by Rosalyn Eves
I burrowed a little deeper. There. My shadow self hovered, a knot of longing behind my heart. I called to her, and she surfaced in a wave of terror-induced rage.
My shadow self scrabbled against the distant pull of the spell, catching and then tearing.
In a silent explosion of light, the spell ripped wide.
I heard a startled “Mária!” across the room as I tumbled against my bed, gasping for breath. My eyes flew open, the aftereffects of the spell hanging in my vision like the afterimage of a harvest bonfire. My attacker stumbled backward, his head slamming against my vanity table. A sickening crack sounded, and then he lay still.
I heard a long, shuddering breath that caught on a sob—mine—and did what I should have done when I realized there was a man in my room.
I screamed.
Gábor was the first to reach my room, his trousers hastily pulled on beneath his flowing nightshirt. “Anna!” He crossed the room to me, and drew me upright, his hands warm on mine. His released me almost at once, his fingers flashing upward to brush against my shoulders, then my cheeks. His eyes searched my face. “Are you all right?” His hands stilled, one thumb caressing the corner of my mouth.
I stared at him, eyes wide. The tingling left in the wake of his touch made it difficult to think. I swayed toward him, dizzy with relief and a sudden rush of blood, and Gábor slipped his arm around me to keep me upright. The longing of my shadow self still lingered in my body like a fever.
The door was flung open again: Noémi, rushing to my side in a flurry of red-silken robe and lacy nightdress.
Her eyes flickered from me to Gábor, her expression wavering between shock and reluctant understanding. Then she registered my gown. “Why are you still dressed?”
Words tumbled through my mind and tangled my tongue. Instead of speaking, I pointed across the room. Noémi squinted in the direction of my finger. She whispered a spell, and a Lumen lantern bloomed in her hand. “The Circle keep us safe! Who is that?”
“I don’t know. I think he’s hurt.” Or dead. I put one hand to my head, which had begun pounding.
Noémi set her lantern against the foot of my bed and scurried toward the prone figure.
Mátyás burst into my room, still in his evening clothes. His collar was askew and his coat wrinkled, as if he’d only just shrugged it on. He scanned the room, his eyes running first across my face and Gábor with his arm still around me, and then to where Noémi crouched by the intruder. “Good Lord. What’s going on?”
Noémi looked back at us as Grandmama and Ginny pushed into my now-crowded room. “He’s unconscious, but his pulse is steady. He’ll live.”
Gábor discreetly pulled his arm away from me. The sudden removal of his warmth made me shiver, and the pounding in my head intensified. I sat down on my bed.
“Who will live?” Grandmama asked, her voice cross. Like Noémi, she’d seen my cloak and gown. “Anna, where have you been? Is that a man in your room? I promised your Mama…” Grandmama took a half dozen steps toward the unconscious man and stopped. “Istenem!”
Her body wavered like a candle flame. Mátyás sprang toward her, catching her before she could fall. “Pál,” she said, the word a slow exhale.
“You know him?” Mátyás asked. “Who is he? Should we call the police?”
Grandmama shook her head. “No. We must keep him here till morning. Someone will be along to look for him.”
“But who is he?” I asked.
“And why was he in Anna’s room?” Mátyás asked, scowling.
“He tried to kill me,” I said. The earlier part of the evening felt remote and dreamlike.
Grandmama stared at me, her face white as undyed cotton. “You? But he—why would anyone want you dead?”
I closed my eyes, briefly, gathering courage. I had kept so much hidden from Grandmama. It was hard to undo the habit of silence. “I went into the Binding.” An image flashed in my head, a being of pure light dancing in a field.
“What?” Noémi said. “Anna, are you mad?”
“You dabble in magic you don’t understand,” Gábor said. “You’re lucky to have come out unharmed.”
For a moment, hovering above that pristine world, I had not wanted to come out at all.
“Anna,” Grandmama said, her brows tucked together in dismay. “I had no notion. I thought you had given up your obsession with magic.”
My heart tightened at their disapproval, but I lifted my chin. We were right to seek to break the Binding. I tamped down the niggling doubt at the back of my mind.
