Chapter 42
Iwoke in Caspian’s rooms before the school did, naked under a sheet that smelled faintly of him.
For a moment, I kept still.
The covered basin sat dark in the corner, weighted cloth still in place. My coat lay over the back of a chair. Caspian’s note was on the desk where I had left it.
Caspian stood at the window in yesterday’s rumpled shirt, open at the throat, blond waves loose from sleep, bare wrists crossed in front of him as if he had been holding them there for a while.
The sight of him did something to my chest.
He turned before I spoke.
“Astra.”
My name sounded different after last night. Less like a thing he was being careful with. More like a thing he had learned the weight of.
“If they corner you before the formal,” he said, “send for me.”
“And if they intercept it?”
“They will, but I will come anyway.”
I should have made a joke. Something sharp enough to put the space back between us.
Instead I said, “All right.”
I found my underthings at the foot of the bed and pulled them on beneath the sheet with what dignity I could manage. Caspian looked at the covered basin as if giving me privacy from a bowl of water required the full force of Ashford discipline.
My hands were clumsy on the buttons. His were worse when he handed me my coat.
He didn’t ask me to stay.
I appreciated him for understanding that he couldn’t.
At the door, he stopped.
“Last night was yours,” he said.
The latch was cold under my palm. I had been about to open it. For one breath, I forgot how.
“I know.”
“So is today.”
I looked back at him.
He stood three paces away, obeying the space between us only because I had not told him otherwise.
“You are getting alarmingly good at this,” I said.
His eyes warmed by a fraction, which from Caspian Ashford was practically reckless.
“I’m trying.”
Then I left before the room could make either of us braver than was wise.
The corridor outside his rooms was gray with early light. My hair was half-loose. My coat was unbuttoned.
By the time I reached Room 114, the first-year corridor had begun to stir.
The room was exactly as I had left it and completely changed.
The dress box stood at the foot of the bed, my mother’s name written on the tag.
Selene Verita.
For a moment I stood in the doorway and just breathed.
They had returned it while I was gone.
A girl could be watched, summoned, questioned, fitted, paired, and still not be present for the return of her own inheritance.
I closed the door.
The quiet pressed in.
I shrugged out of my coat. My mother’s brooch was pinned inside the left lapel where I had moved it before leaving Caspian’s rooms, not hidden exactly, but kept close enough that I could feel the metal when I breathed.
I touched it.
Then I opened the box.
The dress lay folded in the tissue like before.
Both sleeves were gone now.
Removed cleanly, with a care that made my throat ache. The lines at the shoulders had been reshaped, cleaned of every sign of the band they had tried to fasten over my Mark. Cosima had preserved every bit of its beauty.
She had done it well.
That was the insult: they could take things from my mother, alter them, return them, and still make them beautiful enough for me to want.
At least it had been Cosima’s had that did it.
I tried to picture my mother in it.
Not the woman I remembered at five, tired at the mouth and quick with her hands, but Selene Verita at seventeen. Green silk. Silver branches. Hair pinned back from a face that might still have believed a beautiful room could mean something beautiful was about to happen.
Had they painted her mouth? Had she let them? Had she looked into a mirror and recognized herself, or had the dress already begun turning her into the version of Selene the Council needed witnessed?
She had walked into her formal dressed for a future they would cut short because it wasn’t the one they had planned for her.
This dress had belonged to the girl before that woman died.
The girl before me.
The girl Zenith had dressed beautifully before it learned how badly she would disobey.
I sat on the bed.
Then I stood again because sitting near that much history felt like letting it climb into my lap.
The basin lit at half past seven.
A softer gray than the usual silver-white.
Words formed across the surface.
Formal preparation. Remain in quarters until attended.
“Absolutely not,” I snapped at it.
The water did not answer.
Someone knocked before I could decide whether throwing Kieran’s apple into the basin was a bad idea.
When I opened the door, Cosima stood in the corridor.
She looked at me. My messy hair, my swollen lips.
