Chapter Twenty-One

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

T he room went completely silent as the words floated around and around my brain, refusing to make any sense. Even once their meaning was clear, I couldn't understand why Sybilla would say such a thing.

"I'm not in love with Grimm . I'd—I'd have noticed!"

Sybilla's eyebrows shot upward. "Oh, you really didn't know. I thought you were being coy about the whole thing. Goodness, how delightful." The corners of her mouth curved, and then, appallingly, Sybilla began to laugh, leaning one hand on the corner of the sofa for support as her whole body shook with mirth.

Grimm and I shared a brief horrified glance, then quickly looked away from each other.

"Sorry, sorry," Sybilla said, hiccuping slightly. "It's just that this is more entertainment than I've had in quite some time." She wiped the tears from her eyes and stood up straight again, seemingly getting ahold of herself. "All right, you've convinced me. I'll write your counterspell. Follow me."

Too dazed to do anything else, Grimm and I trailed along in Sybilla's wake. We followed her up the winding stairs to the place where they disappeared onto the second floor and emerged into a space that was empty of everything except the staircase we stood upon, the wall it clung to, and doors.

The doors were dotted along the stairs like beads on a necklace, set at regular intervals and just as impossible as the one I'd noticed down below, given that they should have opened into empty air. But nothing about this part of the tower seemed bound to the rules of possibility. When I looked back the way we had come, instead of floor or ceiling beams blocking my view of the first floor, there were only clouds, actual clouds, obscuring everything except the place where the stairs emerged. Above us the tower continued up far higher than the outside of the building would have suggested, until the spiraling stairs disappeared into shadow.

I could not see the top of the tower. Indeed, I was not sure there was one.

The whole place stank of Grandmagic. Not just the smoky scent of a spell recently cast, but the humming of active spellwork. If each individual work of magic had been set to music, it would have been enough to build a symphony.

"What is this place?" I wondered aloud.

Sybilla looked back over her shoulder and smiled. "This is the tower. What you saw down below, that was just the doorstep. Come along."

The first door we passed had a flower painted on the front of it, and the whole thing pulsed with magic, from the frame to the doorknob to the layers of blue paint. The second door was much the same, only the painting was of a tree. Sybilla led us up a little farther, until we came to a door with a book painted on it. The book lay open in profile, pages arcing to either side.

Sybilla opened this door and stepped over the threshold. The room beyond, when I paused to peer inside, was clearly a study. A large wooden table stood in the middle of the space, with more bookshelves like the ones below lining the walls, only these shelves were full of scrolls as well as books, and messy stacks of paper. Two shelves were given over entirely to pots of ink, while a different one displayed an impressive array of quills.

Curious, I reached out to touch the doorframe. It felt solid under my fingertips, but the buzz of magic was so strong that I had to wrench my hand back almost instantly. When I stepped into the room, the buzzing faded. The tower was still visible through the open door, stairs spiraling away to infinity, but I couldn't help but feel we were someplace else entirely. Like the magic at work here was a complex patchwork quilt, stitching together places that had no business existing alongside one another.

Once Grimm was inside, I closed the door and opened it again, just to see if everything stayed put. It did. Whatever spell held the room and the tower in place, it was a strong one. Far stronger than anything I would be able to write, though I thought I could sense the beginnings of how one might go about doing so.

"Fascinating," I muttered.

"You didn't think I just spent my time out here in the woods twiddling my thumbs, did you?" Sybilla called out. "I might be a little reclusive, but I have no desire to spend my days living in a simple one-room tower, I assure you. Now, stop staring at the door and come over here so I can start taking notes on your love spell."

The workings of the tower had distracted me, but Sybilla's words brought me back to the matter at hand.

"It's not a love spell!" I insisted, going to join her at the table. "I would have noticed."

"There've been no signs?" Sybilla asked. "Nothing out of the ordinary at all? Fits of passion, unexpected jealousies, protective urges?"

"Certainly not!" My feelings toward Grimm remained much as they always had been. Perhaps they had warmed slightly over the past few days, but that seemed a reasonable side effect of forced proximity. Facing down monsters and outlaws would have been a bonding experience for anyone; it didn't mean anything.

Except…

"You threw yourself in front of me," Grimm said, almost apologetically. "When you thought Jayne and Mathias were going to kill me. And again, when Beaugard leapt at me."

"That was—that was just me reacting in the moment. Instinct!"

Grimm didn't say anything, but I could practically hear what he was thinking. I was thinking it too: Since when have either of us ever felt a protective instinct toward the other?

