She sat on the couch in her hotel room, tea growing cold in her hands.
Verenice pushed away the memory of Sydney’s shadow in one hand and a knife in the other and explained to Miranda. “I told you that our binding to Shadows wasn’t over when we left—that we paid a debt.”
Miranda nodded.
“That debt was paid in small pieces of our shadows.” She gestured to hers, moving so the torn and ragged ends were easier to see. “It’s very akin to the way magic collects in the bones of the hand. Symbolic, but a symbol powerful enough to be made real.
“When the spell went wrong, Sydney asked me to cut her entire shadow off, to give back all the magic in it at once, in order to keep magic in the world.”
“How could one person possibly contain that much?” Miranda asked.
“You’ll remember the Four Seasons duel, early in the Turning, where there was a failure of magic,” Verenice said.
“Yes. I was there. It was an excess of spring, as if the spell was flooding the room with magic. Terrifying.” She shuddered once with the memory.
“When Sydney stopped the spell, she channeled the magic that had been contained in it. She’s been holding it ever since. That excess was enough.”
“But the cut—the removal of her magic like that. It’s survivable?”
“Yes. People live without magic all the time.” Most of them didn’t die of it. Most of them.
“I am aware of that,” Miranda said. “I’ve lost mine as well.”
Verenice didn’t tell her that it wasn’t the same, not at all. Miranda would believe what she needed to.
“But what I don’t understand is why she would possibly give up her magic in that fashion. She made very clear that she hated magic, hated Shadows, hated the entire Unseen World. Why not just let the spell continue, let everyone lose their magic and be mundane?”
Verenice leaned over, gently took the cup and saucer from Miranda’s shaking hands. “She hated Shadows, yes. Hated what magic had become in the hands of the Unseen World. But hate magic? No, that wasn’t it. Not at all. She loved magic, and she saw it leaving, and so she did what she had been made to do—she became a sacrifice.”
She watched Miranda break then, her eyes close, her face slide into lines of mourning.
“If you see her, if you think it will help her to hear it, please tell her that I’m proud of her,” Miranda said.
“If those conditions are ever met,” Verenice said carefully, “I will.”
? ? ?
“Anything for me today, Henry?” Sydney asked as she walked back intSydney walked through Central Park with Madison. Theyo her building.
“There’s a gentleman over there, waiting, miss.”
Ian stood by the elevators. “Verenice gave me your address. Do you mind if I come up?”
“Sure. Fine.” She shrugged. “Thanks, Henry.”
The silence in the elevator was thick enough to suffocate.
“I’m not sure why you’re here,” she said as she unlocked the door.
“You know, I’ve never been in your apartment. It’s nice,” Ian said.
“I didn’t want people to know where I lived. Doesn’t matter now.” She started making coffee, bumped a mug off the counter with her elbow. Her hand flicked out, and she spoke a series of words that ended with the shattering of the mug and a loud, “Oh, fuck this!”
She slammed the other mug to the floor.
“Sydney?” Ian asked.
“Just get away from me. Just go.” She slumped down to the floor, sitting among the wreckage.
“You’re bleeding,” he said. “Your hand.”
She laughed, sharp and harsh, and tilted her head back to rest against the cupboard. “I don’t even have Band-Aids. I never needed them. I had magic.”
“I can—”
“Leave it. A little blood won’t kill me.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “I hate being like this.”
“I’d be surprised if you didn’t,” he said.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “The worst part is I can still light a candle. Like some fucking mundane who knows just enough to be dangerous. It gives me a bloody nose, and yet every morning when I wake up, it’s the first thing I do. And then the second thing I do is try to cast something else. Anything else. I can’t, of course, but I try.
“I can’t not try.” Her voice was suffused with loss.
Ian moved his hand just enough that he was barely touching hers. “I know.”
“I feel like I’m not me anymore. And don’t you dare give me some bullshit platitude about how I still am and how nothing important about me has changed, or I swear, magic or not, I will figure out a way to throw you off my balcony.”
“Mine’s better. The balcony.”
Sydney looked at him. Laughed. It sounded almost like an actual laugh this time, not bitterness given voice. “Why do you think I’m always on yours?”
Then, quieter. “Magic was who I was. I felt it in my blood and my bones, Ian. It was me, and now it’s gone, and I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore.”
“You’ll figure it out,” he said. “Who you are now. And I’d really like to stick around and see who that is, if you’ll let me.”
She blew out a breath and leaned her head onto his shoulder. He wasn’t a solution, not at all, but he was an ease in the loneliness. A moment of warmth. For right now, that could be enough. “Do you want to stay and watch me light a candle tomorrow morning?”
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The elevator doors to Laurent’s apartment slid open. Sydney hesitated for a moment, then stepped into his offered hug, held on. “It’s really good to see you.”
“How’ve you been?” he asked. “I got some of those macarons you like—flower flavors for you and chocolate for me—so we can eat while we catch up.”
“It’s really, really good to see you.” She smiled and sat down at the long table, facing the windows, looking out over a city that still looked magical. “And I’d rather hear how you are—how’s being an official Head of House?”
“Fairly normal right now, though I think that’s mostly because everything is weird for everybody. People are still figuring out how to cope, what with no Shadows and everything else that changed. I’m spending a lot of time teaching people how to use magic, which is not a thing I ever thought I’d be doing.”
“I bet you’re good at it,” she said.
“I learned from the best.”
She shrugged the compliment off. It was still too hard to think about the person she had been when she’d had magic and not see the person she was now as less. “And when things calm down and are normal? What are the plans for then?”
“I’m opening the doors,” he said. “No more of this stuff about people not being strong enough for Houses, no more outsiders, none of it. If they have magic and they want to be in the Unseen World, they are welcome in my House.
“Sydney, if you want—”
“I don’t,” she said. “Thank you—truly—but I really don’t. The Unseen World isn’t my place. I don’t think it ever was, and it certainly isn’t now.”
“The offer stands.”
She nodded, polite, not wanting to hurt him by saying she would never take it.
“I had Madison scout you, you know,” she said.