Rook said, in a more subdued tone, “When I’m healed, I plan to leave this place.”
I startled. “What? Why?”
“You don’t need me. You’ve great new work to do, and…new friends. I’ll hold you back. I can find work—”
“You have to stay with me, Rook. Please.” Tears spilled down my cheeks.
“It’s not proper.”
“Who’s to say what is proper? I already live outside of society’s good opinion. How much more damage can this possibly do?”
He laughed. It looked as if he wanted to agree, but then he said, “You have Mr. Magnus—”
“Magnus means nothing to me, not in that way.” My voice almost failed. “You are the most important person in my life, and you’ve always been. Please don’t ever leave.” He placed my hand over his chest, so that I could feel his heart, a soft and steady beat against my palm.
“I won’t go if you don’t want me to.”
Not tonight, not tomorrow, not a year or twenty or fifty years from now. My shoulders shook. Why should love be so painful?
“You know I’d hate to ever leave your side,” I said.
“As you wish, Henrietta,” he murmured. I leaned my forehead against his. His breath caught, and we drew nearer…until the darkness at the corners of the room began to close in around us. Instinctively, I flinched. The shadows vanished. “I’m sorry,” he sighed. “It always seems to get in the way.”
“Yes.” I wore a false smile. In his eyes, I recognized the change I’d noted before. The irises were pure black. No blue at all. There are subtle differences now, in the eyes….
Someone cleared his throat. Magnus watched from the doorway. “They sent me to tell you there’s a messenger. The queen has summoned you. It doesn’t look dangerous.” He appeared to have heard everything. I didn’t care about that. At least, I couldn’t. Not anymore.
“Thank you. I’d like to wash up, but afterward I’ll go directly.” I squeezed Rook’s hand and left the room, brushing past Magnus on my way out the door. A moment later, I heard his footsteps behind me. He looked determined.
“What is it?”
“Howel, you don’t understand—”
“Yes, I do. You came back for me when most others would have left me to rot. You’re my dear friend, as you’ll always be.” I emphasized the word friend. I held out my hand to him, praying it remained steady. “I hope you’ll invite me to your wedding. I want you to be the brother I never had.”
I already regretted this. That didn’t make it any less right.
He stared at my hand for a moment, as if he didn’t know what on earth it was. Slowly, he took and kissed it. “I’d be honored to be that close to you, Howel.”
“Thank you,” I said. He held on for too long. Then he kissed my hand again. That tingling warmth spread throughout my body. I wanted…
No. This had to stop. I tried to politely slip away, but he held on. There was a determined look in his eyes.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t let you go.”
“You will.” I yanked out of his grasp. “Or we won’t see each other again.” I walked off, feeling sick to the core of my being. If he felt half as awful as I in that moment, he was sorry enough.
—
THERE WAS NO FANFARE, ONLY A servant who led me down dark halls to a large room. My heart was pounding despite my best efforts to remain calm. After all, if the queen wanted me dead, she wouldn’t have allowed me to have Blackwood and Fenswick as escorts, though they’d been instructed to remain in the front parlor. I just hoped I’d got all the soot off me.
I was shown into a small receiving chamber. On the far side of the room, Queen Victoria sat in a chair before the fireplace, her dog in her lap. She looked very small and young now that she had removed her jewels. She smiled when I entered.
“Sit, Miss Howel.” I did. “We…that is, I know what you’ve done tonight.”
“I’m glad that I was able to stop Korozoth, Your Majesty.”
“Lord Blackwood came to see me straight after the fighting and explained how the ward happened to fall.” Would she now blame me for the trouble in the first place? “It grieves me that Master Palehook could have abused my people and my trust so shamefully.” She stroked her little dog’s head. “Even if I could replenish the ward, I would not.”
“So Your Majesty isn’t angry?” I twisted my hands in my lap.
“No. I’m pleased, both with the destruction of one of the great Seven, and what I’ve learned of your people.”
“My people?” The sorcerers? The magicians? I felt no surge of belonging to either.
“The sorcerers have been left to their own devices long enough. They behave as if they are sorcerers first and Englishmen second.”
“They’re not my people, Majesty. My father was a magician with a talent for fire. Howard Mickelmas did teach me how to pass for a sorcerer. I was prepared to accept your commendation and lie to everyone.”
“Your confession is good to hear, Miss Howel.” Now the guards would arrest me. “Your honesty makes a strong case for your integrity. I need that on the front lines.”
“Even if I’m not the prophesied one?”
“I’m not sure I ever had tremendous faith in that idea,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
“But I’m not a sorcerer.”
“You use a stave. You employed many sorcerers’ techniques in Korozoth’s destruction, so they tell me.”
“Hargrove—that is, Mickelmas—told me that I was a cross between the two races. Magicians are descended from sorcerers, after all. I belong nowhere.”
“Then it seems you may choose your own path,” the queen said. What a strange and heavenly idea. “But I warn you that you have an irrevocable decision to make. I recognize you were born a magician and may need to control those aspects of yourself, but if you become a sorcerer, you must turn your back on a magician’s label and life.”
My mouth went dry. “You’ll commend me as a sorcerer, Majesty?”
“If you wish. It will come with the privileges of that rank, but the responsibilities as well.” She drew herself up by every royal inch. “I mean to send us on the attack. We will retake Canterbury from the Vulture Lady, we will destroy Nemneris and preserve our coasts, and we will march through the midlands and the north until we come to R’hlem himself. And we will finish him, before this war drags on further into its second decade.” I could hardly contain my astonishment—or delight—at her words. “You will be a part of my plans, should you choose this path.”
“Are you certain this is a wise decision?” God, what was I saying, challenging the queen? She smiled.
“My advisors are against it, but they were led astray by Master Palehook, and even old Agrippa.” Sadness tinged his name; she could believe it no more than I. “They tend to look suspiciously on any woman who dares to challenge their authority.” The edge in her voice couldn’t be mistaken. Perhaps she understood my situation better than I imagined. “I feel we must try what has not yet been attempted, and you have given us the first clear hope of defeating these monsters in eleven years. Now, Miss Howel, have you made your decision?”
What did I want for myself?
As a magician, there would be the possibility of learning more about my past, about my father. But my work would be outlawed, and my influence in this war would be less. As a sorcerer, I would be on the front lines, but I would look behind every step of the way, in case an enemy from my own camp planted a knife in my back.
But I had friends now. And above all, I had to help Rook. There was only one path that would allow me to stop his transformation.
“I choose to become a sorcerer, if Your Majesty wills it.”
“Kneel.”