18

18

H e wasn't going to be glad I was here. That was the first thought to cross my mind, brief and nonsensical, as I opened the familiar door and saw him. He wasn't going to know I was here, or that anyone else was. He had already gone somewhere else.

Mary and Holly glanced up from his bedside at my approach, their eyes anxious and hopeful at once. My brother lay there, the bindings that had held him all night untied beside him. As a scholar, I probably would have advised keeping them on, but I could see why my family hadn't. His eyes were closed, his chest barely rising and falling, his face ashen. Despite all I had been imagining, my stomach still clenched in shock at how gaunt and frail he had become since I had seen him at Christmas. His shirt was unbuttoned to mid-chest, and for the first time since he had come home after the war, I could see the extent of the curse that was turning his flesh to wood. This time, there was no doubt that it was growing. It was happening before our eyes. Inch by inch, long fingers of bark crept out from his shoulder, up his neck, over the curve of his jaw. And, slowly but surely, to his heart.

If the curse is too close to his heart, there will be nothing you can do. The faerie had warned me of this. I should have realised the warning was a threat.

This was my fault. I had let the faerie into the world, despite all my efforts to the contrary. The door had opened—only a crack, but enough. Enough for the faerie to complete the curse that had been halted so long ago on the battlefield at Amiens. Enough to make sure that the counter-curse I had bargained for would come too late to save him.

"Clover…"

I shook myself at Holly's voice, so small and so helpless, and found a smile. "It's all right," I said. "I know what to do now."

I did. I had ripped open the world for exactly this. Perhaps, after all, I had reached him in time. But all I could think, over and over again, was that I was in a story in which the foolish farmer's daughter makes a bargain with a faerie that ends in her losing everything she loves.

I sat on the bed and placed my hand over Matthew's chest. I had to find his heart precisely, I knew that without knowing why. It wasn't difficult. It was struggling frantically against my palm, racing for its life while its owner lay far too still.

The words the faerie had given me knew the feel of a human heartbeat. They pushed at my throat like a scream. I closed my eyes, opened my mouth, and let them out.

Most of the magic we use is rooted in Latin, Old English, medieval French and German. Other cultures have their own magic, rooted in ancient versions of their own tongues—we had covered some of these in the second semester, and Hero in particular had always revelled in their differences. Yet even these feel shared in some way, shaped by human minds and driven by human needs. This was different. It was magic in the fae language, entirely alien and strange. My mouth spoke it without a trace of understanding, the words themselves shaping my tongue and teeth and breath. It was thrilling and frightening, like being possessed by something I had invited in. I knew in that moment just how arrogant Alden and I had been. No amount of study would ever have got me here had we not opened that faerie door.

The power of that spell was like nothing I'd ever felt. It rushed from me in a great wave, flexing my back and shoulders, throwing my head back, leaving me breathless. It hit my brother with the same force. His body twisted on the thin mattress; a sharp cry was wrenched from somewhere deep. His eyes flew open, and they gleamed bright green. They looked at me, a short, sharp contact that froze my insides, and then he fell back, shuddering, fighting for breath.

I watched, waiting, holding a breath of my own. The horrible grey fingers of bark faltered, stilled. Then, like a creature shaking off an imagined threat, they kept going. They moved forward one inch, then two.

"It didn't work," Mum said, too calm, too gentle. She was crouched beside him now, her hand smoothing his hair from his forehead as she did Little John's when he was sick. As she had my father's, right at the end. "He's going."

"No," I said numbly. "No, that's not possible."

It was. Of course it was. His heart beneath my hand was growing weaker, struggling for each beat; each breath was coming with more and more effort, with longer pauses in between. And the look in those green eyes—it had held nothing but triumph.

If I hadn't made the deal, the curse would have taken months or years to devour him. Now it was swallowing him whole, and it was all my fault.

"I'm sorry," I heard myself say. "I'm so sorry…"

"Clover." Eddie's voice, trembling right on the brink between calm and panic. "Here, take this, here…"

My free hand reached out for what he was offering and clasped it blindly. A flower. A rose, scarlet and full-bloomed, with a long stem. It was from the plant I had brought home from Camford and left behind in my room, my birthday present from Eddie. I could see it now over by the window, much larger and repotted into an old bucket with a broken handle. I should have known. My sisters were hopeless with houseplants, but Matthew never could resist rescuing a living thing.

"Try again," Eddie said. "Just try."

I should have asked why, or at least wondered. I didn't. It was a plant, and Eddie, who was so uncertain of everything else but knew everything about plants, was handing it to me. I gripped the stem as tight as I could, heedless of the thorns biting my palm, while my other hand pressed tighter against Matthew's heart.

"Please," I said aloud, as though it was a spell in itself. "Please."

