Oh, that was even worse.
“You’ve turned my own body against myself,” she said, spitting the words at him.
“Yes, I have.”
She stuffed her shaking hands into her pockets, realized they werehispockets, the ones he’d made, and pulled them back out. She wanted to run. Instead, she leaned against the table and forced herself to ask the question she dreaded to hear answered. “What are you going to make me do?”
“Omnimancing,” he said.
She stared at him.Omnimancing?
“I will continue fielding requests that require spellcasting outside the house, but everything that can be done in here, away from witnesses, you will do,” he said, striding to the cabinets and pushing the aconite back into its slot. “You will handle all the brews by yourself.”
“But—”
“You will perform your work to the best of your abilities and cast no spells outside this house. You won’t tell anyone about these contracts or anything whatsoever to do with magic use, yours or mine. You are not to suggest we’re involved in anything illegal. You will not harm me—or yourself.”
He slammed a fist on the table between them. “And you are most certainlynotto do anything that will get me intotrouble, such as making fuckingcopiesof top-secret documents to give toagitators!”
She pressed her fingernails into her palms to keep tears at bay. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
Besides—he wasn’t done.
“Don’t take anything out of this house without my permission,” he said. “Don’t duplicate anything in this house without my permission. Don’t talk, write or otherwise communicate about anything happening in this house without my permission, other than to say you’re helping me prepare ingredients for brews. Is there anything at all about this that is unclear to you, Miss Harper?”
She inhaled, felt her breath hitch and exhaled slowly. “One thing,” she said, voice mercifully steady. “If you needed my help, why not justaskfor it?”
Somehow this made him even angrier. “Because I wasn’t sure I could trust you! And then you proved to me that I can’t!”
“So did you—Hades,” she said bitterly.
“Get out.”
That was one order she was happy to follow.
CHAPTER 12
She managed to hold off her breakdown until half a mile into the forest, and it was there that Ella—going for a solo tromp in her boy’s boots—found her.
“Are you all right?” Her friend covered the distance between them at a run. “What’s happened?”
As she opened her mouth with no clear idea of what she would say, she tasted the too-sweet aftertaste of pomegranate blooming in the back of her throat—reminder and warning. She couldn’t answer the question.
“Beatrix?”
She coughed. “Our omnimancer,” she finally choked out, and could get no further.
Ella’s expression hardened. “What did he do?”
“He—he—” She faltered, trying to think of something true that she would be physically capable of saying.
Ella’s next words were quiet. Dangerous. “Did he rape you?”
Beatrix burst into laughter. A completely inappropriate response, but she couldn’t help herself. Ella looked alarmed, which only made her laugh harder. Blackwell could do literally whatever he pleased to her, as long as it didn’t harm Lydia, and she had no defense—what could possibly be worse?
“No,” she finally managed, “not that.” She shifted on the log where she’d slumped. “It’s just that you were right about him after all.”
Amazing she could say as much as that. But Ella’s face showed just how cryptic and confusing it was. “What, that he’s awful? Does this have something to do with the League? Beatrix, don’t make meguess!”