She had survived too many injuries in this school for her to mistake this one.
For one second, I saw it hurt her.
The knowledge that Caspian had been with me. Not her.
Then she looked past me to the dress box.
“You brought reinforcements,” I said.
“I brought competence,” Cosima said.
Rev leaned slightly to see past me into the room. Her gaze found the dress box.
I stepped aside and they came in. Cosima went straight to the box. Rev closed the door and turned the lock with the air of someone who considered locks personal suggestions.
“The basin told me to remain in quarters until attended,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Well, we are attending,” Rev said.
“I doubt you were what it meant.”
“They should have specified then.”
Cosima lifted the dress from the tissue.
For once, she did not speak immediately.
Her hands moved over the altered shoulders and the seams. Her face stayed composed, but her thumb paused at one stitch near the left armhole.
“You left no trace of the band.”
“That is the whole point of removing evidence.”
Rev crossed to the window and tugged the curtain closed another inch.
“What are we hiding from?” I asked.
“Anyone bored enough to notice three girls and a dead woman’s dress.”
“So everyone.”
“Exactly.”
Cosima held the dress up against me without asking.
I let her.
The silk brushed my collarbone. My Mark stirred under my sleeve, then stopped as if confused by the absence of the thing meant to smother it.
Cosima noticed.
“Again,” she said.
“Again what?”
“Let it answer.”
Rev’s head turned.
“Is that wise?”
“We are past the time for caution, LeJoi,” Cosima said.
I looked at the dress in Cosima’s hands, at the open shoulders, at the bodice waiting for my mother’s brooch.
Then I pushed up my sleeve.
The Mark showed itself without ceremony.
The lines were brighter than they had been yesterday, more restless since my night with Caspian. A shape that had been asked too many questions and had begun answering in its own language.
Cosima assessed it.
Rev came closer but did not crowd me.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Less than yesterday.”
“You know that was not my question.”
I glanced at her.
She waited.
“It feels like there isn’t enough room under my skin for all of it,” I said.
Cosima nodded, as if that was the answer she had expected.
“The formal will make that worse.”
“Fantastic.”
“That is why it generally works in getting the Council the desired outcome,” Cosima said.
Rev looked from my wrist to the dress in Cosima’s hands.
“I hate this place,” she said.
No wit in it.
That helped more than wit would have.
Cosima laid the dress on the bed.
“You can still refuse to wear it,” she said.
“If I refuse, they use it. If I wear it, they use it.”
Rev sat on the edge of the table.
“Then choose the version that will piss them off the most.”
Cosima nodded.
“Reverie is right.”
Rev looked pleased in a way that suggested she had never, as long as she lived, expected Cosima Verraine to tell her she was right.
I touched the dress.
The silk was cool under my fingers.
“My mother wore this into her formal.”
“Yes,” Cosima said.
“And walked out of it alive.”
The air between us thinned.
Cosima’s hands folded in front of her.
Rev stopped turning the apple.
“Yes.”
“Until they killed her for staying alive after she refused.”
Cosima’s gaze met mine.
“I’ll wear it as proof she refused them,” I said. “Not as proof they owned her.”
“Good.”
I unpinned the brooch from inside my coat.
The silver wren caught the gray light and threw it back badly, a stubborn little flash against the room’s dimness. I held it in my palm for one breath. Then another.
My mother had carried this out of Zenith.
Zenith had kept the dress.
The Council had kept the record.
Quill had tried to return inheritance as if return could wash blood from the hand doing it.
I pinned the brooch to the bodice myself.
High on the left side, over my heart.
Openly.
By my hand.
Mine.
Rev watched my hands.
“Perfect” she said quietly.
Cosima looked at the brooch, then at the Mark on my wrist.
“You understand what they will see.”
“My mother’s dress. My mother’s brooch. My flawed Mark.”
“Your unhidden Mark,” Cosima said.
She said it carefully, as if the word flawed had no business on my lips.
So I said, “That too.”