Then I drew a deep breath and spoke the spell again.

The force of it tore through me, less violent this time, just as powerful. Matthew's back arched; he drew a sudden sharp breath, as though at the thrust of a knife. His body creaked and groaned like a tree in high wind. I nearly snatched my hand back on reflex. Then I looked again and held tight.

Because the tendrils reaching for his heart were truly receding now. Little by little, like poison drawn from a wound, the long fingers of bark crept away from my hand, back toward the wound in his shoulder, leaving bare flesh in their wake.

It's working. I held the thought at arm's length, not daring to hope. But it was. It was working.

Farther back, farther—now the silver bark that covered his shoulder was shrinking too, like watching a patch of damp spread in reverse. The patch was little more than the size of a fifty-pence piece when his body shuddered just once more, and then was still.

My mother's voice broke the silence, unusually quiet. "Is that it? Is the curse broken?"

I looked at Matthew, still half convinced we had killed him. Yet he didn't look dead. His face had a flush of colour now; his breathing was gradually becoming more regular. Mary and Holly were staring at Eddie and me in awe, as though until that moment they hadn't believed either of us could do magic.

"I think it is," I said. "I don't understand how, but…"

"You're bleeding." Eddie's hand was on mine, very carefully removing the flower from my hand. I uncurled my fingers at his touch, reflexively; they were sticky with blood, and yet I felt no pain. My mind was dazed, past relief, past astonishment, well past noticing a few scratches from a few thorns.

There was no time to ask Eddie what had happened. Matthew was stirring awake. His eyebrows quirked, his brow furrowed; his eyes blinked once, twice, then stayed open. The sight of them, fogged and exhausted but unstreaked with green, was the most welcome thing I had ever seen.

"What—?" he asked huskily. He started to push himself up on one elbow, then fell back with a wince. "Is everyone all right?"

"Why wouldn't we be?" Mum demanded, in the over-accusatory tone she takes when she's very happy indeed. "You were the one we all thought was going to die."

"Why?" His eyes fell on me, and he blinked again, this time in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

"Hello to you too," I said, as airily as I could through a throat thick with unshed tears. "Aren't you pleased to see me?"

"I'm pleased to see anything, to be honest." His voice was clearing, becoming his own again. "It's been a very weird night. Is anyone going to tell me what happened?"

What had happened? I didn't know how to answer. It was too big, too confusing, there were far too many questions and all of them entangled with guilt and worry and doubt. I looked at Eddie and saw it all mirrored in his eyes as he looked back at me.

"What happened," Mum said firmly and unexpectedly, "is that your sister saved your life. You did, Clover," she added, as though I'd opened my mouth to protest. Perhaps I had. "You said you were going to, the last time you were home, and I said things back that weren't fair. I'm sorry for it."

I had waited a long time to hear those words, and now I didn't deserve them. "I said things too—"

She shook her head before I could go on. "That's as may be. But you saved your brother, just as you said you were going to. I'm proud of you. Your dad would be too."

There was no question then of what I was going to say. All at once, the worry and tension and miseries of the last seven years broke the dam I had built for them. I burst into tears. I cried helplessly, as I hadn't since my father died and perhaps not even then. Mum didn't know half of why I was crying—I didn't myself. Nonetheless, I felt her arms around me, and with them the touch of the old, safe world before the war had come and shattered us apart.

We didn't stay like that for long. We weren't a demonstrative family, and besides, there were chores to be done. Mum went to get everyone a bite to eat and prepare somewhere for Eddie to sleep; Mary went to give the stock their supplementary feed, it being the parched summer months of drought; Holly went into town on the motorcycle to pick up supplies, and Eddie went with her to use the only telephone for miles. I took Iris and Little John in hand: They were worn out after the long day of panic and confusion, and they hadn't eaten since breakfast.

Matthew had fallen asleep almost before we had left his room—real sleep this time, deeper and more peaceful than I'd seen since he had come home. It wasn't until everyone else had gone to bed that I had the chance to talk to him alone. I hesitated on the ladder leading up to the attic, unsure of my reception. We still hadn't spoken since that terrible Christmas.

"It's all right," Matthew's voice came, soft and drowsy. "I'm awake."

"I know." I could tell the difference—I had a lot of experience sharing rooms with my siblings. "I just wasn't sure if I was welcome."

"Of course you are, idiot." I heard the creak of the bed as he sat up, then the lamp beside the bed flared. "Come here. I never really had a chance to thank you for saving my life, did I?"

"Don't," I said, before I could stop myself. "Please."

"Why?" He frowned, his eyes still adjusting to the light. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing, I hope." I clambered through the trapdoor and sat on the bed beside him; he shifted to make room. "How are you feeling?"

