He tosses me aside like a rag. I crash into the footboard hard enough to knock the wind from my lungs. When I pick myself up, he’s gone.
Emeric is motionless, still crumpled over the desk. The fire still burns unforgiving blue, the only noise in the frigid silence. Poldi can’t save me now.
I am on my own.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
TheThief and theLie
I don’t know how much time passes while I huddle by the bed, fighting panic and failing.
I fail and I fail and I fail. No matter how many times I tell myself not to panic, it never puts down roots.
The hour-bells begin to chime.
I close my eyes. I tell myself I can panic for as long as the bell tolls. I can feel that fear, I can let myself fall until the silence tells me I’ve hit the bottom.
So I do. For eleven more droning rings, I let myself be terrified. Angry. Selfish. I let it course through me like a poison, breathe in everything ugly and little and quivering. I am dying. I am not enough. I am a broken girl in a world that wants me in smaller pieces still.
I let this malignant terror find my edges, spill over.
Then the bells go quiet.
The fear is still there, but I’ve let it have its time.
I make myself stand. I take a deep, clean breath, waiting for the fear to settle. And then I dust myself off, and start thinking about how exactly I’m going to pick this lock.
Greed, love, hate, revenge, fear. Ragne, Gisele, Joniza, Barthl. These are my picks; I am the rake. If I shift everything in just the right order, I can get us all out.
But Emeric is the lock, and if I get this wrong, he will break.
I need to test that first. As long as Adalbrecht keeps Emeric off the board, my hands are tied. He keeps the real threat at bay: the justice of the Godly Courts.
There has to be a way to get thenachtmahraway from Emeric. I gently turn his face to look in his ear. All I see are two pinpricks of blue light staring back.
Maybe Ragne can shrink down to tear it out—no, it just has to start growing and I’ll lose Emeric and Ragne both. I could pour tallow into Emeric’s ear to try to drown it, but Adalbrecht knows when one of his creatures dies.
Maybe we can lure it out somehow . . . but Adalbrecht seemed to be giving it unspoken orders. I don’t know what those were, only the threatened consequences.
I let my fingers linger on Emeric, telling myself I’m just checking his pulse, trying to ignore the glimmer of pearls spelling my end across my skin. His heartbeat is soft and steady as ever, and neither of us has time for sentiment; I make myself move on. Maybe he’s left some prefect gadget lying around. I look around the desk.
He’s holding the message-mirror in one hand. It’s still flashingVanja—I can’t, over and over. But below his elbow is an open notebook, charcoal smudging his sleeve. The page looks nearly full. I lift his elbow and slip it out.
It’s a draft of a letter. One for me.
Vanja—
I want
You mean more
I can’t watch you die. You said you didn’t think me a coward, but
that’s what I amI am terrified of losing you, whether it’s to the curse
or because I failed you. I thought I didn’t believe in bravery. I just
didn’t know what it was until I met you. You’ve lived with monsters for
