26
It Was You
Midnight dawned just as the girls reached the door hidden behind the Astronomy bookcase. Even in the dark, Sera discerned Mary’s wide eyes and palpable excitement. Not to mention she declared it every other step.
“This is exciting and so romantic. I hope we’re not caught,” Mary whispered for the umpteenth time.
“We will be if you aren’t quiet,” Sera murmured over her shoulder.
“Sorry. I’m nervous. My heart is beating in my throat.”
Sera stopped. “Are you sure you want to do this? After we enter the library, there’s no turning back. If we are caught…”
“If we’re caught, I can pretend it was me who snuck out and you were trying to get me to turn back. The headmistress will be much more lenient with me than you.” She nodded, determined. “You need me here.”
Sera let out a breath and pressed her wand to the wall. “Very well. By the stars.”
The door clicked, and the bookcase opened. Sera peeked inside, keenly focused on the long shadows cast by the threads of silver moonlight. The library was, for the time being, empty. She ushered Mary inside and through the aisles to the Ethical Magic section. She touched her wand to the books there. “Right above all else.”
The bookcase creaked open. Mary took firm hold of Sera’s hand and squeezed inside. Sera rushed in behind her but bumped into her best friend and ricocheted back against the now-closed bookcase.
She rubbed at where her head had collided with the wall. “Goodness, Mary, why did you stop—”
She cut off. A hooded figure stood in the alcove before them, its shadow a monster against the wall. Sera’s hand flinched to her wand.
“Cool it, Dovetail.” Whittaker lowered his hood. “Timothy asked me to escort you down to the tunnel.”
Sera shifted before Mary. “Why should we trust you?”
He shrugged wide shoulders. “How else would I have known he plans on meeting you two here? Now can we go? I’ve done enough to make sure we aren’t caught. I made a huge mess in the potions laboratory, the rectory, and the greenhouse. The servants were called to clean it up, so these halls will be clear for now. If you hurry, we can be in and out in no time.”
Still, she lingered. Mary looked to her, awaiting their next move. “Why are you doing this?”
“I may have no allegiance to you, but Timothy’s my friend.” He cast a quick glance up and down the hall. “Besides, if I do this for him, I won’t need to worry about the Aetherium entrance exam. He will make sure his father signs off on my entrance papers. Seems like I’ll be an inspector before you, Dovetail. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll be working under me.”
He winked, and bile rushed into her throat. The boy was a parasite. “Let us hope not. Lead the way.”
Wand at his side, he spun to the labyrinth of halls. “If anyone sees us, pretend I caught the two of you sneaking around. I’ll tell them I’m taking you to the headmistress. You play along.”
Sera and Mary eyed each other. Mary shrugged.
“Fine, but the moment I feel you’re up to no good—”
“You’ll set me on fire. Yes, I’ve been on the other end of that before, seventhborn.”
They moved this way and that, their bodies tight against the wall and Mary’s hand firm in her own. Sera remembered the path loosely and was glad to find Whittaker didn’t lead them astray. Finally they approached the plain stone wall where the hall branched off into two. Timothy swept through it like the wall didn’t exist. Relief flooded her. Shock followed as Timothy brushed past Whittaker and Mary and took her into his arms. Face buried in the crook of her neck, he hauled in her scent, his hold firm. Sera stiffened but forced herself to relax and hug him back.
Whittaker made a sound of disgust. “How about we move this to somewhere more private, you know, where we won’t get expelled if we’re caught?”
Timothy released her slightly and, inching back, ran his gaze along her face. He tangled his fingers with hers, led the group to the stone wall, and pressed his wand against it.
They swept inside, all except Whittaker. “I’ll patrol the halls and keep everyone from this way. Signal when you need me.”
Once safely inside, Timothy walked to the library door, but Mary didn’t follow.
“I’ll stay here,” she said.
“No one can see through the wall,” Sera said. “You don’t need to guard it.”
“And there is plenty of space inside,” Timothy added and opened the door to prove his point.
Mary glanced inside and shrugged sheepishly. “Still, it’s been weeks since the two of you last saw each other. I’ll wait out here. Go, I’ll be fine.”
Sera noted the pain in her eyes, the desire to disappear if she could. She squeezed her hand. “We won’t be long.”
Timothy stepped aside and allowed Sera to enter, then closed the door behind them.
“Mr. Delacort,” she started, but his head came to a rest at the back of hers, and she silenced. His hands smoothed onto her shoulders, gentle, as if he feared she would break if he held her any tighter.