"Good," he said, and the wonder in his voice told me that this time, for perhaps the first time in years, it was true. "I mean, sort of like I've had the flu and then been turned inside out, but… it doesn't hurt."

"Can I see?"

Matthew pulled down his shirt collar willingly, which more than anything told me he truly wasn't worried. His exposed shoulder was flesh again, slightly pink and tender. Only where the curse had struck was a small knot of silver-grey wood.

"It's not all the way gone," I said, and couldn't dismiss a twinge of unease.

He shrugged his collar back into place. "I'll take it. Like I said, it feels fine." He hesitated. "I used to hear it whispering all the time, in the dark. There's nothing now."

A shiver went through me from head to toe. "What did it say?"

Matthew looked away, uncomfortable. "Nothing, really. Just rustlings. Like a forest when the wind shakes it."

"You never told me that."

"Why would I? You couldn't have done anything."

"I did, didn't I?"

"You did." A smile tweaked his mouth. "Thank you."

He didn't know what he was thanking me for. But just then, in that moment, I didn't care. I let myself hope that it was worth it—the long hours of study, the terrors of the long, dark night, my still-throbbing head, and the fears of what worse might have happened. I had done what I had said I had gone to Camford to do.

"Why did you take off that night last Christmas?" Matthew broke the silence. "I know I bit your head off. I'm sorry. I'm doing that to everyone lately, and I never used to. It didn't upset you that much, though, did it?"

"It wasn't just you," I said. "Mum was furious at me."

"What else is new? She'd have got over it by morning."

"But she was right ." The words came out painfully. "You both were. About Camford, and about me looking down at you all, and about me pretending I was there for some noble reason when really I just wanted to do magic and build a life for myself. And I was so ashamed."

"You're eighteen. You're allowed to want your own life. You're allowed to want to do magic. Who wouldn't?"

"You said—"

"I know. That wasn't about you, all right? That was…" He paused, frustrated. "I don't know what it was about. Just that sometimes I'm sick of pretending everything's fine."

That struck me with the physical force of an epiphany, like learning the term for a concept in magical studies that had been vague and nebulous and now suddenly made sense. Because we were all pretending, weren't we? It felt like since the war and the epidemic that followed it the world had been irreparably broken, and we were all trampling barefoot through the shattered fragments as though nothing had happened—as though we weren't all broken too.

Last night we had come so close to breaking the world again. Somehow, despite everything that told me otherwise, I couldn't quite be sure we hadn't.

"What happened to you when the curse took hold last night?" I asked. "Can you remember?"

Matthew started to shrug the question off, but something in my face must have told him I had a reason for asking. "Not really." He shifted uneasily, and the bedpost creaked. "I remember my legs binding together and digging down into soil; I remember branches and vines creeping around me until my bones cracked; I remember a voice screaming in a language I couldn't understand. It was cold—proper cold, the kind that stops your heart—and I couldn't breathe. Things like that. The usual. Why?"

It was my turn to shrug. Unlike Matthew, I took it. "I just wondered."

He gave me a long, hard look.

"I'm getting married," he said, out of nowhere. "Next spring, probably."

"What?" I glanced at him sharply, and whatever my face showed, it made him smile. "How? Why? To whom?"

He snorted. "Well, there's an insight into your priorities. In the usual way. For the usual reasons. To Jemima Piper, in the village. We got engaged before I went away. You really didn't guess?"

I shook my head dumbly. Jemima. I knew her, of course, but only vaguely—she had been four or five years ahead of me at school, and had left to work for the post office when the older girls were still a bewildering blur of half adults to me. Fair-haired, short, kind, smart, and efficient at her job, she had given sweets to the little ones when I brought them in on errands… I had never given her more thought than that. I was starting to realise how self-centred I had been the last few years, and how little I knew anybody who had been around me at the time.

"Does she know about…?"

"The curse? Yeah, she does. It's a little difficult to hide, when you're turning into a tree and lose your mind at set dates. She grew up on Pendle Hill, you know. Witchcraft runs in her family. She says she doesn't mind if it's now in me as well, but I do. I've been pushing the engagement off again and again, because I wanted better for her and our family. So please, Clover, if you know something—if something worse is coming—tell me."

"Nothing else is coming," I said, and willed it to be true with all my heart. "It's over. I promise."

He didn't believe me—I could see that. But he must have decided that I did at least think I was telling the truth, or at least that he was too tired to argue about it. His eyes were already growing heavy once more.

"Well," he said. "That's something, I suppose."

The kitchen was quiet when I came down. A single candle was burning at the table; Eddie sat perched on a chair in its light, his fingers curled around a mug and a plate of biscuits in front of him.

"I said I'd sleep here on the sofa," he said softly, so as not to disturb anyone upstairs. "Your mother left me all these biscuits. Do you want one?"

