by Rosalyn Eves
“Choke the life from her,” the second said. The clasp of my necklace broke; the fine chain slithered down my neck.
“Tear the skin from her.” The third creature joined her sisters, kneeling at my side and scratching a jagged fingernail along the exposed skin at my wrist. Beads of blood followed the line of her finger. Gooseflesh prickled up my arm.
“No! Please.” I remembered Hunger had asked me to break the Binding, and the strange not-shadows I’d seen on Whitsun night had pleaded for freedom. “I’m here to break the spell. If you kill me, I can’t set you free.”
At once my lungs expanded with air. The creature on my back leapt off, joining her sisters before me. I pushed myself upright.
“Is she lying?” the second one asked.
The first, the oldest to guess by the deep grooves in her face, sniffed at the air. “She has the stink of magic on her.”
“No Luminate has come here for ages.” The third grinned, baring sharp teeth. “And we ate that one.”
“I’m no Luminate spell-caster. I’ve no magic of my own. But I can break spells.” I hoped I spoke truth.
“Let her try,” the first said. “If she fails, we kill her then.”
“Kill her then,” the others agreed.
I took a deep breath, as deep as my corset would allow, and tried to swallow the lump clogging my throat. “Do you know where the heart of the spell is?”
The three women shifted as if agitated. Were they afraid?
The first one muttered to her sisters, and the third pointed down the path. “We will take you as far as the end of the wood. But you must face the castle alone. We are not welcome there.”
I slid the broken necklace into my pocket and found my knife at the side of the road. I began walking again, flanked this time by my otherworldly guard. Now that I was no longer in imminent danger of dying, I found their presence curiously comforting. At the least, it meant all lesser predators would stay well away from us.
I tried not to think about greater predators, or whatever had spooked the sisters about the castle beyond their wood.
True to their word, the sisters left me at the edge of the wood and faded into the shadows. Before me stretched the great golden meadow I remembered from my first visit. The road from the wood continued, but it took a curving path around the edge of the field. Directly across the meadow the crenellations of the castle wall thrust toward the sky. With growing confidence—there was nothing here to threaten me—I strode forward into the waving grass.
And immediately drew back. The blades of waist-high grass were, in fact, blades—their edges strewn with serrated teeth. My skirt now in tatters and stinging cuts on my hands and forearms, I kept to the road.
There had been a creature in the meadow, I remembered, an incandescent being that made me think of unicorns, though it was unlike any unicorn I had seen illustrated. As I skirted the meadow, I watched the undulations of the deadly grass and hoped I would see the creature again. After the darkness of the woods, I needed a sign my mission was not foredoomed to failure. Something light would do.
The grass erupted.
There it was: a being of light, as if a ray of sunlight had suddenly become animate. It moved through the meadow with the muscular grace of a great cat I had seen in a London menagerie, with the speed of a long-limbed horse.
The creature ceased its dance through the meadow and whipped its head toward me. I looked away; meeting its gaze was like trying to look directly on the sun. With a roar that shook the bladed grasses, the creature twisted in on itself, stony arms erupting from liquid limbs, darkness spooling in uneven tendrils from its incandescent core. The metallic smell of blood wafted across the meadow. My stomach twisted, and I hurried toward the castle gates, desperate to be inside before the creature decided to pursue me.
I had longed to return to this world, feeling its absence like a toothache, a constant dull throb. And yet today there was nothing here but horror. What had Hunger shown me, that first time in the Binding? The truth? Or only the reflection of my own desires?
The streets inside the castle gates were nearly empty, the cobblestones torn and ruined. A young knight wandered alone. His face was vacant, empty sockets where his eyes should be. I trembled, tried not to speculate what had happened to his mistress, and crossed to the far side of the plaza.
I peered through an archway shrouded with roses. Here was the cloistered garden I remembered, full of dancing women. I thought with relief of their bright colors and their glad looks, and pushed my way past the roses. But when I found the center of the garden, the fountain ran with blood and the women were all dead, their throats gaping wide.
