Chapter Twenty-Four #3
“So my spell worked after all.” I laughed a little. “I was wishing to be rescued from my monotonous existence. Little did I know.”
“Rescued, eh?” He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “By a handsome prince, no doubt?”
“By someone. But it turned out I had to climb down on my own.” I spread out the silks. “You must have dozens of these. Why did you keep asking Baldbeak for them?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “You have a gift. Besides the magical ones, I mean.” He traced one of the patterns lightly. “Even if these had no magical worth at all, they would be beautiful.”
He looked up, more meaning in his hazel eyes than I was ready for.
He had kissed me once before, on Plaguenight, and I had been trying very hard not to think about it since then.
But the thing about a kiss is that, when you’ve done it once, the possibility of another one is always hovering between you.
I would say like a butterfly, something fragile and beautiful, but if you are desperately trying not to think about kissing the other person, it is more like a mosquito with an unignorable, insistent whine.
And I had too much else to think about.
The moment hung suspended; and then I looked away, and he dropped his gaze.
“Do you want them back?” he asked, keeping his voice light. “As you can see, I have taken great care of them.”
“No,” I said. I lowered the lid, shutting them away again. “I can make more.”
“Well,” he said, and sighed. “At least let me walk you back to your rooms.”
“I am not going back,” I said.
“You’re leaving right now?”
“I think I must.” Before any number of things happened that could delay me or persuade me to abandon my plan altogether.
“Then let me walk you to your … horrifying skeletal steed.”
“That I can do,” I said.
We made our way up to the highest floor of the palace, to the door that led out to a rooftop garden.
The battlements were quiet, save for the soft wind and the faint creak of bone.
The bird waited, motionless as a sculpture but somehow unmistakably alive, her great ribbed wings folded and her skull turned slightly towards me.
Below, guards walked the courtyard, their cloaks floating behind them as if they had wings of their own.
“I will never get used to that thing,” Patrick muttered.
He looked out across the ramparts. His posture was easy, his hands clasped behind his back, but there was something rigid about the set of his jaw. The wind had disarranged his hair slightly, and I had the strange urge to reach out and brush it back. I didn’t.
“How does it feel? Finally having your revenge on Milady?” I said. “I don’t think you could have beaten her any more thoroughly.”
A soft breeze lifted his cloak.
“Empty,” he said. “It feels empty.”
“I thought it was what you wanted.”
“So did I.”
Something about the set of his jaw made my throat ache.
“So this is it, then?” he said lightly, though there was a bitter twist to his voice. “You go your way, I go mine?”
“For now,” I said.
Patrick turned to look at me fully then, studying my face, as if committing it to memory.
“I can’t say I approve,” he murmured, tilting his head. “But you’ve never cared much for my approval, have you?”
I huffed a quiet laugh. “Not particularly.”
More silence. The wind whistled low through the eyeholes of the bone bird.
There was too much between us now. Too much deception; too much truth. I thought about saying thank you, or I can’t forgive you yet, or come with me.
Instead, I stepped towards him, and there it was again: that flicker of something almost gentle behind his eyes.
I don’t know what made me do it. The awful quiet of it all?
Or maybe just the thought of leaving without knowing—without at least trying to know.
I leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth.
He startled—just slightly—and then he kissed me back.
It was soft. Careful. We were almost exactly the same height, so I didn’t have to crane my neck, but I still felt precarious, unbalanced. His hand brushed against my waist, uncertain, and then hovered there, barely touching.
I wanted it to go on forever.
So I ended it.
He took a breath as if to speak, then stopped.
“I’d better go,” I said.
“You’ll be careful,” he said. A plea disguised as a command.
I nodded. “You too.”
He glanced towards the bone bird, then back at me. “If you need anything—”
I cut him off gently. “I know.”
Baldbeak flapped over, stopping on Patrick’s shoulder. He reached up and ruffled his feathers.
“You odd bird,” he said. “I believe I will miss you, too.”
He gave a pleased sort of raark. Patrick gave him one more pat.
