The guidelight had split into two when Edwin first entered the bedroom. Half had remained in the bracket in the hall, but the rest had followed him inside and found its place in an old-fashioned guidekeeper, a cylinder of amber glass with a bronze handle so that one could move it around the room by hand. The light was strong enough that there was barely a need to do so. When Edwin’s hand came near the keeper, the light flickered and brightened further, and a warm sensation spread up Edwin’s arm. It was a cousin to the sandpaper rasp that had heralded Robin’s danger in the lake, and also to the everyday itch of existing on Penhallick lands. At the same time it was nothing like either of them. It felt, too much, like power.
When he turned his gaze from the mirror to the windows, the curtain-ties unhooked themselves and the curtains gave a twitch towards their centre as if to ask: This? Is this what you want?
Edwin closed his eyes. If he told himself that the coaxing glow of magic was no more than something to be studied, he might be able to keep the enormity of the situation at bay. He knew a little about how estates could be, if they’d been inhabited for generations by an unbroken line of magicians. Stopped clocks were only the least of it. When he’d visited Cheetham Hall as a child, Jack and Elsie had competed in the ballroom to see who could flatter the floorboards into tilting beneath the other’s foot. Elsie would win far more often than not, and Jack would lie back on the floor and shout with begrudging laughter, curling his fingers wickedly until the rug twitched from beneath Edwin’s spectator feet and sent him sprawling as well. Jack Alston, a dark, wild boy with all the power of his inheritance at his command, and a family who loved him without question.
Edwin had learned to want him, then, and also to fold his resentment in that want like a glass shard in layers of tissue.
A knock came on the door, followed by Robin’s voice pitched low. “Edwin?”
“Come in.”
Robin’s hair was wet through, his own scrapes standing out stark on his freshly washed face, within which the hazel of his eyes shone like the surface of a lake. The dressing gown that had been found for him was dark green, quilted fabric tied with a black cord. He’d pushed up one sleeve, baring the curse to the air. He was rubbing over it with one thumb, hard enough to crease the skin.
Edwin nodded at it. “Is it . . .?”
“Just once, a few minutes ago,” said Robin. “I’m counting my stars that it didn’t go off when we were in the maze. So it really could have been worse.”
He’d said that when they first emerged. Just before—before.
“Yes,” Edwin said softly. “It could have been.”
“So are you glad I plunged in after you now?”
It was an impossible question, coming at the end of an impossible day, and Edwin’s emotions crowded him like birds trapped in a cage, beating and beating against his usual inability to express them. Strangest of all was the fact that for once he didn’t feel afraid. Perhaps his fear, like his magic, had a finite volume, and he’d drained it all in the maze. They’d both almost died. And even if they’d been half the world away, with no blood-pledge to hold Edwin responsible for keeping Robin alive, he’d still find the idea of Robin coming to further harm—unacceptable.
“No, I’m not glad,” he snapped, a wild and unstoppable lie. “I knew you would be nothing but trouble.”
Robin was smiling, because Robin didn’t know what was good for him. That was how he ended up like this, with the scratches on his face and his hands, and—and Edwin couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and tracing the worst of the scabbed red lines, half-flattered and half-guilty and all-over angry with the world for putting him here, now, richer than he’d been at the start of the day by one of the oldest magical properties in England and by this, Robin Blyth lifting his palms willingly to Edwin’s inspection, displaying the evidence that they’d both bled out of desperation today. Edwin was so angry it filled his skull like hot water. He couldn’t breathe past it.
“Edwin,” Robin said hoarsely, and Edwin pressed blindly forward and kissed him.
It was a bad angle. It was a bad kiss. Edwin hadn’t kissed anyone in years and it was like a language long unspoken in his mouth, coming out with the wrong cadences and with the grammar all askew. Robin’s lips were soft beneath his. Edwin let himself stay for a quick count of two, which was as long as it took for horrified self-preservation to overcome the impulse that had shoved him forward.