Eternally Yours (31 page)

I’d already turned to flee when her gentle hand on my shoulder stopped me.

“Let’s go to my room,” she said.

We didn’t talk on our way back to the main house. We went through the kitchen door, through the dining room, and up the main staircase like we had hundreds of times before. As we passed my door I was overcome with longing to leap inside, shut the door, and curl up on my bed. It was hard to force my feet to keep going, to turn right and follow River to the end.

I’d never been in River’s room, though of course I knew where it was. At her doorway she brushed her fingers down the doorframe, whispering. A door-lock spell.

Inside, her room was not much bigger than mine, and just as simple except instead of a narrow single bed she and Asher had a double-size four-poster bed made of black wood. It stood so high that I’d have to climb up and jump down, if it were mine. Immediately I pictured Reyn sprawled across the white down comforter, looking at me with glittering eyes, and I shivered.

“Shall I ask for tea? I should have thought of that before we came upstairs.”

“No, I’m good,” I said. Some days I felt I would float away on tea.

There were two scaled-down armchairs, old-fashioned and tufted, the kind you’d see in England in the 1890s, set before a window. A small, round Shaker table stood between them, and River’s knitting basket was beneath it. “Let’s sit here,” she said, gesturing to the chairs.

I sat. Now that I was there, my stomach hurt. Nervously I retucked my scarf deeper into my dark turtleneck sweater.

Patiently River waited, obviously wanting me to start.

Maybe I should just say something like
I’m worried about the remaining chickens, and maybe we should move them into the barn, and maybe someone
—“I ruined your spell of protection.”

River straightened and looked at me more alertly. “The big spell?”

“Yeah. The big spell.” My throat was so tight, I couldn’t swallow.

“Why do you say that?”

“I didn’t mean to.” Possibly the lamest words in any language.
Je n’ai pas l’intention. Ich habe nicht zu bedeuten. Ik was niet mijn bedoeling. Io non volevo.
“I didn’t mean to. But we were all there, and you said that each of us would get a signal—feel a push—about when to join.”

“Yes?”

My voice was barely audible. “I never got a signal.” Okay, it was out. It had been an anvil on my chest for weeks. Now it was out.

“What do you mean?”

Did I have to spell it out? What part of “I ruined your spell” did she not understand? “Everyone got a signal,” I said. “Everyone joined, one at a time, as the spell went on. I was there, and I wanted to be in it, but I never got my signal.”

“Then why did you join the spell?” River sat back in her chair, and panic flared in my gut. She would forgive me. But would she still like me? Care about me? Because, finally, I believed that she did. She did sincerely care about me. But here I was, disappointing her in a huge, important way. Like I always did.

I swallowed, wishing I had asked for tea. “I couldn’t stand not being part of it,” I muttered. “Everyone had joined. The spell was huge and complex and masterfully designed, like architecture, like a skeleton. I waited and waited for the
push so I could join in. But I never got one. Because of who I am. What I am. I hated that. I didn’t
want
to be
that
me—I wanted to be the me that was part of it.” Out loud, this sounded even more selfish and uncaring than it had in my head. I fixed my eyes on a tiny split in a floorboard—it was like I’d forgotten how to look bored, how to sound casual about important things. Crap. “Anyway. I wanted to be part of that beautiful, amazing spell. I couldn’t be the one left out. So I just stepped in.”

“And then what?”

“At first my voice didn’t blend as smoothly as the others. But I closed my eyes and sang, seeing it all come together in my head. And soon my voice seemed like all the others—part of it, seamless. It was like art.”

River nodded without smiling. “Did you think the spell was perfect?”

I started to say yes, then I thought back. “No,” I said slowly, and River’s gaze sharpened. “I mean—the form was perfect. The design. The layers, the limitations, the powers invoked. That was all… the most perfect thing I could ever imagine. But there was something wrong.”

“What do you mean? What was wrong?”

With surprise I saw River’s hands in her lap, folded together as if she was trying to keep them still. Her knuckles were turning white.

“What was wrong?” Her voice was almost a whisper.

