I feel like some made-up, dewdrop-fine creature from a story. I can’t stop running my fingers along the sash and over the embroidery that edges the sleeves.
When I step out of the room, Rowan looks me over, from my pinned braids to the fall of the skirts. His mouth tilts slightly when he notices my bare feet.
“Come on, then.” He turns and moves farther into the hallway, waiting for me to follow him.
We go across the landing. The air is dim, lit by only the faintest drifts of afternoon light. My bare feet leave prints on the dusty floor. He walks behind me, deliberately measuring his pace so we don’t walk side by side. At the top of the stairs, Rowan puts his hand on my shoulder. “Violeta. You—your…” He trails off.
I turn around to look at him, confused. “What?”
He motions awkwardly to the back of my dress. “You missed some buttons.”
I reach my arm to my back. Bare skin, the lace band of my camisole, then a row of empty buttonholes. Oh. Heat creeps over my face as I twist around, trying to fasten them, but they’re too small, and they slip away from my fingers.
Hesitantly, I turn my back to him. “I can’t reach them. Can you, please?”
He doesn’t move. I wait, feeling exposed with the buttons undone and him just standing there.
Eventually, with a rough sigh, Rowan reaches out and tries to catch hold of the buttons without touching me, but he can’t. He pauses, takes off his gloves, then tries again. His fingers brush over my skin. Without the gloves, his hands are warm, his fingertips rasped by calluses.
“Ash.” His hands drop. “Sorry, I—”
He takes hold of the dress with another muttered curse. I feel the shift and tug of fabric and pearl. Sparks of heat dance through my fingers. At the center of my chest I feel a strange pull, as though a thread has been knotted up inside me.
At last he fastens the final button and rests his hand, flat, over the nape of my neck. I step away from him.
“Thank you.” The words are half-stuck in my throat.
He walks forward briskly, forcing me to catch up. “The library is this way.”
As I follow him down the stairs, my hand drifts up to curl over the back of my neck. I press down on the memory of his touch on my skin.
Chapter Nine
The library is sunlight and polished wood, a row of windows that reveals a sky hazed with summer clouds. The walls are lined with shelves, shrouded in dust cloths. At the center of the room, Arien and Clover sit together at a large table that’s cluttered with papers and books and ink pots and pens.
Arien gets to his feet when he sees Rowan and me come in.
“Come and see what I’ve done!” He takes hold of my hand, his face alight with a pleased smile, as he pulls me farther into the room. “Clover taught me how to draw sigils. She’s so clever.”
Clover laughs. “Arien, you’re delightful. It helps that you are a very good student.”
Arien rifles through the piles of papers on the table. He finds a notebook and pushes it eagerly into my hands. I leaf carefully through the pages. The book is filled with intricate, beautiful illustrations drawn in delicate ink. I recognize the same interconnected symbols as the ones marked on Arien’s wrist and on Clover’s arms.
“Look.” He touches his fingers to the edge of a shape. “That’s iron, and this is gold, and this is salt…”
“All these elements are part of the magic that makes the world. The Lady’s light, separated into individual pieces,” Clover explains. “Every spell we cast draws on different elements. The more difficult the spell, the more elements you need, and the more complicated the sigil becomes.”
“And that’s how you channel the magic?” I ask. “You combine the elements to make a sigil?”
“That’s right.” Her eyes drop to her wrist, and she brushes her fingers idly over the markings. “And it’s forever marked onto your skin after.”
It makes a grim sense—the permanence of the sigils. Alchemy is so wondrous, so terrible. The enormity of that magic should leave a scar. Arien touches his wrist in an echo of Clover’s gesture, then turns back to the notebook and points to a new page. “And this one is my favorite…”
Neither of us knows how to write more than our names. Mother never showed us, though she taught us to read, so we could learn the litanies. But Arien has always loved to draw. He sketched patterns on fogged-over windows or in the dust between rows of the garden. He hoarded scraps of paper and the slate pencils Mother used to mark down invoices. Kept the leftover wood and remnants of paints she rarely gave to us, and guarded them like treasure.