He sweeps his hand through the air, hiding us in his shadows, and then he sets off walking. I follow behind him.
I barely take in my surroundings, barely notice if there are people we pass. I’m too busy inside my own head, replaying that moment – the demon attacking Clare – over and over again, looking at it from every angle, trying to determine if there was something I could have done differently, if there was a way I could have saved her life.
At the same time, I’m thinking of her parents and what I’m going to say.
I remember the night they came to tell us of my sister’s death. It had been a night similar to the one we just left in Slate. Bitterly cold, icy rain falling like daggers from the sky. I’d been asleep in my little bed, but the pounding on the door had woken me. I tiptoed out into the hallway, the cold, compacted earth frigid beneath the soles of my feet.
I’d hidden in the shadows then too. Watched and listened. My father’s broad back blocked the view of the person standing in the rain outside, but I could hear his voice clearly. The accentwas refined, different from anything I’d ever heard in Slate. But despite that, I’d understood his words.
“Your daughter is dead,” he’d said simply. No empathy expressed. No sympathy either. “Died in an accident. Strayed too close to shadow weavers who were training. She was killed in crossfire.”
Again, no apology. No condolences. Just the barest information imparted.
My father hadn’t said a word. He’d just shut the door and stood there, unmoving, for what felt like forever, until the cold in my toes and in my heart became unbearable. I’d hurried back to my bed, buried myself under the covers, and wept until I had no more tears to give.
I won’t do it like that. I won’t be so cruel. I’ll tell Clare’s parents how beautiful she was. How wonderful she was. How sorry I am. How very, very sorry.
“We’re here, Nini,” Thorne says, knocking me out of my thoughts.
It’s a large building, not too dissimilar from the Town Hall back in Slate, though in much better repair. The windows are large, the walls fairly recently painted.
We check that there’s no one watching, step up to the doorway, and read the names listed for each apartment. My eyes scan down the list, like they have so many times at the academy, searching for my name, for Fly’s, and for Clare’s. Her family name sits near the bottom of the list.
“Apartment 35,” I tell Thorne.
The entranceway is locked, but I unpick it easily with my magic. Then we slip inside and climb the staircase to the fourth floor.
We stride down the corridor, ticking off the different numbers as we go until we find number 35. The number hanging in the center of the door isn’t some metal creation. It hasn’t beenpainted on the wood. It’s something that must have been crafted many years ago by a child; formed of dough, baked in the oven, painted in bright colors that have faded over time.
I glance at Thorne. “They might not be here. Clare said they were always working at the hospital.” I shuffle on my feet.
“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, Briony,” he reminds me. “There are other people who can deliver this message. It doesn’t have to be you.”
I bite my lip and shake my head. “It does, Thorne. It does have to be me.”
I knock on the door. Everything inside my body, even the magic in my veins, is so tense, pulled so taut it feels like it might snap or shatter into a million pieces. Or maybe I already have. I feel so broken by all of this.
There are footsteps behind the door, and then it draws open.
The woman on the other side looks so remarkably like Clare it knocks the breath right out of me, and I can’t help but gasp. She blinks at us behind her glasses, squinting to get a better look at us in the dark corridor. Then she gasps too and scurries back.
“You’re that girl! The girl from Slate. The one wanted by the Empress.”
She glances up at Thorne, and her eyes widen with horror. “And you’re Thorne Cadieux.”
She opens her mouth wide to scream, and I step forward, raising my hand – an action that makes her flinch and squeeze her eyes shut, as if she thinks I’m about to zap her with my magic.
“No, wait, please,” I tell her. “It’s not what you think. It’s not what they’ve told you.”
“Please don’t hurt me,” she says. “I don’t know why you’re here, but I can’t help you.”
“We’re friends of your daughter,” I explain. “We’re friends of Clare. She never told you that?”
The woman peeks at us. She’s trembling, like she really thinks we’re a pair of psychopaths come to murder her in her bed.
“I know she writes to you,” I tell her. “Did she never tell you about me? Her friend Briony? Briony and Fly – we’re her best friends.”
The woman blinks again and then adjusts her glasses in a manner so like Clare’s that it sends a stab of pain straight to the center of my heart.