I sagged weakly back in my chair, going over everything that had happened since the spell was cast. Reframing it. First had been the clear compulsion to do as Grimm bid, but then had been the creeping need to be near. What Sybilla was saying cast that particular urge in a very different light. I remembered the way I had shadowed Grimm's footsteps in those early days, just to catch a glimpse of him—like a shy teenager nursing a crush.

" Oh ," I said, and put my head down on the table. I couldn't look at Sybilla's smug face. I certainly couldn't look at Grimm.

"It's a very subtle piece of magic," Sybilla said, not unsympathetically. "You needn't feel badly for not noticing right away. In fact, I think it's likely designed to grow in strength over time for just that very reason, to stop you from understanding the true mechanics at work. It makes the whole thing doubly difficult to unravel." Sybilla's face darkened. "Whoever wrote this has a very devious mind."

How had I not known? I'd thought myself aware of every effect the spell had on me, yet I had glimpsed only the tiniest part. It reminded me of when I'd fractured my ribs writing that overblown wind spell. Those bones had always been there, but their function had been silent, invisible. Then suddenly, with each painful breath, I was aware of them—their placement and their flaw.

Perhaps it was dramatic to compare love to an injury, but that's how this felt. Like something that needed to be mended.

Grimm was of a similar mind. He turned to Sybilla and asked, "Can you fix it?"

"I can certainly try. There are two ways I know of to remove a spell that doesn't want to be lifted. The first is a counterspell. Difficult to do if you're not the one who wrote the original magic, but as you know, that's a specialty of mine. Unraveling a stranger's words and meaning is no small task, especially with something as complex as your curse, but I do like a challenge!"

"What's the second way?" I asked.

Sybilla, distracted with sorting through one of the piles of paper on the table before us, didn't even look up. "What?"

"You said there were two ways to remove a stubborn spell. What's the second?" I'd never heard of anything but counterspells being used to break apart magic before.

"Ah," Sybilla said delicately. "That method is complicated in a different way. You wouldn't need me for it at all, as it doesn't rely on scriving."

"How can that be?"

Sybilla sighed. "It's difficult to explain, especially if you're only used to thinking about magic in straightforward terms, which is what the Fount likes to teach best, but I'll try." There was an overstuffed chair in the corner of the room that looked like a cousin to the sofas downstairs. Sybilla walked over to it and picked up a basket left perched on one of the chair's arms. From the basket, she withdrew a half-formed project still attached to a ball of yarn and needles. She held the whole thing up for us to see.

"Spells are conditional," she said. "They're rooted in the intention of the person who wrote them. That intent is like a seed that the spell grows from, watered with magic. But magic brings its own requirements into the mix, and if those requirements aren't met, there's no growth. Now, think of the spell's intent as these needles, and the magic as the yarn. Together they build something. But if something happens to divorce the two from each other?"

Sybilla slid the knitting off the needles in one smooth motion and pulled on the yarn until the whole thing began to unravel, stitch by stitch.

"That's very interesting," I said politely. "But so far the only thing I understand is that you've just ruined your sweater, or whatever that is."

Sybilla rolled her eyes and threw the whole tangled mess impatiently down onto the table. "The curse on you is built out of opposing forces. No one who felt true love or caring for the intended target would be able to cast it, and yet those are the feelings it incites. Now, a caster doesn't set the intention of a spell, but they do channel it during casting. They are part of a very delicate balance, and that balance is part of what the spell relies on to succeed. Yarn and needles. Intention and magic. If you want to unravel the curse without a counterspell, you would need to upset the balance."

Sybilla looked at us expectantly. Grimm and I stared back at her, utterly uncomprehending.

"Oh, come on," she said. "This is a very good analogy! It means that if the person who cast the spell were to return the feelings it provoked, the whole thing would likely dissolve on its own."

The room got very quiet. The sort of silence large enough to swallow a person whole.

Then I began to laugh. Not because I was amused, just because there really was nothing else to do but laugh. The only thing more ridiculous than me being in love with Grimm was the idea that he would return such feelings of his own volition.

"Guess the counterspell really is our only option, huh, Grimm?" I said, and for the first time since the love spell had been announced, I swayed into his space just long enough to jostle his shoulder with my own. Then I collapsed in another fit of giggles.

That night, we ate dinner in a dining room with velvet chairs and window hangings. The food was already laid out in covered dishes down the center of a long table when Sybilla opened the door, and the half-moon rising through the windows never moved the whole time we were there.

