Wil’s mind was spinning. “I don’t understand.”
Pahn leaned toward her. “Just as beauty attracts beauty, cursed souls are also drawn to each other. It’s an illusion, to keep your kind in the world’s shadows.”
“I . . .”
On the cot, Loom broke apart from the bottomless well of his dark dreams, and opened his eyes. He let out a pained groan, and his lips moved in the shape of her name, though no sound came out, and then he was gone again.
She looked to Pahn. “You’re saying that everything I may feel for him, and that he may feel for me . . . is a lie? Because we’re cursed?”
“I’ve seen this sort of attraction thousands of times, and it’s very common,” Pahn said. “But your particular curse is truly the most interesting I’ve seen, and I once met a boy who thought he was a salamander when the moon was full.”
It made sense. It explained this pull she felt toward Loom, like a little boat rising helplessly with the swell of a wave.
“There is another extract I can give the boy to be sure he lives,” Pahn said. “But it’s in short supply and hard to come by, therefore expensive. I will use it, but in exchange, I must ask you to do something for me. I’ll give you one month to oblige, and if you don’t return, I’ll take your absence as a refusal and I’ll stop his heart for good.”
Wil forced strength into her voice. “What do you want me to do?”
THIRTY-EIGHT
THE SNOW BEGAN LATE IN the night and was still falling by morning.
Wil had been lying awake since before dawn. She watched the sky begin to pale through the single window in the small room. All night it had rattled and let a chill in through its crevices.
Sometime in the night, when exhaustion took hold, she lay on the edge of Loom’s cot, turned away from him. Just as she had begun to fall asleep, Loom shifted in his sleep and wrapped his arm around her waist, drawing her in with a silent sigh that filled her hair.
It was hours later and she had barely moved, afraid that she might disturb him. His breathing was light and even. His forehead pressed to the back of her neck was cool, no longer drenched with perspiration.
He was going to live. Now that the sun was rising, Wil was sure of it. Pahn had kept his word, and it was time for her to do the same.
For now, though, she let herself linger in his presence, let his breaths disappear under her tunic and rustle the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. In this quiet place, she could close her fingers around his and hold their joined hands over the mark of her curse on her chest. She could imagine what it was to be loved, to be safe.
Because soon, she knew, there would be the new day bright with snow. There would be two cursed hearts who were drawn to each other only because that was a part of their curse: forgotten things signaling out to other forgotten things.
None of this was real. She knew that. She and Loom could not be honest with each other, as he had hoped, because this curse wouldn’t allow them to ever know what might have been if they had met with normal hearts.
Still, as she sank against him and ignored the light of morning that crept over their bodies, this felt like the truth.
She bowed her head and kissed the back of his hand, just to know how it might have felt to love him. Her lips lingered on his skin. She wasn’t prepared for how deceptively right it felt.
For a moment in time, this was their kingdom. Just as the world had cast them out, the world was not welcome here.
Then she forced herself to stand. The absence of his body touched her like a cold wind.
Loom’s fist tightened in the empty space where she’d been, and he opened his eyes. “Wil?”
“Hey.” She knelt beside him. “You lived through the night after all.”
“I told you. I refuse to let my father be happy.”
He cupped his hand against the side of her throat, and she leaned into the touch as he traced his thumb along the line of her jaw.
It was so good to see the life in his eyes again. All that mischief and tragedy he showed her, as though she were worthy of his trust.
“How do you feel?”
“Like Zay owes me. I told her it was too dangerous for you two to enter the city at night. Nearly cost her head.”
“Don’t be too hard on her,” Wil said. “She was the one who thought to bring you to Pahn.”
He pushed himself upright, testing his strength. “So what was it? What was the trade for my health? I know Pahn doesn’t work for free.”
“We can talk about that later. What’s important is that you’re well.”
His gaze fell flat. “Tell me it wasn’t you.”
“We were low on options.” She sat on the edge of the bed, and he wrapped a blanket around her; she was accustomed to the cold, but he wasn’t. “He wanted me to crystallize an ancient tree.”
“What for?”
“If I didn’t do it, he was going to let you die. I didn’t ask beyond that.” She rose to her feet. “I’m going to bring you some breakfast.”
“I can get it myself if—”
“No.” The word came out too fast and too loud. “No. Please, just rest.”
She shed the blanket from her shoulders and moved for the door, but he grabbed her shirt and reeled her back. She fell against his chest, and at the warmth of his lips against her ear, she closed her eyes.
He smelled of strange ground roots and the oil the marveler had forced down his throat to make him well again. That musty presence of death still lingered, though, warning her that this wasn’t over.
She thought he would kiss her, but instead when his lips moved it was with a warning. “We can’t stay here,” he whispered. He grabbed her chin and brought her face up to meet his. She loved the way he touched her—so eager and so gentle. “You may not have dealt with marvelers, but I have. We have to leave this place. Today. He has something planned for that tree and for you, and it’s best we don’t stay to find out.”
