Chapter Sixteen #3
He circled the ring with his thumb and forefinger.
It felt first hot, then cold. The teeth on the inner rim seemed to move, twisting and digging themselves deeper into my skin.
How deep were they burrowing? It felt like they were writhing their way to the bone, like an eel’s backward-pointing teeth drawing in its prey.
Patrick’s hold on the ring tightened, and a shard of pain iced from my ring finger up the length of my arm, making my skull rattle.
I screamed—a long, throbbing note. Baldbeak woke up and shrieked, leaping up from his perch and flapping his wings.
Patrick knelt before me, the two pieces of the ring in his palm, his face white.
“It is done,” he said. “Netta. It is done.”
I cradled my injured hand in the other. My finger was shredded down to the white fat and ivory bone, streaked with blood.
I was aware of the pain, but horror, or shock, kept a thin, shimmering barrier between me and the sensation.
Baldbeak landed beside me, keeping a little distance, as if afraid that he, too, might hurt me.
Patrick looked like he might be sick. “I didn’t realize …”
“It’s all right,” I whispered. “It’s off.”
He got to his feet and moved swiftly to the basin in the corner of the room, dampening a cloth. “We need to clean the wound and bandage it,” he said, his voice trembling a little.
I stared down at it. The colors were almost pretty—cream; a watery pink; and red.
So much red. Perhaps to protect itself, my mind started to see the torn flesh and exposed bone as a piece of delicate embroidery—something floral and sinuous on a cream silk base; something like the ornate monogrammed handkerchiefs I had transformed for Mieka.
In my mind, I unpicked the pattern and started to restitch it, shaping its chaos into a more orderly form.
I barely noticed when Patrick knelt before me again, damp cloth and length of muslin in his hands.
I heard his sharp intake of breath, but continued staring dreamily down at the cloth on which I was working.
Wait—not cloth. My brow furrowed. My vision tripped back and forth between the silk handkerchief and my ruined finger.
Not so ruined now, because as I watched, the flesh and skin began to knit itself together. The movement was mesmerizing.
“Netta,” said Patrick. “What …?”
But the rest of the question died on his lips as we both stared at the slow, unnatural progress of the invisible needle that seemed to be mending my flesh.
At last, nothing was left but a flap of skin and soon even that had smoothed and melded into the rest. My hand lay still, complete and nearly flawless, just a slender, shining scar where the relentless teeth of the ring had gripped me.
I waited to feel tired, or drained, as I had after reviving Baldbeak, but instead was filled with a strange thrum of energy.
“I have never seen anything like this. It shouldn’t be possible,” Patrick breathed. He raked a hand through his hair.
“I don’t know. I mean, I know that my Hair—”
“I don’t think this is your Hair. This is something new. How did you do that?”
“I …” I felt silly telling him about my embroidery, how I had envisioned it. “I don’t know. Perhaps it is part of the ring’s purpose, not mine. To heal the wounds it causes.”
“I doubt Ban Morin would chain you with anything so benign.” He smoothed his finger over the healed skin, seeming to not realize what he was doing. “Completely restored. I have never seen anything like it. When I saw what had happened to Baldbeak, I didn’t …”
“What do you mean?” I said sharply.
“Why, that you healed him.” He reached out a hand to smooth Baldbeak’s feathers. “I felt my connection with him sever. His injury must have been grave. And yet—here he is. You healed him. You must have.”
Baldbeak and I exchanged glances.
He does not know, said Baldbeak. That I died.
“All right,” I said, pretending reluctance. “Yes. I healed him.”
“Do you know how astounding that is?”
He was too eager, his sharp features made sharper by his interest. He stood and turned to stand by the fire with his back to me. “No wonder Ban Morin and Milady are so anxious to get you back. No wonder—” But he cut himself off.
“Why? Why are they?”
His jaw tightened. “I have some theories.”
“Then tell me, Patrick,” I said. “If you really want me to trust you, tell me.”
I rubbed at the place on my finger where the ring had been. Although the skin was unmarked, perfect, I imagined I could feel the ghost of it—the ghost of control. Of coercion. With a flash of revulsion, I wished I could just cut the hand off and be done with it.
Patrick sighed, rubbing at his close-cropped beard as he thought.
He sat in the chair opposite me and steepled his fingers.
“You know that all power must come from somewhere. Every incarnist mage draws their power from a part of the body—a part that can be sacrificed and then replenished. Not without cost, but replenished.”
