I meet Eve’s eyes, only briefly. Then she breaks her gaze, and discreetly pulls the delicate Vestergaard crest from her neck. She slips it into her pocket.
“Oh,” she says, letting out a nervous giggle. “I’m sorry. They came here for me.”
I look sharply at her.
Don’t do this, Eve, I think. I don’t deserve it. I bite back tears, and my heart swells to bursting. I can’t believe she is still willing to risk a lie for me.
“I lost my necklace just before the . . . accident,” she says. “I’ve looked for it everywhere. I was too scared to come in here myself.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Helene asks. “I would have helped you.”
“I was ashamed that I’d lost it. I’m sorry.” Eve’s face crumples. She’s laying it on thick, with just enough fear and misery to be believable. “I was hoping I would find it and you would never have to know I’d been so careless.”
I swallow hard and stay very, very still.
“Of course, I’ll help you look for it now,” Helene says. “It can’t have gone far.” She draws Eve close to her elbow and looks at both Brock and me. “You may go,” she says.
I nod at her and take a quick step toward the door. Thanks to Eve, we’ve almost made it.
“Wait,” Philip says. “I want to make sure that’s the truth.”
“Why?” Helene asks, her voice sharp. “I take my daughter at her word.” Her eyes flicker brightly with warning.
“It isn’t your daughter I distrust,” Philip says coolly. He looks to me and Brock. “Please turn out your pockets.”
Brock blinks rapidly, his pupils dilating. He takes a deep breath as Peder steps toward us.
There is a long pause between us.
“Yes. All right,” I say stiffly.
I step forward first, putting myself between Brock and the others. Slowly, stalling, I reach into my pockets. I clutch the fabric inside and turn it out.
The only thing that falls out is one of Liljan’s candies. It hits the rug at my feet and rolls toward Eve.
The guard grunts.
“Now you,” Philip says, pointing at Brock.
I swivel to look at Brock. There is a haunting fear in his eyes. The look of someone who is about to lose the very last thing he has.
There’s nothing I can do, and I’m standing nearly close enough to reach out and touch him.
Brock slowly puts his hand in each of his pockets and turns them out, one by one. Vest. Jacket. Pants. When he gets to the final pocket, the one where he tucked the ring, he pauses.
I have to do something.
I close my eyes.
I have to.
I picture the ring in his pocket, the hem of his sleeve where it hits along his wrist. I’ve never used magic on anything without physically touching it before.
There’s no time. I can’t let him get caught.
I call to my magic with desperate urgency, feel it lighting through my veins as if I’ve left a trail of kerosene, followed by a prickling of cold. I can almost sense the stitches in Brock’s shirt, like feeling along a banister in the dark. I concentrate as though I’m filling my lungs with as much air as they can hold, as if I’m preparing to dive into deep, deep water. I think of Ingrid. How deep she must have dived that night she convinced the men of a lie, to get her magic to do something it had never done before.
I try not to think of what it cost her.
“Well?” Peder urges. “Get on with it.”
I’m flirting with a magic I’ve never gone near before, going deeper and deeper into freezing, dark water, hoping I won’t go so far that I can’t find my way back to the surface. I swiftly unknot the threads of Brock’s shirt and swoop them down to stitch around the ring. It’s an unearthly feeling of ice and fire at the same time—of lungs bursting and burning within me while my skin feels the outer icy cold of the deep.
I’m kicking toward the surface, hoping I’m going to make it in time. With one last burst, I pull the stitches tight to hide the ring up in the hem of his sleeve. A ripple of seams, concealing treasure.
Then I force my eyes open and it’s like breaking the surface and taking a gasping breath of air again. My veins suddenly ache with an icy cold that throbs and hurts, the way my head and the roof of my mouth do when I eat ice cream too quickly.
Brock pulls out his hand and shows the empty fabric of his last pocket.
I did it.
Philip twitches his fingers with irritation toward the door, and the false ring I planted on him shifts to turn its jeweled face downward. He looks at the ring for half a moment, and I hope he merely attributes its loose fit to the weight he’s lost since the attack.