Wil studied his face. His dark, serious eyes, the stern line of his lips. “Will you at least eat something first? You’ve barely held down anything for a week, and all of this will be for nothing if you collapse from hunger.”
He pressed his fingertips against her throat, to where her heart was beating fast.
She kissed him. It was a still kiss, her lips pressed unmoving against his. It did not feel like an illusion; it did not feel like a curse; it felt as natural as the grass beneath her bare feet so long ago when she was free.
His lips moved against hers. “I love you,” he said.
She held her breath.
She didn’t want to respond. Saying anything at all in the throes of this curse would be a lie. She didn’t know how love should feel, and as she considered this, she thought of everything that had rushed into her head the moment Loom called Zay his wife. With that revelation, she had presumed that Ada was their child. She had imagined Loom looking at Zay the way he had looked at her before she crystallized the alber blossoms in Brayshire. Had imagined his hand trailing the length of Zay’s hip, the wicked smile on Zay’s lips before she must have kissed him.
She had felt flustered and heartsick and jealous.
Now, Loom tucked her hair behind her shoulder, his fingertips sweeping her throat. Again she felt flustered, and heartsick, and jealous—not of Zay this time, but of the girl Loom believed she was. Again, she felt that his love did not belong to her. Even so, she wanted to pluck those lovely words up from the earth—fat and healthy and dripping with their roots—and keep them.
She sensed his expectancy. He had told her he loved her, and he was waiting for her to respond.
But she couldn’t. The curse and all its lies of love were not the only deception at play. She was the daughter of his enemy. Her brother had alchemized the weapon that tore his city ablaze. Love her? Of course he didn’t. If he knew the truth about her, there would be weapons drawn. He would want her dead.
“I have to go,” she blurted. “Stay here. Please, just stay here.
”
She was gone before he could utter a word of protest.
Wil found Zay by the fire, eating from a bowl of rice topped with steamed vegetables and slices of boiled egg. Ada was beside her, contentedly biting into a pear.
“How is he?” Zay asked. “I checked in on him in the night. If I had known those grindings would work that well—”
“It wasn’t the grindings,” Wil said. Loom’s words were still buzzing inside her. She wondered if they showed on her skin, made her brighter somehow. She sat across from Zay and leaned close, her voice hushed. “Pahn made him drink some extract, and that’s when he started to improve.”
Zay paled. “What did he ask for in return?”
“You can’t tell Loom.”
“What did you do?” Zay’s voice was tight.
“Pahn wants me to return to my home and discover the origin of my curse. He says that the answer lies in my family lineage. I need to find the name of the marveler who cursed me and bring it to him in a month’s time.”
“What happens if you don’t?”
Wil bunched the fabric of her trousers in her fists. Her posture was rigid. “Loom will die.”
For a moment Zay was too bewildered to speak. She blinked furiously. “I may have despised you from the start, but until this moment I never thought you were stupid.”
“He was going to die.” Wil’s voice was steady. “You saw him. I couldn’t sit back doing nothing.”
Zay shook her head. “Loom won’t let you be indebted to Pahn for his sake.”
“It’s done,” Wil said. “I have to leave. Tonight. One of the silent men will bring me to the port. The Arrod borders are closed to Southern ships, but the East is still an ally.”
Zay bit her lip and looked to the closed door that led to Loom’s bed.
“Look at me,” Wil said. “I will come back in time. You have to keep him here. Don’t let him do anything stupid.”
She laughed bitterly. “I’m his wife, not a weaver of miracles.” She hesitated. “I’ll do what I can. But if you don’t return, you’ll have me to deal with. I am far worse than any curses you may encounter, and there will be nowhere you go that I can’t find you.”
“Yes,” Wil said. “I know.” She stood and pulled the steel gloves from her belt.
Wil avoided Loom for the rest of the morning, but eventually he found her, as ever. Now she knew why he was so good at sensing her presence. And, as she listened for it, she realized that she could sense him too.
She was sitting at the edge of the cliff that overlooked the city. Even without hearing his footsteps, she knew that he was coming, his nearness like a touch, snaking around her throat, her wrists, soft and warm against the chilly air.
She didn’t move, letting the feeling tumble through her.
He sat beside her, and both of them stared at the faraway electric lights winking against the cloudy gloom. “I was wondering where you’d gone off to,” he said. “Aren’t you too cold?”
At last, she looked at him. His cheeks were pinched pink by the frigid wind. “I’m never cold,” she said. This weather made her think of home, of the draft that crept in around the castle windows during the winter, hissing a tiny symphony as the snow danced in time.
Loom nodded to the city, strung together by electrical wires in the distance, like the vine that connected all his tattoos. “Is Arrod like this?”
“No,” Wil said. “The electricity comes from the water mills, but we don’t have nearly as many buildings, or roads built for automobiles. You can smell the ocean and the rivers from anywhere.” She smiled, remembering the Port Capital. “We still use carriage horses. A bit dated, I know.”
“Cannolay is more dated, I assure you.” Loom laughed.
