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Penbrook slumped to the leaf-strewn ground, and Fia dropped to her knees beside him, crushing all the many pages of her skirt.
“Don’t close your eyes,” she pleaded, brushing a strand of Penbrook’s hair from his forehead. His skin had gone very cold, and it was agonizing—watching his waning. “Don’t sleep. Don’t sleep.”
“You should—”
“I won’t leave you alone.”
She stayed with Penbrook, even as the scent of paper and ink and ashes grew stronger, even as the sound of footsteps clattered closer. She did not think of the other magician who stalked them.
Fia tried to memorize Penbrook’s face the way she might a spell, wishing she were saying good night and not goodbye.
“You’re frowning.” Weakly, he lifted his hand, brushing his knuckles over her mouth—and charming her with one last lazy grin. “Haven’t you got anything better to do with those lips?”
Fia laughed softly, a pang beneath her ribs as he drew her down, his eyes exquisitely dark and slowly closing. When their lips touched, she closed her eyes too. Her hair spilled around them, coming undone from where it was pinned, the last of Penbrook’s magic guttering as the illusioned butterflies wisped to nothing.
He kissed her so tenderly, and it was beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. The way he breathed, until he didn’t.
Like he’d given her the last of himself.
Fia drew back, tears pooling in her eyes, her voice as soft and shallow as a stream. “Penbrook.”
She pressed a hand to his chest where only hours before she’d rested her cheek and heard his heart’s mellow thumping. She might have been touching marble, that was how stilly he lay there, how unmoving and breathless.
“Penn,” she whimpered, fumbling for his hand.
Something clinked to the ground.
Fia reached down. Her fingers closed around a small object, circular and cold, and when she lifted it to the moonlight, the silvery beams glinted upon his ring.
And so it was true.
Curses cannot be broken until they have already come to pass.
CHAPTER 36
Fia hurled the ring that had fallen from Penbrook’s finger as hard as she could. She wanted to rip her feelings out by the roots, discarding them as she had the ring, because the hurt was too much to carry inside, curling over and around her heart.
A low voice cut into the night. “You don’t want to keep a memento?”
Fia stumbled to her feet, glaring at Sebastian Smith, who stood there, his shirt left in tatters where he’d scratched at the sparks that had never been real. Through tears, she could see his pale chest and a flash of his stomach, a calligraphy of words like the ones she’d once spied on his wrist.
They ran in lines across his skin, almost mirroring the glimmering spells inked on her dress.
“I thought you liked mementos,” Sebastian cruelly continued. “Isn’t that why you’re so desperate for your mother’s spellbook? I can’t say I understand your sentimentality.”
“You’re heartless.” And hers was broken, falling to bits.
“Could be.” He tapped his chest, the sleeve of his velvet coat shredded, and his expression was too. “I’m not sure what’s beating in there besides a storm of spells.”
“My mother’s spells, you mean.”
“Yes.” He inclined his head, waiting for her to see something else.
Her gaze traveled over those wavering words, the spike of a t, the long tail of a y. Her mother’s handwriting lined his skin, and understanding dawned. “You don’t have her book. You… consumed it.”
It sounded impossible, but the idea that he’d somehow devoured her mother’s spells was the only thing she could reason. And, rather unnervingly, it was almost how Fia thought of herself—the way she burned her spells, locking them away inside her head and heart. The enchantments might not have shown on her skin as they did for Sebastian, but if she cut herself open, would she find the words engraved on her bones?
His eyes flashed in irritation, as if she should have guessed more, and he stepped closer, forcing her to see him. The swirl of spells, the glimmer of magic. “It consumed me,” he moaned. “I am her book. I am what’s made from a crackle of lightning and magic gone wrong.”