We'd seen several other rooms in the tower after leaving Sybilla's study: A bathing chamber so large it wouldn't have fit inside the ground floor of the tower. A solarium full of green and growing things in pots, oddly fragile seeming after the time we'd spent in the forest. A library that rivaled the one back at the Fount, in scope if not in size.

"They're memories," Sybilla explained. "Or at least, they're built from memories. Places I've been, filled with what I can recall of them. Some of them are more than memories now, like the study, or the other rooms I often spend time in. But some… some aren't meant to become anything new. They only hold their shape with someone inside them."

It was so far outside the realm of what I'd been taught to do with magic that for a moment I felt a stab of exquisite longing lance through me. To know that such a thing was possible, and know it wasn't possible for me .

After all, everything in the tower was inescapably Grandmagic.

I could tell that Sybilla didn't spend as much time in the dining room because it had a distinct air of unreality to it, the candles a little too bright, and that moon, hanging so still in the sky. But the food seemed real in my belly, and the wine Sybilla poured was real enough to leave my senses pleasantly softened.

"Is it always the same meal?" I asked curiously.

"Oh yes," Sybilla answered. She took another sip of her own wine, savoring it before she continued. "This was one of the best dinners I ever had, and the first room I created for something other than practical reasons."

"What happens when you get tired of this meal?" Grimm asked.

"Then I have the room that always serves afternoon tea, and the one that leaves me a breakfast tray," Sybilla said, in the tone of someone pointing out the obvious. "There's also the kitchen on the ground floor for when I want to actually cook something for myself, but nothing in the kitchen resets itself when I close the door. And I'm frightfully lazy, you see. I like it when the tower acts as my housekeeper. It leaves me more time to devote to my own interests."

"Like counterspells," I prompted.

"Counterspells are more of a business than a hobby," Sybilla said. "Speaking of which, we have yet to discuss payment."

"Of course." I had been distracted since arriving, first with fever, and then with the words love spell , and then with our tour of the tower. But now I rifled through my pockets until I found the rings I'd stored away there. They sparkled in the candlelight when I laid them out on the table before Sybilla. "This is what I had on me when we left. The gems in each ring are quite valuable, I assure you."

Sybilla looked at the assembled offering, then threw back her head and laughed. "I don't need gold or baubles, you silly thing! I need a caster."

She looked very pointedly across the table to Grimm, who went still as a prey animal.

"What do you need me for?" he asked.

"This tower didn't make itself," Sybilla said. "Nor did the protective barrier I put up around it. I wrote the spells, but they were cast by the people who came seeking my aid. It's been a long time since I wanted anything enough to seek out new clients, but I do have spells that are in need of updating, and a few new ones that I'd like to test out. You can go through the stack while you're here."

Grimm folded his napkin and set it back on the table. "How long will we be here for, exactly?"

"I've never unraveled a love spell before, so it's hard to say. A few days at least. Plenty of time for you to repay me with labor." Sybilla winked at him. "It's been a while since I had a Fount-trained sorcerer doing my bidding. I think I shall enjoy it."

Grimm scowled, clearly unused to the idea of being under anyone's thumb. Let's see how he likes it , I thought, amused and embittered all at once. Sybilla was unlikely to order him to do anything objectionable, but then, Grimm never told me to do anything awful either. The discomfort came from having to take orders at all, and it seemed only right that Grimm should experience at least a fraction of that.

I must not have been quick enough hiding my smile behind my glass, because Grimm's eyes settled on me and his expression grew even more severe.

"And what will you do?"

I looked back at him, uncomprehending. "Me?"

"Yes, you. She's writing the spell, I'm paying for it, or near enough. What are you doing?"

"Leo will be helping me, of course," Sybilla said smoothly. "The work will go ever so much faster with two scrivers picking away at it."

"I can't," I said, alarmed. "I'll ruin it."

"Oh yes, your Grandmagic predicament, I'd forgotten. Is this another curse laid over you, perhaps?"

"No. It's just the way I am. I have to be very careful to avoid composing anything too big; if I'm not, it goes terribly wrong. Grimm knows. Tell her what happened the last time I got too ambitious."

Grimm looked faintly embarrassed. "If I recall correctly, I was thrown out a window."

I nodded. "Exactly. It's really not a good idea for me to help write the counterspell."

Sybilla asked, "Has no one ever been able to tell you where the problem stems from? None of your tutors or instructors at the Fount, perhaps?"

