He breathed in. Breathed out. Let his thoughts break like waves.
When the taste of pepper came, it was fainter than usual. The vision was so indistinct that Robin thought at first he was seeing another foggy day, but it wasn’t that. The lines of the library could still be glimpsed as if through a heavily grimed window. Trying to focus on the foreground, the vision itself, struck a match of pain behind Robin’s eyes. He gritted his teeth and pushed harder.
What is going to happen?
Moving shapes. A silvery blur dotted with flashes of maddening colour that never cohered—a stupid, useless pointillist picture of a vision—was that a tree? a chair? Pepper burned on Robin’s tongue and his skull throbbed with effort. I’m going to make this work, dammit, dammit—
A room. It should have been awash with flowers, and wasn’t. The parlour at Sutton Cottage. Edwin was stepping through the frame of the mirror leading into the hidden study. The glass had liquefied to allow him through, but like a rippling pond it still reflected things in a distorted fashion. There was at least one person, perhaps another, in the room. Edwin’s hand was tight on the frame; he began to glance over his shoulder, speaking—
A very young man with a head of dark curls and a poor-fitting suit, shoulders hunched as he stood in the eaves of a closed street door and scribbled fast in the kind of notebook you saw emerging from the pockets of journalists. He leaned frequently around the frame of his shelter, as if expecting someone, or afraid of being caught—
Priscilla, Lady Blyth: youthful and alive, dimples cradling her loveliest smile as she accepted the fur placed on her shoulders by her husband. Pearl buttons on her long gloves. The way that smile slipped into annoyance as she glanced upwards through the banisters to where her oldest child was crouched, watching, aching—
An explosion that sent smoke and mud in a growling cloud against the sky, a field crawling with uniformed soldiers—
Edwin lying sprawled and lifelessly white on a gravel path between perfectly manicured lawns, a group of men in evening wear straightening up from inspecting his body and looking, in eerie unison, down the path to see—
Spring sunlight sparkling like diamonds on the Cam, the view from Arthur Manning’s second-year room where it overlooked a green-cosy bend like Millais’s Ophelia, the prow of a punt just floating into view—
A blond woman with hectic colour in her cheeks and the side of her hand in her mouth, ecstasy soaking her expression, the other hand caught in the elaborate skirts of an evening dress—
Robin was losing his grip. The part of him that was still him, that was a mind dimly aware of its existence beyond the images playing themselves out, had just enough sense left to worry. The visions had gone on too long. They were becoming, if anything, more immersive. And moving faster and faster, like the flickering spin of a zoetrope. Blurring together. Dizzying.
The last image that appeared for long enough that Robin had a chance of paying it proper attention was, again, Edwin. His hands were brimming and burning with a light so bright it looked as though it could set fire to a forest. Edwin raised those hands, drawing them back as if for a blow. The look on his face was utterly unfamiliar, a snarl nearly animal in its ferocity.
And then—
And then—
Edwin didn’t have a habit of remembering his dreams. The rare exceptions were the bad ones: hiding uselessly in a version of school gone darker and less familiar, crouching with knees drawn up, hearing Walter’s voice drawing near. Sometimes those dreams began as more mundane things in which Edwin was sitting university examinations, but they always managed to end in the same place.
This particular morning he woke with scraps of dream disappearing like sun-touched mist, and he could feel enough of their fading edges to suspect that the dream had been a good one. More than good. Pleasurable. Or perhaps, given the previous night’s events, it was only memory. Either way, Edwin closed his eyes and savoured it: warm desire like melted honey, and the phantom ache of someone else’s body pressed to his.
Last night had not gone as Edwin had expected. He was grateful that Robin had been so easygoing, so happy to let things play out as Edwin steered them. He’d made no attempts to push at Edwin’s boundaries or his stated desires.
Edwin brought his own hand up to his throat and let his fingers rest there. It was early; he wasn’t quite awake yet; he was safely alone. He could let himself wonder if he’d wanted to be pushed, and what he would have done if Robin had pressed the full force of his so-caring, so-trustworthy self up against the walls that Edwin had been frantically erecting even as the seas of lust tried to erode their bases.
Here, now, Edwin could examine what lay on the inside of those walls. There were so many things he wanted. Sometimes his whole body was a drawn-back bow of wanting. But telling Robin even a single naked truth—Every time you touch me it’s exactly what I want—had been terrifying enough without Edwin making himself prove it.
And it hadn’t mattered. It had been satisfying, bordering on glorious, giving Robin that taste of a spell that Edwin had created. Edwin wasn’t going to be able to look at Robin’s shoulders again without remembering the view of them from behind. The firm muscle bunching. Robin begging. The tightness of him as Edwin pressed in.
That was a sense-memory to keep under glass, the prize of Edwin’s collection.
There was a knock on the door. Edwin’s mouth curved into the start of a smile.
“Are you awake? Mr. Edwin?” It wasn’t Robin’s voice. The girl knocked again, louder, which stirred Edwin’s curiosity. The staff had instructions not to disturb the household at this hour.
“Yes.” He threw on a dressing gown and slippers, and opened the door. One of the maids stood there, hands clutched taut in front of her, looking even less comfortable than Edwin felt.
“Mr. Walcott says you’d better come down to the library at once, sir. It’s Sir Robert.”
“What? What about him?”
The girl swallowed. “I don’t know. I think—he’s gone all funny, sir.”
“Funny?” Fear harshened Edwin’s tones. He regretted it when she flinched. “No. All right. Thank you. I’ll be right there.”
He fetched and pocketed his cradling string, then jogged down the main staircase and towards the library. The wide doors were closed, and a rustle of voices came from behind them.
The tableau that encountered him when he pushed open one door—a small group of people, including two servants, clustered around a single figure—made Edwin’s knees weaken and panic cram itself into his throat. He steadied himself on the door handle. He couldn’t be sure where he was, which house on whose blood-sworn land, whose body he was looking at.
This is my fault, he thought, quite distinct.
“Win!” said Charlie, straightening up. He, too, was gown-clad. Bel was properly dressed, but her hair tumbled unbound down her back. Edwin experienced an unbalancing moment of being glad to see his sister and brother-in-law; more to the point, to see only them. Small mercies. He wouldn’t have been able to cope with Miggsy or Trudie at that moment.
Charlie went on, “Don’t suppose you can shed any light on this, old man? He’s taken rather ill, I’d say. Is it that curse?”
Ill wasn’t dead. All funny wasn’t dead either, if Edwin had been thinking. If he’d been able to think past the sheer wrench of terror. He hurried forward. Robin was slumped in the window seat, looking at first glance as though he’d lost himself daydreaming, his half-lidded gaze focused somewhere beyond the glass. His face and shirtfront were wet, beads of water clinging to the brown hair that hung over Robin’s forehead—sweat?—and the only movement was the rapid rise and fall of his chest.