Chapter 56
Clare
“ What does this remind you of?” Tatianna’s voice echoed down the dark corridor. The hidden tunnels under Lord Fowler’s mansion seemed endless, as if they were going in circles, with no light save for the glow of Tatianna’s hands.
“I don’t know. When we were fourteen and got locked in my mother’s attic?” Clare heard the squeak of a rodent and nearly stumbled into the wall, almost squishing a very encumbered Alexander in her pocket.
Tatianna laughed, seeming unfazed, as usual, by Clare’s lack of enthusiasm. She’d dealt with it long enough that Clare suspected Tatianna actually enjoyed her prickliness. “Do you remember what I said when the attic door slammed shut?”
Clare couldn’t help the smile tugging at her lips, or the euphoric feeling of a happy memory. “You accused me of doing it on purpose because I wanted to steal a kiss.”
“You turned so red in the candlelight I thought your face was going to catch fire.” Tatianna snorted, rounding another corner. The walls seemed to become more narrow the farther into the dark they traveled.
“Because I couldn’t tell if you were being serious or not!” Clare accused. “I was so afraid if we took that leap, you would tell me you didn’t feel the same and I would have lost my best friend.”
Tatianna stopped walking, her lashes sweeping downward, a sad smile pulling at her fuchsia-painted lips. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
Clare frowned, adjusting Alexander in the tiny satchel at her waist. “What?”
“That I did feel the same, but we lost each other anyway.”
Ironic? Or gut-wrenching? Both were applicable.
Clare rolled back her shoulders and walked ahead, which she knew was foolish, since the only way to see her feet in front of her was by Tatianna’s healing light.
So when the toe of her shoe caught against something solid and unmovable, the sudden obstruction causing her to fall headlong into the wall, her only thought was, I deserved that .
Until the wall started shifting with a groaning, rumbling sound, and it pushed Clare back into Tatianna’s arms.
“What happened? What did I do?” Clare breathed, gripping one of Tatianna’s soft, glowing hands.
Tatianna looked more curious than alarmed as the wall slid fully open, revealing a hidden room. “Well, well. Lord Fowler’s private study.”
Kingsley tumbled from Clare’s pouch and immediately was tugged to the ground by the weight on his ankle. The frog glared up at the two women as if they’d betrayed him. “It was your idea, Alexander!” Clare reminded him.
The frog made a huffing sound and rolled the ball slowly to the corner, doing his best version of an amphibious pout.
Clare took a look around the room, watching Tatianna run her fingers along a dusty bookshelf in the corner, beside a large oak desk with a million odds and ends atop it.
The space was like Clare imagined most studies would be, with a touch of off-kilter whimsy.
The plaid pattern on the cushioned chair in the corner contrasted starkly with the stars painted on the hearth. “Tati, don’t touch the bookshelf!”
Tatianna didn’t listen, continuing to scan the wide shelf. “His magical collection. What do you think all this stuff does?” The healer picked up a little candle flickering a warm violet glow from the wick.
Clare gaped at Tatianna’s feet. “Um. Tati?”
“Hmm?” Tatianna didn’t look away from the flame.
“You’re…floating.”
Tatianna squinted at her and then down to see her glittering shoes drifting a few inches from the ground. “Oh. That’s interesting.”
Clare sighed, tugging at the ends of her hair. “Put it down. Please.”
The healer dropped the candle only to pick up another object.
“Where do you think he gets all this stuff?” she asked, tilting the gilded lightning bolt to the side.
A flash of electric light shot out, cracking the oak desk down the middle.
Tatianna’s mouth dropped open, her head slowly turning to Clare as the dust settled. “Oops.”
Clare grabbed both of Tatianna’s hands, tugging her away from the bookshelf and the ruined desk. “Stop touching things. Good grief.”
That intense rush of emotion that came anytime she was touching Tatianna sent shock waves up her arms, worsening when the healer twined her fingers with Clare’s.
“Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if Trystan had never gone with King Benedict that summer,” Clare whispered, keeping her eyes on their joined hands.
Tatianna released them, but there was a phantom tingling left behind, a flash of hurt on the healer’s face. “Clare…are you under the impression that all our problems are because of King Benedict?”
No. Clare had also thought they were because of Trystan, for far longer than was forgivable. “I know that wasn’t all of it. I do. I just…”
“Can’t help but think things would’ve turned out differently?” Tatianna asked, propping Alexander up on the table. “They wouldn’t have. You know as well as I do that the problem wasn’t King Benedict, or The Villain, or even that I wanted to work for him.”
