“Thank you,” I said to Valentin, and ducked into the room.
It was colder than the hallway. I drew my arms across my chest and turned to berate Valentin for keeping Will in this frigid space, but he had shut the door behind me. Will lay on a narrow bunk under a small window, wrapped in blankets and facing the wall. The room was not much bigger than a closet, and I crossed it in two steps. I knelt beside Will and put my hand on his shoulder. He didn’t stir. I shook him, then without waiting touched his face—cold—and then in a panic began to feel at his throat. Before I could find a pulse, his eyes snapped open and his hand found mine. He turned toward me, stifling a cough that shuddered through his body.
“They are trying to kill you, keeping you in here,” I said with fury. “I will tell Valentin that this is unacceptable.”
Will pushed himself upright, and his eyes kindling with happiness to see me were the warmest things in the room. I pulled my hand away and seized the blankets that fell off him as he rose. I draped them over his shoulders and tucked them snugly around him, covering his tortured, bandaged hand. I didn’t want to see it.
“I didn’t think they would let me see you,” he said, still smiling at me in a sleepy way. His eyes caught on my dress and flashed alarm. My stomach clenched.
“What is that ridiculous thing you’re wearing?” he asked. “Why have they dressed you like this? Are they trying to freeze you to death, too? Here—”
He took one of the blankets and clumsily wrapped it around me with his one good hand. He put his arm around me, pulling me close beside him on the bed. In spite of myself, I leaned my head against his chest. I closed my eyes for a moment. There was something indefinable about his scent that hadn’t changed, that still smelled like home. Like something to hold on to.
“There’s no one like you, Bee,” he said. “No one in the world but you is brave enough, or brilliant enough to do this.”
My breath came rough. I didn’t want to be brave. I wanted to be safe and happy with him. Away from here, away from all these ugly doubts.
“I don’t feel brave,” I said instead.
“You probably don’t feel brilliant, either. Or at least not as brilliant as you are.”
If I were truly brilliant, I would have thought of a way out of this that didn’t involve losing my mind while Will tried not to die in this attic. But I didn’t say that, either.
“It’s her fault, you know,” he said. The fingers of his good hand moved on my arm under the blanket. They were cold, but they were his. My skin pricked at the touch. I wasn’t sure who he meant. My mind flicked, unwillingly, to Ada. “I hated the way she would talk to you. I should have done more to contradict her. I thought about that constantly after she threw me out.”
Ah. He meant my mother.
“You did contradict her.” I’d been shocked the first time he stood up to her for me. No one else had ever done anything like it, not even the Comte. “That was the real reason she threw you out, in the end.”
“I was afraid she might turn on you after I left, be even worse to you.”
I was quiet. She had turned. Suddenly I had become a thing outside of her, someone whose mind and desires were different from her own. She said things I would never forget. She left memories that still seared at their touch.
And you did not? she said. Do you think you hurt me any less than I hurt you?
I closed my eyes tighter. I pushed down the panic that flared in me at the implications of hearing her voice. I heard Will’s heart beating fast, felt the faint warmth of his chest. I sank into it and stilled my mind.
“You were too full of things for her. Too much life, too much love. Marguerite couldn’t stand for you to love anything but alchemy and her. She would have kept you her captive forever if she could have. And I can’t say I blame her.”
“You can’t?”
“Not for that,” said Will. “Not for wanting to keep you all to herself, or for being afraid to lose you. I might do the same if you let me. I missed you more than I would have believed, Bee.”
“I think I missed you more,” I said.
“Not possible.” His lips brushed my forehead.
“I was alone with her.” I wanted to sound calm, but a slight tremor in my voice betrayed me. “You weren’t alone at all.”
Will’s hand went still on my arm. His shallow breath caught in his chest.
“Tell me about Ada,” I said.
Will let out his breath in a long, slow sigh. He coughed, but not violently.
“I wondered if they might say something about that,” he said. “I thought perhaps not, but that Prussian brute was always half mad where she was concerned.”
He sounded calm. I let his calm wind its way into me. There was an explanation, of course. He would tell me, and we would both sigh at the unfairness and folly of other people.
“She is Graf Ludwig’s daughter,” I said.
He nodded. “The younger one. He has two. The older is different.”
“Rahel is here,” I said. “I met her. She invited me to dinner.”
“Of course she did,” said Will with a note of bitterness. “She
