Chapter Seventeen Kit #3
I push past Abram to take the servants’ stairs to the archive, as Idris showed me. Abram starts to follow, but I hold out a hand to stop him. “Let me handle this—stay here unless I call.”
I don’t look back to see if he’s listened.
I dive through the darkness of the hall and grab the door to the archive.
As I emerge into the room, the smell of old papers and dust surrounds me.
My entire attention, my entire being, focuses on the door at the far side.
My hand, searching for something to use as a weapon, closes round the wand in my reticule.
Even as I run, I hear him speaking.
“I knew you would come back,” he says, and his voice is the silky gloating I remember. “You only had to get used to the idea.”
My other hand closes on the latch.
Catharine, in my voice, stutters, “I—I don’t understand—”
I pull the door open. It doesn’t so much as squeak. My stepfather has cornered Catharine near the curtained window, and he is closing the distance between them. He is so intent, he has not heard me.
Catharine stares with wide eyes. The moment before he’s close enough to block me from her view, her gaze darts to me in the doorway.
Horror and fear and confusion are written across her face—across my face—and I am suddenly looking at myself.
The first time. I am fourteen, and I am alone, and I am trapped.
Then he steps forward again, and I can’t see her—I can’t see myself—beyond his broad back.
He bends to kiss her neck. And I know with a searing clarity exactly what I have to do.
Fury and revulsion rise in me so violently that the wand almost snaps in my hand. I cannot spare Catharine the knowing—but I will spare her the touch.
I strike my wrist with the wand. My body lurches forward, and I squeeze my eyes shut against an unbridled nausea. My soul seems to tumble free of my skin, and for a moment I fall and fall and fall. Then, with a painful snap, I am in a body again. Just in time to feel a kiss land on my neck.
Wild anger cuts through me like a tempest, and a scream tears from my throat as I ram my head against his. “Get the hell off me!”
King Byrne stumbles to one side with a cry and raises a hand to his nose. I shove away from the wall, twisting into open space. I am little again, in my own body, with aches and fatigue murmuring for my attention. I shove that aside, only focused on him. On his surprise turning to fury.
He lunges, and I grab a book to smack his hand away. He shouts an oath, grappling for me, trying to get a hold of my arms to pin me back.
But someone moves between us, shoving me back and raising her arms like a shield. “Stop it!” Catharine shouts.
King Byrne reels back, face red. I straighten behind Catharine, my chest heaving.
“Don’t touch her,” Catharine hisses.
“Catharine!” King Byrne says, schooling his expression into something benevolent. He even smiles. “I’m afraid you misunderstand—”
“How could you?” she says, voice ragged now. “How could you?”
King Byrne opens and closes his mouth, his expression becoming guarded and eyes calculating. The floorboards groan behind me, and I look over my shoulder.
Abram stands in the archive doorway. He glances from Catharine to me uncertainly. “I heard someone cry out—”
“I want my father escorted from this building,” Catharine says, lifting her chin. She looks every bit a queen. “I do not want him in my sight.”
“I’m not sure what you think was happening, Catharine,” her father protests. “But—”
“Do not speak to me!” Catharine snaps. “Do not say anything. Just leave.”
With Abram here, King Byrne hesitates. Finally, his jaw tightens. “We’ll talk later. But don’t be so quick to believe everything that chit”—he nods toward me—”tells you.”
Still gripping my hand, Catharine points to the door. Abram holds it open for King Byrne. Face red with anger, the king leaves. Abram glances at us, but then steps out after him.
For a moment, neither Catharine nor I move, frozen with her hand gripped in mine. I’m suddenly aware of myself—of my shallow breathing and the ache in my fingers and the tightness in my shoulders. I don’t know what to say or do.
Catharine turns to me, her eyes shining with tears. She starts to speak, then closes her mouth. I meet her gaze and watch her expression crumple as she reads the truth in my face.
“Yes.” The word is so soft, I almost don’t hear myself speak. “He hurt me.”
With a whimper, she begins to pull away, to bow her head.
Before she can, I wrap my arms round her and hug her as tightly as I can.
Her arms close just as fiercely across my back, and suddenly I am the one crying.
I am raw and exposed and for the first time, someone else knows—someone else is with me in my loneliest, ugliest moment.
Once I thought my mother’s anger on my behalf was the most I could hope for.
I thought that she had seen me and felt for me, but in Catharine’s embrace I realize that wasn’t true.
My mother only saw the shame of me—Catharine stands in the shame with me and holds me, turns the shame from darkness to a searing, bittersweet love.
“I’m so sorry,” Catharine babbles, her voice broken. “I didn’t know—I never thought—”
I squeeze her tighter. “It isn’t your fault.”
Catharine leans back, wiping her eyes with her palms. “I … Kit …”
I swallow on my raw throat. It is strange to see the distress on her face, and I want to soothe it away, but at the same time I feel it burning through me.
Leaving behind something purer, someone stronger.
I clasp her hands between my broken, misshapen ones and try to focus on this moment.
On my heart, so full of pain and delight and empathy and sadness that it seems to break and mend at once.
“I should have told you,” I whisper.
“I should have seen it,” she replies. Her gaze goes distant. “How could I not see it?”
“Almost no one else has.” I pause, thinking of Idris and the ball. “I think sometimes it’s harder to spot when it’s right in front of you.”
Remembering Idris brings me back to the wand.
I search the floor and find it cracked in two.
Speir didn’t lie, it seems. It only worked on one curse, and I’ve chosen the curse to break.
I look down at my hands. I don’t know how I’ll stop my wasting, or how I’ll save Idris from dancing to death—but in this moment I’m glad I’m in my own body.
I look back at Catharine. “Are you all right?”
“Not exactly,” she says with a fragile laugh. “What about you?”
“I’m all right.” I look in the direction her father left. “What will you do about King Byrne?” Though it pains me, I add, “I understand if you … if it’s important for you to … make peace …”
“With him?” she finishes, incredulous. She shakes her head. “I don’t know exactly what is next, but whatever it is—I stand with you. What else would I do?”
Gratitude swells in my chest, and my vision blurs. I lean my forehead against my sister’s shoulder; she strokes my hair, and I breathe.