Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

I woke up in an unfamiliar room, and not in the fun way. Which is to say, I was quite alone in the narrow bed I lay in, and while my memories of the previous night were a little blurry in places, I recalled most of it better than I would have liked.

Upon sitting up, I saw that the room was small and relatively plain, furnished with only the bed, a chest of drawers, and a chair in the corner upon which my violin case and bag had been placed. Agnes was sleeping in a mess of blankets on the floor beside me.

Moving quietly, I rose and sorted through my belongings until I found a clean shirt and my sorcerer's coat, which I swapped for the creased and sweat-stained formal jacket I'd worn the night before. The room's only door was covered by a simple cloth curtain. After one last look to confirm that Agnes was still deeply asleep, I pushed the curtain aside and left the bedroom behind.

The curtained doorway led to a kitchen, with a well-worn table and chairs at its center and dried herbs hanging from the rafters over the sink. Everyday items lay scattered atop the table and counters, but none of them were presently in use, and when I called out a soft "Hello?" no one answered.

I decided to investigate further. An uncharitable person might have called it snooping.

To my right was a ladder that led up to a loft bedroom. The two pairs of slippers that had been left at the foot of the bed led me to believe this room belonged to Grimm's parents, which meant that the bare little room given to me and Agnes must have been his.

Off the kitchen was a sitting room full of books (fiction, I realized upon closer inspection—not a spellbook in sight) and threadbare chairs. Sweetly fading watercolors decorated the walls, along with a floral brocade wallpaper that reminded me of something I might have seen in my father's parlor—though his walls would have been covered in the stuff, and here there was only a scrap that someone had cut and framed. It was hung in a spot where the rich pattern caught the light from the window.

There is a particular thrill to exploring someone else's home for the first time. It's like peeling a curtain back from all your notions about who that person is, and instead seeing them as both who they are and who they want to be. My father's house, for example, is a magnificent building, full of beautiful things. But look closer and you'll find that all of that loveliness was manufactured. I doubt he picked out a single item in that house for himself; he just paid for everything to be arranged for him. What did that mean, you might ask? Well, I thought it meant this: Deep down, my father enjoyed being there about as much as I did. It was a home in name only.

This house, by contrast, was a comfortable space—lived-in. I liked it.

It held none of the austerity I had come to associate with Grimm, which made me suspect he spent little time here. I did find evidence of him, though, in a portrait hanging above the sitting room fireplace, centered between an illustration of peonies and another of forget-me-nots. It was obviously Grimm, for all that he could not have been much older than twelve when the portrait was painted. His hair was the same shockingly pale shade of gray, and the miniature furrow between his brows made it clear that he had spent a good portion of the sitting glaring at the artist.

It made me chuckle, to see that Grimm's grumpiness was apparently long-standing. It also made something inside my chest turn over restlessly.

With some trepidation, I closed my eyes and sought after the spell's guiding influence. Grimm wasn't far; I could tell that much immediately. The invisible thread connecting us was an almost palpable presence now, much more so than it had been at the Fount.

I followed the sensation out the kitchen door and onto a stone porch overlooking a courtyard full of half-broken flagstones with grass sprouting through the cracks, past the trellised fruit trees lining the fence around the house, and through the gate, toward the barn we'd stopped in front of the night before. By day, the surrounding landscape was all gentle slopes and open fields. Some of them were already laid bare, empty until next year's planting.

Inside the barn, I found more signs of the harvest—golden sheaves of wheat hanging from the ceiling, with more stacked waiting on the floor. Crates full of apples lined one wall, and another was given over to baskets of potatoes. Amid all of that stood Grimm, back to me and hands busy with a spell.

I was trying to be quiet, but my boot scuffed against the rough barn floor as I entered. Not enough of a distraction to disrupt anything, but enough that Grimm's shoulders stiffened. He waited until the paper in his hand was burned away before turning to face me.

