Page 20 of The Light Between Worlds

She sweeps out of the room and the Tarsin retinue all begin speaking at once. It’s only because I’m listening that I hear, muffled by the thick oak of the door Philippa shut behind her, a string of painfully hoarse sneezes.

For the rest of the evening, Jamie asks leading questions. He sounds reasonable and considerate, as if what he hears about the Empire’s size and splendor and manifold resources are enough to impress. But at the end of the night, Venndarien parts ways with us and we’ve made no commitment.

Later, I lie in the room Philippa and I insisted on sharing, and listen to her coughing fitfully. The way Venndarien Tarsin watched her when she left the room turns my stomach. The hunger in his fiery eyes, as if she’s something to be owned or conquered. It’s the same way he looks at the Great Wood, and everyone who lives within it.

I may be young, but I’ve lived for years in a world where the language of force is the one used most readily. I don’t like the shape of its words. I don’t like the way it tastes on my tongue. Nevertheless, I will use it too, if I must.

I slip out to the stables in the dim light before dawn and watch the Tarsin delegation readying their horses for the long journey south.

“You’ll have to come visit the capital one day, little fawn,” Venndarien Tarsin says to me, with almost a laugh in his voice. “When we’re allied, and your sister and I rule all this world together.”

In answer, I take out the knife I’ve borrowed from the kitchen. I set its blade to my palm and draw it hard across my skin, just as I saw Jamie do in the birch ring. Blood drips from my hand to the ground and smokes, a reminder that I’ve walked between the worlds.

Venndarien’s dead-white face grows whiter. “What are you playing at, girl?”

I stare at him until he’s trapped by my attention and can’t look away. “I swear to you, by my breath and bones and whatever power rests in my blood, that allies or not, if you touch my sister I will kill you.”

There’s a shocked silence before the first nervous chuckle breaks out. It’s not long before all the men are laughing. They mount up and ride past me and I watch them go.

Let them laugh. I meant every word of my oath, though it turned my stomach even to speak it. Leaving the castle, I walk, losing myself in the glory of the Great Wood at dawn, letting my darkness burn away in its light.

13

MY HANDS KEEP ME AWAKE LONG AFTER LIGHTS-OUT.Max was right. Tom was right. I should have worn gloves. I haven’t got Philippa to look after me anymore, and I need to start taking care of myself. I can’t go down this road again.

The sensible thing to do would be to visit the school nurse. Instead, I slip into the shadowy hallway and down the dormitory’s wide front stairs. Faint music drifts from Max’s rooms, and when I feel around the base of the potted fern, the cold metal of the key she keeps hidden for me offers itself up to my fingers.

I slide out into the waiting dark. The night air soothes my troubled spirit and as I walk across the gravel quad, toward Hobb’s hut and the back field and the gate beyond, a trio of cats flits along behind me. They’re grey, ghostly things—wild creatures that won’t let anyone near them, but I’ve been feeding them for years and they know the sound of my footsteps. The three of them trail after me like little wraiths, and I walk backward to watch them. I may be worlds away from where I belong, but they neither know nor care.

I stop at the back gate and turn my face up to the star-bright sky,just breathing. Here I am. Here’s the Evelyn I lose during the day, in among other people. Evelyn of the Woodlands, who knew where she belonged. I catch at that other self and bid her come to me, to make me whole and brave.

And because I’m emboldened, I take the familiar path to St. Joseph’s. Before Jamie left for college, on nights like this I’d have dragged him out for a wander. While he’d have had better things to do and said so, he’d still have indulged me. Jamie was always more of a one for this sort of thing than Philippa, who’d pat me on the head and tell me to enjoy myself. If she snuck out, it was to thumb a ride into town to go to the makeshift cinema in Hardwick with her courtiers.

The crumbling stone building of the boys’ school looms in front of me, and I nearly bump into someone hidden in the shadows beneath a spreading oak. It’s Gorsley—I know all of the school’s smokers by now, having come after curfew so many times. He’s one of St. Joe’s scholarship boys, and his face gleams pale beneath the moon, devoid of summer color. His classmates may have spent their holidays enjoying the sun, but Gorsley passed his cooped up in a woolen mill working alongside his parents and older sister. I suppose it’s why he can’t get enough of the country air during terms.

“Hello, Hapwell. Fancy a smoke?”

“No, thank you,” I say with a smile. There’s still a cat behind me, one last straggler peering out from behind a tree with eerie eyes. Gorsley scratches the back of his head and gives the cat an uncertain look.

“Is that your familiar, then? You out here communing with the devil, Haps?”

I cross my arms. “Don’t be ridiculous. I would like to commune with Tom Harper, though.”

Gorsley raises both eyebrows and stubs out his cigarette against a tree trunk. “Is that what they’re calling it now? You and Tom, eh? I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Oh, shut up,” I grumble. “Are you going to get him or not?”

“Depends.” Gorsley shrugs, inspecting his fingernails. “What’s in it for me?”

“Packet of peppermints to keep you from smelling like an ashtray.”

He holds out a hand. “Make it lemon drops and you’ve got a deal.”

“I always knew you were sour.” We shake on it, and Gorsley disappears inside. I crouch down and coax the cat out with a gentle voice.

“Come on. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The little creature creeps up, wide-eyed and skittish, and butts its head against my knee before the creak of the dormitory door sends it flying back into the undergrowth. I straighten and turn, and there’s Tom, grinning in the moonlight.