“Surely none of that matters now,” Mátyás said. “Anna is safe. She did not break the Binding. But this man most assuredly tried to kill her. Suppose we deal with that?”
“Grandmama?” I asked.
Grandmama swallowed once, twice. Her hand closed convulsively over mine. “Have you ever done something terrible, something you wished you could undo but could not?”
Yes. I thought of James, of the Romani baby whose soul I might have stolen. “Grandmama, who is he?”
Grandmama shut her eyes tightly, as if our hovering faces were a bright light she could not bear to see. “He wears his father’s face. He is my son. Your uncle Pál.”
I gaped at the inert figure on the floor. I studied his face, seeing now the strong bridge of a nose, like Mama. Like me. No wonder his face had seemed familiar when I had seen him watching me outside the Café Pilvax. I remembered now where I had first seen him—at Lady Isen’s ball with Herr Steinberg in Vienna. I shivered. All this time, the Circle had been watching.
Mama had spoken of a brother, but only a handful of times. I had always assumed he died as a child, his death the tragedy that made Grandmama’s face whiten when he was mentioned.
Mátyás frowned at me. “Did you know he was your uncle?”
I shook my head. It had been Mama’s name the man said before the spell collapsed, not an appeal to the Catholic Mary. Anxiety unspooled in the pit of my stomach. Had he known who I was? If so, why had he attacked me? “Grandmama, what happened? Why was I never told about him?”
She was silent for so long I began to think she would not answer. At last she sighed. “Pál is a Coremancer. His abilities were unprecedented; even the Circle was astounded at how deftly he cast scrying spells immediately after his Confirmation. But, perhaps to compensate for such gifts, he has not been quite…right in other aspects. When the Circle came for him—to teach him, so they said—your grandfather was relieved. And I…I had no wish to quarrel with your grandfather, so I let him go. I told myself it was right.”
I tightened my fingers around hers, sensing some of the things she was not saying. I had never met my grandfather, but I knew from what little Mama said that he had been strict, and sometimes unkind. “How old was Pál?”
Another silence. “Nine.”
My heart twisted, both for my grandmother and for the young boy Pál had been.
“You understand, szívem, Luminate magic is costly. I know you suffer because you are Barren, but I…I have been glad. I believed it meant the Circle could not use you.” Her voice shook, stricken. “But if the Circle has sent Pál for you, I was wrong. So very, very wrong.”
Noémi stood from her examination of Pál and joined us. “Irína néni, you’ve had a shock. You need rest.”
“But…” My gaze swung to my uncle on my rug.
“You can sleep with me,” Noémi said, linking her arm through mine.
“Or me,” Mátyás said, winking. His grin stretched wide as both Noémi and Grandmama immediately protested.
“We can’t leave him here on the floor!” I said, ignoring the heat in my cheeks. I refused to let Mátyás bait me.
“Ginny can bring a blanket to cover him, and Mátyás can set an Immobility spell on him,” Noémi said, already ushering Grandmama from the room. “Everything else can wait until morning.”
While Mátyás set the spell, Gábor walked me to Noémi’s room. His hand lifted, as if he would touch me agai
n, then fell. “Will you be all right?”
The gentleness in his voice, more than anything else that long evening, made me want to weep. No one else, not even Grandmama, had thought to ask about my well-being after my revelation about the Binding. Gábor might not agree with what I had done—with what I would surely attempt to do—but here, now, in the silence and shrouding darkness of the hallway, none of that mattered. Only the bare concern of one friend for another.
“Yes,” I said. You are here. “I will be all right.”
My first thought on waking was of the world in the Binding: the wild, unearthly beauty; the pure, unbridled joy. Its absence ached like a bruise on my heart. I must go back.
