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THE COATING OFsnow that moments ago I cursed I now thank God for, as I slide down the hill faster than I could ever run. My ankle twists under me as I tumble to the bottom, but I’m up in an instant, hobbling as fast as I can. The water runs swift and icy, pounding the mill wheel round and round in a deafening roar. That’s when I see them.
They must have forgone a witness, because it’s just the two men, their figures slashes of black against the white landscape. John stands on the embankment, coat flapping behind him, his shirt open, oblivious to the fast-falling snow. My breath comes out in a hiss of relief, my body slumping into itself. I follow his line of sight to where Cyrus is struggling to load his pistol. John must have had the first shot, and missed.
“John!” My legs are numb, my throat hoarse as I limp with outstretched hand. The wind carries away my words. “John, please! Stop!”
The snow comes faster. Cyrus raises his gun, pointing it into the dizzying whiteness.
My heart lurches to my throat. John might have shot wide on purpose; a gentleman never shoots to kill. But Cyrus? Cyrus is no gentleman.
My ankle is on fire and I can barely do more than hop forward a few slow, painful steps at a time. Even if I could reach John, what good would it do now? But I have to try, so I hobble as fast as I can, trying to attract his attention.
Something is wrong with Cyrus’s pistol—jammed, I think—and he struggles to cock it. All that I know about duels comes from my novels, highwaymen meeting at the break of dawn with their flintlock pistols to settle debts of honor. If those stories are in any way true, then Cyrus will have to count to ten once his pistol is primed and aimed. There is a little time yet.
“John!” I ignore the pain shooting up my leg as I stagger through the snow. My feet are numb and heavy. I’m so close now that I can see his hair dark and plastered to his temple.
It isn’t fair. After everything John and I have been through, do I really have to watch as he throws it all away for the sake of honor? What if Cyrus misses and it goes to John again? Will John aim straight and true this time? He could be arrested for murder. He could hang.
Finally he looks up and sees me. With a quick glance at Cyrus struggling with his pistol and then back to me, he starts running to close the small distance between us. “Lydia, my God, what are you doing here?”
I collapse in his arms in a heap of relief. I made it. I didn’t have to turn myself into a yellow bird, I didn’t have to mutter some arcane spell. I made it here with only the help of Joe and Ajax and my own sheer force of will.
“John, please call it off. I don’t care what he does. He can publish any story he wants. Please, just call it off.”
But John isn’t listening to me. He’s taking my hands in his own and rubbing them. “You shouldn’t be out here. Your hands are frozen. How did you get here? We need to get you back home.”
He scoops me up before I can utter a word of protest. And oh, how wonderful it feels to be in his arms, to know that he is safe after so much heart-pounding anxiety. “Cyrus!” he cries out over my head. “Hold your fire!”
Cyrus looks up in surprise, his pistol fumbling in his hands before he regains control of it. “Lydia?” He gapes for a moment.
But instead of lowering his pistol, he raises it, training it on John. “Put her down, Barrett! We still have unfinished business.”
John’s fingers tighten around me. He mutters a curse. “Don’t be a fool! Would you see her hurt?”
Through the snow I can see a ripple of uncertainty move through Cyrus’s body, but his pistol doesn’t waver from John. “Put her down and let her see who the real man is.”
“John.” My voice comes out in a whimper.
Gently, he places me down, and I wince as my weight lands on the twisted ankle. He takes me by the shoulders and squares me to look at him. There are dark smudges under his eyes and I wonder what happened last night. How did it go from talking sense to Cyrus to coming out here in a snowstorm to point pistols at each other?
“I want you to go back to the edge of the woods and wait for me there. If...” His words trail off and he shakes his head. “Just, wait for me there and don’t move.”
It’s no use. With Cyrus’s pistol still trained on him, both men watch me as I hobble back to the trees.
Tears sting my eyes as I brace myself against a pine tree. Anger roils my insides.It’s not fair, it’s not right.But I’m not helpless. I may not understand the breadth of my abilities, or even how to channel them quite yet, but I know enough. I have my memories and my natural instincts, as well as what I learned in my books and from Mary Preston. But, I promise myself, this will be the last time I use them in anger.
It doesn’t matter if John sees what I am now, what I can do. If he is disgusted by me, at least he will be alive and capable of such thoughts, instead of dead in a box in the ground.
I’m not cold anymore, a warming calm wrapping itself around me. Tingles run down the length of my arms to my fingers. My body vibrates. Red tints everything around me from the porcelain snow to the gray sky above.
I feel alive, at one with every snowflake that melts on my skin, every lick of wind that raises my hair off my neck. My blood runs in time with the river. My ears roar. It’s all so clear now.
The darkness that has hovered at the periphery of my vision since coming to Willow Hall—the same darkness that gave me strength when I fought Tommy Bishop, the same when I almost lost control with John after Emeline drowned—I can use that. I can grasp it and mold it, make it mine to use as I see fit. The book showed me how. I feel my blood run with the power of generations of women before me, feel Emeline as if she were standing right here beside me. Mary Preston was right, it’s part of me. I see my mother’s kind face, remember her gentle words.There’s not one drop of evil in you, Lydia.
It seems an eternity, but when I look up again at Cyrus, he has only just called out eight of his count to ten. I slowly raise my hand. The air around my fingers is alive, taut, like dogs at the end of their leashes awaiting the command. The sensations that I’ve tried to ignore, to push down inside of me for years come alive. I never knew what to do with them before, but I know now. I will not hide anymore.
My eyes bore into Cyrus as I reach deep inside myself to use every power I possess. I envision his arm twisting around, snapping, the pistol falling as his fingers stiffen. The words from the pages of my book swim through my mind.A witch has a third eye that she may use to see the world not as it is, but as it may be. See what you want to see, bend vision to your will.Everything stills. I focus, hard, on his arm. Far away I hear John’s voice, raised in alarm as he calls my name. Cyrus counts ten.
Three things happen at once.