The Devouring Gray(64)
Awareness dawned in his eyes. “You’ve been training.”
Harper’s skirt swished around her knees as she stepped forward, extending the point of her blade until it was a hair away from his chest. She had a sudden, fervent wish for it to be made of steel, not wood. “Stop talking.”
When they dove back into sparring this time, she could tell Justin was no longer holding back. They parried and wove around each other, Harper easing into the pattern of the fight. Somewhere in the past three years, Justin’s gangly frame had filled out, and that new strength showed in each of his lunges. His muscular arms batted away her blade with the easy confidence of someone who was used to winning.
They had trained together as children, and it did not take Harper long to catch on to the familiar rhythms of Justin’s moves. He’d grown up but his technique hadn’t, and so she knew every feint, every weak point. But the way Harper fought had changed since her ritual. Her missing arm had altered her balance and footwork, forcing her to develop different attacks, different defenses.
He didn’t know who she was anymore. Which was why she would win, and he would lose.
Justin’s easy confidence was dissipating, a thin sheen of sweat collecting at his temples as his chest rose and fell in small, shallow breaths. Harper could feel her own body starting to tire, her muscles straining with the effort of outmaneuvering Justin’s larger frame. It was too easy for him to get close to her; a well-timed parry left their torsos only inches apart. Harper jerked away from him, but not before his scent filled her nostrils, a familiar mixture of soap and woodsmoke.
She steadied herself and lunged, whacking the hilt of Justin’s blade hard enough to send it flying out of his hand.
Harper stepped forward, her muscles burning, and tipped her sword up to his throat. “You lose.”
Justin’s eyes met hers. There was something unsettled in his gaze. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop it.”
His voice was husky and low. “Harper, if you’d just let me explain—”
“Like you let me explain after I failed my ritual?” She extended her arm up, pressed the tip of the blade against the skin above his Adam’s apple. “You never gave me a chance. Now you know how it feels.”
Justin’s eyes widened, his hands raising above his head. A clear surrender. “If it’s any consolation,” he said quietly, “it feels like shit.”
Harper realized, dimly, that her hand was beginning to shake, the edge of her sword trembling against Justin’s throat.
She wanted him to hurt like she was hurting. Was tempted to try to run Justin through with a wooden blade, for the past three years of her life, for the things he’d done to her, the damage he had caused.
Yet she was still overly aware of the proximity of their bodies. It would only take a half step for those muscular arms to close around her, for her forehead to nestle against the planes of his chest.
All this, and she still wanted Justin Hawthorne to touch her.
Harper lowered her blade, disgusted with herself.
“Just go,” she said. “Please. Just go.”
For once, Justin listened to her. Harper watched his slumped shoulders as he loped back toward the fair, the sword he’d left behind discarded in the grass.
Violet watched the clouds gather from her bedroom window, tendrils of gray that reached toward the trees below them like claws.
It annoyed her that her mother knew nothing of the Saunderses’ heritage—except for the Founders’ Pageant. Violet had woken up that morning to find a crown on her dressing table and a text telling her that the sheriff had asked her to participate, and wouldn’t it be good for Violet to go hang out with her new friends?
Violet was pretty sure the crown was actually made of bone. She’d wanted to examine it more closely, but Augusta Hawthorne had taken it away after the pageant, claiming it needed to be stored in the town hall.
There was something different in the air tonight. She’d been able to feel it back at the Founders’ Day festival, a slight charge in her fingertips like a static shock. That strange pulsating energy she’d felt when she was near Orpheus bubbled within her now, and she could tell it wasn’t just because the cat was nearby, mauling a toy mouse from his perch atop her pillow. This was more than the tether she’d felt between them, stronger, even, than the tether she’d felt between her and that resurrected body.
It was power. Her power. And it was everywhere, fizzing through her blood, frightening and exhilarating in equal measure.
The Hawthornes had already told her that the fall and spring equinoxes were the days of the year when the prison was at its weakest, and the Beast inside it was strongest, but Justin had made a point to remind her again today. He’d warned her to pull down her storm shutters and stay inside until dawn. But Violet didn’t feel scared—she felt strong. Stronger than she had since she’d arrived in town. And she could not shake the urge that there was something more she could be doing.
Violet stared down at the sheet music binder in her lap, at the phrases that were so basic, so flat, and sighed. She could feel the way she wanted the notes to change just by looking at them.
On a whim, she leaned forward and penciled in an extra flourish in the margins of Abegg Variations, op. 1. She wondered what it would be like to start from nothing, to improvise on an empty page. To create music the way Rosie had created art on a blank canvas.