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award a heart its unfair share
from mine that beats, and one dear day, early dies.
“Wait!” Penbrook cried, clattering to his feet, hand splayed out as if he could stop her. Understanding the intent written in the spell. “Wait.”
But she’d decided, and the words had already been spoken, releasing her magic. It swirled through her body, sending up bright flecks of dust like stars. Penbrook’s eyes widened in anguish, and she couldn’t understand him. He should have been glad.
“Take it,” she said, directing the magic more firmly toward him. Toward Andromeda, sleeping one story up, unaware.
His whole body shook, a useless resistance against her golden dust whirling around him. He inhaled great heaving breaths as if swallowing the wind, and Fia’s heart thumped out of rhythm, too fast, too fast, beats given up to Penbrook and Andromeda.
“You shouldn’t…,” he gasped, dark eyes gleaming with golden specks of light, and she wondered what it felt like, to be filled up with a day’s worth of breath, a day’s worth of heartbeats.
Because losing them, oh, losing them hurt. This magic was ruinous, digging so much deeper than she’d expected. She thought her heart would stop entirely. That her lungs would give up all they had.
She threw out her hand, catching herself against the table, refusing to be brought to her knees.
“Fia.” Penbrook moved toward her, then stopped, uncertain, it seemed, that she’d want him any nearer. That she’d accept his help. “Are you all right?”
“I—”
“I feel almost like myself.” Andromeda tumbled into the kitchen, cheeks rosy with verve, eyes dancing with gold dust. “What was that?”
“A gift,” Fia said hoarsely, her head feeling very light.
A day of her life was funneling away.
“Well, you knocked me awake at just the right time. So thanks and all that”—Andromeda gave Fia’s arm a squeeze as if to make up for the brevity and haste of her gratitude—“but I just saw from the window upstairs that the Cloaks are coming down the street.”
Fia frowned, her thoughts gone a little soupy. She hadn’t liked it when they’d come round the last time, had she? No, not at all. Why were they back again? “I don’t want to talk to them.”
“They’ve brought their coach.” Andromeda glanced at Penbrook, and he seemed to understand something that just eluded Fia.
She might have grasped the threads of her thoughts if she hadn’t been looking at Penbrook too, caught by the healthy blush of color on the blades of his cheeks when only moments before they’d been so harshly pale, the smudges under his eyes all but gone now. The spell was transforming him, lifting away the stalking shadow of sleep, and Fia felt a daunting change in her too. A dark wave of fatigue crashed through her like she was drowning.
“They don’t mean to ask questions this time,” he said, brows pinching severely together.
“What…” Fia drooped, but this time Penbrook didn’t hesitate. He was around the table before she could fall, keeping her upright with a careful hand at her waist. Her legs had gone to jelly and jam. “Wha’ do they want then?”
“To arrest you, I suspect,” he said, ignoring the elbow Fia wedged into his side.
She scowled up at him, hair in her face, and it seemed like entirely too much effort to swat it away. “Your fault.”
“All mine,” he agreed, and then to Andromeda he said, “Out the back door. Quick.”
“But Finnick,” Fia protested, feeling suddenly that the world was tilting.
Or she was.
Yes, yes, she was definitely tilting—the infuriating Madbury had tossed her over his shoulder.
CHAPTER 31
Light filtered through the window like long golden fingers prodding her awake. Fia opened her eyes, staring out at an unfamiliar room done up in shades of sky blue and steel gray. The shimmery drapes, the downy coverlet, even the sea-swell paintings on the wall were at once lovely and vague, the way her slumber had been.
How long had she been sleeping?
As Fia swung her legs to the floor, a quick stutter of memories tripped through her mind—that spell she’d cast sucking air from her lungs and stealing her heartbeats, the cold of the night all around her, the upside-down world rushing past in a blur, and later, everything righting again as Penbrook laid her in a high cushy bed, the pillows extra fluffy.
