I thought Catherine would strike me. She brought her hand up as if she would let fly, but Mama’s shocked “Catherine!” recalled her. Her hand dropped.
Once in the ballroom, Lord Orwell stalked across the floor to the spot where I’d hidden. The room looked so different now, forlorn and sad. Colored streamers lay trampled on the floor; flowers hung dull and wilted on their stems. The water illusions had evaporated.
As the strongest Coremancer in the room, Lord Orwell cast the spell, pulling the reconstruction from memories lingering in the air. When he stopped gesturing and murmuring the Latin incantation, the faint silhouette of a girl took shape, crouched on the ground behind a tall plant. The air in the ballroom shimmered, and the illusion candles flickered. I caught the faint briny smell of the illusion beast, like an echo of a real scent. Light sparked in the center of the room, then my crouched figure rose up and shouted. Outside of the cheval glass in Mama’s room, I only ever saw myself in small mirrors and windows, in bits and pieces. It was strange to see all of me from all angles at once, tall and ungainly. The Reconstruction spell followed the illusion me, walking backward through the events of the night.
I waited for the Reconstruction charm to end there, for the Circle to turn to me with recrimination and accusations. But it didn’t.
My illusion self crept away from the plant and held out her hand.
I put my hands together to stop them from trembling, so Catherine would not see I was afraid. There was no help for it now. I couldn’t hide Freddy’s involvement any longer.
A figure flickered into being beside me, a golden-haired man a few inches taller than I. We stepped backward into a portal.
“That’s Freddy,” Catherine said. “But why would he help you spoil my debut?”
Mama shot a darkling look at me. She knew. I had been fortunate before that she had been so caught up in Catherine’s debut she had not had time to track my errant feelings.
“Where was the portal anchored?” Lord Orwell asked.
I did not want to answer. But the memory of the garden rose up full and fresh in my mind, and Lord Orwell plucked it out of me.
“The herb garden.”
I hung back behind the others, hoping to escape once again, but Papa took my hand and gently but firmly propelled me forward. We tramped across the lawn, past the rose arbor, and into the herb garden. Overhead, the stars shone and the night wind stirred through the branches of the trees. It was, impossibly, still the same night that had found me in the garden with Freddy. That moment was beginning to feel so distant, as if it were something in a story.
The reconstructed spell had continued in our absence, so when we reached the garden, we did not see the pair of us entering the portal. Instead, everyone saw our illusion selves embracing on the bench. The kiss that felt like a promise now looked like betrayal. My inadvertent betrayal of Freddy to the Circle. My betrayal of Mama’s strict training. My betrayal of Catherine, who glared at me with fury-bright eyes.
And something behind the fury I had not thought to see in my sister—hurt.
After the reconstruction, my mother led Catherine, alternately grieving and raging, to her room. The Circle led me—also grieving and raging in the silence of my head—back to my father’s study.
There they proceeded to dissect me, laying bare my motives like the skeleton of some beast. They determined the following: I was in love with Freddy, he had spelled me, and the sight of him in the midst of my sister’s charm had so enraged me that I destroyed her spell. How I destroyed her spell they had not yet determined.
Set in sharp syllables and indifferent pauses, my motives for the night became sordid and unrecognizable. I couldn’t find the texture and feel of the night air, of Freddy’s kiss, in their words. My story became instead something silly and shallow. A one-note piece of gossip for the morning papers, the younger sister consumed by jealousy.
“We would like to study her,” Lord Orwell said to Papa, sipping from a glass of water mixed with the headache powder most Luminate carried. Depending on the scope, spells were frequently exhausting, sometimes painful. “Discover how someone without magic can disrupt spells. As a scholar, you must appreciate that the more we know about magic and its failings, the more powerful we become.”
No.
“What I appreciate in the abstract and in historical records takes on a much different cast when applied to my own flesh,” my father said. It took me a moment to untangle his words and realize what he had meant: no.
One did not lightly refuse the Circle. For treason against the Circle, an entire family could be stripped of their access to the Binding, thereby losing their magic. For lesser offenses, the Circle might limit what spells one was allowed to cast. Families that stood publicly against the Circle often found themselves social pariahs, shunned by the highest orders of Luminate society. Small wonder Mama was so anxious. And angry.
Lord Orwell looked thunderous, his brows pulling together. “It is your duty—”
Lady Berri interrupted him. “It is late, and this discussion might be best saved for another time, when we have rested.” Her eyes caught mine. “I have a feeling, my dear, that you and I are to become much better acquainted.”
Morning came too early, all stabbing lights and throbbing in my skull. Then memory rushed in. By the time my maid, Ginny, came bearing hot cocoa, I had already pulled my favorite walking gown from my wardrobe, a plain green cotton with a black fringe along the wide sleeves and neck. I had to get out. I had to move, or I would perish from too much thinking.
Ginny’s blue eyes widened in dismay. “You’re not going out? I’m sure your mama intends you to stay in today.”
“So you’ve heard?” Gossip traveled particularly swiftly in the servants’ hall. “Did Mama tell you herself I was to stay in my rooms?”
“No.” Ginny smiled a little. “She said nothing to me.” Ginny was half a dozen years older than I, but she was perhaps the closest thing I had to a friend. She mothered me where my own mother did not, and knew well enough I could not bear confinement.
I nodded decisively. “Good. Then we are going walking.”
It had rained in the early hours of the morning after my father’s spell had lapsed. The distinctive petrichor of wet stone and earth and the damp slap of my slippers against pavement eased my restless heart. I was free—for the moment. In the wake of the storm, the clouds tore across the sky. Intermittently, the sun shot through the clouds, illuminating bushes like something out of a medieval manuscript or an Elementalist’s debut.