"Good morning," I said, trying to sound casual and not at all like I was feeling slightly embarrassed about showing up on Grimm's doorstep with no warning in the middle of the night, only to collapse upon said doorstep. Who would be embarrassed by such a display? Not me, certainly.

"You're awake, I see." Grimm looked and sounded as he always did, voice clipped and face remote, coat neatly pressed. There was something strange about seeing him here, in the softened countryside setting, his bearing just as proper as it was at the Fount. The incongruity of it struck me as hilarious, and I laughed.

"Ah, Grimm," I said, "it's too much. You're a farmer. A farmer, you !"

Grimm scowled. "Your snobbery does you no credit."

" My snobbery! You're the haughtiest person I know; that's why this is so funny. You're so good at looking down your nose at everyone that you might as well be gentry already."

"I am not snobbish," he said primly. "I am simply mindful of who I associate with."

"Oh, my mistake," I said, with exaggerated sarcasm.

Grimm opened his mouth, shut it, and then appeared to physically bite his tongue. Which was disappointing. He was more fun when he spoke without thinking. "I'm glad to see you've recovered enough to find this humorous," he said at last, not sounding glad at all.

"Yes, yes. Quite recovered. Er, did Agnes happen to explain the circumstances of our arrival?"

Grimm's scowl deepened. "She said the spell worsened and you chose to make yourself ill rather than tell anyone about it. And that you've been following me secretly as a form of… curse management."

I turned away and began to inspect the worktable next to me, covered with tools and dirt and dust. There were neat little stacks of spells there too. Food preservation charms—that's what Grimm had been casting. I looked down at them rather than meet his eyes as I said, "Sorry about that. And about this. Probably should have waited until morning before I came snooping around your house. Don't know what we were thinking."

"Agnes thought you were dying."

"Absurd," I scoffed, even though I wasn't sure it was. I'd felt untethered toward the end there. Like parts of myself were beginning to drift away.

Grimm shook his head slightly, a condemnation. "It was foolish of you to try to bear it alone."

That this was true did nothing to stop the flash of annoyance I felt at him for saying so.

"What would telling anyone have changed? We all agreed to take a break until after the trials, so what can I do besides bear it and try to resist? I don't think trying to fight it was so foolish. I certainly can't haunt your footsteps the rest of our lives."

Referring to the curse as anything but temporary left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I had never much enjoyed being constrained by anything (another reason the deal with my father chafed so), and everyone knew Grimm was Coterie-bound. I'd be in quite the predicament if we couldn't find a way to undo this.

This was the same trap, coming to catch me in a new and unexpected way.

Agnes was awake when we got back to the house. The three of us gathered on the little stone porch, seated around the rough wooden table there, and Grimm brought out a tray with a dented silver teapot and mismatched cups, as well as breakfast for Agnes and myself—cold leftovers from the morning, two hastily boiled eggs, and some sliced-up late-season peaches. The fruit made me wrinkle my nose, and I pushed it toward Agnes, trying not to shudder at the mere sight of the furry peach skin, but I ate everything else. I was so hungry that it didn't matter that Grimm's skills as a cook were obviously nonexistent.

"What did you tell your family about why we're here?" I asked him curiously.

"That you are a tiermate from the Fount who fell ill while traveling nearby. They do not know the particulars of your illness." Grimm paused, hands suspended in the action of pouring tea. "I would prefer to keep it that way."

His meaning was clear: No one in his family knew of our blunder, and we were not meant to tell them.

"Easy enough to explain this time," Agnes said, "but what about the next? What if it gets worse? Perhaps Cassius could be persuaded to have another stab at the counterspell before the trials begin, given how things have changed."

"I'm not so sure it's a matter of his willingness." I took a sip of tea, then winced and set my cup aside. It was a dark and bitter brew, nothing like what was usually served at the Fount. "I ran into Cassius before we left for the party. He didn't seem confident that he would be able to find a solution easily, even after the trials are over. He did have another idea, though."

