He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. Realization dawned on his face.
“You know it’s not true,” he said, staring at the lighter. “It won’t prove anything.”
He flicked the lighter, and an inch-tall blue-and-orange flame sparked from its tip. The second it did, he flinched, such a small movement I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been watching so closely.
He let the flame die, and his Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow. Then he scowled and flicked the lighter again, defiantly. We both stared at it for a second, watching the flame dance in the drafty room.
In one quick motion, he brought it to the inside of his forearm and hissed through his teeth. He grimaced, and looked away, but left the flame in place for five incredibly long seconds.
When he started to shake, I batted his hand away. “Stop. Enough.”
Stellan dropped the lighter to the ground and clutched his arm to his chest.
I reached for it, and he rested his forearm in my hands. I looked for the burn.
There was nothing there.
I stared, then grabbed his other arm. He shook his head. “It’s this one. Right there.” He pointed to the spot and grimaced. “Hurts like hell.”
I had burned myself with a curling iron a few months earlier. It went bright red immediately, and within a few minutes, it had blistered. I reached my fingers to the back of my neck. Even now, I could still feel the welt, and I’d only touched the iron to my skin for a fraction of a second.
On Stellan’s arm, there was no mark at all. I touched the skin carefully with my thumb. It was warm, but no redness, nothing. “Not even like the ones on your back,” I whispered.
“Those burns were much worse.” He sounded as awestruck as I felt. “I got them saving Anya. A burning beam fell on us. It took me a minute to get out from under it, and—”
He looked up, and I could see the doubt shining in his eyes.
I latched on to his uncertainty. “Think about it. If we were right, and you were the One, and if we all got away before the Dauphins could catch us, and we have all those other clues to the tomb? We might be able to find the treasure ourselves. You wouldn’t have to count on the Circle anymore. You could take Anya and go anywhere you wanted.”
He still didn’t look convinced. I caught his hands. “Please,” I said, changing tactics one more time. “Just let me out of here so we have more time to investigate. If you sneak me out before Monsieur Dauphin notices—”
He took his hands back, letting mine fall limply to my sides. “I can’t risk—no. I’m sorry, kuklachka, but no.”
I closed my eyes, defeated. “Then at least call the Order,” I said.
Stellan ran a hand through his hair. “Do you even have the phone number?”
“I memorized it last night.” I rubbed my eyes. “Give me your phone.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket hesitantly. “If I got caught talking to the Order—”
“Fitz is going to die otherwise!” I grabbed the phone and punched the number in. “Tell them we’re still trying to find the One. They can’t blackmail us unless they keep him alive. I hope.”
Stellan took back his phone. “I’m sorry,” he said again. And he was gone.
CHAPTER 39
Without windows to judge the passing of the day, I wasn’t sure how many hours had gone by, but it had to be evening by now, and no one else had come in to see me. Maybe they’d changed their minds and were putting it off. Or maybe it just meant a wedding took more than a couple hours to plan, even for the Circle. I stared at myself in the small, utilitarian mirror. This bathroom was rustic compared with the marble and gold of the one upstairs, and the version of me staring back from the mirror was an entirely different Avery, too.
Even if Stellan had called the Order and gotten a reprieve for Mr. Emerson, it was starting to sink in that I was really about to get married. Could they do this without my permission? Would it be legally binding? I’d refuse to sign the papers. I’d run away later.
But if they could track me as a random girl in Istanbul, there was no way I’d be able to escape as a wife.
Wife. The word sent a violent shiver through me.
As if on cue, the door opened and I jumped, flattening myself against the bathroom wall. Elodie came in, along with four other maids who chattered at me in rapid French. So much for putting it off.
“Sit,” Elodie said, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. She dragged the single chair in the room across to the mirror and pushed me into it, then pulled at a limp strand of my hair. “This is disgusting. Have you even showered today?”
I glared at her. “Silly me. I must have missed the spa in this cell.”
She rolled her eyes and studied me in the mirror, pulling my hair back from my face. This was eerily reminiscent of the plane to Istanbul, when she’d put me in the Herve Leger dress.
“Up,” Elodie said. “We don’t have time to wash your hair, so dress first, then I’ll see what I can do with . . .” She waved a hand at my head.
I didn’t say anything while one of the older maids pulled the wedding dress over my head and adjusted the fitted waist so it flowed in a graceful A-line over my hips. The cap sleeves settled onto my shoulders, and she laced up the corset back so tight, I gasped. She gave it one more pull for good measure, and then Elodie gestured to the chair again. I sat gingerly, my back rod-straight in the corset.
Elodie went to work on my hair.
“Does Luc actually want this?” I remembered him smiling at that boy at the club. For that and plenty of other reasons, I was pretty sure he had no interest in a relationship with me, but the political implications of it were something different entirely. In the mirror, I could see the older women whispering behind me while one pulled a pair of blush-pink heels out of a box.
“I can assure you Luc is just as excited about the nuptials as you are.” Elodie tugged a little harder than necessary on a piece of hair before securing it with a bobby pin.
“Can’t we put it off until we can talk about it?”
“No.”
“Because it’s fate?” I said sarcastically. “Our fates are mapped together, as the mandate says.”
“Do you know what a fate map is in biology?” Elodie twisted half of my hair up and set to curling the other half. “It’s a map of which cells in an embryo should develop into which specific adult tissues. But what they should develop into isn’t necessarily what they actually do develop into. They can be manipulated, or change on their own, and end up as something completely different from what they were fated for.”
I turned to stare at her. That was a strange thing to say.
She wrenched my head forward again, her honey-dark eyes still trained on my hair. “I’ve always loved science,” she said sweetly.
So she was just torturing me. I sat in silence while she finished. Another maid handed her a cascade of white lace, and Elodie draped it over her arm.
“Amazing that you managed to keep your eye color a secret,” she said, smoothing the lace with her fingers. “And now, only the Dauphins and a few of their staff members know. Good thing you have this to cover your eyes.” She affixed the white fabric in my dark hair with a comb. “Your father wouldn’t be the only one who was angry if the Dauphins’ plan was unveiled. If anyone else at the wedding saw your eyes before the union was official . . . it would be a riot.”
I glanced up sharply. That was it.
I watched Elodie, who kept her eyes trained on my hair. Maybe she wanted me to make a scene so Monsieur Dauphin would have an excuse to kill me.
Elodie stood me up from my chair. There, staring back at me from the mirror, was a bride.
“Doesn’t it seem wrong to you that a girl has this much power but has no say in what happens to her?” I said, still staring at my reflection. This couldn’t be where the past few days—really, my whole life—had led. “This is so Middle Ages.”
“Oh, cherie, it’s much older than that.” Elodie worked her fingers under the veil and to the back of my dress. “Now let’s make sure this is tight enough.”
She undid the corset strings and I started to protest, but rather than pulling them tighter, she let them out enough for me to breathe. I looked at her in the mirror again, and she continued to avoid my eyes.
Could she actually be helping me? Why?
“There,” she said. “Now don’t do anything to muss yourself up before the guards arrive to take you to the church. And take this.” She pressed a large black umbrella into my hand. “It’s raining, but don’t be sad. Rain on your wedding day’s said to be good luck.”