“Well, that does present a problem,” I said. “You need to have that figured out. What have you done to this magician? Why does she hate you? Is it justified?”
Phelan stopped, his back angled to me. “Yes. I stole her home, her territory. I disgraced her.”
I rose and took a step closer to him, my blood singing. “Then you should start by apologizing to her. Genuinely. And then by telling her why you did such a terrible thing to her. And then ask for her forgiveness, preferably on your knees, for burning her drawing. Perhaps she will grant it to you.”
He was silent, but he turned and stared at me with a ferocity that made my breath hitch.
He said, “That sounds a bit excessive, don’t you think?”
“I suppose it depends on how badly you want to win her over.”
“I don’t want to ‘win her over.’”
“Then what do you want?”
“I want to apologize,” he said. “And I want to change what she thinks of me. Then, hopefully, speak candidly with her about the information I need.”
“Do you remember what you once said to me, Mr. Vesper?”
He was quiet, regarding me.
So I continued, “You told me that you are not a kind person. So why go through all the trouble of apologizing?”
“Have you ever wanted to change someone’s opinion of you, Miss Neven?”
“Not really,” I replied. “You care very much for what others think of you.”
“Don’t you?”
“Does it look like I care?” I said, opening my arms.
His eyes searched mine, as if my secrets hid within them. “If you don’t, then I wish you would bestow such magic upon me. I would like to not care as much as I do.”
I approached him, ignoring how he tensed when I moved to face him, when only a slender space of air remained between us. Rain began to tap on the windowpanes. The night felt heavy and swollen with the storm; the shadows gathered knee deep in the corners of the library.
“If you want to learn,” I murmured, “then it begins here.” I laid my hand over his heart. “It begins when you acknowledge and respect who you are—scars and mistakes and victories and accomplishments all accounted for.” I let my hand slip away, fingertip by fingertip, and watched his deep inhale, as if I had left a scorch mark behind. “Now. Summon her.”
I returned to the safety of my chair.
Phelan cleared off his desk. He set my drawing over the center of the wood, along with a silver bowl, a moonstone, a knife, a candlestick. He next selected a spell book, leafing its ancient, crinkled pages open to a spell of summoning.
I watched as he read it, once, twice, as he began to utter the rivers of incantations.
He placed my drawing in the silver bowl and cut his palm with the knife. His blood dripped into the basin three times, marring the parchment, mingling with my art. Next, he held the moonstone over the wavering candle flame, until the stone seemed to come alive, a vein of light pulsing within it. He opened his bloodied palm and the stone gently lowered itself into the bowl, as if gravity had thickened. The moonstone came to rest over his blood and over my drawing. Smoke rose, a dancing blue tendril. The air smelled like cloves, like the wind from the mountains.
It was beginning.
“Clementine,” I heard Phelan call. His voice echoed, resounded in my bones. “Clem, will you answer me? Will you meet with me?”
He was making no sound with his lips. The conversation was in our spirits—silence in our ears and yet thunder in our minds. His eyes were focused on the smoke as my drawing broke into flames, and my eyes were focused on him, the way the light washed over his face. His lambent eyes as he waited for me to materialize.
I prayed he would not look at me in that anguished moment when I felt the magic tug in my chest. I waged war against the overwhelming urge to rise and answer him.
Sweat beaded my brow, slipped down my back like a taunting fingertip.
“Clem,” Phelan called to me again, his voice sharp and beautiful as glass in my mind. Reflecting prisms of color in every direction.
I forced my answer down, down in the tangled vines of my lungs and the wild briars of my being. And yet the tug turned bright and painful. I discreetly braced my feet on the legs of the chair. I held to the armrests, my knuckles strained white.
Hold to the chair, I ordered myself. Don’t move, don’t rise, don’t utter a sound. Don’t answer him.
The flames rose with crackling intensity, but just as swiftly as they rose did they begin to die. Once my drawing turned into ash, when the spell had nothing more to devour, it would end.
“Clem!”
I closed my eyes, trembling.
If he had only looked at me, he would have known. He would have realized that his magic could not summon me because I was already present.
But his gaze remained on the fire, and I was nothing more than a distant constellation in that moment, gleaming at the edges of his sight. When the flames surrendered into cold smoke, he let out a tremulous breath, slamming his palm on the wood in defeat.
I opened my eyes and looked at him. Phelan was ashen. Sweat dripped off his chin, and his eyes were bloodshot.
“Where is she?” I asked. My voice felt like sand in my throat.
He remembered me, at last. His gaze found mine and he sighed, lowering himself to his chair.
“I don’t know. I must have done something wrong.”
If there was ever a time for me to reveal myself to him . . . it was now. After this moment passed, things would change between us. I could feel it like the gradual shifting of a season, like autumn giving way to winter snow.
But I was silent, unyielding.
There was too much I knew—he and Lennox wanted to find Mazarine—and so much I didn’t know—what did they plan to do with Mazarine? If I revealed myself to him now . . . I wasn’t sure what would happen, and I couldn’t take that risk.
I left him in the library, my drawing burned into ashes and my heart beating far too swiftly for my liking.
20
The day of the new moon arrived like any other, save for the fact that I slept in that morning until I was rudely woken by Phelan knocking on my bedroom door.
“Miss Neven?” His voice melted through the wood as he knocked again. “Are you awake?”
I groaned and blearily took note of the daylight that snuck in through a crack in the curtains. It couldn’t be later than nine o’clock, and I grumbled as I slipped from the bed, my hair a long, tangled mess down my back.
I opened the door to glower at Phelan, who had claimed I could sleep as late as I desired the night before, in preparation for battle.
To my immense annoyance, he had already showered and dressed. He smelled of soap and spicy aftershave and morning air. He had obviously taken a walk, and had probably already eaten breakfast as well.
“Yes, what is it, Mr. Vesper?” I sighed, and watched as he took note of my dishevelment.
He was speechless for a moment but quickly recovered by remembering what he held in his hands: a rapier.
“Are you sword trained, Miss Neven?”
I stared at the rapier he proudly held and arched my brow. “This is why you have woken me from the sleep you promised me last night?”
“I thought you would be up by now,” he replied. “There’s much to do to prepare for tonight.”