"No," I said, ready to move on from the topic. "My father brought in a few people, when I was young, but they couldn't find any reason for it. I didn't think it was worth meddling with, beyond that."

Across the table, Grimm released a small punched-out breath, as though the idea that I would avoid meddling was laughable. Normally he would have been right, but not about this.

"You don't have an interest in knowing more?" Sybilla pressed. It was clear she was interested. She had put her fork down to rest her chin in her hand, focusing all her attention on every brusque answer I gave.

I took a long sip of wine before saying anything else, aware that Grimm was watching now too. "Not really. I'm well suited to my charms and cantrips. That's all I need."

"Is it?" Sybilla's eyebrows arched doubtfully. Even Grimm looked like he didn't believe this. But it was only because of who they were. Each of them lived and breathed Grandmagic, writing it, casting it, perfecting it. It was only natural that they would doubt my being satisfied with less.

"It is," I said firmly.

Sybilla looked at me a moment longer. Then she picked up her fork again. "If that's really how you feel, you can be an observer for the composing part. But that doesn't mean you can't help in other ways. It's rare that I get to bounce ideas off another scriver while working. You will be my assistant."

I didn't see any way I could keep objecting. Being an observer broke none of my rules, and I was curious to watch a master like Sybilla at work. I was even a little eager for it.

Once our plates were empty and the candles on the table had burned low, Sybilla led us back onto the staircase. It was properly night now, not just the forever evening that took place inside the dining room. Sconces in the wall lit up ahead of us as we ascended the stairs, lighting the way through the tower's shadows. Sybilla showed me to a door with a green glass doorknob, then pointed Grimm toward the next one, a few steps up.

"The sheets are fresh," she told us. "They always are, actually. Benefits of remembered guest rooms. You can leave your belongings in there safely, but I'm afraid that anything you unpack will go right back in your bags as soon as you leave the room. That's a snag I'm still working out." Sybilla clasped her hands over her chest and looked at us. "Oh, it's so nice to have guests again. Do sleep well!"

I intended to do just that. The day's events had caught up with me over dinner, and I'd drank enough wine that my senses felt pleasantly floaty. My room, once I stepped inside, revealed itself to be small but elegant, with dark green walls and bed hangings to match. There was a tiny hearth to keep me warm, and fluffy pillows, and a window that looked out over some sort of coastal scene. When I opened it, I swore I could hear waves crashing in the distance. It was all perfectly restful, but I had barely lain down before I started to feel it: an itching, restless sensation that crawled beneath my skin, urging me to get up again. To go somewhere. To find someone.

I groaned and rolled over, staring at the forest-green bed hangings above me and willing the feeling to subside. When it didn't, I got up and retrieved my violin, hoping that music would be enough to distract me. The first song nearly did. It had been too long since I'd played simply for pleasure, and there was comfort to be found there. But by the time I was halfway through the second song, I knew it would not be enough.

I set my bow down and looked longingly at the comfortable bed. Then I ripped the topmost blanket away, grabbed a pillow, and went back out onto the staircase.

My mood was black as I stomped up the stairs to Grimm's door. The persistent feeling of wrongness was much less now that I was no longer inside the memory room, but that didn't improve my temperament as I propped my pillow on the doorstep and wrapped the blanket around myself. The tower was much cooler than my cozy little chamber had been, but I was tired enough I thought it wouldn't matter. And then, when I'd finally gotten everything arranged just so, the door behind me swung open.

I yelped and spilled into the room, causing Grimm to step back hastily, staring down at me in shock.

"What are you doing?" I asked indignantly, because indignance was better than abject mortification.

"I was going to find you," Grimm said. "What are you doing?"

I sighed and began to untangle myself from the blanket. "I'm not precisely sure how these remembered spaces work, but I don't think we're actually as close together as rooms down the hall from each other would be in an ordinary house." I picked myself up with as much dignity as I could muster and met Grimm's eyes. "The curse doesn't like it. Felt like I was trying to sleep on top of an anthill."

"Oh," Grimm said. Then, "Why on earth didn't you just knock and say so?"

The truth was that I had thought it would be too awful to stand on Grimm's doorstep and explain that I apparently couldn't bear to be that far away from him. It would have been uncomfortable even before we knew what the spell was, and now there were several helpings of awkward layered on top. But being caught sleeping on his doorstep was decidedly worse, so perhaps he had a point about the knocking thing.

"Thought you'd be asleep already," I said airily, then busied myself with looking around the room.

