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If she hadn’t been so much in her own head since her mother’s death, Fia might have recognized the way Skye cozied in the blue armchair for hours at a time and ran her fingers over the counter, how she returned again and again just to be in the space where Sable once was. And looking back further, Fia might have recognized that Skye, who was never much one for talking, had had more to say to Sable than most. “I—”
“Just thought you should know she had a friend who cared for her.” Skye tugged on the end of her long braid. “Who cares for you.”
Fia had felt that—the comfort of Skye’s presence in the spellshop, even when they weren’t speaking.
“I’m sorry,” Fia said, because Skye had been grieving all this time. In some strange way, they’d been doing it together, and Fia had never noticed, let alone acknowledged, it before. Sometimes the loss had felt so entirely her own.
Skye smiled, as if she’d used up all her words for the day. Returning to the task at hand, she and Fia slipped into that familiar quiet again, hardly making any progress against the ash that Fia could see, but working because what else could they do, until the door burst open.
In a billow of peacock skirts, Andromeda lurched into the spellshop, hauling a bedraggled Penbrook over the threshold—where he promptly and piteously collapsed.
CHAPTER 28
The tarnished crown fell from Penbrook’s head in a cascade of dust.
Fia dropped the broom with a clatter and ran forward, heart in her throat.
Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.
“Penbrook!”
“He escaped me,” Penbrook moaned from the floor.
“And that’s probably for the best!” Fia exclaimed, taking in Penbrook’s form, helplessly sprawled at her feet. In this state, with his magic weakened, he’d be no match for Sebastian Smith. She crouched down, unsure what to do with him. “What happened?”
A clear worry shone in Andromeda’s sleep-heavy eyes, but she propped one hand on her hip, her voice less than gentle as she said, “He’s a disaster, that’s what happened.”
“I’m a disaster,” Penbrook miserably agreed, making no effort to move, as if he meant to expire there among the ashes.
“This isn’t the time to feel sorry for yourself,” Fia said softly, resisting the urge to push back his disheveled hair and reaching for the closest of his limp arms instead.
“But I wanted…” He came clumsily to his feet between Fia and Skye, who had slipped wordlessly to his other side. They shuffled him over to the once-blue chair, and he flopped into it with an old-man groan, a cloud of dust puffing up from the cushion. “I wanted to get your mother’s spellbook for you—and I couldn’t even catch up to that ghastly Smith.”
“That’s not what’s most important right now.”
“S’pose not,” he said disagreeably while Skye backed away, nodding a silent goodbye to Fia as she let herself out of Sable Spells, thoughtfully giving the three of them some privacy.
“Definitely not,” Andromeda said, swaying a little on her feet. In just the one day they’d spent apart, her fatigue, like Penbrook’s, seemed to have escalated. Every part of her had softened—limbs gone willowy, eyes half-closed, violet smudges a hazard beneath them.
Uselessly, Fia wished she’d already gotten that second chair in here so Andromeda would have had a place to crumple, but it would only be ruined by ash now too. She could bring over one of the stools, but Andromeda would probably tip right off. Andromeda sighed against one of the shelves, then seemed to think better of touching its filthy surface.
“Sebastian Smith did this?” she asked, frowning at the devastated spellshop. “What’s he after, throwing grand balls one moment and throwing curses the next?”
Fia thought of all those twisted spells she’d pored over in The Book of Ribs—for wealth, for luck, for longevity, no matter the cost to others—but now that she thought of it, none of the curses set upon Trivoris seemed to have been mentioned in the tome. She had no idea what he sought.
I wanted to meet you, he’d said at the ball, but it made no more sense now than it had before—even knowing he had her mother’s spellbook.
“I don’t know, but maybe that’s not the most important thing right now either.” Fia looked meaningfully at Andromeda. “Did you learn anything yesterday from the curse workers?”
“Only that they’re as helpless as we are at breaking this sleeping curse. They lit a hundred candles, they chanted a dozen counterspells over me—the last of which did not go particularly well—so all I’ve got to show for it are the burnt ends of my hair.” She flipped her golden locks over her shoulder, and they were a good deal shorter and rather crimped at the ends.
Penbrook laughed darkly. “So this is how we go.”
“So it seems,” Andromeda said, releasing a dramatic sigh that rivaled one of Penbrook’s.
“No.” Fia looked back and forth between them. “No. We still have time to think of something.”
From the slump of his chair, Penbrook creaked himself forward, head bent, ash falling from his hair. “Well, can I at least do my thinking in the bath then?”