“There were—” I didn’t know how to describe it and
didn’t want to criticize something she’d worked so hard on. “Like, chunks missing. Like it was a tapestry, and the design of the tapestry was perfect, and the finished weave was almost perfect, but here and there, there were little patches of wool missing, tiny little bare patches. Or places where something was patched over. I was surprised—I didn’t mean to do that, but maybe I did. Everything in me—all of me wanted to be part of the beauty. But since I wasn’t supposed to be there, maybe adding my voice damaged the structure somehow.”

River let out a breath and sat back in her chair quickly, as if I had slapped her.

Alarmed, I scrambled for something to say. “I’m so sorry, I was wrong, I didn’t—”

“
Shh!
” River said, waving a hand at me, and my jaw snapped closed like a marionette. She almost leaped from her chair, hurried to the door, and opened it. “Asher! Asher!”

Oh God, she was going to get Asher to physically throw me out! This was so much worse—I should have realized how bad this was—I should have admitted it right away. I’d been lying to myself, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t so bad, that she could forgive me, that she would never ask me to leave.

Hot, embarrassed tears sprang to my eyes as I stood up. “You don’t have to get him—I’ll go!” I choked out. “I’ll just go, right now!”

That got River’s attention, and she turned to look at me. “What are you talking about? Sit down!”

Shakily I sat and wiped my sleeve across my eyes. Okay, first there would be a yelling at. Accusations and censure and whatnot. Well, I deserved it. I’d done wrong, and I would sit there and take whatever they threw at me. It was the least I could do. Then I would get out of there or do whatever she wanted me to do. I could only imagine how tired she must have been of trying to fix me.

In just a minute Asher came, looking concerned as River closed the door behind him. He took her hand, then saw me sitting miserably in the chair at the window, trying not to cry.

“What’s wrong, love?”

River pulled him over to the window and grabbed a low stool for him to sit on. “Nastasya, tell Asher everything you just told me. Don’t leave anything out.”

So I had to humiliate myself again. Sniffling, I nodded, and then in a low voice that kept cracking, I went through my whole stupid tale of how I had ruined everything.

“Tell him about the missing parts,” River said.

“I guess—it was my fault,” I said. It must be, if River was making me tell Asher about it. Not meeting their eyes, I repeated my tapestry metaphor. When I was done they sat back and looked at each other, not saying anything. This whole scene was starting to seem kind of bizarre.

“Huh,” said Asher at last.

“No one else felt it,” said River breathlessly.

“Except you and me,” said Asher. “And Nastasya.”

“Should I go now?” I asked in a tiny voice. “I just need to get some stuff.”

“Go where?” Asher asked, confused.

“Uh… leaving? River’s Edge? Because I ruined the spell?”

“
Tsk
—I forgot to clear that up,” River said. “You didn’t ruin the spell.”

I repeated her words in my head, but they still didn’t make sense. “I never got a signal to join in,” I reminded her. Had she missed that part?

For the first time River gave me a slight smile. “You did, sweetie.”

Whoops, there I went, right through the looking glass again! “Wha-huh?”

“Your overwhelming feeling of wanting to be part of us,” she said gently. “Your refusal to be left out. The desire to join so strongly that you took a chance and stepped in. That was your push.”

Okay, speechless here.

“Were you expecting a voice in your head?” Asher asked. The corners of his eyes crinkled, though he still wore an air of weariness and worry.

“Yes?” I mean, yes,
obviously
that would have been good.

“Everyone’s push is different,” River explained. “It can be
quite striking or more subtle. The signal you got was actually quite strong—you described it as being overwhelming, didn’t you?”

Still had no clue what was going on. “Uh-huh.”

“So you got an overwhelming feeling, and you joined,” said Asher. “What part of that seems unclear to you?”

“Besides all of it? It was just a feeling! Feelings can be wrong! It was just what I
wanted
.”

They looked at me, and I felt even more clueless and dense than usual. Which, as you know, is really saying something.

“No, my dear,” River said at last. “When you’re honest with yourself, in touch with who you are, and you know what your goals are—then, no, feelings can’t be wrong. And what you want will make sense.”

