“I must go back,” I said. “To break the spell, I mean.”
Rising elation bubbled up in me. I would go back to the Binding. I would break the spell, and nothing terrible would happen. I should be doing a good thing—perhaps a great thing, the most important thing I had ever done. Papa would be pleased, so would Mátyás and Karolina and the students at Café Pilvax. The thought of Gábor’s and Noémi’s disapproval dimmed my joy—but only a little. When the Binding had broken, they would see we were right.
Lady Berri nodded. “Good girl. Now I must study the Binding spell a bit more. This night’s work has shown me I am not as prepared as I ought to be, nor are you. I must devise counterspells to protect you, and we must plan how you are to break the spell. Come to me again in one week.”
Grandmama’s palace was shrouded in darkness when I entered. I had told Ginny not to wait for me. I lit a candle and mounted the stairs. The sphere of light cast by the flame rose with me, my shadow long and wavering beside it. In my room, I set the candle on a small table near my bedside, shivering as my hands went to the buttons at my throat. The effects of the laudanum were fading, a heaviness replacing the euphoria that had burned through me inside the spell.
A deep voice spoke out of the darkness.
“Isten áldja meg a lelked!” God bless your soul. The voice was unfamiliar, the intonation eerily like a prayer one might say over the dying.
There was a man in my room.
Terror spiked through me, setting my heart racing and sending new energy into my exhausted body.
“Who are you? Why are you here?” My voice emerged high and tight.
A shadowy figure pushed away from the far wall. In the fitful light of the candle, his face was indistinct, framed by dark hair. I heard a murmured Latin phrase, followed by a flare of light.
The spell burst over me in a cascade of pain, stars dancing against my eyes, flame spouting down my back. Agony crackled through my heart. I was going to be killed—not by some half-forgotten beast in the Binding but by a Luminate assassin in my bedroom. Herr Steinberg must have sent him, to punish me for going into the Binding.
Lady Berri had not protected me after all.
Dark spots danced at the edge of my vision. I fought to breathe.
No.
I was not going to die so easily.
Everyone believed I could break spells. I would break this one.
Think, Anna.
What common thread linked my previous experiences breaking spells? I struggled against the blackness clouding my mind. I had been angry with Catherine at her debut, afraid when Noémi’s spell in the Romani camp brushed me, and in Sárvár there had been a longing so sharp and sweet I still ached with the memory of it. Somehow, that emotion was key. But I couldn’t feel anything now except pain drilling through my bones and a dullness where the laudanum had been. Tears leaked from beneath my closed eyes.
I burrowed a little deeper. There. My shadow self hovered, a knot of longing behind my heart. I called to her, and she surfaced in a wave of terror-induced rage.
My shadow self scrabbled against the distant pull of the spell, catching and then tearing.
In a silent explosion of light, the spell ripped wide.
I heard a startled “Mária!” across the room as I tumbled against my bed, gasping for breath. My eyes flew open, the aftereffects of the spell hanging in my vision like the afterimage of a harvest bonfire. My attacker stumbled backward, his head slamming against my vanity table. A sickening crack sounded, and then he lay still.
I heard a long, shuddering breath that caught on a sob—mine—and did what I should have done when I realized there was a man in my room.
I screamed.
Gábor was the first to reach my room, his trousers hastily pulled on beneath his flowing nightshirt. “Anna!” He crossed the room to me, and drew me upright, his hands warm on mine. His released me almost at once, his fingers flashing upward to brush against my shoulders, then my cheeks. His eyes searched my face. “Are you all right?” His hands stilled, one thumb caressing the corner of my mouth.
I stared at him, eyes wide. The tingling left in the wake of his touch made it difficult to think. I swayed toward him, dizzy with relief and a sudden rush of blood, and Gábor slipped his arm around me to keep me upright. The longing of my shadow self still lingered in my body like a fever.
The door was flung open again: Noémi, rushing to my side in a flurry of red-silken robe and lacy nightdress.
Her eyes flickered from me to Gábor, her expression wavering between shock and reluctant understanding. Then she registered my gown. “Why are you still dressed?”
Words tumbled through my mind and tangled my tongue. Instead of speaking, I pointed across the room. Noémi squinted in the direction of my finger. She whispered a spell, and a Lumen lantern bloomed in her hand. “The Circle keep us safe! Who is that?”
“I don’t know. I think he’s hurt.” Or dead. I put one hand to my head, which had begun pounding.
Noémi set her lantern against the foot of my bed and scurried toward the prone figure.
Mátyás burst into my room, still in his evening clothes. His collar was askew and his coat wrinkled, as if he’d only just shrugged it on. He scanned the room, his eyes running first across my face and Gábor with his arm still around me, and then to where Noémi crouched by the intruder. “Good Lord. What’s going on?”
Noémi looked back at us as Grandmama and Ginny pushed into my now-crowded room. “He’s unconscious, but his pulse is steady. He’ll live.”
Gábor discreetly pulled his arm away from me. The sudden removal of his warmth made me shiver, and the pounding in my head intensified. I sat down on my bed.
“Who will live?” Grandmama asked, her voice cross. Like Noémi, she’d seen my cloak and gown. “Anna, where have you been? Is that a man in your room? I promised your Mama…” Grandmama took a half dozen steps toward the unconscious man and stopped. “Istenem!”
Her body wavered like a candle flame. Mátyás sprang toward her, catching her before she could fall. “Pál,” she said, the word a slow exhale.
“You know him?” Mátyás asked. “Who is he? Should we call the police?”
Grandmama shook her head. “No. We must keep him here till morning. Someone will be along to look for him.”
“But who is he?” I asked.
“And why was he in Anna’s room?” Mátyás asked, scowling.
“He tried to kill me,” I said. The earlier part of the evening felt remote and dreamlike.
Grandmama stared at me, her face white as undyed cotton. “You? But he—why would anyone want you dead?”
I closed my eyes, briefly, gathering courage. I had kept so much hidden from Grandmama. It was hard to undo the habit of silence. “I went into the Binding.” An image flashed in my head, a being of pure light dancing in a field.
“What?” Noémi said. “Anna, are you mad?”