Clare licked her lips, sitting slowly on the plaid chair in a corner of the room.
A small lantern just above her illuminated what was likely a defeated sheen in her eyes.
“What else could it have been? I loved you.” Her voice cracked.
“I love you. I have since before I was even old enough to know what that meant, but you were the one thing I’ve always wanted, the one person I want to be with every second of every day.
Those years without you were”—she swallowed—“the worst of my life.”
Tatianna’s lip wobbled uncharacteristically, the confident set of her shoulders drooping as she came closer, taking the seat opposite Clare. “I thought that after I left, you’d come to the manor—that you’d come to me—but instead, you gave up.”
Clare’s eyes watered, and a hot streak of tears spilled down her cheek. “I didn’t give up. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was saving you from being stuck with me and my guilt.”
“Your guilt about what?” Tatianna questioned, reaching for her, but Clare pulled her hands away, not trusting herself to be touched, knowing she didn’t deserve it.
“I can’t.” Clare shook her head, hands trembling as she pushed them into her lap.
Tatianna’s gaze hardened. “It’s about your mother, isn’t it?”
Clare stood so quickly she knocked a glass from the side table, leaping back as it shattered hard against the stone floor, just missing a woven rug. “Why—why would you ask that?”
“Because she was the problem, Clare.” Tatianna stood, using her healer magic to sweep the glass pieces to the side the same way she used it to extract objects from beneath the skin.
“For you, for Trystan, even for Malcolm. She was cold and cruel and forced you all to earn an affection she never had. Arthur was the only one who showed true devotion to any of you, but that didn’t undo what Amara had already wrought. ”
Clare shook her head, her feelings so fragile she didn’t want to risk revealing them any further. But she couldn’t stop. “What is it you think she did?”
Tatianna’s hands came up to Clare’s cheeks, holding her face still, forcing Clare’s black eyes to her brown ones.
“She made you and your brothers think the world is full of only right and wrong, good and evil. And because of it, Trystan’s decided that he can only be one thing, and you believe that, too. ”
“You’re saying the world is gray and that she was wrong?” Clare sniffled.
Tatianna brought her lips to Clare’s forehead, gently pressing there until a sob leaked out of Clare’s lips. “Love, I’m saying that the world is full of color and your mother tried to take that from all of you.”
Clare leaned back as soon as Tatianna’s hands fell from her cheeks, trying to catch her breath, rubbing at her eyes. Not wanting to dwell in sadness any longer as she looked at her ex-betrothed, the woman who had been meant to be her wife, with steely resolve. “How do I get it back?”
Tatianna’s smile was no longer sad—it was hopeful and playful and everything they’d had before rolled into one. “Well… Wand!”
Clare blinked. “Is that a metaphor, or—?”
“No! Look!”
Clare followed Tatianna’s finger and the webbed toe Kingsley had pointed toward the other end of the room, and there, sticking out of a unicorn head mounted on the wall—fake, thank goodness—was a magic wand where the horn should be.
“Oh my gods!” Clare rushed for it, reaching to pull it out, but Tatianna stopped her.
“Don’t! Didn’t you just tell me to stop touching things? There could be enchantments on it. We can’t just pull it out!” Tatianna warned and then shuddered. “Oh, you forced me to be the responsible one. I’ll never forgive you.”
There was a moment of calm amusement as they both contemplated the wand, and then Kingsley wiggled free of the weight around his ankle.
The frog leaped upward, landing atop the wand and leaning his weight on it until the long piece of pure iridescent white fell to the floor with a clatter. Both women froze, their hands up like they were trying to cover themselves if the ceiling came tumbling down.
Clare exhaled. “Okay. I think we’re safe.”
But then the walls started shaking, knickknacks on the shelves rattling with them. “From growing old?” Tatianna quipped as a horrible creaking sound came from the corner. “That seems likely, yes.”
And then Clare realized that no, the ceiling was not tumbling down upon them.
But the walls…
The walls were closing in.
“Clare. Run. Now.” Tatianna shoved at Clare, and they sprinted at full speed down the hall, leaving the study behind them. The ground shook beneath them as they pushed faster and faster until they hit a dead end.
“Tati, move!” Clare cried, rushing past her, pulling a vial of orange ink from her pouch as the walls continued moving closer.
The ink floated freely as she wielded it out of the vial, and then in one sweep of her hand, Clare seared the stone wall with the orange ink’s melting properties.
The brick started to dissolve before them, slowly, as the walls closed in.