He couldn’t fool her, anymore. She remembered all his hiding places.
The bench beneath the willow tree, the couch at the bottom of the library, the hollow under the stairs. That portrait on the fourth floor that slid back when you touched it with magic, to reveal a little cubby. They had hidden there once, when Professor Hargreaves had been furious over a book they had stolen from her collection. Though she didn’t remember reading it.
She remembered kissing.
She remembered his sighs of pleasure.
The memory of them made her heart flutter. It made her whole body flush hot, even in the middle of all of this. And it was in such a state—weak, thrown, half in love and half still her old self—that she found him. In that copse of trees by the lake, that you could only get to by seeing your way with magic.
Like putting a particular key in a certain lock.
Hard for her before. So easy now it was breathtaking.
She formed a shape with her hands like a heart, and the path opened up, and there he was. Sitting an only slightly safe distance from the water, with his arms around his knees.Hoping something will eat you, she thought and wanted to roll her eyes. But instead she found herself wondering how many times he’d tried to dosomething similar. Let himself fall off a roof, wandered into the library after dark, attempted to make some weapon that could be used against himself.
God, it was no wonder he’d wanted her to do it for him.
Constantly, all he had cared about was her doing it for him.
Make a knife, he had said. And now she was even more in her feelings than before. She almost buckled when he looked up, emotion so suddenly clear all over a face she was still used to being steely. He looked haunted, horrified. Before she could even say anything, he tried to stand up and back away.
She made him stay down with a spell.
Invisible wall—two hands flat and face down, together in the middle, then drawing outward just above his head as he rose. He clocked into it pretty hard, and thumped back to the ground with a sound of surprise and protest. Then after a second, he let out a weary sigh.
“Oh god, now you’re remembering how to do everything,” he said, with a shake of his head. “And you’re not even going to use it to get revenge, clearly. You’re just going to do stuff like make me stay here and listen to you probably being insufferably sympathetic toward the man who murdered you.”
“So that’s why you dumped me in my bed and ran away.”
“I didn’t run, all right? I just walked very fast. Then hid.”
She looked back at the path she had easily found.
Then back to him. “You didn’t pick a very good spot.”
“Only because I had no idea that one memory would give you loads more.”
“I think it’s a little like poking a hole in a dam. Once you do it... ”
“The deluge. Yes, I can see that. God, you even look more like her.”
“Because Iamher,” she said, more insistently than she intended to. She didn’t even know she believed it like that, until it came out of her with all the passion in the world. She put her hand to her chest but somehow ended up clutching it instead.
It made her feel silly.
Until she saw the way he reacted.
He jerked as if shot through the heart; the breath he let out seemed to break, in the middle. And the way his eyes searched her face, that hand on her chest, the curve of her shoulders, the dark tumbling waves of her hair. She knew he was letting it all sink in. That she wasn’t just almost, but lacking the memories to be more.
She wasactually.
And the acceptance made his expression sink.
It disappeared beneath waves of emotion she wouldn’t have said he even knew how to feel, before now. Before it broke down entirely. She saw his face almost crumble, in so traumatic a way she took a step forward. She put out a hand, caught between what Mina would do if it was Harker, and what Lilibet would do for Bram.
But he held up his own hand before she could decide.
While the other covered his face as best it could.