“Well. Goodbye, you two,” he said. “Or three, rather.”
He took a step backwards, putting distance between us, then took my hand and kissed it.
I nodded wordlessly, and he walked off with his usual easy, elegant stride, his hands clasped behind his back, as if simply going for an evening stroll.
He did not turn again. After a moment, I heard his voice and another’s, just inside the door, and then the Book Man emerged alone, blinking.
He always had the look of someone coming out of dimness into a bright light, although I knew the palace was light and airy.
“My dear,” he said. “I heard you were leaving.”
“I hoped you would come with me to the Tower,” I said. “My mother’s books are there … all her research. I wouldn’t know what to do with any of it, and I can’t understand it myself. There’s no one else in Virelith that I would trust with it.”
He adjusted his spectacles. “I am honored.”
“Unless you have somewhere else you want to go,” I added quickly.
He was standing so still that I wondered if I had pinned him to the floor with my awkward request—whether he was finding the courage to reject me politely.
But he stepped forward to take me by the shoulders and repeated, “I am honored.”
Behind the spectacles, his eyes were damp. I screwed mine shut to keep my own tears back and took a steadying breath. His hands on my shoulders were warm and grounding.
“Some of it should probably be destroyed,” I said.
“If that is necessary, I will do what needs to be done.”
I thought of the Tower. Some of the pigeons might still be coming back to roost in the attic, out of habit, but many had probably moved away.
The swans and geese in the river would long have ceased to look for me.
The spiders would have had a wonderful time, finally left entirely to their own devices.
I imagined their webs laid over all our furniture and belongings like dustcloths.
“There’ll be a bit of tidying up to do,” I said in a remarkable feat of understatement.
“I am quite willing to wield a feather duster.”
“Are … are you ready to go now?” I said.
He spread his hands. “Why not? I have no shop, now, and no possessions.” He seemed quite cheerful about it. “I am ready to follow you whenever you say the word. Are we to take the stagecoach?”
“Er … no.” I hesitated. “We’re going to ride on Bone Bird.”
“Gracious,” said the Book Man, adjusting his spectacles. “That … skeletal bone magic creature? A very impressive spell, might I add.”
“She’s very friendly,” I hastened to assure him.
“Oh, I’m sure she is, my dear,” he said, politely, but his smile was a bit fixed.
I led him to where the Bone Bird and Baldbeak were waiting. Baldbeak was fussing about the immense creature like a mother hen with its chick, picking specks of dust and debris off its shining white skeleton. The Book Man’s eyes were wide as saucers, but he cleared his throat and nodded.
“Goodness,” he said faintly. “It is all bone magic, I presume.”
“Yes.”
“A complex spell, indeed. It does seem … much larger, up close.” He took a deep breath. “A truly terrifying power.”
He said it not with awe, nor with fear, but with something like compassion.
“I hope that I will learn to control it one day,” I said. “At least to stop it from spilling out at all the wrong moments.”
“I shall endeavor to assist you with that as well, my dear,” he said, putting an arm about my shoulders and squeezing. He paused. “What about your friends here?”
“I have said my goodbyes,” I said firmly. I tugged at the rope I had asked a servant to bring, as well as some cushions to soften our seat on the bony spine. “I’m sorry. Even with the padding, I don’t think our journey will be very comfortable.”
“I shall manage,” he said.
I climbed the curve of bone again, my fingers cold against the smooth ivory. Bone Bird shifted as I mounted, making a low grinding sound deep in her chest. It was a friendly sound, I knew somehow. Baldbeak settled on my shoulder, a familiar and welcome weight. The Book Man clambered up behind me.
I had wanted to be free from everyone who tried to use me—and now I was. I was no longer anyone’s daughter; prize; sacrifice. Perhaps I was still a vessel, of sorts. But this time, I had chosen to be.
“Ready, my dear?” said the Book Man from behind me.
“Ready,” I said, and Bone Bird turned my thought into movement, leaping into the air with a clatter, turning Mirthwater and the palace into nothing but a tangle of color and shape as it unraveled beneath us.