Everyone standing in the room parts for us like a curtain.
I’m shaking when I take my first step toward freedom, and my leg starts to buckle beneath me. Liljan’s hand bolts out to steady my elbow before I can fall.
“Wait,” Eve says. She draws herself up and looks unflinchingly at Philip. “I think you owe them an apology. Did you know that this is the very servant who saved your life?”
The room stills and I force myself to meet Philip’s gaze. His skin is sallow, but his eyes and mind look strong. “Please forgive the accusation,” he says quietly. “You can understand, after my recent attack why my suspicions might be heightened.”
I nod and Brock, looking shaken, mutters something vaguely unintelligible. The guard, Eve, and Liljan leave the room. But Helene holds up her hand, blocking my way out the door.
“Philip, you’ll remember that you are a guest in this house. I’ll handle my own staff from now on,” Helene says, and her voice cuts like steel.
He gives her a smile and nod that teeter on patronizing and she leaves. But when I follow Brock out the door, Philip lashes out and catches my wrist to stop me.
“I don’t know what the two of you were playing at,” he says. The fake ring slides down his finger again. Beneath it, I see another scar left from an old burn. “But I am watching you.”
I wrench my wrist away and try not to run. Shaking, I keep my head lowered and hurry down the maze of stairs, careful to keep distance from Brock and Liljan so I can have a moment alone.
I pause in the chill of the stairwell to the servants’ quarters, gathering my courage. My heart pounds as I count to three and peek under the sleeve of my uniform.
The skin there is smooth and clear as a blank sheet of paper.
I let my sleeve fall and breathe out a shocked exhale and a prayer of thanks. That was a fool’s errand, too close for comfort from every angle.
I fumble with the latch into the kitchen, trip over my feet, and collapse onto the bench. My muscles begin to tremble with shivers. “You’re meant to meet the rest of them upstairs,” Dorit says in a low voice. “But you look positively ashen, dearie. Tea?”
“Water,” I croak.
“Damned stew,” Dorit says. “I should have made him a pie instead. If he’d eaten the whole thing, this never would have happened.”
“It’s my own fault, Dorit,” I say, my teeth chattering.
I fumble with the glass and knock it over. Dorit hurriedly rights it and pours a drink for me. I need to eat something. I don’t feel right. I focus on drinking down the cool, clear water, one gulp at a time.
Brock suddenly appears at my elbow. “How the hell did you do that, up there?” he says, taking the seat beside me. “Are you all right?” His eyes are soft with concern. He looks at me with sincere tenderness, the way you might look at a younger sister.
The way he once looked at Ivy.
“I owed you a favor,” I rasp. “And I always return what I borrow.”
“Thank you,” he says. He gently touches my elbow before tucking his fingers into the hidden folds of his sleeve.
He rips the blackened ring from the stitches and holds it out to me.
I’m reaching for it when Liljan appears in the doorway. My stomach turns at the look on her face.
“I’m sorry, Marit,�
�� Jakob says behind her, pushing his spectacles up.
“That stone isn’t glass,” Liljan says softly. She comes and puts her hand on mine. “We were wrong.”
I was wrong. But I can’t be. It made so much sense. It tied all the threads together. My thoughts set off like an avalanche. “You’re sure?” I ask, my head suddenly splitting.
“It does look exactly like the one from your father,” Liljan says. “Just darker. It has a similar crystalline structure under the microscope. But it’s not glass, and it’s not a ruby.”
Then . . . what now?
My vision is doubling, and the disappointment is so weighted it’s crushing. The king is coming in less than a week, and I have nothing for him. No proof of wrongdoing. Maybe because there wasn’t any to begin with. Maybe I was just wrong. Maybe I’ve been wrong since the very beginning.
“I need a moment,” I say. The greenhouse is where I want to go, where it is warm and feels like life and hope and safety. I stumble down the withered corridor and push open the door. The light is warm and golden-green, like being beneath the surface of water when the sunlight hits it. I close my eyes and breathe in the scent, trying to calm my heart, my thoughts. I was so sure I was right.