“Teeth. Hair. Bones.” I paused, remembering Milady and her unique punishment, then added, “Nails.”
“And you know that the spells required to use this magic to its fullest potency are complex, lengthy, requiring the reading of a spellbook.”
“But not for me.”
“Not for you,” he agreed. “The rarity of your gift, and your ability to memorize, makes you uniquely valuable.”
“Except it doesn’t, because I don’t understand what I’m saying,” I said, frustrated. “I’m not casting a spell. If someone can … latch on to me somehow, they are casting through me, like Ban Morin.”
“That only increases your value. You cannot use your power for yourself, your own intentions. You say what you are told, and your magic does exactly what you are told. You are the perfect puppet for someone like your ex-fiancé, my sweet.”
Anger flushed my cheeks. “I am no one’s puppet. Perhaps I was, before, but not now. I would cut out my own tongue first.”
“I sincerely hope that will not be necessary.”
There was a knock at the door. When Patrick opened it, two maids stood there with two pitchers of water and a large basin.
“Ah, thank you,” he said, taking them one by one and placing them on the table before shutting the door. He turned back to me. “There is one more thing we have to take care of.”
“What?”
“Your Hair,” he said.
I lifted a hand to it, feeling it coil about my fingers.
“It is too recognizable,” he explained.
“It won’t permit cutting,” I said. The Hair shrank back from my scalp, as if anticipating the scissors.
“Not cutting,” he said. He went to his bag and opened it, removing a packet of dark powder.
“Dye? I don’t think …”
“Bespelled dye. It will take, I think.”
The Hair strained at my scalp as if trying to escape. I smoothed it down, soothing it, avoiding his eye.
“Netta,” he said. “I would not do anything that would hurt you.”
“I could cover it,” I said, without much hope.
“There is no need for fear,” he said. He turned back to the table, where the glass pitchers of water stood, and emptied the contents of the packet into one. He swirled the pitcher around, and I watched the water inside it turn first brown, then purple.
“Purple?” I said out loud.
“I have been assured that it will dye your hair black,” he said, his mouth quirking slightly upward.
“I certainly hope so, or I will be even more conspicuous.”
His face was half shadowed as he turned away, making it hard to read his expression.
He set one of the low chairs with its back against the washbasin and draped a sheet over it.
“Here. Sit.”
I sat gingerly, leaning back until I felt the cold porcelain of the basin against the nape of my neck. I closed my eyes, feeling rather like the executioner’s blade was hovering above me.
“Do not look so frightened,” he said, and I could hear the slight smile in his voice. “But keep your eyes closed, lest the dye splash in.”
I felt the air shift as he moved around me. His hand brushed mine, and I started.
“We must dampen it first,” he said, and his usually smooth voice was a little roughened.
He must have raised the ewer of plain water, because I heard the heavy slosh and clink of it, and then felt the warm trickle of water.
Once he had poured water over the front of my Hair, he asked me to turn around.
I kneeled on the chair now, bending my head over the basin and letting my Hair fall forward into the water so he could dampen the back.
I shivered at first, as the nape of my neck felt the first chill—but pleasurably.
It was calming, feeling the Hair grow heavier as it saturated and darkened, bending my spine even more with its weight so that my face was just inches from the water in the basin.
Then, his hands were in my Hair. A shock of unexpected intimacy that set my cheeks blazing.
It was only his hands, I told myself sharply, but couldn’t stop the flush from creeping down my neck.
And we were both fully clothed, brightly lit by the fire that was all at once too warm—although I knew I would be glad of it in a moment, when the length of my Hair was wet and cold.
His hands weren’t even bare—he wore a pair of old, dark gloves to keep the dye from staining his skin.
Despite this, I could still feel how long and deft his fingers were and the slight pressure of his rings.
It would have made an odd picture for anyone walking in unexpectedly.
I was bent over the basin, on my knees, back arched, clutching the edges of it with both hands, my arms bent at the elbows.
The Hair was pulled back from my neck and over my head, dragging with its own weight, and falling about me as dense and impenetrable as the velvet curtains around a four-poster bed, moving and coiling gently.
Patrick stood beside me still, one knee on the edge of the chair.
He shifted his weight as he poured from the ewer, so close that I felt the press of his knee against my thigh.
“Now, the dye,” he said, his voice low but still startling in the silence.