Grimm's lodgings were slightly larger than mine, with wood paneling that matched all the furniture and deep red velvet bed hangings the same color as the wine we'd had at dinner. His bag sat (unpacked) at the foot of the bed, and his sword had been laid on top of the dresser.

"I was coming to see if you wanted me to do another casting over your arm before you went to sleep," Grimm said.

I turned around from inspecting a stack of books on top of the tiny writing desk. "It's feeling better, actually." I'd noticed a few twinges when I played, but the bandage was unstained, and the pain had turned to more of a dull ache. "Almost as good as new."

"Very well." Grimm was still standing awkwardly at the open door and, oh, this was awful. We hadn't actually been alone since the love spell had been spoken of, and he looked seconds away from fleeing.

I understood the impulse.

Steeling himself, Grimm turned and shut the door. "You can make up a spot on the floor," he said. "I think there are extra blankets in the chest over there."

There were, and I was able to make myself a nest that, while in no way as comfortable as the bed I'd been given, was also not the worst place I'd ever slept. Grimm blew out the candles and got underneath his own covers, and I'd just begun to think that maybe we were going to successfully ignore the elephant in the room with us when Grimm said, "Did you truly not know?"

I thought of pretending to be asleep. Or asking Know what? and hoping he would not have the courage to clarify. But Grimm wasn't a coward, and perhaps it was better to get this conversation over now, in the dark, where we didn't have to face each other.

"I didn't. Truly, I had no idea." I stared up at the ceiling and sighed. "I blamed you for not realizing what the spell could do when you cast it, but in the end, I didn't recognize what it was either. At least, not entirely."

"Is there a chance Sybilla is wrong?"

"I think Sybilla is very good at what she does," I said carefully. "She's older than she looks, you know. She must be. The tales I read about her were in a book written twenty years ago. She must make use of cosmetic charms that put all of mine to shame. I think she's been doing this for a long time. So, no. I don't think she's wrong."

It was silent for a while, except for the sound of the fire crackling in the hearth.

"I just don't understand how you didn't notice," Grimm said quietly, sounding honestly perplexed. "This is so different from anything you would have felt before."

"You mean back when we were at each other's throats? I thought of that too. But you heard what Sybilla said, the spell works slowly. I suppose that I have enjoyed your company slightly more than usual lately, but I thought that was just a consequence of spending time together under unusual circumstances. Just the beginnings of a… friendship, of a sort."

The moment in the woods when I had become mesmerized by the sight of Grimm singing flashed through my mind, but I decided to forgive myself for not spotting that particular warning sign. It was totally normal to find your friends attractive, after all.

I continued doggedly on. "If there was anything else to it, I was oblivious. I have not loved many, to recognize the signs."

"Hm," Grimm said, openly skeptical. Everyone knew one another's business at the Fount. Everyone knew one another's reputations, and though my own was exaggerated, it was not entirely unearned.

I chuckled, amused for the first time since this conversation began. "I don't love everyone I fuck, Grimm. For that matter, I don't fuck everyone I love, which should comfort you. As far as I'm concerned, the spell has just tricked me into thinking you're a bit like Agnes—someone I care for."

Glancing up at Grimm, I thought I caught a glimmer of some dark emotion in his eyes, similar to what I'd seen after the spell had first been announced. I'd taken it for horror then, but now I almost thought it resembled disappointment. But that was ridiculous. Why would Grimm mind if my actions were only the result of the curse? He had never wanted my friendship in the first place.

"I promise that the only urges I've had to fling myself at you were of the protective variety," I joked, seeking to lighten his mood.

"I wasn't worried about that ," Grimm said, but he sounded so affronted I was certain this was at least partially a lie.

That was all right. I was maybe lying too, a little bit.

My feelings for Grimm, both before and after the curse, had never resembled anything like what I felt for Agnes. Nor were they like anything I'd felt for lovers. Perhaps that was why I hadn't been able to recognize the spell for what it was. Whatever it made me feel for Grimm was something different. Something I wouldn't have known to look for.

There seemed nothing left to say, so I rolled over, pulling my blankets up to my chin. It had been a long day, and my pillow was very soft, even if the blankets between me and the floor were a little too thin for comfort. Grimm's breath evened out and grew deeper, and I measured my own against it until I felt the last traces of tension leave me. I knew now that any calm I felt because of his presence was likely caused by magic, but knowing did not lessen the effect.

I wondered if I would miss this feeling when it was gone.