The Cerulean (Untitled Duology, #1)(39)

“Is it . . . are you en—”

“Don’t say it.” The tears were coming, she couldn’t stop them, and she had never let Leo see her cry before. “Please, just . . . leave me alone.”

“Agnes, I . . .” His arms twitched like he wanted to comfort her, and that made everything worse. She wrenched off her shoe and threw it at him, missing his head by inches and hitting the door instead.

“Get OUT!” she screamed. He cursed and vanished.

She got up, slammed the door shut, then went to her bed to retrieve the hidden photograph. Her mother’s face was blurred through her tears.

“Why did you have to leave me?” she demanded. “Why couldn’t you be here to protect me from him?”

Her mother only laughed. Agnes wiped her nose on her sleeve.

Engaged. It didn’t seem real. Tomorrow she would meet with Ebenezer Grange, the man who would be her husband. Her entire body rejected the idea.

She lifted her gaze to the book with the letter inside it and a steely determination set in. She was just as much a Byrne as she was a McLellan, goddamn it. What had Mrs. Phelps called her mother? Wild. Unconventional. Well, so was Agnes.

She grabbed the book off the table and headed to her lab. She would write this essay. She would book a ticket to Pelago and leave as soon as possible—Eneas would take her to the Seaport tomorrow without question. She would meet her grandmother and attend the interview with the university Masters and she would live her own damn life the way she wanted to.

She took the jar with Sera’s hair out from where she’d shoved it in the very back of her supply cupboard and carefully unscrewed it. She sterilized a set of tweezers, then laid the hair on a slide and put it under the microscope, turning the magnification to 10X. She peered through the scope and saw nothing more than a strand of blue hair. She increased the magnification to 20X, then 50X. The hair was the most perfect color blue she had ever seen—she’d called it cerulean before, but really it was much richer. Like a cloudless summer sky. She was so awestruck by the color that it took her a moment to realize something was missing.

Agnes increased the magnification to 100X and gasped. There were no ridges or overlapping scales on the cuticle to protect the cortex. This strand of hair was entirely smooth. That didn’t make sense. That wasn’t how hair worked. She took it off the slide and sliced it in half with a scalpel. Pinching it carefully with the tweezers, she held the cross section up under the scope.

The medulla, or the core of the hair, was nearly impossible to see—Agnes had tried when she studied her own hair, with dismal results. But in the center of Sera’s strand was a tiny light that pulsed like a star. She sat back and placed the hair on the slide again, rubbing her eyes. Hair was made of dead cells, but Sera’s hair seemed to be alive. She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew it was important. The Masters at the university would never have seen anything like it. She began to scribble in her journal, writing down her observations and thoughts, jotting down notes about how she might test its properties.

She felt a twinge of guilt that the hair had not held any answers that would help Sera return home, wherever that might be. But Agnes had her own prison to worry about. She bit her lip, hating that she could not be more helpful, loathing the idea of leaving the girl in her father’s clutches.

She worked until well past midnight, when she finally collapsed, exhausted, into bed and sank at once into a blissfully dreamless sleep.





16

Sera

WHEN SERA CAME TO, SHE FOUND HERSELF INSIDE A large crate with wide slats. There was a chain wrapped all the way around it, and no matter where she kicked or pushed, the wood refused to budge.

“Let me out of here!” she screamed. “Mother Sun, hear me! Help me, please!” She fell back against one of the slats, hot tears filling her eyes. No one answered her. The only sound was her labored breathing. Light was coming from the ground a few yards away, an odd purple-pink glow. Slowly, her eyes adjusted, and she was able to take stock of her surroundings.

She appeared to be on an elevated platform made of dark wood, with thick red curtains hanging on either side of it. Mossy banks grew up at its edge, dotted with luminescent pink, purple, and orange flowers that provided the light.

At the back of the platform, the wood vanished and a garden had been planted, thick grass and tiny flowers growing among spry saplings. In the center of the garden stood a slender tree, its bark silvery white, with leaves of jade inlaid with blue veins that made them look turquoise. The saplings were not nearly as magnificent in color, plain brown trunks and green leaves.

For some reason, Sera felt the tree seemed sad. Its branches were bent like it carried a heavy load, and there were markings on its trunk that looked like a face frowning. It was not a very big tree—she would be able to reach its topmost branches if she stood beside it on her tiptoes. She wondered what it was doing here, inside . . . whatever this place was. And the moss and flowers too. Why would the people of Kaolin grow moss and trees inside?

And what was she doing here? What did they want with her?

She shuddered, recalling the events of the previous evening. The low-voiced girl was actually a male named Leo—Sera had realized it when she saw him in the daylight. Males looked sort of like females, except they had no breasts and were taller and hairier and meaner. She touched the spot on her temple where the other male’s fist had crashed into her skull. Sera had never been hit in her whole life. It had hurt so much, but the magic in her blood had healed the bruise, leaving her skin smooth and unblemished so that only the memory of the pain remained.