Rev stood.
“Put it on.”
“Bossy.”
“Put on the dress, Astra.”
Cosima turned her back without being asked. Rev looked at me once, eyebrow raised, waiting to see whether I wanted to do this.
I did.
I wanted to get the dress on before I lost my nerve.
“Fine,” I said.
I took off my coat first, then the shirt and trousers I had put on in Caspian’s room that morning.
Rev nodded and helped me lift the dress over my head.
The silk slid down my body.
For a second, I couldn’t breathe.
The dress fit perfectly.
Of course it did. Cosima had measured me with her eyes, written nothing down, and still made my mother’s dress fit her daughter closely enough that my body couldn’t refuse it.
Rev fastened the back.
Cosima turned when Rev said, “Done.”
She spared me the word beautiful, thankfully, though I saw it in her eyes.
She adjusted the left shoulder with two fingers, then the right. Without sleeves, the dress left both arms bare. My Mark sat in the open air, dark lines against my skin, bright enough that no one at the formal would be able to pretend they hadn’t seen it.
The brooch rested above my heart.
I hoped I looked half as brave as my mother had believed the wren was.
“Well?” I asked.
Rev crossed her arms.
“You look like trouble.”
“Exactly what I was going for.”
Cosima’s mouth tightened.
“You look like Selene Verita’s daughter.”
That one found bone.
I looked down at the skirt before either of them could see the tears that sprang to my eyes.
“I was so little when she died,” I said.
Neither of them moved.
“I remember her hands. One dress. Her voice when she was tired enough to tell me about the brooch.” I touched the silver wren. “Everyone here knows a version of her I never had.”
Cosima’s voice softened.
“Not everyone.”
“Enough of them.”
Rev came to stand beside me, shoulder almost touching mine.
“Then make one they don’t own.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“A version of her. Of you. You in her dress, with her bird, refusing to let them decide what either of you are.”
I swallowed.
“That was almost wise.”
“Never call me that again.”
Cosima went to the window.
“Do not breathe too easy yet.”
Something in her voice made Rev move.
I crossed the room carefully, still learning the weight of the skirt.
Below, the front drive curved toward the gate. A motorcar had stopped there, black and polished, with the Ashford crest worked in silver on the door.
Lord Magnus Ashford stepped down first.
I had never seen him in person.
I knew him anyway.
He had Caspian’s height, Caspian’s bones, sharpened into something even colder. His black coat was impeccably cut. His gloves were dark leather. He glanced at the front steps, and every man waiting there seemed to remember his posture.
Two attendants moved behind him. Caswell stood near the steps with Linden. Quill waited at the foot of the drive with his hands folded behind his back.
Then Caspian came out through the main doors.
My breath caught before I could stop it.
He had changed since morning.
Formal black coat. White shirt. Blond hair pulled back from his face. Everything neat enough to satisfy a father who measured sons by what they could endure.
But his wrists were bare.
Only skin, and the dark Mark on his right forearm, visible from three floors up.
Magnus saw it.
Even from the window, I saw the pause.
Brief.
Terrible.
Caspian stopped in front of his father.
He didn’t bow.
Beside me, Cosima stood perfectly still.
Rev whispered something under her breath that I suspected was not prayer.
Magnus spoke.
Caspian answered.
We were too high to hear the words.
The Mark on my wrist pulled once.
Caspian’s head lifted.
He looked up.
Straight to my window.
For a moment, the whole school was between us: stone, glass, Quill, Magnus, Linden, the formal waiting to be dressed as an honor.
For one breath, all the Ashford training left his face.
My hand pressed against the window. I didn’t remember moving it.
Below, his hand opened at his side.
He kept it there.
So did I.
Below, Lord Magnus Ashford turned his head and followed his son’s gaze.
He saw me in Selene Verita’s dress.
He saw the wren over my heart.
He saw my Mark uncovered.
This time, when my wrist pulled, there was room for all of it.
The ache. The fear. The want.
The answer.