Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(72)

“Out with it, then.” She crossed her arms. “Why are you looking at me like that? Say it.”

With a tilt of his head he finally asked, “How do you hold on to yourself?”

She squinted at him. “Qué?”

“If you slip in and out of identities the way I do cloaks, how do you hold on to yourself?”

Finn blew air through her teeth. What a soft life he must lead to not see the freedom in what she could do. In the power of being so many people that you became no one at all. People with one face, one story, have weaknesses, vulnerabilities, things to exploit and dangle over their heads. But to be no one was to have nothing to lose and nothing to gain. That was true freedom, plain and simple.

“That’s the best part,” she said, her shoulder lifting in a shrug. “If you can trade identities at the drop of a hat, then you’re invincible. Thanks to my gift not a man on this earth can touch me.”

Alfie fell silent, frowning at her as if she’d said something sad instead of clever. “But then no one can help you either.”

Finn bristled, something within her sputtering where it usually ran smooth as honey. She didn’t like how easily he did that—with a fistful of words he could turn her strength into weakness. All her repartee, opaque and clever at first, now felt embarrassingly transparent. If she longed to be untouchable, it was because someone had taken her in their hands and broken her. If she wanted to fly from identity to identity, then she’d tarnished the one she’d been born with too much to return to it.

And if the prince could sense this, surely others could too.

What did you do that would make you never want to see your own face again? What made you bury it under all this magic?

Finn shoved Kol’s rasping voice from her mind and found the prince’s golden eyes still clinging to hers. He looked away from her then. From the discomfort prickling between them, she could tell that he knew he’d overstepped. That he’d spoken to her with the concern of a friend when they were barely acquaintances, on a good day.

The sweeping room suddenly felt small. It seemed to fold in on itself, like those delicate paper flowers sold in the Brim—large swaths of colored tissue creased and curved into something new.

“I should go,” he said, his voice unraveling the silence.

“Sí,” she said, her words frayed as she lowered herself onto the plush bed. “You should.” Finn settled into the bed, pulling the thick blankets about her.

He did not rise to the bait this time. “I’ll come for you in the morning,” he said.

She watched him open the door, and the sight of his back, of his hand closing on the doorknob, brought her back to earlier today. To when she’d told him she wouldn’t help him. And instead of trying to twist her to his will until she gave in, he’d simply reached for the door as he did now. He hadn’t seen her as something to bend into whatever shape would better serve him.

He’d seen her as a person. A person who had said no.

Her heart beat in her throat, and inside her rose the urge to define where they stood. The urge to canvas the crevasse between them and see it as she knew it was—insurmountable.

“Prince.” The word fell from her lips, soft and pillowed with the sudden rush of exhaustion falling over her as she nestled into the sheets. She raised herself up onto her elbows and stared at him where he stood at the door, his back still to her.

He didn’t turn to look at her. “Yes?”

“Did you magic the door and windows to keep me from escaping?”

His hand still on the doorknob, he turned his face slightly, and she could see the delicate sweep of his profile, the way his Adam’s apple bobbed in his elegant neck as he swallowed. The tense set of his mouth told her the answer before he spoke it.

“Yes.”

The knot in her stomach loosened then. The boundaries had been redrawn, defined in thick sweeps of ink. Her world, his, and the vast space between.

“Good.” She sank back into the pillows, a yawn curling her tongue. “Then you’re smarter than you look.”





24


The Farewell


As the sun rose, Alfie, Luka, and Finn stood in the palace stables, tension reverberating through them, as if they were the plucked strings of finely tuned instruments. Alfie rubbed his slick palms against his trousers and saddled his horse.

Finn had transformed Luka and Alfie into one another. Luka had scribbled a note to the king and queen saying that after his run-in with Tiago he would rather skip the Equinox Ball tonight and travel with a friend instead. Since Luka had too many friends to count and loved to travel, the king and queen would hardly be surprised by this.

The whuffling of the horses and the warm scent of hay should have calmed Alfie, but his body screamed for rest from using the magic. The few hours of sleep he’d gotten had done him no good. With shaking hands, he readied two horses for their journey to the prison where Xiomara dwelled.

Finn pulled the hood of the cloak off and appeared in the corner of the stable, tucked away from the stable doors where sunlight had begun to pour through, greeting the whickering horses with its warm caress.

She stared up at the horse Alfie had saddled for her, her lips curving into a grimace.

“Do you know how to ride a horse?” Alfie asked, wanting to break the silence instead of filling it with his fearful thoughts of what was to come.