Chapter Twenty-One
She tried not to think too much about him and everything they had done, over the holidays. But he sent no messages, and there
were few opportunities to run into him, with no classes and no crowds of students around. She couldn’t just find him talking
about Gauntlet tactics with someone who sported a monocle.
Almost everyone returned home—including Anaya.
Her friend had hugged her at the gate, and told her to be careful, and then disappeared over the hill in her family’s old,
battered Beetle. While Mina remained, with nothing but letters from her mum telling her that they couldn’t afford the gas,
and could she perhaps fly home on a broom? Was flying a thing?
Even though her Mum knew that Mina wouldn’t be able to tell her. And not just because she had only book learning and vague
instructions and some wobbly practicing to go on, with regard to broom flying itself. Or even just lifting herself off the
floor. There was also the fact that she couldn’t tell either of her parents hardly anything now. If she tried, she knew the
words would be stopped in her throat, and for the first time, she really found herself wishing that was not so.
There was just so much silence she longed to fill.
Two weeks of nothing but being alone with her thoughts.
And her thoughts were always racing, racing, racing.
She did her best to make her room a cave of books.
To surround herself on all sides and bury her brain in the pages.
But somehow it just didn’t work. She found herself wondering constantly about why he was so suddenly quiet, if he was all right, about what had happened.
Then hating that she cared.
So what if he’s messed up, she told herself, in the middle of Boxing Day morning. One finger between the pages of Mastering Practical Flight, holding her place. Still in her nightgown. Hair a wild, tangled mess. It’s probably just disgust with himself, for wanting you for even a moment.
But it was difficult to make that stick.
And even more so when she finally did see him again. On the morning of her first practical lesson, as she made her way to
the hallway she had heard others call the run up. Fifth floor, and so long and narrow she couldn’t see the end of it, when she joined the line of nervous students there.
All she could do was hear the whoops of joy, as someone succeeded.
Or the screams, as they plummeted.
“Let me see you float again,” Anaya whispered, as one particularly bloodcurdling one rang out. But Mina couldn’t answer her.
She couldn’t show her what she had practiced over Christmas: Some fumbled hovering, that her friend definitely didn’t have
faith would save her.
She was too busy realizing that it was him, ahead of her in the line.
Even though there was no reason for him to be there.
He didn’t need to come to any of these lessons.
He already knew everything there was to know about the basics of flying.
But that shape was unmistakable. That height, heads above everybody else.
The shoulders, broad enough to almost fill the narrow passage.
And then he turned and looked right at her.
And god, the expression on his face.
It wasn’t disgust or horror or disdain.
Instead, he seemed to jerk as if struck. Like he hadn’t expected to see her, or have her see him, and now couldn’t cope with
it. She actually saw his intake of breath, followed by a flash of that same agony she’d seen that day, under the stairs. Then
he looked away, whip quick.
Before it got any worse, she suspected.
And she didn’t know what to do with that. “Have you had a falling out?” Anaya whispered, but all she could do in response
was shrug. She couldn’t let words emerge. She knew they would be terrible ones, like I think it might be somehow the opposite, and he just doesn’t know how to cope with that.
Or even worse:
I don’t know how to cope with it, either.
Despite the fact that she had this to deal with now. They were basically ten people from Professor Kirkpatrick, with his clipboard.
Someone had just definitely hit the ground. They watched as he confirmed with the resident physicians that some healing spell
hadn’t taken. We need a clean up box, she heard him say, and knew that this meant coffin.
It was vital that she focused on this.
And not on Harker, up ahead. Not on the fact that he was now on the edge.
He can fly, she told herself. He can fly, he can fly, he isn’t about to drop off a precipice to his doom.
Though she couldn’t deny it looked like that.
He didn’t even sit astride the broom he had, the way some did.
He just kind of stepped forward, in a way that made her stomach lurch.
It made her think of words like suicidal, even though she’d done her best to suppress them.
And her heart only restarted when she saw him swoop back up.
He headed into the night sky, as if he could somehow go and never come back. She couldn’t even see him by the time it got
to her turn. There was just the huge drop and a dozen students still swooping around—including Anaya.
She waved from her own broomstick.
Ready, Mina thought, to catch her.
Even though catching was against the rules. “Don’t you dare, Ms. Syal,” Professor Kirkpatrick called out. And Mina tried to
communicate the same. Don’t risk anything for me, she had told her friend, way back at the beginning of the line. Now she made it as clear as she could with her eyes. She
aimed for confident, for I’m fine, as she put one foot out over the abyss below. No broom, no object to help her, just her and her body. Letting herself feel
fear, but everything else, too.
