“Sorry,” I said. I hefted Colin past a last mess of thorns. We both looked like we’d lost a fight with a pack of rabid weasels. Our clothing was tattered and blood-smeared, and our skin was cut to ribbons.
There was a door in front of us, small and narrow, like the door to a cupboard. It certainly didn’t look important or large enough to be the door to the Outside, but Cornelius trusted his nose, and I was coming to trust it too, so I supposed it might be the key to our escape.
I put out my hand for the handle, and the Other House roared around me, a roar that wasn’t exactly sound but managed to be deafening nonetheless. I clapped my hands to my ears, letting go of Colin, who staggered but miraculously managed to stay upright.
It sounded like all the boards and dust and spiders and vines had swirled themselves up into a maelstrom. The door spun in front of me like clay on a potter’s wheel, the handle a black blur at one edge.
“Why is it like this?” I panted, struggling to stay upright. “Why won’t it let usout?”
“It doesn’t like the House being in its space, I think,” said Cornelius, his voice also straining. “I suppose it thinks we’re part of it.”
“Itthinks?”
“It’s kind of ... shoved under the House,” said Cornelius. “By the sorcerer’s magic. And it doesn’t like it.”
“Wonderful,” I said between my teeth. “Let’s get out before it figures out how to crush us.”
Fighting the wall of soundless sound, I reached out again and grasped for the door handle. Astonishingly, I found the smooth curve of the handle in my palm, the chaos stopped, and I was able to open the door.
“Let’s go before it changes its mind,” huffed Cornelius, a little out of breath.
He jumped through, seemingly with no difficulty. I pushed Colin through first, then followed. The door pulsed around me, unpleasantly warm and tight, but then I was free and standing in the sorcerer’s courtyard. It was night. It was not possible for it to be night—not enough time had passed.
“I forgot to mention,” said Cornelius. “Time does seem to pass differently in there.”
“How differently?” I asked. “Is it tonight? Tomorrow night? A hundred years later?”
He snorted. “Don’t be dramatic,” he said. “We’ve probably only lost a few hours. But we need to go.”
I nodded, but looked back, just once, as all the fairytales tell you not to do. I had to go, I knew that much, before I ended up with a rotten peach pit in my chest and my heart in a jar.
I had thought to myself previously—staring at the ceiling in the early hours of the morning, contemplating the fix I was in—that perhaps I could carve out some sort of hollow life, as Dav had, and live out my shortened days with no husband or sweetheart, sobbing in pubs until the rot took me.
Hells, that’s probably what would have happened to me anyway, even if I’d never encountered the sorcerer at all. It would just happen a little faster now, that was all, with whatever this spreading mold was, if indeed I had become infected like the others.
But the thought of leaving Sylvester was almost unbearable. I hated myself for it. I knew the love I felt for the sorcerer was artificial, not a real attachment.
I would be Sylvester’s footstool, his nursemaid, I would scrub out his privies, just so I could stay near him and feel that nonsensical and unearned happiness that his presence gave me, false or no. To be leaving—really leaving—felt impossible. I told myself not to think about it, to just keep walking.
We ran across the courtyard to the outer wall, hurrying, lest the magic-workers feel our presence, and wrenched at the handle of the final door.
Colin had roused himself enough to move on his own and keep up with us, but he still seemed little more than a hollow puppet, trailing along after us as if attached by strings.
We stepped out into the same old night as always, and the black door closed with a hollowclonkbehind us, shutting me away from the sorcerer and the sorcerer away from me. For good. I imagined I could actually feel the severing, like something snapping in my chest, but of course, it was my imagination.
I wondered if he and his sister were still inside the House, or whether she had dragged him off somewhere to force him to harvest his “quota,” however many hearts that was supposed to be. I would probably never know now.
I held the pocket at my waist open for Cornelius to jump in, and once I felt his weight settle into it, I walked as fast as I could away from the House without actually running, fearful that I would change my mind, let my heart overpower my good sense, and turn back.
Either that, or I’d hear theclip-clopof the sorceress’s heels coming after me. I wasn’t sure which would be worse.
Once I felt we had gained enough distance, I held Colin’s arm within mine, hoping that we could pass for two sweethearts out walking. Even if one of the sweethearts looked like he could keel over at any minute.
The streets were only dimly lit by lanterns here, and as we got farther down toward the walls, there would be no light at all, so hopefully people wouldn’t be able to look at us too closely.
“Are you all right?” asked Cornelius from inside the pocket. “You look a little green.”
“I’m fine,” I said, and then realized something. “You can still talk!”
