A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(90)

The comment about stone-collecting was salt on the cut of childhood that Bel had reopened with her mockery at breakfast, and Edwin realised—finally, too late—the particular cut of Robin’s that had been exposed in turn. It was, after all, how the Blyths had seen their firstborn son. A collection of pieces to be used.

“It’s not,” Edwin said, thin with desperation. “I don’t—Robin, that’s not—the foresight isn’t all it is. I promise.”

“Really? You don’t even want me to try and use it without your supervision, and you certainly can’t be there every time it happens. I suppose I should stop trying to seize control over my own mind, and just let it keep interrupting me at any moment. Just write everything down and send the notes to your precious Assembly? Even if they’re about things like—” Robin waved a hand between them, colour in his cheeks.

A chill went through Edwin. “You—you saw that? When? Before we—” The chill doubled. “Is that why you . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

“No!” said Robin. “Do you think I would just—accept something like that? Go blindly along?”

“Don’t you?” Edwin heard himself say. “Go along with things?”

“I certainly went along with it when you kissed me. Another use I could be to you—fucking Gatling’s replacement because you couldn’t have him.”

Some of the blood left Edwin’s face; he felt it go, like the stroke of cold hands down his cheeks. “What.”

Robin’s face was already changing. He rubbed at it with both hands, and when they dropped he looked rueful. “I—no, that wasn’t at all fair. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just . . .” He sighed. “I should go. It’ll be for the best. I’m taking Maud, and we’ll go.”

“Take the motorcar,” Edwin said. “Leave it at the station. We’ll send someone for it. Or not.”

“I’m not going to tell your secrets to anyone, you know,” Robin said. “And Maudie won’t either, not if I ask her to promise me. I’ll put in for a transfer out of the office, like I originally planned to. Whoever’s after the contract should have realised by now that I haven’t any idea what Gatling did with it. I’ll vanish back into my old life and actually look after my family, instead of running away.”

“I don’t know if you’ll be able to vanish that easily,” Edwin said. “As far as we can tell, you’re still a foreseer. And now the cat’s out of the bag in that regard.”

He tried to imagine what it would have been like if they had taken Robin’s memory, and Robin had kept on having the visions anyway. He’d have thought he was going mad.

“Still a fascinating object,” Robin said, resigned.

“I’m saying my world might find you again, regardless.”

“Then I’ll deal with it.”

Edwin wanted to snap at him, to demand that Robin accept his help, that Robin—go along with it. Come and be studied. Come and be stroked. Edwin set his jaw and managed to erect his usual coldness. “You’re right. It is for the best.”

Robin reached out a hand to Edwin’s arm, but Edwin was raw with the effort of holding himself calm. He didn’t think, he just flinched away.

“Don’t. Don’t touch me. Please.”

There was a long, long pause. All the tension that had begun to ebb came rushing back again, as though the room were a cradler’s string in hands suddenly yanked apart. A lump of misery bobbed into Edwin’s throat.

“Exactly what you want,” Robin said, as though solving a riddle. “But not what you want to want?”

It was just true enough that Edwin didn’t know how to explain the ways in which it was false. Robin looked . . . sad. Not even angry. Edwin wanted to build a spell that would dissolve everything, take it down to atoms and essential forces, so he wouldn’t have to look at that expression anymore.

Robin asked, “Do you even like me at all?”

“Y—yes. Yes.”

He almost didn’t get it out past the sudden echo of memory. He and Hawthorn had bickered, but they’d had very few real fights. Edwin wanted any conflict to end as soon as possible; Jack seemed to want to live in a house built of low-grade needling and casual mockery. They had fought at the end, short and sharp like a fist to the ribs. It had nothing to do with wanting to stay. They both knew how unsuited they were, beyond the fact that Edwin had little enough power that Jack could pretend to have escaped the magical world entirely, and Jack was trustworthy in his own abrasive way, and sometimes would look at Edwin almost as though he were handsome, and sometimes would insult Edwin’s siblings with breathtaking, gleeful carelessness.

Even so, pulling apart had been like extricating one’s clothes from a blackberry bush. Edwin had been off-balance with hurt. He’d said those words, or some very like them. Do you even like me at all?

Jack had laughed that cruel laugh of his. If I ever did, I can’t remember why. And he’d said other things too. He had a devastating eye for weakness, Jack Alston did, and during their ill-advised months together Edwin had come undone under his capable hands and shown him nearly everything there was to see.

Robin was nothing like that. Robin was kind and Robin loved fiercely, but Robin, too, had already seen too much of Edwin. Edwin couldn’t rip off the last layer. That was all there was left of him. There’d be nothing left but blood.