Coming swiftly on its heels was a memory of last night. I had thought I would not sleep after Grandmama’s revelation. Yet I had fallen into dreamless slumber nearly as soon as Noémi had found me a spare nightdress and settled me in her bed with a mug of tea. Surveying now an empty bed and a room full of sunlight, I realized Noémi must have drugged me. I suppressed a flicker of anger and pushed away thoughts of the Binding—my energy would be needed for other things—and gathered up my cloak and dress from the chair near Noémi’s wardrobe. I walked back down the hall to my room, tapped gently at the door, then eased it open. The room was empty, the bed neatly made up. My uncle no longer sprawled across the floor.
For a moment I feared he’d escaped—then I realized my room would not be so orderly if he had done so. Doubtless Mátyás had simply moved him. I rang the bell for Ginny and hurried to dress.
Ginny’s white face looked as shocked as I felt. “I can hardly believe it, miss.” She pulled a brush through my hair, her hand trembling. “I’ve always admired your grandmama, but this…how could she give away her child?”
“Don’t judge her,” I said. “People do terrible things when they are afraid.”
“Yes, miss.” Ginny began twining my hair into a knot. “Is it true what you said, that you went into the Binding?”
I started to nod, then caught myself. Ginny wouldn’t appreciate it if I undid all her work with my hair. “I mean to break it. I mean to let everyone have access to magic.”
Her hands stilled. “I believe,” she said slowly, as though picking her words with care, “that would be a mighty fine thing, miss.”
When Ginny finished with my hair, I rose and, on impulse, threw my arms around her. “Thank you.”
She laughed, astonished. “Whatever for?”
“For believing in me.”
I heard voices in the drawing room as soon as I reached the landing from the stairs. Despite the unseemly early hour, there was quite a gathering. My cousins and Grandmama sipped their tea while my uncle sat empty-handed on a narrow wooden chair, his hands loose in his lap. Lady Berri spread her bulk across a chaise longue, and Herr Steinberg stood against the wall nearest my uncle.
I nearly ducked back out of the drawing room. But I was ravenously hungry and could smell the pastries from the doorway. I squared my shoulders and marched into the room. I collected a plate full of food from a sideboard before squeezing onto a sofa between Mátyás and Noémi. My cousins’ warmth made me feel marginally less exposed.
“Welcome, cousin,” Mátyás said. “We’re in the midst of a rather brilliant confabulation about your future.”
I glared at him. “My future? I was not the one in a stranger’s bedroom after midnight attempting to murder her with a spell.” Grandmama always said the best defense was to attack.
“Too true,” Mátyás murmured. “And therein lies part of the scandal. Where exactly were you, Anna, when you were supposed to be abed?”
I elbowed him. He knew well where I had been. I had told him. Then I took a bite of a walnut-filled rétes and turned my attention to Grandmama, who spoke with Herr Steinberg and Lady Berri. Her back was stiff, her voice full of militant politeness.
“This is unconscionable,” Grandmama said. “That you, Lady Berri, should have coerced my granddaughter into participating in dangerous magic, and that you, Herr Steinberg, should take it upon yourself to punish her!”
“Notice the prodigal daughter bears no blame in this,” Mátyás murmured.
“Mátyás!” Noémi warned.
He grinned at me.
The door opened, one of the maids with a fresh tray of pastries, and Gábor slipped in behind her to take up silent vigil beside the door. He caught my eye and smiled reassuringly.
“I very much regret the necessity for Pál’s actions,” Herr Steinberg said. “But I cannot allow risk to the Binding, and your granddaughter broke her promise.”
“Surely that is for the Circle to decide, not you,” Grandmama said. “Surely she is entitled to a trial, at the least. And why is Anna to be punished, and not the spell-binder who drove her?”
Herr Steinberg glanced at Lady Berri, his gaze flat with loathing, and said nothing.
Lady Berri laughed. “What the distinguished herr means to say is I outrank him. He cannot touch me.” Her voice turned serious. “But I do very much resent what he tried to do. It is only the mercy of God Anna was not hurt.”
I stiffened, affronted. I had been saved through my own efforts, not divine intervention—though it was not, perhaps, the best moment to say so.
“And to use her own uncle against her…” Lady Berri’s voice trailed off.
