“Then send for help,” Jane said. But the words were hollow, light as ash, dissolving as she spoke them. She did not know if Larrenton still existed beyond Lindridge Hall, did not know if he could bring the larger wall down himself, did not know if he could escape. I have doomed us both. “Mr. Lowell. And there is a locum. They can assist in surgery—”
“Jane.” He cupped her cheeks, gently, and held her frantic gaze. “I do not want to hurt you. I am not sure I could, not even to save you.”
“Why not?” she cried.
“The last time I tried, I was wrong, and I might have killed you. And for that injury, I have been trapped down here for days.” He bowed his head, his brow pressed to hers. “You were right. Death always wins. It is arrogance to think that when I fail, it is always due to error. Sometimes … sometimes there is nothing left.”
“I am asking you to save me,” Jane whispered.
He flinched, pulled away, and said nothing more.
She had bent the world to one single purpose: to rescue him. She had driven herself mad with lack of sleep, had swallowed half-formed birds, had sat with ghosts and screamed and cried, and now, here, she was so close to her goal that she didn’t know what came next. She had never thought beyond opening the stone blocking the cellar. She had never thought she might not follow him out. She had never thought she might die.
She pressed her hand to the aching pain in her gut, forcing her fogged thoughts over what she knew, desperate for a solution. Here she was, a magician newly trained in ritual, disciplined, used to suffering, and at her side was a surgeon who similarly knew the rules of magic. They had, together, seen how an unpracticed magician could create something in his body that grew out of place, and now something grew out of place in her. Beneath her was the stone plinth where a woman had died. Elodie’s death had bound the house in such a way that Jane would one day come and be forced to learn how mathematics could be used to organize the impossible, how zero could lead to provably true answers by impossible means, and how geometry could be used to divine the easiest way to protect herself, or to provide a lens to see the bones of the world.
They were all together here, now, and they had all come to this place soaked in blood, in one way or another.
Synchronicity.
“Do you have your doctor’s bag?” Jane asked. She could smell the blood already, Abigail’s blood, Mr. Renton’s. Her own, pattering against the floor. The ether, the blade, both filled her with horror—but they were necessary.
“I have it,” Augustine said, “right where I left it the last night I saw you.”
“Cut this thing out of me,” she said.
He recoiled in horror. “Jane, I can’t. Not without an assistant, better lighting, antiseptic. I can’t—”
“We don’t have a choice,” Jane said. She forced herself to move, a little twitching of her hand; it drew him to her side, close enough that she could touch his wrist. He felt warm and solid. Alive. “Do you want to leave me down here, then remain to suffer in this house where I have died? Do you want to add to your sins, your regrets, your shames?
“Do you want to lose me?”
“No! No, but…”
“If you tell me this is your deserved punishment, I will scream,” Jane said.
He ducked his head. His breath shivered in his throat, close to tears.
“You are a better physician than that,” she murmured gently. “You are a better magician than that. I understand the surgery is dangerous, that you might fail. But this is not just surgery. This is ritual. You wanted magic that could save your patients—I have found it for you. You wanted a chance to atone for your failures, you wanted freedom, you wanted to know there was more left for you. We can do it here, now. A surgery and a working both.”
She scanned his face, searching for understanding, acceptance. It had to be there. It had to come now as she laid out everything he had wanted but not dared to hope for, in service of her salvation.
But he shook his head. He clasped her hand tenderly. “This talk of magic,” he said. “This is my fault. I have filled your head with nonsense. Jane, there is no magic that can save you. There is no magic at all.”
“But you yourself have—”
“Imaginings. Wishful thinking.”
She stared in horror. How could he not believe it anymore? How could he so easily cast aside what had sundered his entire adult life? Something had happened. Something had happened down here in the crypt, and she did not know what it was. She did not know how to undo it.