Minutes pass. How long will it take? Even if this works, even if Bishop and Alistair are already on the way, there’s no guarantee they’ll arrive in time. Her heartbeat slows. Her throat tightens. Her body feels like stone—stiff, heavy, and cold.
She shivers in the darkness, and something touches her hand. It slides against her fingers.
“Bishop,” she whispers. “Is that you?” Feeling along the floor, she finds him again and runs her hands along his body. She feels the rogue scale by his left eye where his shed always gets stuck.
“Bishop,” she cries in relief. “You found me. Where’s Alistair?”
Her snake crawls up her body and curls on her chest like he does when they’re falling asleep.
No one else is here.
Is this it? Did Bishop know it was already too late? Is he only here so that his mother doesn’t die alone?
Claudia’s eyes flutter closed for a second, but not before catching a glimpse of an angel.
No, not an angel—a woman. A blond girl with glowing violet eyes.
The woman whispers, “Pyxis, Reticulum.”
To Unlock and Open.
The cell door opens, and the woman kneels beside her. Their eyes meet. The recognition is instant.
Claudia knows her immediately, because who else could she be? There’s something in both of them that recognizes the other—two girls who fed parts of their souls to the same beast.
“Hello, Claudia Jolicoeur.”
Her throat is tight and raw when she forces herself to say, “Hello, Odette Dufort.”
TO HEAL THE SOUL
A soul in love is a torrent of desire, and is thus both divine and imperishable.
Professor Moira Graves, Cygnus Discipline of Musices
You’re alive?” Claudia whimpers. She struggles to keep her eyes open, to keep herself awake. She’s fading fast.
Or has she already gone? Is she meeting Odette just across the veil?
Odette runs her hands along the poem written in blood on the wall. “How did you do it?”
Claudia hardly knows what to say. She stammers. “I just did what I saw in your diary.”
“No,” she whispers gruffly, thumbing over Corvus. “It’s neverworked for me before. It was all a theory.” Her eyes cut to Claudia, and it’s not clear if Odette’s angry or impressed. “Until now. What did you do? What makes it cast?”
“I think—” Claudia tries to sit up, but she can’t. Her body is too stiff. “Fuck,” she mumbles, wincing. “I think the spell must evoke the constellation in both shape and name. See?” Shakily, she points. “I used the wordsHydrusandCorvusin the poem itself. I figured that if we’re mixing celestial and linguistic magic, every form of the constellation is important.”
Odette flares her nostrils. “I see.” She laughs weakly. “It sounds so obvious when you say it.”
Claudia blinks tightly. Is this real? Reaching up, she puts her hand on Odette’s leg, half expecting it to fall right through as if putting her hand on a shadow. “You’re real?”
“I am real.”
“Am I dead?” Her tongue struggles to form words. She holds Bishop closer for comfort. “Are you alive?”
Odette’s fingers are cold as a dead girl when she touches Claudia’s hand. “I am now.”
“How?” Her body and her voice weaken by the second. She chokes out a dry cough. “Triche, Lamour, our friends—everyonethinks you’re dead. Sidarphion told me that the bargain killed you when you failed.”
