Lynet tried to keep her voice light, but Nadia’s face was serious, and Lynet remembered that she had thought Nadia a contradiction too—the smiling girl and the severe surgeon. “And what are you on the inside?” Nadia said softly.
Lynet shook her head, her throat suddenly closing up. “I don’t know,” she said. No matter what she did, no matter who she was, the only thing anyone ever knew about her was how much she was like her mother. And with every year that passed, she would only become more and more the woman lying in the crypt below. She was destined to become someone else, to lose all sense of herself. Everyone kept telling her that she wasn’t a child anymore, but Lynet knew that being a child was the only defense she had against becoming a woman she didn’t know. She could feel the sting of tears in her eyes, and she thought of how she had broken down in front of Mina. She refused to let that happen again in front of Nadia.
Lynet forced a shrill laugh and rose from the floor, hurrying to the window. “Shall we find out?” She slipped one leg over the windowsill, and then the other.
Nadia came over to her at once. “What are you doing?”
Lynet laughed again. “Don’t worry, there’s a ledge right outside the window. See?” She lowered herself onto the ledge, the window now at her waist. She clung to the windowsill behind her, and Nadia seemed unsure whether to take hold of Lynet’s hands, or if that would make her lose her balance. “The view from here is extraordinary in the daytime,” Lynet said. “You can see all of Whitespring laid out in front of you.” And even now, in the moonlight, Lynet could still see the outline of the courtyard below, framed by Whitespring’s sharp spires and steep roofs. That dark cloud there was the top of the juniper tree, surrounded by snow that seemed to absorb the pale light, and for a moment, Lynet couldn’t tell if the snow was reflecting the moonlight, or if it was the other way around. Beyond the stern gray walls of the castle were the woods, the dark shapes of pines standing like sentries on watch.
“I’m sure it’s very beautiful,” Nadia said. “Now come inside.”
Lynet laughed again. “Are you scared for me? I already climbed up here tonight instead of taking the stairs.” She inched her way along the ledge. “Here, there’s room for you, too.”
“I’m not climbing out there, and you probably shouldn’t, either. I don’t think it’s safe.”
A cool wind blew through her hair. “If I fall, you’ll patch me up, won’t you? Just like when we met.”
“Not if you’re dead when you hit the ground.”
The thought came to her at once: At least if I’m dead, I won’t turn into her.
What had made her think such a thing? Lynet glanced down at the ground far below, and for the first time, she fully comprehended that she could fall. She could die. She was not invincible. What am I doing this for? she wondered now, and as always, a voice in her head answered, To feel alive. But this time there was another voice, one she had never heard before, and it offered a different answer:
To die.
“Nadia?” she called. “I want to come back inside now.” Her voice sounded so small to her, like she had already fallen and was calling from far below.
At once, Nadia’s sturdy arms came around Lynet’s waist and hoisted her up over the windowsill. Lynet could have climbed back in herself, but she didn’t trust her own body at the moment. That itching under her skin was dangerous; it told her she could jump from a roof to a tree when she couldn’t. It told her she could hang from a tower window and not fall.
Even when she was safely inside the tower, Nadia didn’t release her immediately, perhaps afraid Lynet would leap away again. And maybe she would—she could feel the rapid beat of her pulse underneath her skin, trying to burst out of her, and she worried that Nadia could feel it too. Or maybe she wanted Nadia to feel it, to ignore the cool surface of her skin and find the blood burning underneath. Maybe she just wanted someone to turn her inside out for once.
But how could she explain that? How could she explain any of her actions tonight? She couldn’t just say that her skin didn’t fit her right sometimes, and that the only way to fix it was to do something reckless and exciting. But when she pulled away, Nadia wasn’t staring at her in disapproval or confusion; she was looking above Lynet’s eyes with something like delight, the beginning of a smile on her face.
“What is it?” Lynet said, her curiosity overcoming her shame.
“Your hair…”
Lynet was confused at first until she noticed she was standing directly in a patch of moonlight coming through the roof. She supposed it had created some kind of halo around her head. Lynet was ready to laugh at Nadia for being so entranced by something so commonplace, but then Nadia reached a hand to brush softly against her curls, and Lynet was afraid to move at all. Nadia wound a curl around her finger, her eyes avoiding Lynet’s face, and Lynet’s heart pounded, a slow but heavy knock against her ribs. Even the air around them seemed to still, so that each breath felt significant, the graze of hair on her cheek enough to make Lynet forget the itching under her skin.
Nadia drew her hand back so suddenly that Lynet thought the entire incident had only happened in her imagination. “I can’t let you keep this journal, but you can come to the workroom any time you’d like,” Nadia said in a rush, her voice a little too loud. “There are other journals, but I haven’t looked through all of them. You may be able to learn more.”
And then she was leaving—bending down to retrieve the journal and the candle before hurrying out the door. The door swung closed behind her, leaving Lynet still standing by the window in the silent room, staring at the empty space in front of her where Nadia had just been. It had all fallen apart so quickly—Nadia had been moving so impossibly fast—
Or perhaps Lynet was caught in a single moment, the world around her passing by while time stood still for her.
9
MINA
How did one seduce a king?
It was too soon, of course. He wouldn’t remarry while the memory of his wife was fresh in his mind, but memories lacked substance and faded quickly enough.
As the magician’s dreaded daughter, she’d never associated with the villagers back home, let alone been courted by anyone. She had to start somewhere, though. There would be no room for mistakes with the king.
Maybe it didn’t matter that she didn’t know any young men. She was her father’s daughter, and what she didn’t have, she would create.