Instead, he carried on.
“Until one day, she decided she wanted to see. He warned her not to, but it seemed so silly to worry. So she pulled the end of it and watched it unravel, and there underneath was not her own hidden ruin. It was the ruin he had wrought on her all along. The wound he had made deeper under cover of that velvet darkness, over every single day she had let him draw close to her, in seeming sunshine. All her life held in, until she pulled that thread. She pulled it and wore a waterfall of blood, for the rest of her life,” he said. Then after a long, dark moment, he seemed to lean in close. “Are you terrified yet?”
To which she went to say,No, of course not.
Only somehow her eyes were closed. Her hand was on her throat, as if to keep that waterfall in. As if to hold her head on her neck, while the feeling of losing that fight got stronger and stronger.She’s drowning, she found herself saying,she’s drifting away to that shadowy place.
And when she did, her voice was full of tears.
She didn’t know why. She didn’t understand any of this.
It seemed as if he was making her feel it maybe—but then she heard his voice. The snap of his fingers.Mina, he was saying. Notbookworm, not some other snide insult. But her name, her actual name.Mina, Mina, Mina, come back, come back. Come back to me.She even thought for a second that she felt his hand on the back of her neck, on her arm.
Like someone trying to lift a body out of a lake.
Like he could drag her out of this.
But it wasn’t him that managed.
It was the sudden ring of the breakfast bell, loud even down here in the bowels of the school. It clanged out, just as she thought she might sink into that oblivion forever. And when it did she snapped back to reality, like she’d never been anywhere else. She took a breath, and looked up to the place she was sure he was.
But he hadn’t moved.
He was still over there by the stage.
Staring at her, with that flat expression all over his face.
“I guess terror didn’t work,” he said, as he eased himself out of the half-sitting position he’d been in. “Oh, well. I suppose we shall just have to try and make you feel the right thing tomorrow.”
Then he simply strolled out.
Leaving her stranded, spent.
And not sure she could ever do anything like this again.
Chapter Eleven
She didn’t sleep well. Half her dreams were of girls wearing dresses made of blood, of Lilibet whispering in her ear that she was falling into the same trap. And the other half were of him doing the trapping. Just luring her in with things that seemed like good advice, but more than likely were not.
Connecting to magic via emotion might actually make it burst out of you and burn your own face off, she told herself, in the middle of getting dressed the next day. And she told herself it again, as she sat across from Anaya before the breakfast rush, wolfing down thick slices of buttery toast and huge mugs of tea.
“I just feel like everybody has mastered basic stuff, even before we get to the practical classes. So of course, they’re all going to survive being attacked by some possessed skeleton or a serpent scooped from the Underneath or whatever else gets thrown at us. But we won’t. And with barely two months to go to the end of term,” her friend was saying. So naturally, she wanted to tell her what Harker had told her. To share possibly valuable information, like she had before the maze.
But in the end, she just couldn’t.
Not yet, anyway.
She had to figure out, first, if he was being honest.
After all, it was bad enough that he and his secrets were a danger to her. She couldn’t endanger her friend, too. She couldn’t endanger anyone. She didn’t even want to be endangered herself, and yet somehow, she got to the theater at the exact time he had asked.Seven, he had said in his letter, this time. As if he wanted to give her a little extra time to fill her head with nightmares.
Though he didn’t look like someone who would ever do such a thing, when she stepped into the room. He was sprawled across the stage, one hand propping up his head, the other holding a book. And the book was, inexplicably,The Velveteen Rabbit. As she watched, he licked his thumb and turned the page.
Even though she knew he could bespell those pages to move on their own. Hell, she’d read about one particular piece of magic that made the words in a book simply leap into your head, all at once. And she felt sure he could have done it, if he wanted to.
It made her wonder: Was it the novelty of not?
Or did he find using magic for things you didn’t need wasteful?
