Page 63 of Uncharmed

Chapter Twenty-Four

SERPENTS

Annie gathered up her skirts as she pushed through the throngs that flooded the dancefloor, a labyrinth of locked shoulders and sharp elbows. She broke through the crush and pushed open the theatre’s rear saloon doors, gulping down a rush of cold air that cooled her bare shoulders. A long corridor, green walls lined with dark damask wallpaper and portraits of centuries of Sorciety members. Her heels clicking against the floor felt like ticking seconds, a countdown to match the beat of her quickening pulse.

She elbowed open the bathroom door and stopped short. ‘Ruby?’

Ruby was slumped against the sinks, her knees pulled up to her chest, back rigid against the porcelain. Her hands were tightly clasped around her legs, head buried low. Annie was so taken aback by the sight that she had to consciously make her body move, to rush to Ruby’s side. It was as though she’d been transported back to Arden Place, seeing Maeve in that exact fragile state, bundled up as small as she could make herself when she was afraid. But this was not Maeve. It was Ruby. Her friend, Ruby, who had, in the short time they had known each other, so often stood up for her and unwittingly acted as a shield. Tripping over her gown, Annie knelt in front of Ruby and grasped her shoulders.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

Ruby peered up from resting her forehead against her folded arms and glanced at Annie with swollen red eyes, mascara streaks staining her face in blotches. She rubbed her nose against the heel of her hand.

‘This place, the pressure . . . I don’t know how you do it, Annie.’

Annie struggled to understand. ‘Do what?’

‘The Sorciety. They’re kicking us out – my family. Me, my brothers, my parents. They’re throwing us away, like we don’t even matter, and it’s all my fault.’

Annie felt her heart plummet to somewhere around her guts, fires of empathy being stoked in the most ferocious way. She knew that feeling acutely well – the rejection, the questioning, the tender hurt. But there must be some mistake, for them to have decided that Ruby Wrathshade wasn’t good enough? It made no sense. Ruby was one of the most vivacious, bright rays of sunshine that Annie had ever met. Her family were kind and humble and generous, keen to include everyone in the same ways that Ruby had with Annie.

Perhaps that was the problem.

‘I couldn’t care less what they think about me – never have, never will. But my parents? They just wanted to find their people, feel settled, and I’ve ruined that chance for them. How am I supposed to tell them? They’ll be devastated,’ Ruby said more quietly, barely able to make it to the end of the question before her words gave out to big, sorrowful sobs.

‘I don’t understand,’ Annie said, shaking her head. ‘How do you know? And why would they expel you? You’re . . . You’re wonderful! Your whole family is wonderful.’

‘Glory summoned me for a “delicate conversation”,’ Ruby said with added air quotes. ‘Apparently someone told the Heralds I was disgracing myself, embarrassing Sorciety members. Not matching the standards that they expect the spellborn to exhibit. But . . .’ she sniffed. ‘I don’t understand what I did wrong. I’ve just been myself.’

‘Oh, Ruby,’ Annie said, feeling her heart break in an identical, mirrored crack with Ruby’s. She took a seat beside her on the floor, wrapping her up tightly so that she could rest her head on her shoulder. At least there had been a solid, tangible reason for Griffin and Cressida to be expelled. This was just plain snobbery and malice and judgement. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong, please don’t think that you did.’

‘Annie, I can trust you, right? We’re friends?’ Ruby, usually so certain in herself, so confident in her mannerisms and presence, so unfazed by the opinions of others, looked impossibly vulnerable as she asked the question. And something flipped in Annie as she saw it. The Sorciety was bringing out this exposed, sensitive part of a woman who, until she became an unwitting part of it, had probably never had to ask that question before. Annie hated them for it, for doing that to Ruby. It made her wonder what it had done to her, too.

‘We’re friends,’ Annie said, giving Ruby a smile that she hoped was as reassuring as she could manage.

‘I thought so,’ Ruby said, returning the weak smile, wiping her nose again on her fluted sleeve. ‘I don’t know how to fix this for my family. There must be a way. They let you back in, right?’

Annie smoothed Ruby’s hair, staring out at the bathroom. ‘They did. But for how long this time? It’s all so . . . superficial. So precarious. You can’t make people like you, Ruby. That’s a cold, hard truth that someone tried to teach me recently.’

‘Well, that sucks.’

‘Kind of,’ Annie nodded. ‘But the other side is that it makes the people who do like you, the ones who really understand you, feel like magic.’

Ruby was shaking her head, half-listening. ‘Precarious. What is it about that word? It comes up all the time around here. That’s exactly right,’ Ruby said, shaking her head. ‘I’ve felt like I’m swimming upstream this whole time. I’m exhausted. It’s damn awful.’

‘It is. But the right people don’t feel precarious,’ Annie said. ‘They feel solid and steady. They feel infinite.’

Hal flashed across her mind.

The bathroom door flew open and crashed into the wall behind it, so loud that Annie and Ruby both jumped. Romily, Vivienne and Harmony all stumbled in together, paused for a moment as they took in the scene and then promptly folded into fits of laughter. Romily was the first to compose herself, batting Vivienne, who promptly sent the gesture down the chain, smacking Harmony even harder.

‘What in all the realms has happened in here?’ Romily asked, unconvincing concern appearing on her face.

‘Oh, darling Rubes, have they run out of finger food?’ Vivienne said, pouting out her bottom lip.

‘Annie, there you are! We were wondering where you’d gone, thought you might have fallen in,’ Harmony added brightly, a slight slur to her words.

They writhed against one another, like snakes. The sheen of their glittered skin caught the chandelier candlelight so brightly it was as though they too were made of gleaming, immaculate glass.