Just one look...
If I only tried a minor spell...
I took a deep, ragged breath as I yanked my gaze away from them. Focus.
Wrexham.
Danger.
Elves.
“So who was the untrustworthy elf lord in that document?” I asked my brother, ragged desperation creeping into my voice.
I had to hear Jonathan’s steady voice in my ears to cover up the whisper of poisonous temptation.
Just one small spell might not kill me, no matter what the doctors say...
“Eh?” said Jonathan, looking back up from the parchment. “Oh, that was Lord Ilhmere, unsurprisingly. I’ve read more than once about him, I can tell you. Powerful fellow, high up in the court for centuries on end, and one of the nastiest in battle too, apparently—especially when it came to human prisoners. Absolutely despises us as a species, you see, and he’s brilliant at twisting his words, so according to all of the various ambassadresses, he’s not to be trusted by an inch.”
“How very...useful to know,” I said through clenched teeth.
The library door closed with a satisfying thunk behind me as I strode outside.
It wasn’t difficult to find Wrexham once I knew where to look. I spotted him as soon as I left the house, emerging from the knot garden beside a thin, stooped older man I didn’t recognize. The snow was falling thicker than ever before me, turning them into featureless silhouettes in my vision, but I knew the moment that he recognized me.
He stopped walking with a nod to the other man, who shrugged and continued forward, brushing past me a moment later on his way back into the house. But Wrexham didn’t move. He remained, waiting, at the entrance to the knot garden.
The message was unmistakable. This time, I would have to come to him.
Drawing an icy breath through my teeth, I pulled my hood more tightly around my head and started forward, hunching my shoulders against the snow.
Wrexham didn’t speak a word of greeting as I joined him in the archway. But he murmured a quick spell under his breath, and the snow fell away from me, almost exactly as it had done under Miss Banks’s spell earlier this morning.
...Almost, but not quite. This time, I wasn’t enclosed in my own bubble of warmth. I was enclosed within his, which had opened up to wrap around us both.
The heavy snowfall, which had filled my vision only moments earlier, receded into a soft, nearby hissing in my ears, almost as distant as the house and everyone else in the world right now. Only Wrexham stood before me in the warm, spellcast circle, his dark eyes deeply shadowed in his lean brown face. Apparently, he hadn’t slept well either.
Standing this close, I could almost feel his breath. All I had to do was lift a hand to touch him...
I pushed the hood off my head, shaking off the last, melting flakes of snow that had clung to it. “Inspecting the knotwork spells?” I said, and wrapped my gloved fingers around my cloak to avoid temptation. “When did you take an interest in gardening spells, pray tell?”
He shrugged. “They’re surprisingly interesting, actually. But I have to admit, they weren’t my focus.” As I raised my eyebrows, he nodded toward the house behind me. “That was Lord Hilbury, you see. He wanted to take a look at the knotwork, to compare it to the patterns on his estate.”
“And you came along because...? Oh!” I swiveled around, but it was far too late. Hilbury was long gone, and the doors stood solidly shut before us. “Hilbury the weather wizard, you mean.” He was one of the two weather wizards I hadn’t met with, yet, according to the list that Lady Cosgrave had given me earlier.
Which meant...
Something painfully sweet unfurled in my chest. I turned back to my ex-fiancé and shook my head at him. “Wrexham...when are you finally going to see sense and give up on me?”
I’d been watching this man—either openly or covertly—for almost all of my adult life, from the moment I’d stepped into my true self at the Great Library and seen him for the first time. I’d seen him laughing, I’d witnessed him absorbed in his work, and I’d felt the staggering intensity of his focus in every aspect of my life.
But I’d never seen true desperation on his face before today, nor heard his voice as ragged as it sounded now. “Never.” Tipping his hands upward in a gesture of defeat, he stepped back, giving me more space within the spelled circle...but still not separating his own bubble from mine. “You can leave me any time you want,” he told me. “You can break my heart again and again, and I won’t even try any more to change your mind. Last night was my last attempt. But if you think I’m going to simply stand by and let you be taken by the elves without making a single move to help you...”
His lips curved into a pained smile that made my chest hurt. “I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t do it, Harwood. I’m sorry.”
My eyes were wet, but there was no snow to excuse it anymore. As my vision blurred, my voice blurred too, turning croaky and raw. “I don’t want to be saved by you again,” I told him. “Don’t you understand? That’s not what we were to each other. I was supposed to be your equal! We were partners!”
“And you think we can’t be anymore?” His brows furrowed. “Is that what this has really been about, all this time? You think I want to somehow control you now? Or look down on you?” He shook his head in apparent disbelief. “Have I ever acted as if I think less of you just because you can’t cast spells of your own anymore?”
“Oh—!” I glared at him, dashing the stupid, useless tears away with one gloved hand. “Of course I don’t think you want to control me. I’m not a fool! I know you, remember? You’ve always cared for people who are weaker than you. That’s why you’re so good at the work that you do for the Boudiccate—and why you think you have to stay with me, too, for my sake. But I don’t want to be your pity-object! I can’t bear it. I—”
“You,” said Wrexham with furious precision, “are a fool.”
“How dare you!” I reached out and yanked him toward me by his coat collar, glaring up at him ferociously. “I am every bit as intelligent as you, and you know it! I was just as good at magic until I lost it, and I was just as good at—”
“You still are!” he bellowed directly into my face. “You idiotic woman! How can you not see that? You know more about magic than most magicians five times your age! Your research and the articles that you published changed the way that magicians all across the nation cast their spells. You’re the single most impressive person I have ever met, and none of that changed four months ago. None of it!”
I let go of his coat, lurching backward as if I’d been slapped. “Everything changed.” The words burned against my tongue like poison. “If you can’t even see that—”
“The only thing that changed for me,” he gritted through his teeth, “was that you finally realized I wasn’t good enough for you.”