Sylvester shook his head. “It means the king has set wards that negate the need for guards.” He stood with a wide stance, the same look of concentration on his face that he had when he faced down the mist. “I can feel them. Like a net cast over the place.”
“Can you get through?”
“I think so.” He turned to look at me, his hair sparkling with the first evening dew. He held out his hand. “With help.”
“What?” I almost dropped Cornelius, who mewed in protest.
“This bond between us,” he said. “I have been thinking on it for a long time. When my mistake met your heart, it formed a connection that I still don’t fully understand, but which seems to work on my magic in a similar way that the House did—only better.”
“What?”
“You must have noticed how your touch has helped me when I am casting. When you managed to calm the chaos I caused in the House with the spell book. When you helped me open the door to the chamber where Millie was imprisoned. You diffuse the wild magic that could spill out and cause damage, but you also help me focus what remains.”
I just gaped at him.
“With the House gone, there is no way to siphon off any excess magic I might produce,” he continued. “From here on, all of it will pour into any spell I cast. That could be disastrous, especially when I am using the hearts.”
“Right, we don’t want to blow the place up,” I conceded, remembering all the times he had nearly burned down the House. “Fine.” I took his hand. “But I don’t think ...”
As soon as I touched his skin, an iridescent membrane shimmered into being before the doors of the palace.
“There it is,” said Sylvester softly. He exhaled, and the membrane popped like a bubble. I imagined I heard a similar, smaller pop from inside his cloak as another of our store of hearts winked out of existence. I hated that we had to use them, but what choice did we have?
Even though the wards were gone, we walked into the palace with caution. Cornelius protested that he was well able to walk on his own four paws, thank you very much, but I continued to carry him.
Besides my concern about his well-being, his warm weight was comforting. The place still gave me the creeps.
Sylvester knew the way to the storage room, which I was grateful for, since I hadn’t been in my best frame of mind the last time I was here.
The corruption had clearly spread rapidly since we left. Almost every jar contained a heart speckled with green and black, furred with mold.
We walked quietly between the rows, with no sound but the faint clink and slosh as we lifted down those which seemed least affected. I tried not to look at the board to which I had been strapped, nor at the telltale stain on the floor where the jars had smashed.
Finally, we had gathered as many of the relatively good hearts that we could find, and Sylvester stashed them in his seemingly infinitely capacious pockets until even they ran out of room.
“Right, let’s go,” he said, when we had finished.
“Stop,” I said. “There’s one more thing.”
He read it in my face. “Foss ... It’s too late. And if we interrupt the transformation before it is complete ... I don’t know if she would even survive. We can come back later, when all this is over, and I can study her then, mayhap find a way to ...”
“There will probablybeno later,” I argued.
“Foss ...”
“No, I’m being realistic. Of course we’re going to try, but what chance do we stand, really? And if the king gets rid of us both, he’ll just come back here and continue on his merry way. Millie will spend another few years floating in that godsforsaken tank, and then pop out as half a monster, just as you did.”
“Thank you,” he said, with heavy sarcasm.
“You know what I mean. Maybe she’ll be more like you, but more likely not. And honestly, she might be better off dead than turning into that.”
He huffed out a frustrated breath.
“Sylvester. Please.” I touched his arm, lightly. He looked down at my hand where it rested on the velvet of his sleeve and sighed. “Fine. Let us go, then.”
It seemed the king hadn’t been too concerned that anyone would come for Millie, as the locks on the chamber with the transformation tank weren’t even fastened. I suppose that, to him, it would be impossible to imagine that anyone would want this unwanted child, especially in her in-between state.
I knew what I was walking into this time, and it was still a shock. She hovered in that honey gold liquid, pinned and preserved like a specimen. Her heart, now fully blackened, still floated just a little away from the rest of her.