I rushed back to the street and dropped to the stony ground, retching.
A breeze drifted down to me, carrying the incongruous scent of roses and charred flesh, and I was sick again. The delighted laughter of a child drifted down from the castle tower above me.
No. My heart beat hard and fast. No.
When the child began screaming, I put my hands over my ears, and still the screams echoed through my bones. I crouched down by the bile-soaked stones and clenched my eyes shut. I wanted nothing more than to escape, to be back in the star-studded darkness with Lady Berri on a hillside that smelled only of dead earth. Not here, not in this nightmare of bone and blood and dying children and charnel-scented roses.
Yet when I opened my eyes at last and took my hands away from my ears, I was still in the middle of the cursed city.
Still in the Binding.
I did not know where the heart of the spell was.
Or how to reach it.
But I knew someone who might.
I rose on shaky legs and made my way to the main plaza before the gates. I braced myself against a stone fountain and closed my eyes, summoning up my strongest desires: magic, belonging, Gábor.
When I opened my eyes, Hunger stood before me.
“You should be careful with such desires,” he said. “They might rouse creatures less friendly than I.” He looked around, his eyes glinting. “How did you come here? You’re not meant—” He broke off.
“Not meant to what? To see this? To set you free? You showed me a pretty lie when I came last,” I said. And I believed it.
“Are our desires a lie? I showed you what you wanted to see.”
Yes. I had wanted to believe his vision because it made breaking the Binding the right choice, the easy choice. I should have known better. I shook my head and swung my hand around at the ruined city, the forest beyond. “If I set you free, is this what I unleash on the world?”
Hunger’s gold eyes met mine. “This spell draws power from the creatures it binds. If you break the spell, you free the creatures. But who can say, when you give a creature freedom, what he or she will choose? What will your world look like when you give all individuals the same rights? Can you say with certainty each person will use that power for good?”
I was silent. My thoughts twisted through my head. But one idea emerged clearly: I could not break this spell, not if it meant unleashing monsters like these on the world. The evils of the Circle seemed to pale in comparison.
“I cannot do this.”
Those golden eyes were unwavering. “I know what you are.”
My heart jumped. “Tell me!”
“Break the spell.”
“No,” I said. “I won’t.”
“Then I will not tell you. And I cannot let you leave.”
Panic spiked my throat. I curled my hands, digging my nails into the flesh of my palm. The grounding. Lady Berri had anchored her spell to a ritual—and to me. Something of that anchor must be here. I rushed back to the archway, to the bloody cloistered garden, and stuck my fingers deeper into the earth, questing. But my fingers met only tangled grass roots and soil.
Hunger stood in the archway behind me, laughing. While I searched fruitlessly for a way back, he sauntered toward me and knelt in the grass.
Setting his hands over mine, he stilled my fing
ers. The silver manacles jangled at his wrists.
He pressed his lips against mine.
Heat ripped through me. I pulled away, gasping, my lips scorching.
“I see your heart,” he said. “Your desires bind you here. To this spell. Even if you leave now, your need will bring you back.”
“No.” I pushed him away and he let me.
The spell needs blood to break. I drew my bone knife across my palm and gasped at the sting. When the blood welled up, I dipped my fingers in it. I swiped my fingers across my forehead and my collarbone, where Lady Berri had set her protective spell. For good measure, I brushed blood across my lips. Then I thrust my bloodstained fingers into the earth again. This time, beneath the flowers and matted grass there was nothing. Not dirt, not clay, not sand. Only a thinly woven mesh, much like the one I’d broken through on my fall into this world.
With a mighty thrust, I pushed myself through the grass and found myself falling, illogically, down again.
When I blinked, my eyes were full of starlight, and I was back on the hard earth of Attila’s Hill. A star flew overhead, dying incandescent. A cold fury burned in me. Hunger had lied to me about the Binding. So had Lady Berri.
