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“I may not have magic, but I can see well enough.” She nodded toward the book like it might turn around and bite at any moment.

“A part of you disappeared when you opened that book. Your eyes, they were all wrong. Being in the room with that thing, it feels like being in a room with a corpse. It stinks of the grave.”

Lydia held the book closer and felt it turn warm, like a kitten in her lap. Funny , she thought. To her, the book only smelled like clean earth.

Rebecca’s eyes flicked to Lydia’s hands, softly caressing the book. “If you hold on to that thing for too long, it will eat you . Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Lydia looked down. The bloody streaks had disappeared, as if some hungry thing had lapped them up. She nodded.

“If you take it back to your academy, will it be safe?” Lydia did not reply. She didn’t need to. Rebecca saw the answer in her eyes. “You should destroy it.”

“What happened to using it against the Germans and ending the war?”

Rebecca stood with a grimace. “Is that what you think you should do? Now that you have it?”

For a moment, Lydia considered it—the glory and the power, the intoxicating violence, the triumph—and felt a wave of terrible shame wash over her. “No.”

Rebecca looked at her, and Lydia was sure that she could see the ugly truth, lurking just beneath her skin. That she had considered using the book. And that it had excited her.

···

Later, Lydia sat on the edge of her bed with the Grimorium Bellum balanced on her lap. She knew she should try to sleep, but something about the book held her captive.

The Grimorium Bellum was dangerous. She knew it the way you knew a particular dog was dangerous, or a man who walks too close behind you on the street.

It wasn’t so much about what it was doing, but what it could do.

Lydia could feel the potential of it under her hands, like a spring wound too tight, begging to be released.

But there was something alluring in it too.

The book seemed to speak to her, to want her touch.

She felt it curling around her ankles, rubbing against her skin. It liked her.

Think of all the things we could do , it seemed to whisper.

Lydia stood and walked quickly to the chest of drawers across the room, and shoved the book inside. She needed to get away from it, just for a few minutes.

She stepped into the hallway, ignoring the way the book seemed to clamor for her attention, even from a distance. She walked, passing room after room, until she stood in front of Henry’s door.

She knew she should leave him be. He hadn’t spoken a word since the farm, not even to say good night.

She understood all too well what he was going through, and knew she shouldn’t push her presence on him.

Still, she had thought she might offer him some words of comfort, but now she felt foolish.

Henry didn’t want to see her. He wanted to be alone.

She was just about to return to her own room, when a voice drifted through the door.

“If you’re going to come in, then come.”

Henry was perched on the edge of the bed, just as he had been that first night when she’d stumbled into his room by accident.

His head was bowed, but he looked up when she entered.

He wasn’t crying. Lydia expected he would, later, but now he was looking at her with a naked mixture of grief and exhaustion that felt intimately familiar to her.

It had changed the shape of him, making him both very young and impossibly old at the same time.

For a moment they were silent. It felt wrong, being in his bedroom like this, even though she’d been here before. It felt different, now that she was inside her body.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hover. I just…I wanted to see if you’re all right.”

He looked at her for a moment. Lydia thought he had never looked at her directly for quite that long before. Then the moment passed, and his gaze dropped to the floor again.

“I didn’t want to believe it was him. Even after the cave. Even after you told me…” He stopped, and Lydia watched the muscles in his throat constrict. “I didn’t want to believe he was dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said again. Henry gazed down at the blistered skin of his hands.

“Let me see that.” She crossed the room and sat on the bed next to him, taking one of his hands in hers.

“What are you doing?”

“Healing these. It won’t take me a minute.” She laid her fingertips on his palm, and was about to speak the words, when Henry pulled away.

“Don’t.” He swallowed, then looked down at the bloodied skin of his palms. “I’m sorry. Just…thank you. But don’t.”

She could feel the warmth of him, sitting this close.

She could see the muscles in his neck and jaw, straining to keep him from falling apart.

