“Because I’m lying,” he admits. “Come in, come in. Let’s have a talk.”
He moves aside and I enter the room. I don’t know if the space is slightly cleaner than the last time or if I’m just getting used to it, but I have a feeling it’s the latter. His raven in the corner bites at the cage like it’s just itching to peck my face off.
“I’m pretty sure your bird hates me,” I tell him, moving to the center of the room to sit on the less dirty high-backed chair.
“Sorry. I’ve trained her to root out time-traveling abominations.”
“I should have assumed.” Matthias sits down in the chair across from me. He’s smiling and saying nothing as he rests his hands in his lap. I don’t know if I’m about to get good news or bad news.
“So,” I prompt him. “Did you find anything?”
For a second his eyes are totally blank until he says, “Ah, you mean about how to send you home. Yes and no.”
I wait for him to elaborate. He doesn’t.
“What does that mean?”
He sits forward in his chair, rubbing his hands together. “It means yes, I did find something, and no, because I’m not quite certain how we can use it to bring Catherine back or to send you forward.”
I open my mouth to speak but then stop myself. “I’m going to need more details than that.”
Matthias gets up to grab a bottle of wine from a nearby table. He sniffs it, makes a sour face, then pours himself a glass. “What I found was a passage in a text that focused on the matter of souls. Souls coming, souls going, and the possibility of controlling the destiny of a soul.” I inch forward as he goes on. “You see, the more I think of it, the more I’m convinced that what happened to you didn’t happen by chance. I believe that Catherine’s spirit must have somehowchosento send you here.”
I sit back in my chair. The surface is sticky, but I can’t bring myself to care. “No,” I tell him.
Matthias takes a sip of his wine, almost gags, then swallows it down. “No?”
“No, that makes no sense. Why would Catherine choose to send me back? I don’t fit here. I hate it here.”
“Well,” Matthias says, returning to his seat, “alternatively, Catherine might have sent you back to punish you. Maybe she saw you in the palace in the future and didn’t like you.”
I give him a glare, and he goes on. “Or maybe it was just the path of least resistance. Your spiritismore bendy than most.”
“You can sense that?”
“Of course not,” he scoffs. “The mist told me.”
“Fantastic.” I’m the one to get up now, putting my hands on my hips as I begin to pace. “You’re telling me that there is no way for us to bring Catherine back? I thought you said you found something.”
Matthias’s gaze turns slightly optimistic. “Yes, I did read a passage that suggests that summoning a spirit can be done...”
“That’s great!”
“The issue being, we would need a piece of Catherine’s soul in order for it to work.”
I’m cursed. My mom didn’t invite an old witch to my christening after I was born and because of that, I was cursed in my crib as a baby. That or Matthias is right, and Catherine Howard is actually trying to kill me.
“Her soul?” I repeat for clarification. “We need a piece of Catherine’s soul?”
“Correct. Or something connected to her soul.”
I cover my face in my hands to stop myself from screaming. When I lower them back down, my eyes are raging. “What the hell, Matthias?”
His affronted gaze shoots right back at me. “Why am I the one taking all the blame? I’m doing the best I can here.”
I inhale a ragged breath and close my eyes. I know this isn’t his fault. I just want to go home. I at least need to have hope that I can get home. When I open my eyes back up, Matthias is watching me with a curious flicker in his gaze.
“Wait,” he says quietly. “I just realized... you never told me your name. What is it?”