I pushed myself upright, my mind already shaping the words I would hurl at her: You did not tell me the spell draws power from the very creatures it holds, the creatures you dismiss. You did not tell me the creatures were terrible and I should unleash them on the world.
I will not break the Binding.
I cannot.
But the words died on my tongue.
We were not alone on the hill. The light I had seen was not a falling star, but a spell. Lady Berri stood a dozen paces from me facing a handful of dark figures, her normally neat hair wild about her head. A red glow enveloped her, and she stumbled back. She swung her hands and shouted, and the entire hill lurched.
I dropped to my knees, biting my tongue. The metallic tang of blood filled my mouth, reminding me of the blood-drenched city I had seen, and I remained on my knees for a moment, dizzy and sick.
Though I wanted only to curl up on the brittle grass of the hill and pretend none of this was happening—not the beasts desperate to escape the Binding, not the fight before me—I knew I could not. I forced myself to my feet again.
“Lady Berri,” I called. A hammer of air hit me in the face, knocking me to the ground in an explosion of pain.
“The Binding,” she said, her words coming in gasps and puffs. “It’s not—”
“I couldn’t do it.” I harbored a thin hope that my words might carry to our assailants, that they might halt their attack. I stood, wiping a thin trickle of blood from my nose with the back of my hand. A brutal wind picked up, whipping at my face. I dodged a flying branch.
“Never mind that now.” Her voice was grim. “You must get out of here. I’ll hold them.”
A slit appeared in the air beside me, dark against the darker night. I hesitated. Fear and despair washed over me, so thick I could taste their bitterness, so heavy my arms hung limp at my sides. Some part of my mind recognized it as a Coremancer’s work, and I struggled free of it. “I can’t leave you.”
“You’re no good to me here. Go!”
I went.
I emerged on the street before Grandmama’s house, and the slit sealed shut behind me.
The heavy wooden gates to Grandmama’s courtyard hung askew on their hinges. Shock held me immobile for a moment. I had been gone only a few hours. What had happened? I sprang up the stairs leading off the courtyard, my skirts clutched in my fists, and stopped in the vaulted entryway.
The silence in the house was tangible, a crouching beast with glowing eyes and sharp teeth. The lovely parquet floor of the entry hall was charred and buckled. Here and there small fires flickered in the gloom.
Grandmama. My heart stuttered. Ginny. Noémi. I gathered up my skirts again and picked my way across the ruined floor before rushing up the stairs. I should have been here. My single-mindedness had left the people I loved exposed, unguarded.
Grandmama’s drawing room was empty, and I raced up the stairs to her bedchamber. It was also vacant, though ash was tracked across the carpet and chairs overturned. I released the breath I held, a slow hiss of air between my teeth. Perhaps Ginny saw her safely away before the attack came.
But whose attack? Was this the Circle, punishing me for my temerity? Or William and Petőfi’s revolution, gone horribly awry?
I had not broken the Binding. There should have been no signal for a revolution.
I pressed down the hallway to my bedchamber. Clothes were strewn across the floor. The round cheval glass over my dressing table had been flung down. Glittering shards winked up at me from the rug.
Noémi’s room bore similar signs of ransacking.
“Anna?” I heard, and paused, my hand on the door. My cousin wormed her way out from underneath the massive four-poster.
“Noémi.” I rushed to help her up. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she said, though her face was pale, her curls in disarray around her head. “Only a bit shaken. Where are the others?”
“I’ve seen no one else.” I put my arm through hers and helped her out of the room.
“The servants fled as soon as the men broke through the door.”
“Luminate?” I asked, heading toward the library.
“No. They were young. Workers mostly, I think.” Her voice was bitter. “Part of William’s mad revolution, no doubt.”
“This isn’t what we planned.” Had Petőfi started the revolution without waiting for a signal?
“Some people need only a small excuse to spread violence,” Noémi said. But she didn’t sound vindicated, only sad and tired.
