much.
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But after a while, a niggle of discomfort made itself heard over the twinges of her muscles and the ache of her heart.
What was taking him so long?
Plucking his T-shirt from the floor, she pul ed it over her head and fol owed him into the bathroom.
Iestyn stood leaning over the sink, looking at himself in the mirror, his back to the door.
She met his eyes in the glass. Around his throat, the angry red line of the heth burned. New blisters puffed and oozed on his skin.
She inhaled sharply, taking in the lines of pain on his face, the open tube of burn ointment on the sink. “You should have cal ed me.”
“I thought you were asleep.”
“Then you should have woken me up.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Her voice cracked. “To help you. To do what I did before.”
“How many times?” he asked wearily.
“As many times as it takes. Until your burn gets better.”
But the burn wasn’t getting better. It was worse, had been worse since they were on the ferry to the island, and they both knew it.
Iestyn scrubbed his hand over his face, a tired gesture that made her heart contract. “I’m not bothering you every half hour because of a damn necklace.”
“Then we need to take it off,” she said steadily.
“How?”
“Soldier said . . .” She struggled to concentrate with the image of his raw, wet wound seared into her brain. “Any way we can. It’s glass. It can be fractured.”
“I’ve tried,” he said. She recal ed the muffled thump.
“It’s not so easy.”
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“You said yourself we can do more together than we can apart,” she reminded him.
He turned to face her. “Unless I don’t know what the hel I’m doing.”
“I do.”
She wasn’t a chemist. She wasn’t an artist or a magic worker. Simon had never recommended her, Zayin had never recruited her, to work in the factory. But she had a good memory. She’d taken theory classes with the rest of her cohort. For years, she’d listened to Jacob and David argue about glass over breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She could do this. They could do this.
She hoped.
“The spel is in the bead,” she explained. “If there are flaws in the glass, if we put the right pressure on the flaws, the bead wil crack. The spel wil be broken.”
“Just like that.”
She bit her lip. “It’s worth a try.”
His eyes warmed as he looked at her. “Yeah, it is. Tel me what you need me to do.”
“Sit down?” she suggested.
He sat on the closed lid of the toilet, his large square knees jutting into the confined space.
She swal owed. “Do you want to put on some clothes?”
“Wil it make a difference?”
“Probably not. Okay.” She looked into his steady eyes and felt the knot of nerves in her stomach relax. Taking a slow breath, she tried to imagine What-should-be.
He held her hand. The way they did before.
She closed her free hand on the heth. The bead was smooth and strong, hot against her clenched palm. She felt the power col ecting in the pit of her stomach, at the nape 24 6
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of her neck, from her hand joined to Iestyn’s hand, felt the pressure building, moving up from her gut and down her arms. Her heart pounded.
But there was no place for the power to go. The bead was smooth and black and impenetrable. Their combined magic slid off the polished glass surface.
Her palm burned as if she held a live coal. She gasped and dropped it.
Iestyn tightened his grip on her other hand. “Easy.”
