I hold out my shaking, earth-gritted hands to show them my upturned palms. “I gave him my magic.”
Arien sucks in a breath. “But you don’t—You said you didn’t—”
“I didn’t even know that I was an alchemist. I thought I had nothing.” I had my cloak, and my shawl, and my boots. The meager sum of my small, untidy life. “But then the Lord Under told me to hold out my hands. When I did, he touched me, and the magic woke up.”
At the memory, heat pools in my palms. I can feel how it once was, rather than the remnants I now have. When the Lord Under stroked my hands, the magic was sunlight under my skin.
“He took my hand, and together we walked through the forest. After a long time we came out onto a road. The Lord Under laid Arien down at the edge of the trees. And then—”
“You were alive,” Arien says. “And your magic was gone. Except—it’s not.”
“It was gone. I don’t understand how, or why, it’s still here. My magic belongs to him. What if using it again means I’m still indebted?”
“Well.” Florence looks at the altar thoughtfully, where the icon is illuminated by candlelight. She runs her fingers over her heart again. “Your bargain had clear terms. You didn’t deceive him; you gave your magic. But that power comes from the Lady. It’s woven through everything. Maybe it was so woven through you that he couldn’t take it all.”
“That makes sense,” Clover says. “We’re all made by the Lady, and her magic is part of us, even people without the ability to use that power for alchemy. The Lord Under had to leave these traces behind, because otherwise you wouldn’t even be alive.” She touches her fingertips to my palm. A lopsided smile crosses her face. “I want to see.”
She strokes across my heartline, the same way that Rowan did, but no light sparks.
“I don’t really know how to control it,” I say.
“What did you do before?”
“It just happened with Arien when he was casting the spell.” I fold my hand closed. “And Rowan, when he touched me.”
Clover arches a brow. “Was that before or after you wore his clothes?”
“It was a cloak. I borrowed it.” Heat creeps over my face. “It’s not like I undressed him.”
Clover hums, thoughtful, and looks behind us at the row of jars still on the lawn from when she and Arien practiced earlier. She gets up and walks over to the edge of the sigil.
“Come over here. You too, Arien.” She beckons to us. “Show me what you did.”
Arien and I kneel down in front of the line of jars. He looks at me, then takes hold of the jar as the shadows gather at his palms.
I put my hands over his, then close my eyes and think of how it felt, that last time. It’s harder now that I’m trying to call on my magic with purpose. When the power finally rises through me, it’s just a brief flash of warmth, like I’ve passed beneath a shaded tree to an open clearing, then gone back into the dark again.
Clover puts her hand on my arm. Her eyes shimmer as she sends magic over our twined fingers, adding her own power to the spell. Arien tenses. I can feel the poison inside the glass, inside the water. Feel how it could be mended. Almost. Almost. I take a deep breath and try to draw out my magic. Try not to think how easy this would all be if I had the power the Lord Under offered.
The strands of Arien’s magic draw tight for a moment before he falters. I sit back with a frustrated hiss as the shadows dissolve. Clover picks up one of the jars and squints at it. The water isn’t clear, but it has changed; it’s no longer inky black, but the gray of softened charcoal.
“It’s not the same as your magic,” I ask her, “is it?”
“No. I don’t know what it was like before, but now your power is like … a leftover.” She makes an apologetic face, then scrunches up her nose as she thinks. “Wait. I have an idea.”
She jumps to her feet and runs back into the house. Lamplight flashes in the window of her stillroom; then she comes back with her basket full of the notebooks and pens she and Arien use at their lessons.
Clover opens one of the books to a blank page, and quickly sketches a sigil onto the paper. It’s not like any of the symbols I’ve seen Arien draw, or any of the marks on his arms. It’s small and curved, like the petals of a half-closed flower.
“When you touched Arien, it was like you made his power more concentrated. This is a channeling spell. It will help you focus more.” She blows on the ink, to make it dry, then passes me the pen. “Practice on the paper first.”