An Enchantment of Ravens(56)

“Undoubtedly.” He paused. “Isobel . . .”

I smoothed my skirts. The ground suddenly became very interesting to look at. “Yes, it was supremely idiotic of me to eat something Lark gave me. I shouldn’t have gone off on my own, either, but I’m worried the court—Gadfly especially—will grow suspicious if we spend more time together.” The leaf I’d torn up had blown into one of the teacups. “And I needed to get away. You noticed it too, didn’t you? What was happening back there?”

When I glanced up, Rook’s expression told me he would have brought it up himself if I hadn’t first. “Yes. Your Craft is affecting us somehow. Isobel, I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“If I keep demonstrating, do you think it will put us in danger?”

“As I said, this is—new. My kind hungers for your work, all the more for its difference. I cannot honestly say that I believe there to be no risk, but I do think it would make the court suspicious if you stopped now, with everyone expecting you to continue. If, perhaps, we stay for just one more day, and leave after the masquerade ball tomorrow night . . .”

A long pause elapsed, neither of us looking at the other. Our alliance had progressed far past the point of mutual survival; we both wanted to buy ourselves more time together for decidedly unpractical reasons. It was no use pretending otherwise, and yet we left those words unsaid.

“But I’m almost healed,” he went on decisively, forcing himself to finish. “If you would like to leave today, even right now, we can.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, cursing my foolishness. “After tomorrow night, then.”

His gusty sigh of relief wasn’t subtle. I aimed a wry smile at him, but something else drew my attention. “Your pin’s gone! It isn’t in your pocket, is it? It must have been torn off when you dropped me.”

He patted at his chest in alarm and then ducked to hunt through the wildflowers. This wasn’t the leisurely search of someone who’d lost a pocket watch or a handkerchief. Rather, he clawed at the ground with a wide-eyed desperation that could be inspired only by the loss of a priceless and irreplaceable treasure. When he found it, he gripped it tightly in his hand. He moved his thumb to the hidden clasp. But then he stopped himself, remembering I was there, and started to put it in his pocket instead.

My heart hurt for him. It was painful to watch Rook reduced to this over something so small. He cared more about that pin than most people cared about everything they owned in the world.

“Who was she?” I asked.

On his knees, he stilled.

“I just—I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that. I suppose I only wondered whether—how the two of you escaped the Good Law.”

I thought he might be angry with me. Instead, he looked at me as though I’d torn his heart from his chest. His eyes dulled with shame and despair. He put the pin in his pocket.

“I was in love with her, but we never broke the Good Law,” he said.

“How is that possible?”

I wished I hadn’t asked. His misery was terrible to see. “She didn’t love me back.”

Silence reigned in the meadow. After a time, a squirrel started gnawing on an acorn overhead.

He resumed haltingly. “She was—fond of me, but she knew she could not be anything more. We decided it would be best if we never saw each other again. She gave me the pin as a good-bye present. I stopped visiting Whimsy, and more time passed than I realized.” He looked at the ground. “When I returned, I found that her great-grandchildren now lived in the village, and she had died long ago of old age. Until your portrait, I never came back.” He drew in a breath. “I know it’s—wrong, that I care so much about the pin. I can’t explain it. It’s—”

“It isn’t wrong.” My voice was so soft I barely heard myself speak. “Rook, it isn’t. It’s just human.”

He hung his head. “What has happened to me?”

I couldn’t stand it any longer. I went to him and pulled him into an embrace. He was so tall I felt I barely accomplished anything; I had my arms wrapped around his middle like a child. But after a tense moment he stumbled into my touch, as though he were too crushed by despair to stand on his own.

“You aren’t weak,” I said. I knew no one had ever told him that before in all the long centuries of his life. “The ability to feel is a strength, not a weakness.”

“Not for us,” he said. “Never for us.”

There was nothing I could say to that. My words of comfort were in vain. I could say nothing to reassure him, not truly. Because here, in the forest, his humanity would be the death of him. Perhaps not now—perhaps not for hundreds of years—but in the end, no matter what, he faced murder at the hands of his kind. I steeled myself against the tears stinging my eyes and the hard, painful knot swelling in my throat. It seemed terribly, unimaginably unfair that I was going to leave him here to die alone. The unfairness of it howled within me like a storm, tearing everything apart.

He pulled away. I must have lost track of time, because I felt cold without his touch.

“It was arrogant of me to assume that I could protect you from every ill at the hands of my kind.” His voice sounded empty. “I barely arrived in time to save you.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”