And every night, the Manticore’s silver song rises through the broken Refinery and pierces my heart.
Today, I try again to write a letter to Father. I can speak about the weather, the wedding plans, even inquire about his work. But the moment I begin to beg him for help or to speak against Charles, the ink runs away across the page in meaningless dribbles. I can no more write the words than I can say them.
I throw the pot of everink against the wall in frustration and watch it bleed down the faded wallpaper. What can I do? How can I help myself? I’ve waited in vain for Syrus to return, but there’s been no sign, no word. I should have known better than to rely on him. I swallow, realizing that I’m only thinking these things because I can’t accept the fact that Charles may have gotten him, after all. Syrus’s soul may already be in that nasty jar.
I must attend Lucy soon, for the Grimgorns will arrive tonight. I wish there was some way to magically fortify myself against the sight of Lucy and Bayne together, but the magic seems to have gone away as fast as it came. I am a witch without spells.
The maids come to dress and powder me. Only Lord Virulen has a wardrobe wight—they’re extraordinarily expensive. I’m glad enough for that. I don’t think I could stand for a wight to touch me again, knowing what I do about their origins. I endure their ministrations, but all the while I’m thinking about what I can do, what I must do, to break free. I consider that if I could somehow wrest the neverkey from Charles, I could get in to see the Manticore. But Lucy has kept me close by her late into every night, and there are men watching everywhere.
I will figure this out.
In the parlor, I serve tea to Lucy, Lord Virulen, Lord and Lady Grimgorn, and Bayne. Charles is thankfully absent; I would guess he’s afraid of what Bayne might do to him. Bayne watches my every move. I look up once to see Lucy frowning, and after that, I keep my eyes lowered. I must pretend that I’ve never seen or spoken to him. They talk mostly of the wedding tour, and how delicately that must be achieved considering the growing Waste between New London and Scientia. Bayne doesn’t involve himself in any of it, but lets his parents, Lucy, and Lord Virulen sort out the details.
I slip over to the window seat while they continue to talk. I slide the Ceylon Codex out of my pocket and turn its old pages. Although I can’t make out the symbols, at least my eyes don’t sting when I look at them. The strange Dragonlike creature has a golden heart. I’d never noticed that before.
“What is that you’re reading?” Bayne says.
He’s come up behind me without my realizing it. I twist to look up at him, and see his eyes on the book.
I pass the book to him, trying to modulate my voice as if I’m speaking to someone I barely know. “It’s called the Ceylon Codex. It’s full of Dragons. My Father used to study them at the Museum.”
He takes it very delicately, as he once took my hand. He turns the pages with the very edges of his fingers to keep from smudging them. “Fascinating. What do you think of it?”
“I think . . .”
Our eyes meet. “Bayne . . .” I whisper. My voice trembles.
Just at that moment, I turn and see that everyone is looking at us. The room has fallen deathly silent.
“Vespa,” Lucy says, her voice snapping with frost, “remove the tea things, please.”
I take the tray and head toward the kitchen. I hear Bayne excusing himself. I try to hurry and disappear down the kitchen corridor before he can catch up to me, but to no avail.
“Miss Nyx,” he calls after me. I haven’t heard him call me that since the first day we met.
I stop, but I don’t turn.
He comes up beside me. “I beg a word with you.”
“My lord.” I bow my head. “I have errands for your impending wedding.” I close my eyes. The tray is so heavy my arms shake.
He takes the tray from me and sets it on the floor. “I do not know why you did what you did,” he says. “I want to believe that you didn’t understand. But you have bound me now with shackles tighter than any signed contract or brokered promise.”
“If you had only told me,” I say. “If I had only known, I would never have—”
“Release me, then. Unbind me from this charm. Only you can undo this. I cannot break this spell on my own. Your strength, unschooled as it is, is greater than any I possess.”
My teeth chatter with tension. “I can’t! I—”
The door opens, and his mother pokes her aristocratic nose around the door frame looking for him.
“Bayne, we need your signature now,” she says, eyeing me.
He turns away without another word or look.
I make my face as cold as I can. I bend and pick up my tray and say icily, “Good day, my lord,” as I make my way to the kitchens. But it is as though I am walking on a thousand teacups all made of the pieces of my heart.
On the day of the wedding, I am up before dawn being trussed and pinched and perfumed. My hair is so tall I’m afraid I won’t be able to get through the doorway. I’m exhausted because I haven’t slept at all between Lucy’s tantrums over a fault in the wedding favors, avoiding Bayne and Charles, and thinking about what I might do to free myself of these wretched, wretched spells. Short of trying to sneak away after this wedding, I have no solutions. And somehow, with both Charles and Lucy watching me like hawks, I have the feeling I won’t get very far.
The maids cluck at the circles under my eyes, my puffy eyelids. They powder my face even whiter than usual to account for it; I look like a ghost.
But there’s no time to worry over it. I must help Lucy in her chambers with the ancient Virulen wedding gown and escort her down to the chapel, as she has no mother of her own to do so. We have this loss in common, but with so many maids at her disposal, I’m hard-pressed to see why Lucy even has need of me. Except that I’m the reason she’s getting married in the first place.
I sigh. Last night, a note was slid under my door, eversealed with the Wyvern seal of Grimgorn. I threw it in the fire unread. It’s bad enough that I am a witch without magic, but even the accusation of being my new lord’s mistress, whether true or false . . . I shudder at how fast Lucy would most likely have me sent to the Waste for that, despite all her charming smiles. I can’t bear to read whatever accusations he might levy against me, or even kind words. Nothing can happen between us.
And yet, as I hurry up and down stairs and through everlit corridors packed with servants and guests, I wonder again if perhaps somehow Bayne would still help me, if I could only explain to him what happened, if I could make him understand that I literally have no magic to free him. Would he understand and forgive me? Would he put aside his hurt to help me free the Manticore? Could he, bound as he is by a spell I can’t release?
I find Lucy holding tight to her bedpost and cursing the maids cinching her into the corset that looks more like a torture device than an undergarment. Her black hair straggles around her shoulders and her cosmetics still aren’t on.
Lucy is determined to have an eighteen-inch waist because she is eighteen, for reasons that elude me. But all the rich cakes with tea have taken their toll. Though she looks natural and healthy to me (and my waist size hovers above hers—though only just), she has had many a tantrum over the failure of the maids to cinch her properly these last few days.
“Ah,” she gasps, “there you are! Help the maids with the dress, will you? Where is that saints-bedamned hairdresser?” she shouts to no one in particular.
I hurry to help with the ancestral wedding dress of Virulen. It has been used by every Virulen woman since the New Creation, and is so ancient that its once-vermilion silk has aged to deep claret. It was spun from the silk of a now-extinct shadowspider. We’ve a few preserved at the Museum—ghastly, leggy, shriveled things. But their silk is flawless and beautiful as none other. This dress alone is worth a fortune.