Noémi helped me stand, then turned to Gábor. “What is going on?”
He would not look at me. “My grandmother believes that an infant’s soul is not fully tethered when it is born. That is why only a few people are allowed to attend the birth, so they will not accidentally steal its soul. But the spell you cast—my grandmother believes that when the spell broke, the magic was pulled into Miss Arden’s talisman, along with some of the baby’s soul.”
Noémi’s eyes widened with horror. “Surely that’s not possible.”
Gábor shook his head. “For all that you Luminate say differently, we still do not know everything about how magic works. I have seen that our talismans gather more magic near births and deaths. Who is to say that the exchange of a soul does not release magic into the world? Or that a soul is not somehow connected to magic?”
Bile burned in my throat. “Do you believe your grandmother?”
“I don’t know. Grandmother understands more about magic than anyone I know. If she says it is possible, it must be.”
“I’m desperately sorry,” I said. “I never meant to hurt anyone. Will the baby be all right?”
Noémi said, “I think she will heal. I can’t speak for her soul—I know nothing about that. But why should you blame yourself? You did nothing.”
“I—” The words nearly choked me. “I broke your spell. That’s what I do. I break things.”
“You didn’t mean to,” Noémi said, her voice so gentle it brought tears stinging to my eyes.
Gábor looked at me as though he had never truly seen me before. “What are you, Anna? No Luminate could break a spell like that, not without casting a spell to counter it.”
I crossed my arms across my chest, trying to still their trembling. A terrible fear stole over me. I had hoped the shattered spells I left in my wake were the result of something I did, because I could learn to undo my actions. But if the broken spells were driven by something I was, how could I undo my own nature? And what, in all the Circle bound, was I?
“We should go,” I said to Noémi.
Something shifted in Noémi’s face. “The broken spell—that’s why William wanted you to go to Sárvár. To break a spell there—maybe even break the Binding.”
I nodded. “I won’t, of course.” Noémi still had not moved, so I started walking away from the tent, toward the meadow where our horses waited.
“Someone asked you to break the spell at Sárvár?” Gábor asked sharply, and I stopped. “Stay away from there. The magic that leaks from that spell is fouled.” A muscle in his jaw flexed. “You saw something Whitsun night. A fene, maybe, a dark spirit of illness and destruction. I don’t believe your appearance along with those creatures is all coincidence. Don’t go to Sárvár. If your friend is right and you can break that spell—if you can break the Binding—you could destroy us all.”
A rumble of voices stopped whatever else Gábor meant to say and dissolved the tart words on my tongue: I already said I would not do it. Gábor’s grandmother was returning, a half dozen Romani men behind her.
“No,” Gábor whispered.
“What is it?” Noémi edged closer to me, her arm slipping through mine. The group formed a loose circle around us, trapping us among the tents.
“My grandmother has brought the Elders.” He listened for a moment. “To judge if we have harmed my sister or her baby.”
Gábor’s mother emerged from the tent to stand beside his grandmother, her arms crossed.
“Tell them to let Noémi go,” I said. “She’s done nothing wrong.”
Gábor’s mother stepped so close I could feel the warmth of her breath on my cheek. “Cs?nd legyen!” Be silent!
Gábor’s grandmother spat a tangled string of words I didn’t understand and shook the talisman in the air. Gábor translated, but from his hesitations, I sensed he omitted the worst of what was said. “She says you both are without shame or honor, coming to our camp to steal away the baby’s soul.”
“We came to save the baby,” I said. “We never meant to hurt anyone.”
Gábor turned back to the surrounding circle of men and started to speak. One of the men cut him off, shouting, and Gábor pressed his lips together, his expression uncomfortably grim. Gábor’s grandmother spoke again, and the men listened in silence, some crossing their arms, others fingering their mustaches. When she finished, each man spoke in turn. The eyes they fixed on us were hard and cold. I shivered.
Gábor would not look at us as he translated. “Whatever your intentions, you put the baby at risk. They find you guilty of theft, and you are hereby banned from this camp.”
“Are we not allowed to defend ourselves?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I told them you meant only to help. But don’t be angry with them—our clan rules exist to protect us from gadzhe who have not always been kind, and I went against those rules to bring you here.”
His mother wailed as he spoke, a thin, keening sound that slit through my ears and pierced my heart. She must be grieving her granddaughter, as she could not regret our banishment.
Noémi tugged at my arm, her face burning red. “Let’s go.”
My chest burned too, part angry that Noémi’s kindness should be treated so brusquely, part horror-struck that Gábor’s grandmother might be right about the baby’s soul.
Gábor led us away from the camp. He shoved his hand through his hair and studied my face, his eyes dark and soft and wide with an emotion I could not read. It might have been sadness. Or fear. “The first night you came to our tents, my grandmother was terrified, claiming you would destroy the Binding. I did not believe her. Sometimes she sees true, but her sight is unpredictable when she has been drinking.”
Hurt and fear and regret and grief tangled in my heart, and so naturally I covered them with anger. “No doubt you regret everything about me. I would apologize for my very existence, but alas, you can hardly expect me to wish to undo that.”
“I don’t regret you,” Gábor said softly, and an entirely different sort of heat flooded me.
But then he spoiled the effect by adding, “I’m only afraid for you, for what you don’t know about yourself. Until you know who you are, your powers master you, not you them. This is why gadzhe cannot master Romani magic: they lie to themselves.”
“I don’t lie to myself,” I said, but I knew even as I spoke that I lied. I had hidden from myself how much I wanted to be with Gábor, seeing it only now as I might never see him again.
“I can’t teach you anymore. I thought there was no harm in it, as long as we weren’t caught. I was wrong.”
Noémi stared at me. “What was he teaching you? Oh, Anna. Not Gypsy magic!”
“Not Gypsy,” I said. “Romani.”
Gábor continued, “It’s no good, Anna. I’m sorry.”