Jakob comes in behind me.
“Marit, are you okay?” He is beside me in two steps. He touches my elbow, and it sends that glittering spark up my arm. But when I turn toward him, his hand pulls at my sleeve, brushing it back just slightly.
My heart freezes.
Did I see something there now?
Magic flows like water.
“I was so worried,” he says, and he gathers me into his arms as if to make sure I’m really there, and I can feel his heart beating so hard inside his chest. “And it made me realize that I have to tell you something.”
Magic freezes like ice.
I smell the snow-fir scent of his breath, his skin. I’m so close to tasting him, what I’ve wanted for so long.
Use too much and it costs . . .
He bends to brush his lips against my cheek.
. . . a pretty price.
With a shy, sweet smile, Jakob hesitates, then leans to kiss me again, just at the corner of my mouth.
Marit, Ingrid says clearly in my ear . . . I think I went too far.
And instead of kissing Jakob, I flinch.
He tenses and draws back from me as swiftly as if I’ve burned him. “Sorry,” he breathes immediately. “I thought—I’m sorry.” He takes another step away to give me space, a mortified flush flooding his face.
I want to explain myself, to tell him he wasn’t wrong, he didn’t misread the signals, but all I can think about right now is what I might have seen at the hint of my wrist.
“Here. Take this,” I say. I fumble with the blackened ring in my pocket and shove it into his hands without looking at him.
“Marit,” he says gently, and when I glance into his eyes, I can see how much I’ve hurt him. “Please forgive me.” He takes a deep look at my face. “I just—are you certain you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” I insist, careful to keep my arms covered and the tears from falling. “Will you look at that ring, please?”
Please tell me that all of this, everything I’ve just done and given up, hasn’t been for nothing.
Brock and Liljan have followed us. They stop, hesitantly, just inside the greenhouse door.
“Is . . . everything all right?” Brock asks, sensing the tension. “Did something happen in here?”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened in there?” Jakob growls at Brock, taking a step toward him, and his voice has an edge I’ve never heard before.
I turn my back to them and look up toward the suspended bulbs of glass, the cascading green that swings above our heads, and blink back tears. Because I know what I saw.
When I hear the door finally close behind them, I bite hard on my lip and summon all my courage to look down.
I gently pull back the fabric of my uniform to reveal it. A crystal-blue lace, etched in a delicate pattern beneath my wrists.
The Firn.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I examine the way my veins have turned a silvery blue beneath my skin. It’s advanced Firn, but it hasn’t killed me on the spot like it did with Ingrid. Perhaps I stopped just in time. My breathing quickens. It feels like I am seeing my own grave, but someone stopped midway through carving my name on the headstone.
My throat grows tight and thick with tears. I can never use magic again. Not as long as I want to live to see the next morning. That part of me, of my identity, is suddenly and completely lost forever, and its consequences ripple outward beyond what I can even see. I’ll have to give up my job at the Vestergaards’. Find another without relying at all on magic to set me apart. I wince anew when I think of Jakob, of Liljan, of Eve ripping the crest from her neck and slipping it into her pocket. Everything I’ve ever wanted is right here, and I have to leave it all behind.
In the privacy of my workroom, I cover the telltale blue markings by making little pincushion bracelets out of satin and carefully fixing them around my wrists like cuffs. I should go now, tell Jakob and Liljan. But I don’t want to voice the horror out loud. Instead I want to curl in on myself, pretend the Firn isn’t happening.
“You know, you didn’t have to lead him on like that, Marit,” Liljan says frostily when I’m changing out of my uniform that night. She pulls a brush down the long, shimmering sheet of her hair.
I pause. “I’m sorry?”
She purses her lips. “My brother. Or is there something happening with you and Brock now?”
“Wh-what?” I sputter. I fight an almost hysterical urge to laugh. “No.”
