Page 29 of The Book That Held Her Heart

“Well—”

“It doesn’t matter.” Carlotte cut Livira off. “I want out. But I can’t just leave Chertal.” She squeezed Livira’s hands until the bones almost creaked. “He’s the only person I’ve spoken to the whole time I’ve been here. He’s nice. Nice-ish anyway. I mean, you don’t stay king for long if you’re Arpix-nice. Actually, he’s pretty cut-throat. But he’s been good to me.”

“But what can we do?” Leetar asked. “I mean, even if we could touch anything, a single skeer would chop all of us into pieces in no time at all.”

Livira had to agree. She didn’t like Leetar’s defeatism, but she was right. Livira lifted her gaze to Yolanda. The girl had been silent since passing her earlier judgement.

“We can’t leave her.” Yolanda’s pink gaze wandered Carlotte’s tattered dress disapprovingly. “It’s possible that the harm she’s done will be self-limiting. But if we leave her to continue disrupting things it will pass the limit and start a chain reaction. If it hasn’t already done so.”

“So, you’ll help me!” Carlotte flashed her old winning smile.

“Or force you to come,” Leetar said darkly.

“How are you expecting us to help?” Livira wanted to, but their options seemed limited…to…zero.

Carlotte nodded at Yolanda. “She’s got magic. I just saw her fly.”

“You can fly too,” Livira said. “There’s nothing to it. It’s just a matter of not falling.”

Carlotte gave her a doubting look. “And you’ve got magic too, Livira. Don’t say you haven’t. That assistant, the one who told me to jump into the pool that…took me to the wood between the worlds. You made that happen, somehow, I know you did.”

“I really don’t. And certainly nothing that will work here…” Livira faltered, seeing the hurt in her friend’s eyes. “Let’s go and look. Let’s watch these ganar and these skeer. We can do that. We’re made for that.”

“You think I haven’t tried?” Carlotte shook her head helplessly. “I’ve spent weeks trudging around in those damn woods. Got so lost! I’d have starved to death if I needed to eat. Oh, gods, you don’t have something to eat, do you? You wouldn’t believe how many cakes I’ve looked at!”

“You forget…” Livira looked down meaningfully and Carlotte followed her gaze, eyes widening at the empty space below their feet. “…wecan fly!” And with that, Livira drew Carlotte further towards the ceiling, keeping tight hold of her hands.

They’d just reached Yolanda and Leetar among the rafters when the far door crashed open, and an out-of-breath king rushed in, shouting for Carlotte. Yolanda pulled Leetar on, vanishing through the plaster overhead.

“Come on,” Livira said quietly.

Carlotte resisted without seeming to know that she was, gazing down at the unsuspecting man as his guards followed him into the chamber. “It’s hard.”

Livira nodded, unwilling to just drag her friend away.

“It was chance that put us together,” Carlotte said. “I’d have been stuck with whoever could see me. Or gone slowly mad if nobody could.”

Livira had always suspected that, in matters of romance, destiny’s role was overstated. Most of the magic was in how any two vaguely suited people could discover the wonder of each other if given space and time. Would she have fallen for a different canith if they had been there in Evar’s place? One of his brothers perhaps? She would never know. Accepting that truth both took away some of the enchantment in love, the romance-book type of magic, and added a different kind of wonder in its place, one that perhaps made you a better person.

“I can’t just abandon him,” Carlotte said.

“I know.”

Carlotte met her gaze. “How could you? You’ve never been in love. You said it wasn’t like that with Meelan…” Carlotte had always been a little cruel, or more careless perhaps than cruel, but the results were the same. Now she caught herself, as if years of semi-solitude had made her listen more carefully to her own words. “Sorry…I didn’t mean—” She broke off, staring into Livira’s eyes. “Do you know? You seem different…How long has it been for you?”

Livira managed a half-smile. “Not so long. But I really did meet someone in the library. I’ll tell you later. But now we really do have to…” Below them King Chertal, who had been marching to the opposite door, paused and lifted his face to examine the shadow-haunted rafters. “…go!”

A moment later they were through the roof and speeding towards a cloudless sky.

Carlotte’s shrieks mixeddelight and terror as Livira hauled her higher and higher. The citadel dwindled beneath their heels, rapidly becoming a patchwork of rooftops which in turn shrunk into some incomprehensible toy. The ground over which they flew started to look more like a map than an actual place. It would, Livira thought, be very easy to lose one’s humanity making decisions from such an altitude. She wondered if the gods felt the same way as they pushed their pieces across the playing board. Did they forget the blood and suffering way down there, too small to see? Or was that what made them gods in the first place? The ability to see both the biggest and smallest picture at the same time?

Livira pulled up level with Yolanda. Leetar remained unwilling to fly by herself, but the contact she maintained with Yolanda was light compared to the death grip Carlotte had on Livira, both arms wrapped about her neck so tight that she was almost choking.

“This is great,” Carlotte said breathlessly after a final shriek. “But I can’t even see my house…and it’s a palace! How can we spot skeer from up here?”

“We saw what might be their tracks in the forest. We can follow those and see what we find. The trail looked fresh.”

“When did you become a tracker, Livira Page?” Carlotte asked, still hanging on for grim death.

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