Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(84)

A coughing fit erupted in his chest. He put a hand over his mouth and took hold of the basin to stop himself from falling. When he pulled his hand away, it was spattered with thickened blood. His breaths came out in sharp wheezes, as if his lungs were pinioned, spread flat and unable to take in a breath. He spat clots of blood into the basin, its metallic taste clinging to his tongue.

This magic was going to kill him.

Finn appeared beside him in the mirror’s eye, her hand pulling back the hood of the vanishing cloak. The look on her face told him that he wasn’t exaggerating. This was going to be the end of him. Alfie stepped away from the mirror and pressed his back against the cold stone wall, his body quivering as he slid to the ground.

He had some control over the magic and it was hurting him. What would it do to his people if it went on unchecked?

Then there were soft hands on his face, halting the dizzy spiral of thoughts. Finn was crouched before him, her eyes locked on his.

“Hey, hey,” Finn was saying over and over again. Her palms were cold. He leaned into her touch, too afraid to stop himself. “Look at me.” When he said nothing, she gripped him by the chin. “Mírame. Count.” She said it with a calm that spoke of practice, of routine. The surety of her gaze steadied him.

“Diez, nueve,” she started, nodding at him to continue. He counted on, his voice feeble.

She took his hand and pressed it to her chest. He could feel her heart beating steady beneath his palm, so controlled compared with his own. “Slow yours down, meet me in the middle.”

Her heart thrumming beneath his palm, Alfie closed his eyes and counted. With every count down his pulse slowed and calmed.

“You’re okay now,” she told him, and somehow her words made it true. He couldn’t help but wonder when her words had begun to carry weight that could tether him to life as he felt it slipping so quickly from his hands. Whatever had caused it, he was thankful.

“I’m okay.” He opened his eyes and nodded shakily. “Where did you learn to do that?” Alfie asked. When she squinted at him, he said, “Counting.”

She stilled, her lips drawing into a tense line, and he knew without asking that this had to do with Ignacio.

“Given enough time,” she said, her eyes on the wall behind him instead of his face, “you can learn to survive most anything. You learn to breathe when your lungs are too scared to move and you learn to calm before your heart bursts. You learn.” She shrugged. “Or you die.”

Her heartbeat was picking up beneath his palm, and Alfie’s chest ached at her words. He couldn’t help but wonder what else she’d been made to learn to survive. How much of herself had she hollowed out and cut away in that effort?

From the moment he’d gotten stuck in her door, his perception of her had been shifting, sliver by sliver—as if he stood before a painting streaked with dust and he need only brush his fingers through the grime to see more of it and less of what he’d thought it was. And he could not go back, could not replace the dust and see what he’d wanted—a ferocious, heartless thief. Now he only saw someone who was risking her life for his own foolish mistakes. Someone who bore more scars than he could count, but still rose for another fight. Someone who, if they’d met in different circumstances, might be his friend.

Before he could stop himself, the words spilled past his lips. “There are some things people should not have to learn. At least not so well.”

Finn’s eyes met his and again he got the impression of something unseen swimming beneath the calm of her face. With his hand splayed over her heart, his thumb had fallen into the soft hollow of her throat. When she looked away from him and swallowed, he felt her throat move with the act of it, sending a thrill through his fingers.

Finn said nothing. With a careful hand, she took his palm from her chest and put it down on his bent knee. Her eyes scanned his sallow, sweating face before looking at the dragon.

“When you were standing over that guy’s body, your eyes went wide like you were seeing something I couldn’t see. What happened?”

Alfie swallowed thickly, the anger inside him flickering back to life. “That man was involved in my brother’s death. He used to be a friend of my family, someone we trusted.” Alfie’s jaw clenched tight at that. “I never understood why he did what he did. I asked for clarity and the dragon answered.”

Finn blinked at that. “It just answered? Just like that?”

Alfie nodded, his head aching from the slight movement. “This magic, it’s not like normal magic. . . . It just, it listens. Or it listened to me. It responds to desire without a word, without question.”

Her eyes darted back to the dragon, her gaze wary. “What did it show you?”

The image of the strange tattoo flashed in Alfie’s mind and he wished he could recall it now and see something in it, something that would give him a clue as to why Dez was taken from him, but he saw nothing new. Only the snarling bull and its sharp horns. “It showed me a tattoo of a bull.”

Finn tilted her head at that. “A bull. Like an angry-looking one with its horns thrusting forward?”

Alfie stared at her, his heart beating in his throat. Had she seen some other tattoo of a bull or the same one he’d seen in his vision? He had to know. He reached hurriedly into his bag and pulled out the roll of parchment he’d brought to communicate with Luka. “Could you draw it?”