I glanced across at my uncle Pál, who fiddled with the cuff on one sleeve. As if he felt my gaze, he looked up. His eyes were incongruously pale against his dark hair and skin. There was a light in them that was not quite right. Fear skittered across my skin.
“I did not realize,” Herr Steinberg said gruffly, “he was her uncle.”
“Zrínyi is not a common surname,” Grandmama said. “You might have guessed.”
“I would not have killed you.” Pál’s pale eyes drilled into me. “I know what you are.”
My heart pounded. Beside me, Noémi gripped my hand in hers.
“What did you see?” Herr Steinberg asked. His eyes were on me, so he did not notice the look Pál unleashed on him: dark, cold, contemptuous.
“Nothing,” Pál said. “And everything. She will break the world, as her kind has done since the beginning.”
A wave of ice flashed through my body. My kind. What was I?
“And the Binding?” Lady Berri asked.
“She could break it if she chooses.” Pál shrugged, as if it did not matter to him whether I undid the spell or not.
Lady Berri looked pleased, Herr Steinberg grim.
I thought of going back into the Binding, and a frisson that was equal parts pleasure and terror shivered through me.
“She must not be allowed to do so,” Herr Steinberg said.
“I should like to see you stop her,” Lady Berri said, her chin high.
Herr Steinberg sprang to his feet, his glasses trembling on his nose. He lifted his hands, his fingers already weaving the beginnings of a spell. “Watch me.”
My body flashed cold. No.
Lady Berri surged upward, her own fingers flickering.
“Hajrá! My money is on the thin one.” Mátyás leaned forward, his eyes bright.
Grandmama pounded her cane on the floor. “Enough! I won’t have you quarreling over Anna as if you were a pair of mongrels and she a bone between you. Now, I think you should leave.”
Herr Steinberg dropped his hands, two spots of color appearing high in his cheeks. His cravat had come askew, the first sign of sartorial untidiness I had ever seen in him. “But the Binding?”
“I think you may trust me to keep my granddaughter away from that spell, and from Lady Berri. But I will not allow you to stay in my house, threatening my flesh and blood. Anna is a child still, and under my care.” I wondered if anyone else saw the sliver of a glance she shot at Pál, the shadow of pain that flashed across her face. “I won’t shirk my duty.”
Herr Steinberg looked as though he would protest, but Lady Berri nudged him. “Come, you heard the lady.” She did not look in t
he least discomfited at being thrown out of Grandmama’s house. Her lips curled, catlike. What was she plotting?
Lady Berri apologized once more to Grandmama and departed, leaving behind her a message that sounded in my ears with a puff of air: “Herr Steinberg will send for reinforcements from Vienna who will try to stop us. I must go into hiding until the Binding is broken. Watch for my letter.”
Herr Steinberg took my uncle away, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.
But Herr Steinberg returned four days later with a sealed letter from Vienna.
Grandmama tried to have the butler turn him away at the door.
“Circle business,” said Herr Steinberg, flashing the seal and nodding at the two Austrian soldiers who’d accompanied him, and the butler let him in.
To Grandmama, who sat with lips pursed and arms tightly folded, he said, “The Austrian Circle appreciates your concern for your granddaughter. But you must also appreciate that we cannot let her become embroiled in any plots to break the Binding. I have come with a solution.”
He held out his hand, revealing a ring in his palm: a hideous gargoyle with a faintly glowing green stone in its open mouth. “I know that spells cast around Anna are sometimes unpredictable, so I have asked Pál to cast a spell on this bauble. It will register where Anna goes and what spells are cast around her. If she goes into the Binding, the spell will immobilize her.”
“No one will be hurt?” Grandmama asked.
“No one. Though the ring, once worn, cannot be removed save by the caster, and if Miss Arden attempts it, it will pain her. And if, by chance, she breaks the spell on this ring, we will have no alternative but to keep her under personal supervision.”
“Imprisonment, you mean?” I asked.
“Nothing so crude. House arrest, rather.”
I thought of Hunger waiting in the Binding: prison was prison, no matter how appealing the bars. “I won’t wear it.”