“I’ve missed you so much.” He spoke into her hair. “I thought I’d lost you the night of the dance, but when I got your letter…”
Sera spun, realizing then just how close he was, to where her nose brushed his when she gazed up at him. “We need to talk.”
“In a minute,” he whispered and pressed his lips against hers.
Sera gripped his lapels and pulled away gently. “Please, we haven’t much time.”
“What’s so important that it can’t wait one minute?” he said against her lips.
“I know who you are.”
He smiled. “The man who loves you?”
She met his eyes. “A Keeper.”
He blinked, the simple action destroying the joy that had shaded his stare. Stiff, his hands fell away from her. His throat pulsed as he gulped, all color fading from his face.
“Timothy…”
He released a shuddering breath and shifted back. Sera reached a hand for him, but he snatched his arm away and walked across the room.
“Timothy, please.”
“Who are you?” He sat down before the great fireplace, hands clasped between his knees, and stared at the flames. “Did they send you? Are you here to kill me?”
Firelight made the shadows in the room dance and seemed to bring the tapestries to life. Sera crossed the room under the watchful gaze of the seven Guardians whose eyes she felt followed her as she sat at his side. “That’s what I’m trying to prevent. I would never and have never meant you any harm.”
He chuckled bitterly. “Funny, as it’s always been you to cause me the greatest pain.”
“I never meant to.”
“A lot of things were never meant to happen, yet they did.” He shrugged. “I was never supposed to know this damned spell, yet here we sit.”
“How did you come about the spell? I thought it was passed down from Sister to Sister, but you’re clearly not a Sister.”
“When the Brother in the forest mentioned knowing my father, I wanted it to be a lie. I asked my father about it, and he confessed everything—that he was involved with the Brotherhood and he…” Timothy let out a shaky sigh and looked at Sera. “He hunted Sisters of Mercy and seventhborns alike. Until one day he was away and two Sisters found their way into my home. I was five. They told me they had a secret to tell me and that I had to guard it with my life. They said I was special, chosen.” He smiled, pained. “I thought they were angels, and in my innocence, I agreed. We made an oath, my first oath. A blood oath. The Sister died instantly and was taken away by the other. I was left to tell my father that I was the next Keeper.”
A myriad of curses swelled in Sera’s throat. “You were just a child. Why curse you for what your father did?”
He shrugged and leaned forward, elbows to knees. “Can you blame them? For ages they’ve been hunted.” He motioned weakly to the portrait of Professor Barrington’s father and other Purists by the door. “My father and Professor Barrington’s father ultimately led this bloody campaign against the Sisters, searching for these spells. Not to mention their research in the dungeons…” He fisted his hair and shook his head. “They tortured seventhborns so that they could perfect the black magic they would use to raise the Keepers.”
“Dear God…”
“The Sisters did what they thought was best to stop them. Once I told my father what had happened, he cut off all ties with the Brotherhood and distanced himself—reformed himself, even if it was all a lie. He loved me above the Brotherhood. I was the one thing he wouldn’t sacrifice.
“Professor Barrington’s father refused to let him abandon their cause, so my father—now an upstanding member of the Aetherium and a champion of seventhborns—blamed him first and let him take the fall. No one believed Professor Barrington’s father afterward.”
Sera cupped her mouth. Could she believe a story told by Timothy’s father? That Professor Barrington’s father was truly a madman, a murderer? She shut her eyes, briefly recalling Professor Barrington’s somberness as he professed his father’s goodness. Pain spread in Sera’s chest. If Barrington heard this tale, surely it would destroy him.
“He did it so I would be safe, but all those lives lost… How could I ever forgive him?”
“As long as the Brotherhood and the Sisters of Mercy exist, you will never be safe. But I know someone who can help.”
Pity saturated his next smile. “My father is on the Aetherium council, Sera. If I needed to be hidden, they’d be able to keep me safe.”
She rose quickly. “Then you must go to him, now. Your spell is the last the Brotherhood needs, and whether it’s a myth or not, they are determined to get it. In spite of everything, you have to go to your father.”
He gazed up at her, defeat in his eyes. “So that I’ll be forced into hiding? To never live a normal life? To never see you again, all for the sake of some ridiculous feud and secret?”
“No, not for some ridiculous feud and secret, but for your life. Whatever you think you feel for me is not worth that. You have to go, let them protect you.”