I felt like they’d hung me upside down by my ankles and shook me. I’d been feeling awful for
weeks
, every time I remembered what I’d done. They were saying it wasn’t me.

“Then—what made the spell not work?” I blurted. “It was so strong! But things are still happening. It doesn’t feel safer here than it ever did!”

Asher and River met eyes again, speaking without words. I remembered how Asher had said they’d been together for more than sixty years.

“We don’t know,” said Asher. “Clearly it should have worked. Except that during it, River and I both felt the missing pieces of the pattern, as you did. It wasn’t you—but we haven’t been able to pin down who it was.”

“Like, someone working on it from a distance, like the other stuff?”

“It was someone here, Nastasya,” River said. “Someone here deliberately ruined the spell, and so skillfully that almost no one would ever notice.”

Oh my God. My brain started firing on all cylinders as I processed this information and its implications.
Someone here?
“Ottavio?” I tried to keep the hope out of my voice.

River gave me a weak smile and shook her head.

“Someone who knew what they were doing,” I said, thinking.

“Yes.” River nodded sadly.

“Someone very strong.”

“Yes,” she said again.

“I’m not strong enough and don’t have any idea of how to do it.” Let’s just rule me out right now. Quickly I ran through the people here, determining whether they were strong or knowledgeable enough. Of course I didn’t know them as well as River and Asher did—no doubt they’d already gone through this painful exercise.

“Not Lorenz or Charles,” I said, and they nodded. “Not Jess. Not Brynne. Daisuke could, but he didn’t.” Somehow I was sure of that.

“Right,” said Asher, looking depressed again.

“I’m guessing Rachel could, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t.” How weird—to be summing up who I thought they were and how well I knew them. Having gotten rid of the easy
ones, the people who were left required more thought. “I don’t think Reyn is strong enough. I’m sure he wouldn’t do it.” A northern raider has standards, after all.

River and Asher looked at each other.

Uncomfortably I realized I didn’t want to narrow it down any more. The thought that someone here, someone I’d eaten with, done chores with, studied with—it suddenly hit me much more strongly.

“Oh my God,” I said slowly. “It really was one of us. I, like,
just
got that.”

River nodded. “It’s a hard concept to accept.”

“I need two things from you,” said Asher. “I want you to think back and carefully examine your memory to see if you picked up on any clues of who it might have been. And two, I’m asking you to keep this to yourself. River and I haven’t mentioned our suspicions to anyone except each other.”

So if word got out, they would know where to look.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

And that was it. My big confession. Their big revelation. And the sure knowledge that someone among us was dangerous.

I
n the late 1570s I had saved up enough money to buy a one-way boat trip from Iceland to Norway. When I was little, my father had shown me on a large, beautiful map where Iceland was and Greenland and where Norway and Sweden were. He talked of other countries as if they were incredibly compelling and yet to be avoided at all costs. I asked him if he had ever been to any of those places, and he’d said yes. When I asked if he would go back to them someday, he’d said no, he never would, by God’s will.

After my husband died in 1569, I’d made my way to
Reykjavík and became a house servant. My mistress, Helgar, had been the one to tell me the shocking news that I was immortal (immortal!) and offer up some of what she knew about our powers, habits, history. Which wasn’t much. Her unquestioning, untroubled belief of the inherent darkness of all immortals had followed me for the last four hundred plus years.

When their stable groom had started to pursue me too strongly, I panicked and left—gathering up my things in a cloth bundle, sneaking out in the middle of the night like a mouse. The stable groom wasn’t a bad man—he was offering marriage, and he wasn’t unkind. No one could figure out why I would refuse him—they literally couldn’t understand, like being married would save me from something. But I never wanted to be married again.

Reykjavík was a port, and it was easy to secure a place on the next trade ship headed for the mysterious, exotic, foreign… Norway. That trip was indescribably awful. There’s no way to truly get across just how bad—I mean, to put it into perspective: Once, Incy and I were on a cruise ship off the coast of Australia. A huge storm came up that the ship couldn’t avoid. It was actually really bad—this huge, heavy, luxury liner being tossed around on much huger and more powerful waves. The ridiculous power of the ocean.