Page 40 of The Moorwitch

“It will be all right! Just hold on!” The spell finally woven, I stretch my hands wide, and the threads snap taut. But soaked as the fibers are, it will take more magic than usual to ignite them. I reach out with all that is in me, curling invisible fingers around grass, heather, and bush, wrenching energy from their leaves.

Pain knifes through my chest, piercing lung and bone.

Above me, Sylvie screams, her fingers sliding free.

She falls.

I cry out, doubling over and forcing that tide of energy through the narrow, sharp point that is my constricting heart. It is like driving a blade into my own breast. But I channel relentlessly, and at last, the threads flare bright.

Sylvie jerks to a halt a half yard from the rocky ground, where her head would have split on a nasty crag of stone. Suspended in place, she gasps and stares up into the rain, as if she cannot believe she is still alive.

Ican hardly believe it.

Breathless with pain, my head spinning, I reach out with ash-covered hands to grasp her skirt and pull her to me. A moment later, the spell releases and she drops into my arms.

I hold her to me, finally sucking in a sob of relief.

“It’s all right,” I whisper into her hair. “You’re safe now.”

Carefully I set her down and search for any injury, but besides a few scrapes on her knees and palms, she’s blessedly unharmed.

“Thank the Fates,” I breathe.

“Thankyou,” she says. “You saved me! With magic!”

I don’t tell her how close it was. That had I faltered another heartbeat, she’d be severely injured or worse. I only squeeze her hand and tell her if she ever pulls a stunt like that again, I’ll hex her with a month of warts.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and to her credit, she does look it. Her gaze drops to her shoes, and I spy a bead of water on her lashes that I do not think is rain.

I sigh. “Come, let’s get you dried off. And ... shall we keep this our secret?”

Smiling, she loops her pinky around mine. “Definitely.”

We make our way back to the house, a muddy, soggy journey that leaves us both spattered up to our knees. My heart still has not quite recovered from that painful channel, and I hope Sylvie doesn’t notice how much I lean on her as we hobble along. Every step is a test of sheer willpower, and if she were not there to witness it, I might let myself collapse into the muddy heather and give in to the pain.

“I wish I could go to a school like yours,” Sylvie says. “Somewhere far away, with other girls like me. Are there boys there too?”

“There are a few, though most boys join the Telarii, not the Moirai.” Even there, they are usually outnumbered. A talent for Weaving and channeling has always been more common among women, in nearly every culture and time. I don’t have the heart to remind her that without the ability to channel, no Weaving school of any order would take her.

“Well, I should make friends of them all, even the boys.”

“Maybe when you’re a bit older, you could—”

“No.” She shakes her head. “Connie saidnever. He didn’t go to school, he says, and I don’t need to either. Just like I don’t need to go to the seaside, or sail to France, or get married.”

I stumble on a slick rock, nearly choking on my own tongue. “Married?He’ll stop you from gettingmarried?”

She shrugs. “Not too put out about that one, to be honest. But I wish Connie would get married. At least then I’d have a sister ...”

She glances at me sidelong, her eyes narrow and sly, and I shake my head firmly. “No, Sylvie. Don’t even entertain the thought. I’ve a life in London to go back to.”

And I can think of beggars back in the Devil’s Acre with more appeal than the insufferably arrogant Conrad North.

“Some days,” she confesses, “I feel like a prisoner. Like our poor Queen Mary, locked away for no sin other than existing. Or like Elaine of Astolat, doomed in her tower to watch the world only in a mirror.”

How lonely has this child been, that she would pour her whole heart out to a guest she’s known for two days? My heart breaks for her, and not just because I see myself in her plight. But what can I do? What advice can I give her? Should I tell her to seek out a faerie and strike a devil’s bargain, trading one sort of cage for another?

She wants answers I cannot give.