I desperately wanted something to do with my hands. I wished I had not put the tray down. I took the fabric of my apron between my fingers instead, and twisted it as if I was wringing the neck of a pullet. “You bought some plants from the herbalist—I don’t know what—and then you stepped back into your carriage. Before you did, you looked out at all of us, at the crowd. And you looked at me.”
“I do not remember,” he said again, looking directly at me this time.How could I possibly have looked at something this hideous and forgotten?I imagined him thinking.
“Well, you ...snaggedme,” I said, remembering the sorceress’s words.
“Oh.” He pinked, which surprised me. He looked about as embarrassed as I felt. “I did not mean to.”
So, it had been like walking out of the privy with a rag stuck to your foot, as I had suspected. Flattering.
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were, when you arrived?” he said. “Why did you come here?” There was more agitation in his voice than I had ever heard previously, and I wondered why. After all, he had beenmadeto take hearts, as he said. Why did he seem so horrified?
“I do not want to be here,” I burst out. “Ihadto come. You did something to me. I was in terrible pain until I got here.”
In the dim light, his cheekbones stood sharp as folded paper, and his eyes were shadowed so that they were black rather than gray blue. I found it difficult not to watch his mouth while he talked and hated myself for it. “You were ... caught?”
“You should know,” I said sharply.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he repeated.
“I needed time ... to figure things out. To try to find my heart.”
“You’ve been looking for it all this time?”
“Yes! What do you think? Of course I have!”
“Even when ...” he caught himself, pinching the bridge of his nose again and breathing deeply. “So since you’ve come here, you have been trying to find your heart. You thought I had it.”
“Yes!”
“So all the times we have talked ... You were trying to find out where it was? That is why you asked me all those questions?”
Did he lookhurt?It was so hard to read his face. “You don’t know what it’s like,” I said. “It’s torment. Of course I wanted to be free.”
“To be free,” he repeated. He was silent for a moment, and then, “I did not mean to take you,” he said, more gently. “I promise I did not. It must have happened without my knowing about it. I haven’t been doing this for long.”
As if he were one of Da’s apprentice butchers who had waved his cleaver too wildly and chopped off the tip of a thumb. Just that easy, to accidentally take a piece of a person and barely notice.
“Where is it?” I demanded. “Where is my heart, then, that you took without meaning to? Where are you keeping it?”
“No! I took nothing from you. If you are ... attached to me, then it is a spell that went awry.”
“Whatspell?”
“The spell for heart-taking is a strong one,” he explained. “Even though I chose not to cast it in the end, I had been preparing to cast it. Spells don’t like that. It’s like throwing a stick for a dog to chase, and then telling it not to run. I suppose some of that ... preparation caused the spell to reach out and attach to you somehow, without my intending it.”
“Why did you choose not to cast it?” I asked.
He looked uncomfortable. I could tell he was desperate for another magic toy to fidget with. “I just did,” he said.
“So, you don’t have my actual heart? Like, in a box or some such?” All my searching had been worthless. All my time spent here—worthless. I had nothing to take to the Snagged. No way of freeing myself.
“No. You are bonded to me by a powerful spell, that is all. I have no piece of you.”
“But you meant to take a heart. You came to my village to get one.”
He rubbed at his temples violently. “I went to your village to harvest, it’s true,” he said. “But then I got there and ... I didn’t. I left without taking anything. Or so I thought. I would never have chosen you.”
I would never have chosen you.Of course. No one would pick me out of a crowd of Hallies and other lithe, young lovelies—girls who knew how to dress and how to smile, how to look up through their eyelashes and laugh at the right moments. Girls who hadn’t spent their whole lives behind a shop counter trussed in an apron. Girls who hadn’t been cursed from birth.