What it was to fly. How it felt to desire.
Bram, she thought, as she closed her eyes, and gave in.
Though she knew it wasn’t him who filled her with everything she needed. It never had been. It was Harker, it was him, it
was his face behind her eyes. It was everything he had done for her, and all the ways he’d disguised it. Because it had been
a disguise, she could see that now. She understood it now. How could she not?
He wanted to die, rather than doom her.
“Oh god,” she said, as she felt her magic catch her.
Heartbroken, awestruck.
Consumed by these revelations.
But soaring into the sky, at the same time.
Not trapped by these feelings, not frightened by them, but freed—as if he had made himself a stone, so she could be the sun.
So she could shine. And she did. She glided across the grounds, hands close to her body at first. But as her courage grew, she let them unfurl.
She touched the air with them, felt it rush between her fingers.
Used that to make herself turn, until she was on her back.
As if the sky was a body of water, and she was floating in it.
The stars above her. The sound of her friend calling to her in her ears.
“Mina,” she heard, and opened her eyes to look.
But instead of Anaya, there was just one of the students who’d laughed, when Sebastian had tried to set her on her fire. His
face loomed large: haughty brow, mean mouth, a sneer all over him. And then he struck her hard, with the hockey stick he was
flying on, and suddenly she was spiraling. She caught a glimpse of the ground and then the sky, ground and then the sky. The
former closer each time she spun.
Scarily close.
She had gone down fast—as if he’d applied some spell at the same time. Sink, she thought, and tried to countermand it immediately. She even knew how to do it instinctively. Reverse it by drawing your
hands in, instead of out.
But it was too late.
She felt its grip dissolve, just as the path between the trees to her dorm became excruciatingly clear. Then all she could
do was close her eyes and brace, as she hit that hard surface. As she waited for her bones to be pulverized to paste, and
her skin shredded by the thin gravel that covered the ground.
And somehow got something soft, instead.
Why is it soft? she thought wildly.
But she couldn’t follow it up.
She was too busy being whirled around again.
Over and over, and so violently, this time, that she couldn’t breathe for a second. She couldn’t right herself. She tried
to put a hand out and found her arm barred somehow, like something had hold of her. And she only registered what it was, once
the whirling stopped.
She came to rest on what felt like grass, with something over her and surrounding her. At which point, she knew. Even with
her head spinning and her breath coming in gasps, she recognized all those little things. The winter scent, that strange mixture
of coldness and fever, the way he held her.
The way he cradled her, in his arms.
Harker. Harker had saved her.
How had she not known that Harker had saved her? He always did. He always had. He still wanted to, even through his fear.
And he was afraid, she could see that now. It was in his harsh breathing; the way he held himself over her body. That face of his, now
so close that she could see all the ways in which that cold stoicism had given way.
His eyes were haunted holes in his face. There were furrows around his mouth, between his brows, across his forehead. And
though it seemed like he wanted to spit some words out, he couldn’t seem to do it. They hovered between his parted lips, full
of a kind of ghostly tension.
It honestly tore her in two to see.
She wasn’t surprised to find herself reaching up to him.
And oh, the way his expression shifted. It seemed to dissolve down from panic, to such a sweet softness she didn’t know how to stand it.
She wasn’t sure how she couldn’t have seen it.
Even with everything he had clearly done to disguise it, to hide behind a mask of cruelty, it was all there.
He wasn’t a stalker, a shadow, some evil double.
It was just him.
Of course it was.
“How did I not guess?” she whispered. “How did I not see that it was you, that you are the one, that you are the man she loved.
That she loved you. Somehow it was you all along.”
But he didn’t answer.
He went very still, instead.
And then his eyes snapped open, and all those lovely things were gone.
“So you know, then,” he said.
“I think on some level I always have.”
“If you did, you wouldn’t have said that to me.”
“But it’s the truth. You loved her. You loved Lilibet. You are Bram.”
“As you think so, perhaps it’s time I showed you what my love did,” he said, so dark and grave she knew it was going to be
bad. She could tell she had misjudged something somehow, even before he yanked her to her feet.
However, it got much clearer when he started dragging her toward the water they had landed near. A murky pond it looked like,
of the kind she knew would be full of horrors. The very sight of it made her struggle. But of course he was too strong for
that. He was too strong for anything.
He held her wrists, like his own hands were a set of manacles. And he hauled her to it, before she could think of a single thing to do. Her mind was a howling blank, when he forced her to her knees. “Hold your breath,” he said, and she had a second to do it, barely anything at all.
Then he just plunged her face into the water.
And after that there was only darkness.