I shook my head and sank down on the chair opposite. I was bone-achingly tired, and my stomach was still queasy. "No, thank you. They're meant for you, to make up for all the other hospitality she can't offer you. She'll be mortified that a young gentleman is in her house and consigned to the sofa."

"She did offer to swap me her bed," he admitted. "Quite a few times. But I like the sofa. I like your house awfully, you know—and your family. Is Matthew well?"

"He's fine. Better than I've seen him in years."

"Good," he said. "I'm glad."

"What happened?" The question burst from me. "The flower. What did it do?"

"I don't know." Eddie shook his head, tired and bewildered. "Not really. The plant was there on the bedside table. I just looked over at it, and it was straining toward your incantation like mad, as though it wanted to be near it. I remembered that when hedgewitches treat curses, they use roses, and I just thought what if…?"

Only Eddie, in the midst of a life-or-death act of magic, would look toward a plant on the bedside table. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or hug him very tight.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

The corner of his mouth twitched in the faintest possible smile. "I'm glad it worked," he repeated.

There was something he wasn't saying. I could see it in his hesitancy, the long gaps between sentences as if each time steeling himself to say something different.

"What is it?" I asked. "What's wrong?"

Eddie sighed gustily. "I telephoned Ashfield, as I said I would," he said. "Hero had already left. I told Alden that Matthew was safe."

"Was he pleased to hear it?" That came out more sarcastic than I meant. Actually, I was worried.

Eddie understood. "He was. He's upset with you about Thomas being locked on the other side of the door. He didn't want Matthew to die."

"No, of course not." I rubbed my aching temples, annoyed at myself for being so melodramatic. "I'm sorry. So what's the problem?"

"Well. It turns out it wasn't just Matthew."

I froze. My stomach, already sick, went cold. "What wasn't?"

"The curse reawakening. It was all of them. The other soldiers from Amiens, the ones who were struck with the curse and lived. Three men altogether, like the faerie said. Your brother, Charles Perowne, and Gerald Drake. The other two died this morning. The curse took them."

I hadn't even known the names of the other surviving soldiers from Amiens until then. We had a Drake in our year—Harold Drake. Gerald must have been an older brother of his, or a cousin. And one of our lecturers was a Perowne—John Perowne, in History of Modern Magic, an older man in tweed, perhaps Charles's father or uncle. All these thoughts raced through my head, confused and disjointed, and overlaying them all was the image of the tendrils of bark creeping toward my brother's heart.

We had killed them. We had let that door open too far and let the faerie who had cursed them snake strands of magic into the world, and they were dead.

My God , Alden had said. I'm so sorry.

"Alden said to remind you not to say a word," Eddie added. "Especially now."

"I'm sure he did," I said, with a welcome shot of irritation. "It was what he did, wasn't it? He never told anyone that he had opened a door, that his brother was stolen, that the fae could break through the circles. Then one broke out and murdered its way through a battlefield."

The same faerie. Eddie had been right—it wanted something. Presumably it still did. I just couldn't see what it was—what any faerie could want badly enough to kill on such a scale.

"Do you really blame Alden for that?" Eddie asked. "For Matthew?"

I sighed. "Not really," I said, and tried to mean it. "He was twelve. He didn't know."

"There's nothing to stop us from telling someone, you know. The Faculty or the Board. We promised, that's all. Promises can be broken."

"Do you think we should break this one?"

He thought about it for a long time. I couldn't read what those thoughts might be, or where they would take him.

"If it was just me, I might," he said at last. "But it isn't just me. It's you, and Hero, and Alden. I don't want to betray you all."

"I feel the same." I also, though I didn't say it, felt a rush of relief. I knew then that I was as bad as Alden. I didn't want to lose Camford because of what had happened at Ashfield. "Not when I can't think what good it would do. The door's closed now—the danger's come and gone, and it can't come back. And… and then there's Matthew. I don't know what the Families would do to him if they knew I'd saved him. Nothing bad, perhaps…"

"Oh, nothing good," Eddie said, and his voice was surprisingly grim. "I forget sometimes. You don't know them like I do. It might be different if you could tell them how it was done—you can't, can you?"

I shook my head. It was gone. The spell that had made so much sense only hours ago had unravelled in my head like a ball of wool. The deal had been one use only.

"No." That, above all, seemed to make up Eddie's mind. "No, I think Alden was right after all. We'd best put it behind us."

"For now, at least." It was a weak compromise. As though I truly thought we might change our minds. "We can talk about it again later. Back at Camford, if we don't go back to Ashfield. The four of us."

"Yes," Eddie agreed. He looked very, very tired. "You're right. Whenever we're next all together."

But we never were all together after that. I think, even then, we knew that we would never be together in this world again.