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“And how’s that going?” Adola asks.
“Not well.” She quickly sips her tea again as if she regrets being so honest.
“Second Rite is a doozy,” I say. “Get yourself really organized and chip away at it every day. Good luck.”
She thanks me with a half smile, then suddenly her face drains of color.
“Nore?”
“If you’ll excuse me,” she says. “Which way is the ladies’ room?”
“Just to the right as you enter from the courtyard,” Grandmom says. Nore pushes up from the table without using her hands and almost knocks into a server. She rushes off in a panic.
Grandmom’s brow deepens. She must be wondering the same thing I am.
“If you’ll excuse me.” I follow Nore inside, but as fast as I’m walking, she is faster. I wait on a scroll-armed chair outside the powder room. Water runs, a toilet flushes, but between them I hear swearing.
“Nore?” I knock.
“Just a minute.” Several moments later the door opens, and she’s all smiles. Her gloves are gone, and where I expect to see tallies on her arms is bare.
“Sorry, I couldn’t figure out how to turn the sink on.” She brushes past me, and her arm is bone-chilling cold.
Far colder than is normal.
I swallow my gasp. She stops, and the fear of death burns in her eyes. She puts some distance between us.
“Nore . . . are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Your gloves, have you forgotten them?” I watch for some inclination that I’m wrong. Her chest is out, shoulders back, perfectly poised. But ever so slightly she flinches.
“I tore them, by accident. There was a snag, and I should have mended it a long time ago. So I tossed them.”
She’s lying! The height of her tone says she’s desperate to end my questions.
“I was going to thank you for the advice with honing,” she says. “Would you like some advice on surviving this place?”
“Sure.”
“Choose the people you let into your circle wisely.”
I’m not sure what to say to that, so I say nothing.
“I should be getting back.” Nore walks off, and her words are choked by the shock of what I think I know. I hurry into the bathroom and make a beeline for the wastebasket. Empty. I search for some remnant of ash, some whispered footprint of telltale destruction. Tears well in my eyes for reasons I don’t have words for. But the bathroom is clean. There’s nothing here other than proof she lied about throwing away her gloves. I know what I felt. I know that look in her eyes. It’s haunted me my entire life.
She said she’s struggling with Second Rite, and I bet I know why.
THIRTY-THREE
The next afternoon, after a sleepless night stewing over what I think I know about the heir to House of Ambrose, I start my day with a trip to the Secret Wood under the dark dregs of early morning. I am too worked up to focus on anything else. After lunch the day falls into its regular rhythm, and I manage to get away to help Abby.
She slides a saucer toward me with a square of raspberry-filled cake on it as my thoughts drift back to Nore. If another Headmistress’s heir also has toushana . . . Tears well in my eyes. The idea that I may not be alone in this chasm, stuck between Grandmom’s expectations and a poison that would kill me, nudges a sore spot deep in my chest. I must know.
“Come on, one more,” Abby prods.
“You’re overthinking this,” I say, as my thoughts shift to Jordan with an unfamiliar ache. I wish I could talk to him about this.
