The Glass Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy #2)(63)

“Sand,” he repeated, thoughtful.

She rolled onto her shoulder, clasping Emery’s arm. “Please don’t tell anyone,” she begged. “If it falls into the wrong hands . . . Oh, Emery, what would Excisioners do with such magic? They’re powerful enough already.”

She thought of Delilah slumped in her chair and pushed the image away. A sore lump formed in her throat.

“You should report it,” Emery said, lowering into the chair, “but I won’t force you. And I won’t say a word.”

Ceony let out a long breath. “Thank you.”

Emery nodded. He pulled his arm from her grasp and entwined his fingers with hers.

“She saved me,” Ceony murmured. “Delilah saved me. She taught me the spells, not knowing I would use them. If she hadn’t, I would be dead. Magician Aviosky would be, too. Grath wanted her heart.”

Grath. Ceony shivered.

“What will they do?” she asked.

Emery leaned toward her. “What do you mean?”

“I . . . I killed him, Emery,” she whispered. “I stabbed him and shattered the glass. I killed Grath.”

“Saving your life as well as the life of a prestigious magician,” Emery said. He released her hand and caressed her cheek. “If anything, Ceony, you’ll be congratulated.”

Ceony’s stomach turned. “I don’t want to be congratulated.”

“Then you won’t be,” he promised. “It’s over today. We’ll go back home, if that’s what you want. If you can bond to paper again.”

Ceony nodded. “I do. And I can. I’m sure it will work.”

Emery stood and bent over her and smoothed hair from her forehead.

“I’ll go take care of things. I’ll be right back, and then we’ll go home together,” he said.

Ceony nodded, a small warmth filling her heart. She clung to it, cherishing it, as she watched Emery go. Emery, the paper magician. How she loved him.

Grunting, Ceony pushed herself into a sitting position and reached for the pitcher, but she stopped halfway, studying her outstretched hand. The hand that had gripped the glass that killed Grath Cobalt. The hand that had made her a Gaffer.

She brought it closer to her face, tracing a finger over her palm and knuckles where the scars should have been. She was a Gaffer now, but tonight she would be a Folder again.

And Ceony realized she held the secret Grath had labored years to discover, the secret no living magician knew existed: the secret to breaking and resealing bonds. She was a Folder—she would always be a Folder—but she could be a Gaffer, too. Or a Pyre, a Siper, a Polymaker. She could even be a Smelter.

Balling her hand into a fist, Ceony twisted in her bed and looked out the window behind her, out into the yard of the hospital and the street beyond, where the buggies were parked bumper to bumper, and the first orange leaf of fall flew on the air, caught up by a summer wind. Ceony knew it then.

Starting today, she could be anything she wanted to be.