Trying to breathe calmly, she pressed one hand to her hair, clutching the comb that had saved her life. With the other, she reached out, grasping at snowy boulders in the cliffside and fumbling with scraggly bushes until she caught purchase at last. Once she was no longer falling, the feeling of regular weight returned, thumping her against the cliff, and then she hung in place, dangling from the side of a mountain she otherwise would have been dashed against.
Frigid wind howled in the dark. Even guarded from the direct blasts, Aria felt the swirling eddies of it, and her bare fingers soaked in the cold of the rock. She shivered. Looking up, she saw the light of the mansion spilling into the night, and her insides shriveled. Had she fallen so far in a matter of seconds?
She looked down.
Mark. You already looked down and regretted it. Repeating the same mistakes. Never learning.
Aria closed her eyes, tucking her head against her extendedarm, the other clinging to a prickly bush beside her shoulder. She shivered in the night. She’d locked the quill away, yet it returned. She’dburnedit, yet it returned. It always returned.
Repeating the same mistakes. Never learning.
She’d disobeyed her father again. Returned to Northglen again. Chased the same circles of conversation with the widow and emerged from the encounter even worse.
Repeating the same mistakes.
She was eight years old again, making strokes on a paper, watching with dread as the marks kept coming and coming and coming. A hundred. More.
Never learning.
“Fine,” she whispered to the quill. “Now what?”
It hovered without answer. It didn’thaveanswers; it didn’t have solutions. Only condemnations. If Aria held to the mountain forever without moving—if she didn’t think, didn’tbreathe—it would have nothing to criticize. Without her efforts, it would be useless.
It was already useless.
When Aria wanted to learn to swim as a child, her father took her to the lake a few times a week for the entire summer. The first time in the water, she clung to him and cried, never trying to paddle her arms or move from his embrace. She told him she never wanted to go back, but as usual, he didn’t listen, and after finding herself back at the lake a second and third time, she accepted she would have todosomething about her fears. For a while, she paddled weakly. She hated water in her face. She thought of drowning and couldn’t breathe. But her father continued bringing her back. After weeks, she could swim on her own. By the end of summer, she was sneaking out to the lake without him.
Yes, Aria kept repeating mistakes. Because she was going backto the lake. She was paddling weakly and gulping muddy water and failing to float. But she kept coming back.
Maybe she hadn’t learned yet.
But she would.
Success would not come by hiding, by fleeing. It would come by returning to the lake.
Aria set her jaw, and she started climbing. Her fingers slipped in powdery snow as she reached for handholds, and she hissed as she grasped sharp rock edges and prickly brush. The skin of her hands reddened and ached. A cut along her palm stung with every movement, then grew numb.
Corvin’s comb proved to be a lifesaver once more. As she climbed, she felt lighter and lighter. Each push lifted her higher, until she began lurching up the mountainside, catching new holds with more ease. For a moment, she almost felt like she was flying, racing toward a starlit sky almost within reach.
At last, she wedged her boot against a rock, heaved herself upward—
And her fingers caught the mansion’s foundation.
Above and to her left rose the gaping windows of the ballroom. Aria eyed a narrow window to her right, where a stone ledge extended at its base. She leapt toward it and caught hold. Though her teeth chattered, the cold couldn’t prevent her triumphant grin.
Then she nearly lost her grip as the window opened and Lettie’s timid face peeked out.
Aria found herself swallowed by a circle of blue light. This magic was nothing like the exhilaration she’d experienced while climbing the mountain; this was a split second of feeling like a mind without a body, falling into a pit without a bottom.
Then came a moment ofactualfalling, ending abruptly by a lurch into new surroundings as Aria stumbled on a rug and landed hard on one knee. Her stomach flipped, nearly losingits contents. Her numb hands needled painfully in the sudden warmth, her eyes watered, and she couldn’t hear until her ears popped.
“Sorry,” said Lettie. “I think I pulled too hard. It’s more difficult when I move myself along with someone else.”
They were in a bedroom. Aria thought at first it was Lettie’s, but the pristine arrangement of every item was not the work of a child. The bedcovers and pillows had been settled with perfect symmetry, and though the furniture was clear of dust, the room smelled musty and unused all the same. It felt like stepping into a preserved tomb. Even the fresh flowers on the mantel felt more like a graveside offering than an addition of life.
Charlie’s room.
Lettie rubbed her hands. Her fingers shook.