He shook his head slowly. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and now you’re asking me to just disappear? I can’t—how can I? Since the day of your entrance exam, I haven’t been able to keep you from my thoughts.”
She stumbled back as if pushed. “You…you were there?” There had been a room full of robed, stern-faced, icy-eyed men in a semicircle, asking her to perform basic magic. They’d then demanded her to tell what little she knew of the life she remembered, and of her experience with Noah. They’d watched her in disgust as she detailed his cruelty, and with each word the room felt to close in around her. Her stomach had roiled, a mix of nerves and anger at being put on display like a caged animal. A pariah. Anything but human.
She spun and tugged her cloak closed as though she stood naked before him. “You should’ve told me you were there.”
Timothy caught her gently by the shoulders. “I wasn’t supposed to be. My father allowed me to watch from the upper level, to see what went into the selection process of the next seventhborn. You never once gazed up at me, but I saw you, and since that day you’re all I see.”
He twined his fingers in hers and drew her down next to him. “The way you go about your life, never needing anyone, carrying the weight of being a seventhborn on your shoulders. You’ve never once let it sway you, never once let it stop you or break you down. I thought—no, I knew—you would be the only one to understand what it is like to live with this burden I carry. You inspired me. I began to think that if you still dreamed above your own situation, I could, too, come what may.” He brushed a thumb lightly against her jaw. “You changed my life.”
She opened her mouth but no words came.
“Come with me,” he said, his forehead against hers, a cool hand at her cheek. He encouraged her face upward. “You’re in as much danger, and I won’t forgive myself if anything happens to you. We will be safe. You saved me the day of your entrance exam. Let me save you.”
She gripped his lapels, wishing she could shake him and make him understand. “Timothy, I can’t. Believe me, I am safe. It’s you that you should be worried about.”
“I want only you.”
Sera swallowed tightly. What could she possibly say to that? She had to get him out of there, and she needed to contact Barrington somehow—if he was awake. This was what they had worked for, bled for, nearly died for.
Wake up, she prayed. The memory of holding him sent a tingle down her arms. You needed me, and now I need you.
“Sera?”
She shook away her prayers. Barrington would want her to focus on the case.
“Will you come with me?”
To do what was needed.
She clasped her fingers over his. “Yes.”
His mouth twitched with a smile, his eyes the brightest she had ever seen them. “Yes?”
She nodded, a broken smile at her lips. She would protect him just as he’d protected her and loved her in silence all these years. Even if her heart were incapable of loving him. Even if she vanished into thin air after securing his safety. “I’ll go with you, but we must leave now. I fear the Brotherhood will manage to find out your identity.”
Before the last word was said, he caught her lips in a slow kiss filled with the tenderness of a person savoring and memorizing their ultimate wish. Sera stiffened yet forced herself to ease and yield. Once he was safe, she would leave, and the memory of this kiss was all she could possibly leave him with. Her heart lay elsewhere.
They broke apart, equally breathless.
“We should go,” she said, standing. Hands entwined, they walked out of the library and into the hall. Mary waited, curled into herself against the wall. She gazed up, green eyes pooled with tears.
“Mary, what is it?” Sera knelt before her, but Mary swatted away her tears and smiled meekly.
“It’s nothing. You mentioned you were both in danger, and I was worried.” She took Sera’s hands, and the two girls rose together.
“We are,” Sera said, “and we have to leave. But as soon as I can, I will reach out to you, I promise. The people after us will not rest until they find us.” Releasing her, Sera made for the stone wall, Timothy behind her.
“Where will you go? It will take little work for your father to find you,” Mary told Timothy. “And Sera, they will find a way to blame you, you know this. Perhaps give it a few days. You will be safe in the Academy.”
Timothy sighed. “Anywhere is safer than here. We will have to keep moving, but we will be okay,” he said, giving Sera’s hand a gentle squeeze. She forced a smile, her heart twisting within. He would never forgive her betrayal, but his safety came first.
“Then let me help. I know of a place—an old church not too far from my house. The church grounds are sacred, and the lands there are consecrated, so you can’t transfer in and out, and scrying is out of the question. You will be safe there, for a time at least, until you can get your bearings and think of a plan.”
Sera and Timothy looked at each other and nodded. Their plan was no better. “That sounds fantastic, Mary. Thank you.”
Mary gave her a sad smile. “What are friends for?”
She twined her hand tight around Sera’s as they walked through the wall. “Come, we will transfer out from here. Quickly, before someone comes.”
