“If you get an answer out of her, let me know,” I said. “I expect she would like to hurry things up, though; Alfie’s waiting in London, and she has a plan to get herself onto the council.”
“And she’s running around after you anyway?” Aadhya said. “El, that makes zero sense. She’s got to have something else going on, and if she’s not telling you about it, you’re not going to like it. Is there some reason you haven’t ditched her?” I couldn’t help but squirm inwardly, which delayed my answer long enough that Aadhya turned around from packing and stared at me with narrowed eyes. “Is there a reason?” she said, in dangerous tones.
“Well,” I said feebly. I’d known it was coming, and that I didn’t have an acceptable excuse.
“Okay, no,” Aadhya said. “Liesel?”
I groaned and flopped backwards on the bed and covered my face with my hands. “It was a moment of weakness?” I said, muffled.
“A moment of total insanity maybe!” Aadhya said. “That’s even more awesome. El, Alfie is her ride. He got her into London enclave, now he’s going to get her on the council? No way she would risk cheating on him unless she had a crazy good reason!”
“She’s not cheating,” I muttered. “He knows about it.”
“Great, because it’s all part of some kind of plan to get at you,” Aadhya said, unmercifully.
And even if I’d turned down Liesel’s alliance offer, Aadhya was fundamentally right, and I knew it. I still couldn’t be sorry; even now I felt almost pathetically grateful to Liesel for the ocean-deep relief of physical release and dreamless sleep she’d given me, not to mention getting me here. But I should absolutely have made her tell me what she was looking for in return now, instead of just letting her keep tagging along after me, being helpful, as though that was all she wanted. That wasn’t what anyone wanted, and Liesel wasn’t even the doormat sort of person who’d pretend it was for any length of time. She was the highly strategic sort of person who was just waiting to hit me with an appropriately large demand right when I was most vulnerable, and I should absolutely have known better. Even if the Scholomance hadn’t taught me better, my entire life was an object lesson in the dangers of not getting the price tag up front.
“I’m warning you right now that if you move into London enclave and start a ménage with Liesel and Alfie, I’m hunting you down with chains,” Aadhya said. “Also if the Scholomance wasn’t literally a time bomb waiting to go, I would be chaining you up right now. El. It wasn’t your fault.” I dragged a breath in, painful in my too-tight chest, and sat up to hunch over it.
Aadhya came over and sat next to me on the bed and put her arm around me. “You didn’t get Orion killed,” she said. “The plan worked. You were at the doors. All he had to do was jump out. I don’t know why he didn’t, but you’re acting like you left him behind, and I don’t need to have been there to know for sure that is just not a thing that you did. And he wasn’t stupid, so he never thought for even a second that you’d want to.” She snorted. “Why would he shove you out if he thought you’d go? He knew you wouldn’t.”
Aadhya was right, of course she was right, and I knew it, except if it wasn’t my fault— “Then he was a fucking wanker who died for no reason!” I said through my teeth.
“People fuck up sometimes,” Aadhya said bluntly. “You do something stupid, and it turns out to be something you can’t fix or take back. Orion made a bad call in one second in the middle of the worst fight of your lives, with Patience coming right at you. That doesn’t mean he was worthless. You’re not dumb for loving him or being sad he’s dead! You are dumb for letting Liesel bag you on the worst rebound ever,” she added, with a caustic edge, giving my shoulder a shove as she got up to finish packing. “You don’t even like her!”
I grimaced. “She grows on you. A bit.”
“Like a rashling?” Aadhya said, giving zero credence.
I didn’t have anything to wear except what was still on my back, Mum’s baggy linen work dress, and despite Liesel’s cleaning spell, it had reached the limits of what it could bear without a wash I didn’t have time to do. None of Aadhya’s shiny new purchases would fit me, but she gave me an unopened packet of knickers and went for her mum, who brought down an outfit she’d been working on, a salwar kameez in satiny thin cotton, embroidered up and down the neck opening with runes of protection in golden thread; it ought to have cost a year of mana, but she pressed it on me.