Chapter Fifteen Kit
Chapter Fifteen
Kit
We are stillness in a crowd of churning color. A clearing in a forest.
I ought to move my hand back to his arm, the way the others hold their partners. Even that is much closer than our balls, where the most contact I must brace for is a simple touch and release.
I steel myself. I promised I would bring him back. And I know what it is to be wandering so far and alone in yourself that you cannot see through open eyes.
I keep my hand deliberately on his shoulder, near his neck, and push the coat and waistcoat aside, sliding my fingertips under his cravat so there is only one layer of fabric between my skin and his.
My thumb comes to rest at the edge of his clavicle.
I feel it tense, pronounced, whenever he shifts.
I have never willingly been this close to a man.
Idris is merely a hand’s breadth away. He smells of sweat, and his hair is limp with it. But there is a bright fondness in his face.
I lift my gaze to meet his. His eyes are a deep brown, the color of loam. They are kind and warm and full of summer promise. Safe. So safe that my heart twists in painful hope. Heat raises the hairs on my arms.
I don’t turn away. I admit the thought: He likes me. He likes looking at me.
Joy sparks in my chest. For a moment, I feel shining and pure.
But only for a moment.
A crack seems to open in my mind. On one side, there is me and Idris wrapped in our dance and our newfound closeness. On the other, there is a shadow. Another man’s greedy look. A hand in the dark. A dark, inky taint.
An instinct so deep in me it feels ancient shouts, Careful, careful!
I squeeze my eyes shut. I am safe with Idris—it is a truth as sure as a compass. Idris doesn’t want to hurt me.
But my feral heart shrieks, Danger, danger!
I can’t make sense of these two sides. I want to be in this moment—I want to be a normal girl dancing with a kind and good boy. Forcing my eyes open, I try to prove to my mind that I’m here. I’m with Idris. I’m all right.
He frowns, the smallest line of worry between his brows. The closeness that thrums between us tightens, and I try to let myself feel it. Attraction? Shouldn’t this be pleasurable? But the warmth has become more nausea than joy. A soupy, wobbly unsteadiness churns in my stomach.
The crack in me widens. Each splinter is a memory—an iron grip on my wrist, insults in my ear, a leering smile. Proof upon proof upon proof that I am not normal. I will never be normal.
Stop! I beg myself. Let me be here!
It is a battle against panic to feel anything at all.
I have Idris’s arm round my waist, but it isn’t him that I feel.
I feel the door in my mind, locked, and I am beating against it.
Excruciating pain tears through my chest. I want to lean into Idris’s touch, but that ancient, feral part screams for me to claw him off and run.
A shudder quakes through me. Idris must feel it, because the worry grows in his brown eyes, and he pulls back.
I want to take his face in my hands. If I were me, in another world, with another past, I would pull him to me and kiss him.
If I were a different girl, I would loop my arms round his neck and lean into his embrace.
But I’m not a girl at all in this moment. I am terror, so coiled and tight that my lungs won’t expand. I release him, and before I can change my mind someone else has seized his hand. A selkie pulls him away. He stumbles into her arms, and his feet resume the dance, and I know I’ve lost him again.
Breath rushes into my chest with a rattle. A tear drops down my cheek, and I slap it away. Hollowness carves through me. Shouldn’t that have been like all those romantic moments in stories? Shouldn’t I be happy? I was happy, for a moment. Wasn’t I?
All I feel now is tired, and empty, and sad.
Someone jostles me from behind, and I stumble out of the way. I retreat to my place against the wall, trying to force my breathing to steady. I want to go home—to curl under a blanket and forget everything.
But, beneath it all, a small part of me still glows. He looked at me in a way no one else has, and it was warm and kind and good.
Don’t trust it, the ancient in me warns.
The fragile glow is all but swallowed by the shadows lurking in my head.
I want to reach into myself and yank them free, like weeds in a garden.
I want to only feel the glow and none of the fear.
I want to cup my hands round the light and hold that moment separate from everything else: when he saw me.
He didn’t see you, whisper my thoughts. He saw Catharine.
The glow fizzles and dies. I look down at my own hands—Catharine’s hands. Beautiful, unmarred. I am in Catharine’s body, one that has never known hardness. That has never been violated.
But I still carry the taint in me.
“It seems your mother’s gift goes unappreciated,” says a voice in my ear.
I start, jerked out of my thoughts. Speir stands beside me casually, as if he’s been there this entire evening. His bright-orange eyes sweep me from head to toe.