“I saw the way you acted with Jakob, and you could have fooled me,” she says, tugging her brush through a knot. “I thought you fancied him. He did too.” She fixes her eyes on me. For once, they aren’t light with mirth. They are set hard, like cooled marble. “You should be more careful, and don’t play games with people’s hearts next time. Especially my sweet, stupid brother’s.”
“I—” I begin. “I do care for him.” My eyes well up. “Liljan.”
With a deep breath, I unpin the satin cuffs and turn my inner wrists toward her.
The noise she makes is a swift cut to the softest parts of me. Her hand flies to her mouth, and the look of anguish on her face makes all my own fear come surging up again. I smother it back down, herd it into place, lock it up.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I whisper.
“Oh, Marit,” she says. She carefully wipes the horror from her face and sets the brush down as if it might shatter.
“Promise you won’t say anything,” I say, buttoning my cuffs back up and climbing into bed. “I want to be the one to tell Jakob.”
She nods. “I’m horrible for yelling at you. Horrid. I really am a vole.” She comes and gets into bed with me. I snuggle down into the warmth of the covers, suddenly shivering uncontrollably. She wraps her arms around my shoulders and hugs me.
“What are you going to do?” she whispers. She gently strokes the back of my hair, pulling it out like spun silk. It tugs pleasantly, sending a prickle across my scalp.
“I have to leave,” I whisper into my pillow. A wild part of me wants to ask Eve to come with me. I have the money from my father hidden in the straw, enough for a place to live and food for at least a month, until I could find some job that wouldn’t require magic. What I could offer wouldn’t be anything grand. It wouldn’t come close to this house. She’d have to give up ballet, and Helene. All I could offer is me.
I’m never going to ask Eve to make that choice. But in my heart, I wish I could go back to the time when she would still pick me without a second thought.
Later that night, when silvery moonlight shifts along the walls like scales and Liljan has returned to her own bed, I throw on a coat over my nightgown. Liljan stirs but doesn’t say anything when I slip out the door with a bundle beneath my arm.
I slink down the stairways and through the maze of the main house. It is the witching hour between days; the house is still and dark. There’s a wafting scent of orchids, the distant chime of a grandfather clock. I tap out five low knocks on Eve’s door and wait for a long moment. I no longer care about getting caught. There isn’t much left of me to lose.
I just care that she opens the door.
My heart quickens with nerves the longer I wait, lacing my fingers together. Would she answer the door if she knew how much was at stake? That I teeter ever closer to the fragile line between being alive and whatever comes next?
Maybe she didn’t hear me, I try to tell myself.
But she always hears me.
Realization darkens within me. I run my fingers over the veins in one of my wrists. The skin is thin enough for me to feel the hardened lines beneath it.
I turn away at the exact moment the door cracks open.
She rubs her eyes and peers out, and despite everything else, my heart feels like the first hint of sunrise.
I step inside her room.
“What are you doing here, Marit?” She looks up at the ceiling, down at the pink shells of her fingernails. Anywhere but at me.
“I miss you, Eve,” I say simply. I shrug and swallow down the lump in my throat. “I wanted to say thank you for what you did today. And to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“You know, Marit,” she whispers. She fiddles absently with her headscarf. “The thing that hurts worst is that the whole time, I thought you came here for me.”
I still. “What do you mean?”
“You have some other reason for being here, don’t you? Something else you’ve hidden from me. It’s not just to work here; it’s not to be near me. It’s . . .” Her eyes fill with tears. “What were you doing in Philip’s room today?”
My chest feels tight. “I was trying to make sure he didn’t have a reason to hurt you.” She looks shocked, and I hurry on. “I was wrong, though. About so much. I didn’t tell you about it because—well, if everything was fine, then you’d never have to know. You could just . . . be happy.”
“How could you think that, Marit?” she asks. “Sometimes it feels as though you want me to choose between you and the Vestergaards. How am I ever supposed to do that?” She rolls her eyes, yet at the same time a tear slips down her cheek. “It’s so unfair.”
Splinters of Scarlet Page 22
