“Stop it,” said Gwyneth, slamming a book shut to release a cloud of dust.
Ru coughed. “Stop what?”
Gwyneth narrowed her eyes, an expression that didn’t quite seem to fit her sweet, soft features. She set the book irreverentlyon top of a row of shelved tomes. Her full attention was focused on Ru. Many young men would have given plenty to be at the center of Gwyneth Tenoria’s attention. She was delicate, beautiful, and nonthreatening, with brown eyes, curling blonde hair, and a nose that belonged on a porcelain doll.
Gwyneth said, “You know what I mean.”
Ru retrieved the book from where Gwyneth had haphazardly placed it, tucking it under one arm. “Terrible library etiquette,” she said. “If any of the professors caught you…”
“Well they wouldn’t, would they?”
Ru turned her head sharply at the change in her friend’s tone, remembering when she had tried to visit Professor Obralle. It was not long after their return to the Cornelian Tower. She had been watching the professorial wing, taking note of when the Children were likely to be gone, tending to unknown tasks about the Tower. And when she was sure that the professor’s rooms were unattended, Ru had slipped inside.
Professor Obralle had seemed to be asleep, her eyes flitting nervously behind closed lids. Pink hair lay in tangles over her pillow. But her pulse was steady, and she had no fever.
Ru had only enough time to wonder what could make a person lie unwaking and helpless for so long before she heard voices in the corridor and fled.
“Yes,” said Ru, vaguely aware that she was meant to be carrying on a conversation. “I suppose not.”
“You’re doing it again,” Gwyneth said, almost apologetic. “That empty, terrible look in your eyes.”
“Sorry,” said Ru, “I suppose being emotionally tethered to the cursed heart of a murderer takes a toll.”
Someone on the other side of the library sneezed.
“Keep your voice down,” Gwyneth hissed, hunching over as if they were being hunted through the stacks.
Ru made a noncommittal sound. She had nothing to hide, not from the academics anyway. They had already decided to hate her, or they hadn’t. Ru rambling wildly about Taryel’s heart in the library wouldn’t change much of anything with no Children nearby to overhear.
Ru had done her best to put an end to the artifact’s hold on her. What had it ever given her but pain? Where once the tether to Fen’s heart had felt something like tenderness, now it was only a reminder of his loss. She had tried night after night, alone on the parapet walls or wandering the courtyards in the small hours, reaching out to that unseen thread and hoping to snip it in two.
But it was impossible. Always the thread slipped from her imagined fingers, unbreakable. As if some part of her, a part she refused to fully acknowledge, wanted to keep the connection in place. Perhaps that lonely part of her was comforted by the artifact’s presence, its soothing hum against the fabric of her mind.
Sometimes, when Ru was teetering just on the cusp of sleep, her mind about to free-fall into the abyss of unconsciousness, she was glad to have him there with her. The man she’d lost forever.
“Some people,” Gwyneth hissed, snapping Ru out of her reverie, “might prefer not to broadcast the fact that we’ve broughtTaryel Aharis’s crusted-up heart into the Cornelian Tower.”
Despite herself, Ru smiled. She hadn’t laughed much lately, and the urge to do so surprised her. Her always downturned mouth had become a constant frown, as if finally reaching the pinnacle of what it had been created to do: brood.
“Sorry, Gwyn, I’m distracted.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“What are you two doing back here?” another voice cut in. It was Archie, strolling between shelves of books as if he owned the place. Hands in his pockets and an impatient expression on his aristocratic features, he came to a stop at Gwyneth’s elbow.
“We’re looking for books, genius. How else are we going to unravel the mystery of the professors’ cursed slumber and wake them from it?” Gwyneth was in a mood now, Ru could tell. “And be careful, Ru’s brooding.”
“Old news,” Archie said airily. “Anyway, haven’t we read every last book in the blasted Tower by now?” He spoke in the clipped, elegant manner of the Mirithan highborn upper crust, which he had never been able to shake despite his efforts to get rid of it. He was continually embarrassed about the fact that he had been born wealthy and privileged, when all he really wanted was to live a bohemian life of scholarship. “What’s new, is the artifact acting up? That bastard Fen Verrill weighing particularly heavily on your heart?”
“Arch!” Gwyneth’s admonition was hushed but fierce.
He shrugged.
“He’s right,” said Ru, self-consciously pushing a dark tuft of unbrushed hair behind her ear, her hair hanging in disheveled waves down her back. She no longer put thought into her clothes. Today she wore a simple dress and a woolen waistcoat that she hadn’t noticed was buttoned up crookedly until Gwyneth pointed it out. “It’s everything. Fen, the artifact. And…”
“It’s not your fault,” said Gwyneth, laying a soft hand on Ru’s arm. “What happened at the Shattered City… none of it.”
“He betrayed me.” Ru’s voice was low and hoarse. “I let him… I let him use me. His heart called me to that dig site, and I didn’t do a thing to resist. I murdered people. I’ve failed at every attempt to make things right. And now they’re going to make me do it again, and Ican’t…” her eyes burned.