I explained the book that Cassius had given me and his suggestion that Grimm and I might seek out the sorcerer in the woods. As I spoke, Grimm's natural stillness seemed to intensify.

"You can't seriously be considering this as a viable option," he said, in the flat sort of voice I'd begun to recognize he used when I'd done or said something he found particularly ridiculous.

"Why not?" I asked, even though I had said something very similar to Cassius the day before. "Whoever this sorcerer is, she's far enough outside the influence of the Coterie that I doubt we have to worry about her turning us in. And the library is full of her counterspells—working ones. Surely someone with that amount of experience would make short work of this curse?"

"The quickest solutions are rarely the best," Grimm said. This sounded almost exactly like something one of our instructors would have told me, and it was delivered with the same all-knowing air. I'd never enjoyed getting such advice, and I appreciated it even less coming from Grimm.

We argued back and forth, with me pointing out every benefit that would come from having the curse gone by the time the Fount was back in session, while Grimm methodically went through all the reasons why such a thing should not be attempted. It was too dangerous, he insisted, and the stories in the book sounded like something you would read aloud to a child, based on more fiction than fact.

"I won't go," he said firmly. "Even if I thought this plan was sensible, which I do not, we have less than two weeks before the trials start. That's not enough time to search an entire forest."

"It's plenty of time to at least try! We could spend a week searching and still make it back to Luxe long before we're expected."

"And what if we stumble upon a monster instead of your sorcerer? What if one or both of us are injured and we don't make it back in time? What then?"

"I don't know why everyone acts like the trials are the be-all and end-all," I grumbled. "Any sorcerer worth their salt could find placement without parading themselves around like some sort of prize stallion to be bought."

"The trials are not the only issue here," said Grimm. "Your quest offers too many problems and only the faintest hope of a solution."

"Well, what would you have us do?" I asked.

"Cassius is the best scriver in our tier," Grimm said simply. "We should give him more time, before we begin grasping at straws that will likely only get us in deeper trouble."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm well aware that everyone thinks the sun shines out of Cassius's ass because he managed to get a spell admitted to the library, but we've already given him loads of time, and it did nothing. Do you really trust that giving him more will change anything?"

Grimm took a sip of tea. He didn't wince at the taste, accustomed, perhaps, to its bitterness. He lowered his cup to the table and said, with great deliberation, "More than I'd trust a nameless sorcerer in the woods."

I turned to Agnes, hoping to gain some support, but in this, I was disappointed.

"He's right," she said, adding, "Oh, don't look at me like that," when I let out a small gasp, betrayed. "Crossing the barrier in search of some sort of—of mythical woman to solve all your problems is a terrible idea. The Unquiet Wood is full of monsters, Leo. There's a reason people don't go there."

I slumped back in my chair, outnumbered and unhappy about it. Grimm's refusal to venture into the Wilderlands wasn't surprising, but I was frustrated all the same. At the heart of this disagreement was the fact that there was simply no way for me to share with him the sensation of something foreign and wrong taking up residency in my bones, and the powerlessness that followed. I could describe it, but that wasn't at all the same. I could not help but think that, were Grimm to find himself at the mercy of such a feeling, he too would be willing to face down monsters and the unknown to see it gone.

But Grimm could not feel what I felt.

"What now, then?" Agnes said, breaking the tense silence that had fallen. "Leo can't return to his father's estate without falling ill again, and I doubt he'd fare much better trying to go back to the Fount before you do. That's still hours away from here."

Grimm's and my eyes met in a sort of mutual dismay as Agnes's words sank in. To his credit, Grimm hesitated for only an instant before saying, "You may stay here until it's time for us to return to the Fount. I will be busy helping with the harvest, but you are both free to make yourselves comfortable."

He spoke too stiffly for the offer to be entirely gracious, but I doubt I could have done much better were the circumstances reversed. He made his excuses shortly afterward and disappeared back to the barn to resume casting the preservation spells I had interrupted.