Her fond memories of home darkened as she thought of her father. He was the one resistant to things like automobiles and telephones. But he had no qualms about using an alchemized bomb on the Southern Isles. Why?
“It’s all wind energy here,” Loom said. “There’s plenty of it at this altitude.” He nodded to a tower far in the distance, billowing gray clouds. “That’s where digital panels for dirigibles and ships are manufactured and then sold around the world.”
“That’s what those spinning stars are,” she said. “They harness the wind. Am I right?”
“Wind turbines,” Loom affirmed.
Wil marveled at how fascinating the world was, even in her grief. Water and air and sun could feed life to so many things.
“Listen,” Loom said, “Wil. You’re under no obligation to help me. I asked for two weeks, and you gave them to me. You have no reason to grant me one last favor, but still I have to ask.”
“What is it?” she said.
“Whatever Pahn has promised you, don’t do it. Don’t rid yourself of this power.”
She drew back at that. “Why in the world not? It’s made me into a monster.”
“No,” he said, startling her when he took her hand. The life in his touch. The energy. But it wasn’t her curse that drew her to him in that moment. It was his arm, wrapping around her and bringing her in. “It hasn’t,” he said against her mouth, and then kissed her.
She let herself fall—foolishly, selfishly, knowing all the while that what it ignited in her was a lie.
This was not like her first kiss, when she and the boy from the party had been curious strangers who meant nothing to each other. With Loom, it felt so certain, as though they had lived a hundred lives before, and found their way to each other in all of them. As though they were always meant to end up here: this boy who had murdered and stolen, and this girl made of secrets and lies, their cursed hearts pounding.
He brought his mouth to her ear and murmured in Lavean, “Tell me something true.”
She felt herself weakening at the words, and she forced herself to stay alert, to resist the thing telling her to grab his face in her hands and kiss him again.
“What?” she said.
He kissed the side of her throat, and she sat taller as the sensation rolled up her spine like a wave. “I want to know something about you,” he said. “Anything.”
She put her hands on his shoulders. She meant to push him away, but her fingers only tightened. Just for a little while, she reasoned. Tonight she would be gone on a ship bound for Northern Arrod, and the distance would clear her head. What did a few moments matter now?
“I’m not what you think,” she said.
He laughed into her neck, and she felt the smooth perfect row of his teeth against her skin. “I’ve never known what to think.”
“I just—” Her fingers moved through his hair. It was damp and heavy; he must have bathed recently. Gone, too, was the smell of herbs, of death and all the desperate attempts to ward it off. He was whole again. Alive again.
She forced herself to push him away. The air was colder, the sky grayer. His puzzled expression was almost too much to bear.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you wanted me to—”
“You should rest,” she said.
He was watching her with that wary skepticism again, silently asking for an explanation, as though she could be trusted to tell him the truth. It was odd that someone with so little cause to trust anyone placed so much trust in her, Wil thought.
She thought of how she had felt in the boat, rowing away from Messalin. How she could smell the city on him, could feel his love for it emanating. It had startled her. It still did. She had never doubted that love was real, and now he looked at her the same way.
Could that be a symptom of the curse? Could any curse be that strong?
“You’re bleeding.” Loom brushed his fingertips under her nose, and when he held them up, they were dark with blood. She coughed and more erupted from her mouth. The earlier strange pain in her core returned, and she grimaced.
“Look at me.” Loom’s words were almost lost in a shrill whine that made everything bright white. He grabbed her face in his hands, but where his touch had soothed her mo
ments earlier, now it ignited the pain that shot through her limbs.
Then, as Loom pulled her against his chest, the pain stopped. Clarity returned like clouds parting, and she could smell her blood on his coat, feel it dampening her mouth and nostrils.
“Wil,” he said gently. “Wil, turn around. Look what you’ve done.”
She looked over her shoulder and followed his gaze. All the grass where she’d been sitting was shimmering—a tiny valley of gold.
The pain was gone, but she felt as though she had just heaved a mountain off her body. She reached out and plucked one of the blades. A residual shiver ran through her.
“Has that ever happened before?” He touched her forehead, inspecting her.
She rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth, wiping the blood away. “No. It’s never been gold.”
It had never hurt like that either, as though her bones were splintering under the weight of her own power. But she recognized that pain; she had begun to feel it, just faintly, that night on the beach with Loom.
She looked from the gold to him. It was him. It had to be. Thinking of him made her turn things to gold. But, no, it had to run deeper than that; this hadn’t happened in all the time she’d spent with him. What was different now?
The look of concern on Loom’s face surprised her. “How do you feel?” His voice sounded far away, and then very close.
“Fine,” she said. “I think it’s over.”
Loom crawled forward in the grass and began plucking the golden blades from the dirt. “We have to hide these,” he said. “I don’t want to think about what Pahn would do to you if he saw this.”
The sudden rush of the wind felt too cold, filled with the earthy smell of decaying leaves. When she moved to gather the gold, she could taste metal on her tongue.
Loom was staring at her. “I’ve never seen your eyes look like that.”