If Sin struck out with one of her chains now, it would be very hard for Seb to dodge. She was pretty sure she could knock him unconscious in less than two minutes.
“We could break the window,” Seb said, locking his door with shaking hands. “And you could jump in the river.”
“What would your new boyfriend think of you helping me escape?” Sin inquired.
Seb turned back to her, his mouth twisting. “He doesn’t have to know.”
“I’m not leaving my sister.”
“They’re not going to hurt her,” Seb told her in a low, strained voice. “They’re going to hurt you! I don’t want to see anyone else hurt. You have to go.”
“They’re not going to hurt her?” Sin asked. “Like they haven’t hurt you?”
Seb was silent.
“Do you have any family?”
Seb cleared his throat, a painful sound. “No.”
“If you did have a family,” Sin said, “if you had someone who loved you better than life, and who wanted more than anything to keep you safe, would you want to be left here?”
She heard steps coming down the corridor.
There was a wavering smile on Seb’s face, an expression that he seemed to be wearing because he did not know how else to respond. “There’s no-one who loves me,” he said. “Get in the wardrobe.”
Sin climbed in, folding herself up small over a tangle of socks and shoes, and Seb shut the wardrobe doors firmly after her. She was in a tiny black box, the only light the yellow line where the wardrobe doors met. She could still see Seb.
He sat back down on the bed and put his head back down in his hands.
He wasn’t a good actor at all. Sin could see his shoulders shaking, his whole body caught in a fine, continuous tremor. This wasn’t a boy used to the extremities of life and death, even if he was a magician.
She tensed her legs for a spring, and drew the magic knife out of her pocket.
“Sebastian,” Celeste’s voice said sharply from the door. “The girl—”
She stopped. Seb looked up from his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “What?”
There was silence. Then Sin heard a click of heels as Celeste walked over to Seb, and a flash of blond hair and black skirt as she sat on the bed beside him.
“You shouldn’t have left that room,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Seb said again, very stiffly, and Sin began to think this might work. If he seemed terrified and guilty all the time, he didn’t have to act. “It was—Jamie asked me if I wanted to talk.”
“I see,” Celeste said. “Sebastian, you’re going to have to give that up.”
Seb went deep red and traumatized-looking, as if someone had dipped him in tomato sauce and was about to continue with other strange forms of torture. Sin thought he might actually have forgotten he was hiding a fugitive in his wardrobe.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered into his chest.
“We’re very glad to have James in the Circle,” Celeste said. “He’s very talented, and I do hope he will become an asset to our side, but he’s obviously extremely volatile. And I wouldn’t describe him as a team player. It’s not all about having the power, you know. It’s about going the distance. I wasn’t the most talented magician of my generation. But I cultivated relationships, and I did not burn out. Don’t worry about your magic, Seb. Focus on your commitment to the Circle.”
Sin wished Celeste was not being kind. She would have bet Seb didn’t get a lot of that.
She didn’t want to think about the chances of Seb deciding to commit to the Circle and open the wardrobe doors.
“James is a very troubled young man,” Celeste said. “I hope he can learn to rein himself in, but I’ve seen a lot of gifted young magicians fall from grace. I wouldn’t want to see you go down with him.”
Seb still looked overcome with horror and shame at being spoken to like this, as if he could not deal with the fact that she knew, but he looked up at her last words.
“You don’t know him. He’s really good,” Seb said. “He was always such a good guy. I was pretty awful to him. A bunch of us were, but it was my fault. He had the power to hit back at us, but he never did. That’s what he’s like.”
The leader of the magicians put a hand on Seb’s shoulder.
“And then he got tested,” Celeste said. “And you see what he’s like now. Maybe you’ll be the special one in the end, Sebastian. I think you could be, but you have to try harder. You can’t do things like leaving that girl unguarded.”
And then she drew her hand away, giving him just a taste of approval with a promise of more later, if he could manage to deserve it. Sin saw Seb’s eyes skid to his wardrobe, and she clutched her knife.
“I could guard the—the little girl,” Seb volunteered hesitantly. “Where is she?”
“You can help us find the missing girl,” Celeste told him, sounding annoyed. “The party’s about to start, and I want everything in order.”