She looked at his injured hands and at her own bloody palms. She reached out and touched the tips of Henry’s fingers with her own, gently, so as not to cause him any more pain.

She was sure he would pull away from her at any moment, but he never did.

Instead, he expelled one long, unsteady breath, and reached back, caressing her fingertips.

They sat quietly for a few minutes, neither of them looking at the other.

“What was he like?” she whispered.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lydia saw Henry’s lips lift in a smile.

“Funny. Smart, but never snobby. He always watched out for me. Took an interest, gave me a job when nobody else would, made sure nobody gave me a hard time. He was…” He took a stuttering breath, and Lydia saw his throat straining against the pain.

“What else?”

Henry took a moment to collect himself, weaving his fingers more tightly with hers.

“What else?” she asked again.

···

He talked for a long time, the words flowing faster and easier the longer he spoke.

It seemed like a relief, like he’d been desperate to tell someone, anyone, about his friend.

Sometimes he laughed, relating some tale of René’s many eccentricities.

Once or twice the grief seemed to sweep up all at once and overwhelm him, and when that happened, Lydia would wait, not speaking, until he regained his composure and continued.

When he finished, Lydia rested her head on his shoulder, their hands still intertwined as they sat together in silence.

“Thank you,” Henry said softly.

“For what?”

“For being here.”

She tilted her face up to look at him. He was beautiful.

Square jaw and soft eyes, large hands with long fingers, the kind that seemed to belong more to a pianist than a scholar.

He looked back at her, their faces so close that she could see the flecks of copper in the deep brown of his irises, and Lydia felt the air become charged.

Something shifted almost imperceptibly between them.

Henry’s hand drifted toward her cheek, his thumb making soft circles on her jaw.

His eyes lingered on her mouth. She felt his heart beating in his fingertips, or maybe that was hers, she wasn’t sure.

His nose grazed hers, and she felt a rush of heat, low in her stomach. A warm, hungry need.

“ Lydia ,” he whispered, and the sound of her name on his lips made her breath catch. “I—”

Suddenly, he took a sharp breath and stood, the change so abrupt it left her dizzy.

“Henry?” She rose, too, alarmed. His posture had gone rigid, and he was staring at something in the corner, his breath gone fast and shallow.

She tried to put one hand to his cheek, but he flinched, and she stopped.

Lydia turned to see what had startled him so, but when she followed his gaze, there was nothing.

When she turned back, he was blinking at her, as if he’d just woken from a nightmare.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I—” He took one step away from her, and then another. “Forgive me. That was…” He swallowed, then shook his head, trying to steady himself. “It’s late. We should…” He glanced toward the door.

“Oh.” Lydia felt a flood of embarrassment wash over her.

She couldn’t understand what had happened.

Was it possible she could have misunderstood so completely?

She looked down, smoothing the wrinkles from her skirt.

“Yes. Of course.” She went and stood by the door, looking back in the hopes that he would say more, but he wouldn’t even look at her.

She felt her stomach sink. She opened the door. “Well. Good night, Henry.”

He opened his mouth, and for a moment, she was sure he was going to explain. Then she saw his jaw tense, and it was as if a wall had gone up around him.

“Good night, Lydia.”

···

Lydia made her way quietly back to her room, shame and desire and bewilderment all twisting endlessly inside her. She noticed the heat in her cheeks, the soft pulsing in her fingertips as she closed the door behind her, the way they tingled slightly where she and Henry had touched.

The Grimorium Bellum was there, waiting for her. It greeted her with a surge of excitement, humming and chattering in its own strange language. Lydia listened to it for a moment, to the way it seemed to respond to her. Its presence felt seductive, almost loving.

She hesitated, then pressed the bloodied skin of her palm to the cover.

She stayed that way, feeling the Grimorium Bellum grow warm and content under her touch. It made her feel powerful, important. She tuned herself to that sensation, observing as it bloomed into mania, making her head ache.

“ What do you want? ” she whispered as the mania turned to horror.

You , the book whispered back. You you you you you you you.