“Lucy,” he said. His eyes were lit from inside. He’d been up all night.
“Good morning, Davy. Eat something.”
“Lucy, I think I cracked it.” He wrapped his arm around my hips and pulled me closer to his chair—and I loved him then.
“What if the oracles kept having the same visions because they weren’t prophecies at all? What if they were instructions?Lucy—what if they’re meant to guide us to change, not foretell it? Here we are, just waiting to be saved, but the prophecies tell us how to save ourselves!”
“How?”
“With the Greatest Mage.”
***
He left again. He came back with more books.
He came back with pots of oil and blood that wasn’t red. I’m not sure when he slept—not with me.
I went for long walks in the fields. I thought about writing letters to Mitali, but I knew she’d fly here on a broom if I told her the truth, and I wasn’t ready to go.
I never wanted to leave Davy.
So much of this is his fault—Iwantyou to be angry with him. But I never asked to leave. I never asked him to let me go.
I thought… I thought that whatever was coming would be better if I was there with him. I thought it helped him to be tied to me. Like a kite with a string. I thought that as long as I was there, he’d never get carried away completely.
***
He killed both my chickens.
***
He crawled into our bed one night, smelling of mud and burnt plastic, and lifted my hair to kiss the back of my neck. “Lucy.”
I rolled over to see him. He was smiling. He looked young, like someone had wiped the bitterness from his face with a warm cloth.
“I’ve got it,” he said, kissing my cheeks, then my forehead. “The Great Mage, Lucy. We can bring him.”
I laughed—I was so happy just to see him happy. I was so happy to have his attention. “How, Davy?”
“Just like this.”
I shook my head. I didn’t understand.
He pushed me onto my back, kissing along my neck. “The two of us. We’ll make him.”
He kept kissing my neck down into my nightshirt.
“Are you talking about a baby, Davy?”
He pulled his head up and grinned. “Who better than us?” he said. “To raise our saviour?”
BOOK FOUR
70
NICODEMUS
She won’t talk to me. Hasn’t since. Because it’s against the rules.