“You!” I exclaim, heart pounding.
“Hmm, yes. Me.” He tilts his head. “You don’t seem to be enjoying the new body your mother procured for you. How odd.”
I rub my eyes, head spinning from the whiplash of emotions—mine all in a roar and him calm as an otter stretched out in the sun. “This isn’t my body to keep.”
“You wear it.” He shrugs. “Simply enjoy it.”
I shake my head. This is the chance I’ve been waiting for. “We want you to undo the curse. Catharine and I want to switch back!”
His eyes glint. “Careful. Do not lie in the queen’s court.”
I stare at him. “I—I’m not lying.”
“Oh? You would have me believe you wish to reclaim that diseased body?” He frowns a moment, then his face brightens with the keenness of a boy who has discovered a secret. “Do you believe that is your wish?”
A flush spreads over my cheeks. “I want what is best for Catharine.”
“Ah, but that is not the same thing as wanting the curse broken.” He leans back, hands spread. “And I am not one to go back on a deal.”
All of Catharine’s stories, all the lessons about never negotiating with the Hidden Folk, crowd the back of my mind. But I ask, “Can’t you make a new deal with me?”
“Not if it contradicts an earlier one. Besides …” He moves behind me and round to my left. I stiffen involuntarily. “I’ll let you in on a secret about magic. A spell works best when the participants step willingly into it.”
My heart thuds in my ears. “What do you mean?”
His orange eyes have no warmth to them. Only the calculating curiosity of a botanist pinning a specimen to a board. “I did not cause the switch, dear. I merely opened the door.”
Dread sinks into my bones. I remember looking into that strange mirror—remember seeing all of my flaws in a sharpness that was impossible to ignore. Even at the memory, the sickening heat of loathing rises in my stomach. I had hated myself—hated my body.
Did I do this to us?
He hasn’t looked away from me this entire time. I’m not sure he’s even blinked. “If I opened the door again, now, would you go through?” he asks.
I am the one to turn away. I cannot answer, and my confusion only fills me with more distress. This should be the moment I fix everything. I should insist. I should fight. I should make him reverse it.
A sparrow suddenly flutters past my ear, making me jump, and then two small beings dart past us in chase. The boy waves a stick aloft in the air, his fair-boned fingers round the wood nothing like a plump child’s. I close my hands round each other, concentrating on the way they do not hurt.
“So you won’t help us?” I ask, watching the children. The boy finally manages to poke the bird with his stick. The golden clouds above cover everything in a shifting pattern of dappled light, and the bird changes from gray sparrow to white seagull. I blink, trying to make sense of it.
“I would rather see what you will do.” Speir lifts one finger. “A warning, though: No curse can be broken with an unwilling participant.”
He pats my back with mock sympathy, and I jerk away. I want to protest that I am willing! But I’m no longer certain that is true. I was prepared to switch back for Catharine’s sake, but for my own? My toes curl in my shoes.
The girl lifts her hand, and the bird alights on her palm. Grinning, she speaks into its ear. The bird’s feathers grow, shift, and turn silver. Where there was a seagull, there is now a small falcon. My insides twist at how easily she enchants the poor thing.
“The stories say humans are unpredictable,” Speir says, his gaze following mine to the children. “Yet only one human has ever surprised me.”
The falcon takes off, and the children twirl past Idris, the boy waving his stick. Speir’s shoulders tighten. It’s the first time I’ve seen him express any discomfort.
“Go on and see if you can break the curse.” He steps away, but then turns again to face me with a cynical smile. “Just try not to be boring about it.”
Then he strides off and catches the children. I spot him gesturing at the bird and the crowded ballroom, but I can’t make out his words.
Deflated, the children nod. They wander away from the dancers, toward one of the passages that leave the cavern.
The girl holds out her arm, and the falcon alights on it.
With a sigh, just as they are stepping out of the room, the boy pokes the bird with his stick. And, suddenly, it’s a seagull again.
My breath catches. I dart a look at Speir—but he is making his way toward the queen of the Hidden Folk on her throne, not paying attention to me.
Speir was clearly warning the child.
He did not like that the stick was near Idris.
They just enchanted the seagull. And then they broke the enchantment.
I edge my way along the walls. Tonight they are covered in thousands of tiny, spiraled seashells. They range from bright orange to dark purple to startling white. I think there must be creatures in the shells, because if I look away and back the mosaic of color rearranges itself subtly.