‘I didn’t throw the sword,’ Gwen told her. ‘I let it go.’ When Isobelle’s brow furrowed, Gwen hurried on, unwilling to go intowhyshe dropped it. ‘I watched it fall, and … Isobelle, itmoved. In mid-air.’
Isobelle’s eyes widened a little. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I was over the ship’s deck when I dropped the sword. But somehow it fell straight into the creature’s mouth. It movedby itself.’
Isobelle studied her as Gwen’s heart pounded. She braced herself for Isobelle to ask the obvious question: why on earth would you let go of your sword in such a moment?
But instead, Isobelle gave a little nod. ‘Hang on a second.’
She drew away from Gwen and turned, scanning the crowd. She spotted who she was looking for, and gestured hurriedly.
‘We need your experience as a hedge witch,’ Isobelle said by way of greeting, as Tabitha approached. ‘Gwen saw something during the sea monster fight that we can’t explain.’
Tabitha had a half-eaten roasted apple on a stick in one hand, and her cheeks had flushed a pretty shade of terracotta with the energy of the party. At Isobelle’s greeting, Tabitha blinked at her. ‘I’m no hedge witch,’ she replied.
Isobelle frowned at her. ‘But …’
Tabitha raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s a term a lot of witches use when setting out their shingle in a town, because it sounds unthreatening and people don’t know what it means. But a true hedge witch has a mastery over liminal spaces and altered states of consciousness and the veil between worlds and all sorts of stuff I can’t do.’
Gwen cast a sidelong glance at Isobelle, knowing that the other girl was replaying her encounters with the kindly middle-aged lady at the Darkhaven market who sold bramble bracelets and love charms. Isobelle rallied in record time, though, giving herself a shake and starting over.
‘Your experience as a witch in general, then,’ she said. ‘Gwen says she saw her sword move by itself in mid-air. That’s magic, isn’t it?’
Tabitha’s gaze slid towards Gwen’s and lingered. Gwen had said nothing of their midnight meeting to Isobelle, and she knew Tabitha was recalling the nightmares Gwen had confessed to her. ‘I did sense something,’ Tabitha murmured. ‘I was too far away here on shore to see, but during the fight, I did feel a … a shift, a surge of power, perhaps.’
‘So itwasmagic?’ Isobelle exclaimed. ‘And it wasn’t you?’
Tabitha shook her head. ‘And there are no witches here in town, according to Lord Bingleton. I was asking him, tactfully, about that just now. So unless one of your friends is secretly a witch, then there’s some unknown power at work here.’
Gwen thought about the paralysis that had seized her and made her drop her sword.But no, she thought,why would someone scare me into dropping the sword only to move it back on target?
They talked for a while longer, trying to make sense of what Gwen saw and what Tabitha felt, but there was no explanation to be gleaned from their limited pool of evidence. When Tabitha had once more drifted off to rejoin the party, Isobelle sighed and slipped her hand into Gwen’s.
‘So we’re back to “something weird is going on here”,’ Isobelle mused.
Gwen sighed and tipped her head back a little, her gaze coming to rest on the horizon. The old tower was little more than a finger of black jutting up against the indigo of dusk, but her eyes found it immediately. ‘Do you think there could be any truth to what Bingleton said about the sorceress having had a lover who’s still up there?’
Isobelle huffed a breath. ‘I mean, if a bunch of paladins with pitchforks came and hurt you, I’d probably stick around for revenge.’
Gwen snickered and leaned back against the wall of the shop, squeezing Isobelle’s hand. The firelight from the torches encircling the square shone like burnished copper in her hair and made her eyes dance. Gwen found herself scanning the other girl’s features, one by one, unable to look away.
‘There’s something about you in the firelight,’ she murmured. ‘I suppose it reminds me of the night of the dragon bonfire.’
Isobelle gave a dreamy sigh. ‘I wish you could have seen yourself in that dress Olivia made for you. You looked like … like magic personified. Do you remember when we went to your house and had to change into plainer clothes, up in your room?’
‘Remember it?’ Gwen replied, feeling heat rising to her cheeks. ‘Isobelle, I revisit that moment at least once a day.’ The laces of Isobelle’s dress loosening under her fingers, the quickening of her breath, the look in her blue eyes as she glanced over her shoulder, full of unspoken longing, lips flushed and parted …
Isobelle’s fingers slid up Gwen’s wrist, drawing her back to the present. Her eyes were fixed on Gwen’s, and Gwen felt a strange, thumping convulsion in her chest as she realised Isobelle was wearing the same look on her face now as she had that night. Gwen raised a hand and touched Isobelle’s cheek, feeling the heat of her skin, watching in wonder as its rosy colour intensified under her fingertips.
Isobelle took a single small step, leaning into Gwen a little, chin lifted that tiny bit required to look into Gwen’s face. ‘Should we …’
But there she paused. Isobelle hesitating about anything was always cause for a double-take, but Gwen’s eyes were riveted to her face, and she saw the sharpening of intention in Isobelle’s eyes before she spoke again. ‘Maybe slip away from the party early? We could light the fire in your room.’
Isobelle’s voice was even, but there was a tension beneath it, and a tremor in her lip. Her fingers slid down the tendon in Gwen’s neck, down to the edge of the fabric of her dress, allowing the edge of one fingernail to slide beneath it with a little tug.
Gwen’s mouth went dry and she tried to swallow.Yes, she thought,God, yes. Right now, please. But she found she could not speak. Abruptly, without warning, those same icy fingers of fear that had seized her on the boat curled around the sparks leaping in her belly and squeezed, extinguishing them. Cold swept through her, a cold she desperately didn’t want Isobelle, with her endless desire to help and solve all her problems, to see. For how could she explain her fear without explainingallher fears?
Gwen cleared her throat and reached up for Isobelle’s hand, holding it in hers.