I fell silent, my heart not in the argument, and pushed open the door to the library. Ginny lay facedown on the rug.
With a cry, I dropped to my knees beside her. I could see no blood—and her chest still rose and fell. Together, Noémi and I turned her over. I took a cushion from a chair and placed it under Ginny’s head. Dark blood, still oozing sluggishly, matted her hair to her temple. Her face was so pale, so still. While Noémi tore a strip from her petticoat to bind the wound, I fetched some blankets from my room to cover her. Had I not come to Hungary, Ginny would not have followed. She would not have been hurt.
I pushed the thought away. I did not have time to tally all my guilt: James, the Romanies, now Ginny.
“I must find Grandmama,” I said, returning to the library and handing the blankets to Noémi. “Where was she when you last saw her?”
“In the drawing room.”
I raced down the hall, shivering. The house was cold. The fires had gone out, and I did not know how to relight them. Only servants and Elementalists knew that.
I scoured the drawing room, examining scuffed, ashy footprints on the Turkish rug, righting fallen chairs, putting Noémi’s tangled embroidery skeins back in her basket. Grandmama’s customary chair had fallen at an odd angle, held up a few inches from the floor as if by magic. I pulled the chair upward and frowned at the floor. Something shifted, a trick of shadow on shadow. A faint rasp sounded, out of tempo with my own breathing.
I stooped, reaching for the carpet.
But my questing hands never touched it. Instead, I felt the plush nap of velvet. Patting upward, I touched the cool, paper-texture skin of Grandmama’s hands. Exploring still further, I found her face, the smooth coils of hair behind her ears, the faint, warm puff of air as she exhaled. My first response was a welling of profound relief.
But my hands looked as if they were shaping air.
Invisible.
Grandmama was invisible—and I had never known she had such magic. If I had thought of her magic at all, I thought her to be a Coremancer like Mama, though one who disliked magic and never used it. But she was Animanti, like my cousins. What other secrets had she kept from me? Rather, not secrets—what questions had I failed to ask? Because she had always been so constant in my li
fe, I had failed her in the worst of ways: I had not seen there might be something to her beyond the needs she met for me.
I had to get her somewhere safe. Karolina Károlyi’s home was perhaps a half mile distant. I had walked there only a few days previous with Noémi.
I slid one arm beneath Grandmama’s head, another beneath her legs, and awkwardly hoisted her upward. I staggered back down the hall, to the library, where I had left Ginny and Noémi, which was marginally warmer than the drawing room with its shattered windows. I set her gently on the floor beside Ginny and borrowed one of Ginny’s blankets. Beneath the covering, the familiar set of Grandmama’s contours took shape.
“I found her,” I said. “She’d gone invisible.”
“Really?” Noémi looked interested, kneeling beside Grandmama and putting her hand to Grandmama’s head. “The spell she used will wear off eventually. Her biggest danger now is taking cold. I’ll keep her warmed.”
“We cannot stay here,” I said. “I’ll see if Karolina has a place for us.”
“The streets aren’t safe,” Noémi said, her eyebrows contracting.
I swallowed. “There is no one else to go.”
The streets were dark—the usual lamplighters had not been out. But I knew the way. I could hear distant shouting, and once I had to draw back into the shadows of a doorway as a troop of Austrian soldiers trotted down the empty roadway. Aside from that, I saw only other single travelers who paid little mind to me, being as eager as I to reach their destinations.
There were still lights on in the Károlyi palace when I approached, and I sighed with relief. The ornamented iron gates were closed, but a pair of footmen stood sentry just inside.
“Is Lady Károlyi within?” I called in Hungarian.
One of the men approached the gate, his eyes sweeping my gown, torn and stained from the Binding and the fight on the hill. Doubtless the dress and my accent made me suspect. “Please, I must speak with her. My name is Anna Arden. My grandmother is Lady Zrínyi, my cousin Eszterházy Noémi.”
