Fox blinks in surprise. ‘But I would never make you stay.’
I want to scream at him. I want to shatter this cell and myself with it.
‘Good. Then give me my dagger and step aside. Then I can go back to avoiding you and we can both pretend that none of this ever happened.’
There is a pause.
‘All right.’ He holds up his hands in surrender. ‘It’s just, it seems only fair.’
‘What’sonly fair?’
‘Well,’ he says, brushing a stray curl behind my ear, ‘since you showed me yours, I figured it’s only right that I show you mine.’
My stomach twists. ‘What are you talking about?’
Fox smiles at me, and it’s such a tender smile that it threatens to knock me off balance. ‘I told you that you and I are more alike than you think,’ he murmurs.
I’m about to protest when his hand moves to the chain round his neck. It’s the one he’s always worn since the very first day I met him. He reels the chain upward, winding it round and round his finger, revealing a pendant dangling from the end of it.
A small golden pendant, shaped like an eye.
38
Iwatch the morning sun glinting off my dagger and try not to come undone. I count the seconds, the inhalations, the heartbeats, the tauntingtick,tick,tickof the clock on the wall and attempt to tackle time to the ground before it can run away like sand through my fingers.
Slowly, I begin to sift through the events of last night.
Fox.Fox knows about the three enchanted Eyes. He knows that I wear Syla’s Eye round my neck. He has an Eye, too. But he didn’t tell me to which sister it belonged, or why he let me go, or what he’s planning to do. With the Eyes. With me.
He took me back to my chambers last night. Up the endless steps, past the sleeping guards and into the serf tunnels to avoid detection. When we reached the Aquatori Wing, he leaned across to open my door, but before I could slip past him he caught hold of me and murmured, ‘I trust you to keep this between us, Storm Weaver. Because when someone breaks my trust, I break them.’
And when he said this I remember thinking about bones. The blunt snap of my wrist in the first trial. The sickening crunch of Cole’s jaw in the maze. But something told methat Fox wasn’t referring to mere bones when he spoke of breaking something. Someone.
I spend the rest of the night lying awake, wondering if I should throw the Eye right back into the pool in the Keep.
Maybe if I concentrate very hard on the patch of blue sky outside the window I could just melt into it. Leave my body behind and go live in the clouds.
But that might have to wait, because at that moment Flint bursts into my bedchamber. Mouse, who was asleep on the pillow beside me, starts awake and hisses at him furiously. For some reason my brother is holding a hand over his eyes.
‘Just to be clear, I couldn’t care less who you are,’ he snarls. ‘Unless your intentions are nothing short ofmarriage, I have no choice but to challenge you to a duel.’
I prop myself up on my elbows. ‘Er … who are you talking to?’
Flint is breathing heavily, as though he’s marched all the way here, which I’m guessing he has. Splaying his fingers slightly, he peers cautiously through the gap. I give him a bemused little wave. He frowns, scanning the room before he yanks back my bedsheets and tosses them to the floor. I yelp, half indignant, half bewildered. But Flint isn’t finished. He strides over to the armoire and begins pulling out dress after dress. Then, struck by a sudden idea, he crouches down on the floor and starts looking underneath my bed.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
He turns to me, eyes burning with rage. ‘Where is he?’
‘Who?’
Then I freeze. He doesn’t mean Fox, does he? He can’t know that I was with him last night, can he?
I decide to play the fool. ‘Flint, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’
My brother ignores me. I can almost see the steam coming out of his ears as he raises his voice, addressing the room at large. ‘I know you’re here, and I don’t care who your father is, I don’t care who you are, and I don’t care who you’re going to be. If you think I’m going to sit by while youdefilemy sister’s honour, then you are mistaken.’
My stomach drops. Did Flint somehow find out about the kiss in the maze? But – but it was just a kiss. Just a mindless, misguided kiss. It didn’t mean anything.
