Instead, he seemed to jerk as if struck. Like he hadn’t expected to see her, or have her see him, and now couldn’t cope with it. She actually saw his intake of breath, followed by a flash of that same agony she’d seen that day, under the stairs. Then he looked away, whip quick.
Before it got any worse, she suspected.
And she didn’t know what to do with that. “Have you had a falling out?” Anaya whispered, but all she could do in response was shrug. She couldn’t let words emerge. She knew they would be terrible ones, likeI think it might be somehow the opposite, and he just doesn’t know how to cope with that.
Or even worse:
I don’t know how to cope with it, either.
Despite the fact that she had this to deal with now. They were basically ten people from Professor Kirkpatrick, with his clipboard. Someone had just definitely hit the ground. They watched as he confirmed with the resident physicians that some healing spell hadn’t taken.We need a clean up box, she heard him say, and knew that this meantcoffin.
It was vital that she focused on this.
And not on Harker, up ahead. Not on the fact that he was now on the edge.He can fly, she told herself.He can fly, he can fly, he isn’t about to drop off a precipice to his doom. Though she couldn’t deny it looked like that. He didn’t even sit astride the broom he had, the way some did. He just kind of stepped forward, in a waythat made her stomach lurch. It made her think of words likesuicidal, even though she’d done her best to suppress them.
And her heart only restarted when she saw him swoop back up.
He headed into the night sky, as if he could somehow go and never come back. She couldn’t even see him by the time it got to her turn. There was just the huge drop and a dozen students still swooping around—including Anaya.
She waved from her own broomstick.
Ready, Mina thought, to catch her.
Even though catching was against the rules. “Don’t you dare, Ms. Syal,” Professor Kirkpatrick called out. And Mina tried to communicate the same.Don’t risk anything for me, she had told her friend, way back at the beginning of the line. Now she made it as clear as she could with her eyes. She aimed for confident, forI’m fine, as she put one foot out over the abyss below. No broom, no object to help her, just her and her body. Letting herself feel fear, but everything else, too.
What it was to fly. How it felt to desire.
Bram, she thought, as she closed her eyes, and gave in.
Though she knew it wasn’t him who filled her with everything she needed. It never had been. It was Harker, it was him, it was his face behind her eyes. It was everything he had done for her, and all the ways he’d disguised it. Because it had been a disguise, she could see that now. She understood it now. How could she not?
He wanted to die, rather than doom her.
“Ohgod,” she said, as she felt her magic catch her.
Heartbroken, awestruck.
Consumed by these revelations.
But soaring into the sky, at the same time. Not trapped bythese feelings, not frightened by them, but freed—as if he had made himself a stone, so she could be the sun. So she could shine. And she did. She glided across the grounds, hands close to her body at first. But as her courage grew, she let them unfurl. She touched the air with them, felt it rush between her fingers. Used that to make herself turn, until she was on her back.
As if the sky was a body of water, and she was floating in it.
The stars above her. The sound of her friend calling to her in her ears.
“Mina,” she heard, and opened her eyes to look.
But instead of Anaya, there was just one of the students who’d laughed, when Sebastian had tried to set her on her fire. His face loomed large: haughty brow, mean mouth, a sneer all over him. And then he struck her hard, with the hockey stick he was flying on, and suddenly she was spiraling. She caught a glimpse of the ground and then the sky, ground and then the sky. The former closer each time she spun.
Scarilyclose.
She had gone down fast—as if he’d applied some spell at the same time.Sink, she thought, and tried to countermand it immediately. She even knew how to do it instinctively. Reverse it by drawing your hands in, instead of out.
But it was too late.
She felt its grip dissolve, just as the path between the trees to her dorm became excruciatingly clear. Then all she could do was close her eyes and brace, as she hit that hard surface. As she waited for her bones to be pulverized to paste, and her skin shredded by the thin gravel that covered the ground.
And somehow got something soft, instead.