I imagined I could feel the invisible leash between us stretching with every step he took, but that was likely just a result of my overtaxed nerves. I hoped.

Agnes poured us each another cup of the dark tea. Its flavor was not improved by being cold. We sat there, looking out over the colorful courtyard.

"Well, it's not the worst place for us to have a vacation," I said. "A little provincial, but very pretty."

Agnes said in a low voice, "I'm not staying."

I spun round in my seat to face her, certain I had misheard, but Agnes remained looking stubbornly into her teacup.

"My mother has arranged an invitation for me at a Coterie party tonight, and there will be other harvest celebrations around the city for the rest of this week. She'll have my head if I disappear into the countryside with you instead of attending them. And, if I'm being truthful, I don't want to miss them." She finally looked up, eyes gravely serious behind her spectacles. "Don't ask me to, Leo."

This was a taste of what the coming year had in store for us, I realized, bitter as the tea we drank. Agnes and I had always done everything together, through choice or circumstance. The one good thing about being forced to attend the Fount was that it had prolonged our effortless closeness. But once Agnes joined the Coterie, she would be launched into a different world. At some point, she would likely have more in common with Sebastian Grimm than she did with me.

I did not know what upset me more: the thought of Agnes leaving me here so she could step further into that future, or that I could not join her.

I selfishly, desperately wanted to beg her to stay, but I could read the set of her jaw and knew that doing so would only push her away faster. So instead, I said, "Of course! It's harvest time, and you have Coterie captains to charm. Of course, you must go."

Agnes's shoulders slumped slightly in relief. "You're sure?" she asked.

"You've already delivered me safely here, that's more than enough."

"But you and Grimm—"

"What about us?"

"I know you two have history," Agnes said haltingly.

"Ugh, can you not say it like that?"

"Fine. I know you have a strange obsession with Grimm, is that better?"

"It is not," I said tartly, "but go on."

"I worry about leaving you two alone. This habit you have of getting on each other's nerves as though it's a sport, it won't serve you well here."

I rolled my eyes. "I think we can manage unsupervised for a couple of weeks. Besides, you heard Grimm, his days here are full. We won't have to interact that much, and I'll be on my best behavior."

Agnes didn't appear entirely convinced (perhaps because my previous promise of good behavior had been followed up by nearly burning my father's house to the ground), but there was no time to argue with me if she wanted to make it back to Luxe in time for whatever festivities the Coterie elite had planned for the evening. And yet, still she hesitated, biting her lip as she looked at me, eyes solemn.

"Leo," she said, and leaned across the table to catch my hand in hers. There was an urgency in her voice that put me on guard. "Promise me you won't go to the forest."

"You heard Grimm; he thinks it's just a story, not worth his time."

"Yes, but I know you. You're still enamored with the idea of running off to the woods to solve this. Some sort of grand quest that will cure all your ills. But that's hardly ever how these things work."

"Grimm must be rubbing off on you," I joked. "Have you so little imagination after only a few hours in his presence?"

"Promise me, Leo. If I could stay, it wouldn't matter. But I'm worried you're going to bite off more than you can chew trying to solve this thing, and I won't be there to stand at your back. I'm not leaving until you tell me you won't go beyond the barrier alone."

Agnes's hand was tight around mine. Once again, I found myself wishing that it was her I could not stand to be parted from. It would have made all of this so much easier. Yet, when I thought of Agnes driving away, it did not make my insides squirm with discomfort. I would feel lonely without her, yes, but I could survive it.

I lifted her hand and kissed the back of it quickly. "You have my word I will not go to the Unquiet Wood alone," I said.

Agnes let out a sigh of relief and settled back into her seat, loosening her grasp.

What I did not say was this: The woods were far too vast for me to search by myself—I would last only a day, maybe two, before the curse left me incapacitated—but the towns in Dwull nearest the barrier were not so difficult to reach, and who knew what information might be found there?

Grimm and Agnes had their plans for the next two weeks, and I had mine.