“I don’t want this,” he says raggedly. “Us, like this. I owe you an apology, if—if you’ll hear it.”
There’s something arresting there. It’s the same as the moment I realized he felt the same solving cases as I did leaving red pennies. Something about that rings in me like a bell.
Neither of us wants to be alone tonight.
But I’ve survived alone until now, I tell myself.
Then I accidentally put my weight on my twisted ankle. I can’t bite back a sharp cry.
Emeric all but leaps for the trellis. “Hold on—”
“Don’t,” I say, throwing a hand out. He stops, one leg over the balustrade. I rest my forehead against the cold stone, eyes squeezed shut as I wait for the pain to subside. “It won’t hold both of us. I’m fine.”
He doesn’t have to say a word; thepig shitis implied.
Instead, he just says, “I can help your ankle.”
I finally let myself look at him. The absolute fool is clutching the coat to his chest, hisbarechest, in the freezing cold. He hasn’t even put it on. He barely managed his spectacles, and even those are crooked.
It still hurts, the memory of who he’d been this morning. The
memory of who I’d become to get away. I didn’t care if I killed him on
those stairs.
No, Ididcare. And it didn’t stop me.
Neither of us wants to be alone with who we were.
Neither of us has to be.
“Put a shirt on,” I grumble. “I’ll leave the veranda door unlocked.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
VanjaIsFine
I carefully cross the rest of the trellis and hobble into my room. The dead roses rattle a minute later as I toss a fresh log into the fireplace.
The knob turns, and Emeric slips inside, back in his shirt and waistcoat, a small leather bag in one hand. “You’ve got the witch-ash side effects too, right?” he asks nervously. I nod. “Wagner gave me something to help. It needs to steep in hot water. Or cider, because it tastes wretched.”
“Wine?” I shamble over to my vanity and pull out a bottle I’ve been saving for emergencies. I’d say this counts.
“That works.”
I pass it to him, then fish out two mugs. He tips a stream of powder from a parchment envelope into the bottle’s mouth, swirls it around, then sets the bottle close enough to the fire to heat. Then he pulls another vial of witch-ash oil from the leather bag. At my alarmed look, he says, “This isn’t the same strength as prefect-standard oil. I’ll be fine.”
It’s my turn to give him a lookloadedin doubtful implication.
He ignores it. “Please, sit.”
I lower myself onto the ledge of hearthstones. There’s plenty of room between me and the fire, but the masonry beneath my palms is warm from soaking up heat all afternoon.
Emeric kneels on the floor by my feet, and my mind can’t quite wrap itself around the way that makes me feel. “Your right?” he asks quietly. I nod and inch that boot forward. A strange look crosses his face. “I’m sorry, the boot . . . that is, this works on direct contact.”
“Do what you need to,” I sigh, tilting my head back to study the ceiling.
Belatedly, I realize I should have thought that through. If I found it disorienting for him to be on his knees, I am in no way capable of reckoning with him slowly, cautiously beginning to unlace my boot.