“But they will trace our magic,” Sera said.
“I’ll do it,” Mary offered. “It’ll be weeks before they trace every illegal transfer that takes place in the school, and even when they do, it will be my magic they find, not yours. Believe me, it will work.”
Timothy’s brow gathered, uncertainty on his face, but Sera nodded. “Okay. We just need a few days to think of a plan, and we’ll move. If the Aetherium tracks us down at the church, we will be long gone.”
Mary nodded, and kneeling, she wrote out the coordinate spells. They moved into the circle together. Mary aimed her wand at the ground and whispered, “Ignite.”
A moment later, the three of them landed neatly in an open field. The night was cool, but with her pulse quick as it was, Sera welcomed the whispering breeze that chilled her skin. The winds whisked over the patchwork hills and winding country roads spread out before them, bringing the scent of earth and cold to her nose. The lights of a village flickered in the distance like beacons, but Mary turned them away from this to a waist-high stone wall that snaked along the hillside.
“We can’t transfer beyond this point,” she said, leading them to a break in the stone. They hiked up the hilly terrain of dry grass and thick hedgerows.
Minutes later, they reached the top of a slope. The church stood abandoned on the hill, its skeletal structure breaking up the clear horizon.
“We’re here,” Mary said, her breath heaving from the walk.
The crumbling brick church looked wholly unstable, some of the flying buttresses cracked or missing altogether. Sections of the roof were also gone, a side of the one spire sunken in and rotted beams of wood visible through the gaping hole. Large windows flanked the arched doorway. Vines grew along the outside, suffocating the crumbling structure. But although abandoned and terribly ominous, Sera saw it for what it was: sanctuary.
Mary walked them toward the arched doorway. With a grunt, she shouldered the door open and held her wand before her, illuminating the space.
“Watch your step,” she said, entering. Sera and Timothy lifted their wands the same, rods of light in the midst of an echoing darkness.
The pews were heaps of rotted wood, stacked upon one another like miniature pyres. Crumbling bricks would have allowed for light were it day, but in the darkness, they looked like eyes in the wall. Dirt stained the once-white tile that composed the nave all the way to the altar. Sera imagined a long carpet may have been there at one time, but clearly the days of the building’s beauty were long gone.
Timothy held up his wand and walked toward the stone altar. “I think this will do nicely for now.”
“Indeed.” Sera turned to Mary. “Thank you.”
Mary lifted a hand to Sera’s cheek, her chin quivering. “I really wish it didn’t have to be this way.” A tear spilled from her eyes. “I’m really sorry, about all of this. I truly am.”
Sera cradled Mary’s hand. “It isn’t your fault. We never would have found this place without you. You’ve been a ray of light for me at the Academy, and I will never forget it.”
“I hope you remember me that way.”
“How else would I remember you?”
Tears pooled in Mary’s eyes. She opened her mouth to speak—
“Sera, Sera in a cage…”
Sera froze, stark cold shooting down her spine at the voice echoing around her. No…
“Sera, Sera wants to fly…”
Her hand tight on her wand, she spun, but his voice was everywhere, bouncing off the walls and refusing to escape through the gaping holes in the structure. No, it was meant to stay and taunt her.
“But her pretty wings are broken…”
One by one, the Brotherhood stepped out from shadows, their wands aimed at Sera and Timothy. Sera gazed up; they were on the second level as well.
Timothy ran to Sera, pulling her close behind him. They aimed their wands, but she paused, as from the shadows at the altar a man robed in red stepped out and lifted his plague mask.
“Look at her fall from the sky.”
Noah was everything she remembered. Beauty personified. Fear become flesh. And alive. Very much alive. Dread bloomed to a solid rock in her chest, an invisible hand clutched tight around her lungs, shackles fettering her to the ground. His hair was shorter, accentuating his strong nose, wide jaw, and full lips. And when that devastatingly cool gaze fell upon her, Sera shivered.
He closed his eyes and hauled in a breath, as though relieved to have finally found her. But she knew better than to hold some deluded hope that he’d missed her. Their last time together she’d nearly killed him, and she had no doubt that this time, he would try to kill her.
Opening his eyes, he smiled, but not at her. “I thought you’d change your mind. Your mother will be proud.”
Timothy followed Noah’s gaze, and his eyes widened. But there was no need for Sera to turn. The silence behind her said it all, as did the wand tip pressed firmly at her back.
She smiled bitterly. “So it was you.”