later.
Now’s not the time to be distracted, even though it feels like my entire chest is one giant bruise.
I peer around, stepping forward on silent feet and then sucking in a gasp. On the left side of the room, surrounded by ugly chairs, there’s a man sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest and his head down.
Kit.
He’s here.
He shifts as though sensing our presence and lifts his head, and the air fills with the sound of clinking chains. His wrists are bound. Manacled, just like Aster when we found him.
His eyes widen as he takes us in, blinking furiously as though he can’t believe his eyes.
I can’t either. He looks better than I expected, dressed in different clothes from when I last saw him. I wish Frannie was here for many reasons, not least because her ability to manipulate fire would come in handy right about now.
Now that we’ve found them, I’m quickly realising I don’t exactly have a plan in place. Nothing is going as it should be. Jack was supposed to be here, Torin and Captain Finch were meant to lure her out so that we could focus on extracting Kit.
But they’re not here to do their part, so I’m going to have to follow the habit of a lifetime and think on my feet.
We need to work with what we’ve got. A witch with unknown abilities and a possibly empty store of magic, a manacled cursebreaker, and me.
Reaching out to brush my fingers over Aster’s wrist, he startles, his eyes snapping up to meet mine, and my chest gives a wayward pang. “Can you keep the distraction spell going and try to free Kit?”
