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“Giving up so easily?”
I pause. Turn.
Rory’s voice is so recognizable, so clipped and English andloudin the empty Lochkelvin grounds.
He’s sitting on a broken plinth, his head tilted up to the sky.
“What do you want?” My voice is guarded, cold.
He smiles up at the sky.
“I’ll say one thing for you, little saint,” he murmurs, his hair falling down past his shoulders as he tilts his head at an even sharper angle. “You know how to build a mystery.”
I step toward him. “Meaning?”
“Yes, exactly. The thing we’re all searching for,” he explains solemnly, and then laughs.
Has he gone stark raving mad?
I decide to ignore him, stalking back up to the castle.
“You know fortunes are lost and won on that ritual, right?”
Again, his voice stops me. It’s clear, confident, and carrying, but there’s an edge to it — a tightness, almost like a warning.
Rory slides those all-seeing gray eyes onto me, and I have to hold back a shiver. He makes me feel like nothing, less than nothing, like some foolish girl who’s thrown a temper tantrum and all he can do is sigh patiently.
“Were you going to dance?”
“What’s it to you?”
“That’s a yes, then.” His smile stretches across his face. “Good thing your leg’s healed.”
I stare at him. It feels like he’s mocking me.
“If, of course, it had been broken in the first place.”
“You were there,” I remind him pointedly, the lurching sensation of skidding down that ravine overwhelming me for a moment. “Despite what your gremlins have said, you know as well as I do that my leg was broken.”
His expression is placid in the low dawn light. “And now it’s not.”
And now it’s not…
A small breeze ripples across the grass between us. Those four words speak of impossible things, of strange Lochkelvin magic that I haven’t come to terms with.
“Do you know why?” I ask him reluctantly. “Has this happened before?”
“Are you asking me if Lochkelvin’s ever healed the leg of a clumsy girl?” Rory asks with little inflection in his voice, his eyes dark and almost sleepy. “In which case no. But,” he adds, before I can make my curse-filled protest quite clear, “if you’re asking if the ritual has anything to do with healing, then yes. Legend has it that the ritual is designed to benefit Lochkelvin alumni however it sees fit. Perhaps, on this instance, it took immense pity on the messenger’s tragic appearance.”
I stare at him. His words are serious. “Are you saying there’s, what, magic here?” Because what else would explain the sudden newness of my ankle, the strength that had coursed through it the moment the ritual began?
“It’s all subjective, of course,” Rory deflects. “But it’s not unheard of for strange things to happen in Lochkelvin. Either way, I wouldn’t recommend going down to the forest in the morning. It’s too dark even for me, and that’s saying something.”
I didn’t ask for his advice. I turn on my heel and proceed up the path to Lochkelvin.
“But you’re right,” Rory says loudly, and I grit my teeth, stopping mid-stride. “You should continue to dance if it’s the thing you enjoy doing.”
“Right.”
