He tried to hide it, but I saw the flicker of relief in his face.
‘I know the Witch hides something in that Tower.’ My hands were twisted into the skirt of my travelling dress. ‘If you insist my place is there, at least tell me the truth. Please. This is my last chance.’
I saw the possibility unfurl; his lips parted, his eyes intense and as troubled as the Witch had been. Then the cloud passed and he looked away.
‘Let people keep their secrets, Mina. They may have good reason.’
It took a great effort to keep my composure. My father was a coward, and I could no longer deny it. He looked so very small and human in his nightshirt; a man who loved me, but didn’t want the demands that came with love.
‘My girl.’ He reached for my hand and I let him clasp it. I must learn not to want more from him than he was able to give. But for all the tension between us, he was my father and I wanted to believe he would tell me if I truly was in danger.
‘Be well.’
As I left, I felt the certainty of it this time. I had come back, against all odds, and he had made it clear he would rather me gone.
I put on my travelling cloak and went down to the carriage.
The driver waited wordless as my bag was loaded and I arranged my skirts on the bench inside. Lamps were lit at the four corners against the winter gloom and we set out.
I left Blumwald for the second time, but this time I was running towards, not away. Sleep came to me in fits and bursts as we thundered through the forest, and as the sun crested the mountaintops the castle emerged from the trees.
I smiled.
The town, the bridge, the gates. The great hall with its breeching wall of limestone. The rotting tapestries, the worn steps of the staircases.
I had made an oath. I was the Witch’s companion now. I had a place, and it was here.
I was waiting in our breakfast room still in my travel-stained clothes when she came in, and was rewarded by the flood of emotions over her beautiful face. Confusion, relief, and then the thing that lit a warmth within me as my own heart echoed hers – hope.
‘You came back,’ she said, half question, half thanks.
‘I came back.’
The distance between us closed one step more. Just as my father had, she reached out a hand for mine and this time I let it be taken, and drew her to sit by me, hip against hip, shoulder against shoulder, head against head.
I was home.
XI
The Witch’s welcome shut all thought of Blumwald from my mind so swiftly.
She complained vociferously about being abandoned and of the mess I had left behind me in her study. Every noise I made was too loud, I chewed egregiously at breakfast and my clothing was an insult to her eyes.
I loved every moment of it: I had been missed.
A few nights after my return, I had my courses and was in too much pain to have any interest in dinner, so I went to her study, planning to make a quick apology for my unavailability and retreat. I found the Witch in the middle of the room, eyes closed and viola raised to her chin, one hand dancing over the fingerboard, the other bowing lazily, drawing out a slow, melancholy tune. She moved with grace – I already knew she was capable of that – but the open vulnerability in her face, the sadness that drew her hand and the bow so movingly across the strings was mesmerising.
I never wanted to stop watching.
The wall between us was as glass and I could truly see her. I could see pain and longing and regret, desire and passion and beauty, the distance shrunk until I could think her thoughts, feel her fingers brush across my arm, her sigh shudder through my body. In that moment, I thought I could love her.
I shifted my weight, and a creaking board betrayed me. She stopped short with a sharp screech of the strings and glared.
‘I didn’t mean to interrupt.’
‘You never do mean anything, do you,’ she snapped, vanishing the viola back into its case, ‘and yet you always manage to do the least desirable thing.’
Once those words would have hurt me, I would have snapped back and the day would sour. But now I knew it was nothing but the spikes on the shell of a conker, a little defence easily discarded.
