When he’d done this to himself, it had felt like tiny invisible threads reaching out from his fingertips, hooking into the muscle of the heart, shivering with each beat. Allowing Edwin to gently, so gently, push his magic down the threads and persuade the muscle to take a longer interval between twitches. He’d read all he could find on the physiology of the heart. Some of it had been beyond him—he was no physician—but he’d read anyway, until he had a mental picture to work with.
Now Edwin let the light of the spell build and slink down those threads like dew down spider silk. It was strange not to have the thump of movement in his own chest, to know that the twitch he felt was the beat of Robin’s heart, steady and fast, held in Edwin’s hands.
Beat. Beat.
Edwin kept his eyes on Robin’s face and concentrated harder than he ever had in his life. Nudging. Slowly. Slowly.
Beat. And pause.
Beat. And—now longer—pause.
Robin’s eyes had fallen closed. His colour had changed; he looked ashy.
Beat.
Bel made a low, surprised noise and hugged herself, arms around her stomach as though having cramps. Edwin wanted to scratch his skin off; it had hit suddenly, urgently. He gritted his teeth and ignored it and felt the invisible threads twitch, sluggish, slower and ever slower, until Robin’s heart gave one last pound and then—nothing.
Nothing.
“Charlie,” Edwin said. “Now.”
Charlie laid his spell-glowing hands over the ink-copy and lifted.
Edwin had been braced for Robin to scream again, but instead Robin’s body gave a silent jerky shudder that was even worse. There was a sobbing cry from Maud. Edwin didn’t look at her. He looked at Robin’s arm, where the black runes were—Edwin nearly sobbed himself, in sheer relief—fainter, and fainter again, washing away like chalk marks in rain.
Edwin forced himself to wait until there was no sign at all of the curse left. Then he took hold of the invisible threads and tugged.
He lived an entire lifetime in the gap between his signal—go, twitch, live—and the response. But respond it did.
After three full, normal beats, Robin shuddered again, and thrashed his way through an inhale like a man pulled from drowning. Maud made another sound. Robin’s eyes opened.
“Hold still, Robin, please,” Edwin heard himself babbling. He satisfied himself that Robin’s heart was once again beating on its own, withdrew the threads of the spell, and let his hands fall into his lap. He felt as though he’d run up and down three flights of stairs. His thumbs were tingling; he’d held the necessary loop so tightly that he’d cut off the circulation.
Which was nothing at all compared to what he’d done to Robin.
Robin was coughing, looking around. “Did I—” he started, voice dry as leaves, and was cut off as Maud flung herself into his arms. Robin hugged her and Edwin swallowed a harsh, useless jolt of jealousy. Robin looked over her shoulder at Edwin, then Charlie, then Bel. Then Edwin again. “What happened?”
“Second time’s the charm, it turns out.” Charlie sounded as ebullient as ever. “Quite literally in this case.”
The moment of realisation was another jerk. Robin withdrew his right arm in its ruined sleeve from where it was wrapped around Maud, and stared at it for a long time. The smile that broke onto his face was a painting of relief and joy.
“You tried again? And it worked?”
“Mr. Courcey did something to you to make it work,” said Maud, unexpectedly. Edwin hadn’t had any idea she’d followed the proceedings. He and Charlie hadn’t exactly been explaining the steps. “It was frightening. You looked positively ghoulish. But,” she went on, hesitant, “I suppose for you lot it was quite an everyday thing?”
Bel laughed. “Oh, by all means. We lift curses every second day.”
Robin rubbed at his arm. It was a motion that by now seemed part of the fabric of him. He said to Edwin, quietly, “How did you manage it?”
Charlie and Bel were still there. Maud was there. Edwin considered lying; and, as usual with Robin’s gaze on him, was unable to do it.
“I killed you,” he said. “Briefly.”
“You did what?” said Maud.
Edwin said, “Slowed your heart,” and held Robin’s gaze until he saw the realisation there. “And then sped it up again, obviously. The curse thought you were dead. That was enough.”
Robin squeezed Maud’s hand. “Well, I’m not. I am ravenous, though. Go and finish dressing, Maudie, and I’ll see you at breakfast.”
“You’re sure you’re all right?”
“I’ve a devil of a headache,” said Robin. “Otherwise, yes. I’m fine. I’m better than I’ve been all week.”
Maud left. Now that the show was over, Bel and Charlie followed suit, though Bel shot curious glances over her shoulder at Edwin. She was looking at him with more interest than she had in years. It was discomfiting.
The library doors closed. Edwin and Robin sat in the window seat, not quite touching. Edwin had no idea what to say. He wanted to sit there for another week, staring at Robin safe and unmarked and free.
“You killed me?” said Robin finally.
“I—yes. I know. Oh, God. I’m going to have to write a paper about it. A book.” Edwin could feel a hysterical, triumphant laugh trying to emerge. “I didn’t know if it would work at all. But I couldn’t think of anything else. You wouldn’t wake up.” He took a sobering breath. “You were just staring into nothing, Robin. And . . . it was the foresight, not the pain?”
A guilty expression washed Robin’s face. He nodded.
Edwin tilted his head to the books on the table. “What were you trying to do?”
“Force it,” Robin said. “Make it show me something useful, something that would give us more information about the last contract. Or the curse. Anything.”
Edwin stared at him, aghast. “You ended up comatose.”
“We weren’t exactly swimming in leads. I wanted to try something more than leafing through books.”
“That doesn’t mean the answer was for you to go throwing your mind into a kind of magic you don’t know anything about, without anyone’s guidance. You might have—if—are you completely stupid?”
He bit his tongue, but it was out there now. Robin settled farther back. From a distance this arrangement, the two of them, probably looked cosy. There’d be no indication of the sudden drop in temperature.
“I know I’m not clever,” Robin said. “But no, I’m not stupid.”
Edwin’s traitorous tongue was now a lump in his mouth, frozen in fear that he’d make things worse. He wanted Robin’s smile to come back. He wanted to reach out in conciliation and touch. He wanted to be touched. It was unbearable.
Robin’s eyebrows arched; there was just enough humour there that Edwin knew he was luckier than he deserved. “This is when you say, I’m sorry, Robin.”
Edwin’s intense contrariness suddenly wanted him to do nothing of the sort. He made himself say, “I am sorry.”
Robin pushed himself to his feet. “And then I say, thank you, Edwin. Thank you for being brilliant and—saving my life, I expect.” He leaned down slowly enough that Edwin could have evaded the kiss, if he’d wanted.
He didn’t. Robin’s lips were dry, peeling a little. It was quick and soft, no more than a gesture.
“Edwin,” Robin said, husky. That voice was a whole conversation being cracked open like the top of an egg. It promised all sorts of things that Edwin wasn’t equipped to hear. He had the ludicrous urge to ask Robin to write them down; to bind them up and give them to him on paper.
Edwin slid out from the seat and went over to the table, where he began to close the books that Robin had left open. “You’re welcome,” he said lightly. “Now, I need to get dressed for breakfast. And you should change your shirt. Belinda threw water on that one, and that’s before I had to ruin the sleeve.”
There was a pause that might have been Robin noticing the dampness for the first time.
“Good idea. I really am starving,” Robin said, and there was a different promise in those words, full of heat and light. Edwin didn’t allow himself to look up to meet it.
“Mm,” he said, to the familiar leather covers of the books. He tidied a small stack of them. Edge to edge. “So am I.”