Page 25 of As Many Souls as Stars
She stopped at the hatch. It led to the roof, which was flat and balustraded, to allow people to walk it and enjoy the view. She and her mother had oft taken the air there when she was small and it was summer, the green carpet of the Suffolk countryside unrolling before them—but Cybil was not small now, and it was no longer summer, and it was not her mother waiting for her on the other side.
‘Richter,’ Cybil said. ‘I know you are here. I asked you to leave this place.’
There was a pause—then another, deliberate knock against the hatch.
Cybil hissed a breath through her teeth, caught between annoyance and fear. She shoved the hatch open and emerged into the night air.
The sky was clear of clouds, the stars glorying in their freedom. Up here, the wind was biting, the cold unerring. Cybil shivered in her nightgown as she stepped shoeless toward the balustrade. There was no one here—at least no one whom she could see—and she cursed herself for her naivety. It’d serve her right if Richter appeared behind her and shoved her over the railing.
Her father had performed experiments up here: rituals beneath the stars, with salt circles and half-shouted incantations. ‘What areyou doing, Father?’ she had once asked, when she was still a child and had not understood the sheer depths of his disdain, or his delusion.
‘Calling the angels,’ he had said. ‘Now leave me, Cybil. There is much work to be done.’
Calling the angels. Sometimes, Cybil wished she could have the same faith that Christopher had in their family’s holiness, in the purity of his powers; she might have still been cursed, the Seed of Eve, but at least then she would resent him less.
Cybil shut her eyes and opened her arms to the night. She pictured shucking the curse off, like chaff from wheat, the darkness being pulled apart by the wind. She would be left clean, normal, with the shadows sent away, and the fear in her heart carved out. Perchance, if she wished it enough, she could make it so.
The wind blustered, her white nightgown drawn against her by the breeze. There were whispers, plaintive, seeking; Cybil responded instinctively andlistened.
A sudden heat flared across her palms and wrists, crawled up her arms and concentrated in pockets of flame. It hurt, but in a manner that was satisfying, glorifying, an anointment of pain. The fire seared lines into her flesh and burst it open. And although her lids were closed, she saw—shesaw—dozens of eyes dotted her skin, open and shining, staring up into the sky. Across her arms, her collarbones, on her open palms, each the golden brown of those on her face, each with pupils blown belladonna-wide, each glowing with their own inner fire, embers of the light that burnt sun-bright within her chest—
‘Cybil,’ a voice came, and Cybil’s eyes flew open.
She was still on the rooftop. The night air was still and indifferent. She looked desperately to her hands, her arms, but there was nothing unusual there. A waking dream?
Miriam Richter was standing atop the balustrade, unconcerned by the danger of falling. She cocked her head, smiling darkly. ‘You should not feed them without asking for something in return.’
‘Feed… the shadows, you mean?’
Richter stepped onto the roof. Cybil shrank back from her. ‘They will grow attached to you,’ Richter said. ‘Although… I suppose theyalready are. Have they been doing you favours, Cybil, in hopes of a meal?’
‘I thoughtyouwere a shadow.’
‘I am,’ she purred. ‘Of a kind. But you have yet to feed me anything at all.’
‘And yet, you are still attached,’ Cybil said, her voice shaking a little.Hide your fear, she told herself.She enjoys it when you are afraid.
Richter sighed a breath—it felt odd to witness, Cybil realised, because she had never seemed to breathe before—and then gave Cybil a tender look. ‘I amfondof you, Cybil Harding. You charm me. It is a shame I shall know you so briefly.’
‘What do you mean?’
Richter shrugged a shoulder. ‘Once the witchfinder has you…’
Cybil froze. ‘The witchfinder?’
‘You did not know? Henry Martingale is starting an inquisition. It seems poor Peter Oswyn was bewitched.’
‘But—but—it wasyouthat…’
‘Was it?’ Richter laid a hand across her chest in faux surprise. ‘And now you shall take the blame? Tragic.’
Cybil snarled in fury, running a hand through her hair, tugging hard in her frustration. It hurt, but the pain helped: it focused her, allowed her to tamp down the burning panic growing in her gut. ‘I thought you wanted a deal. Is this really intended to endear me to you?’
‘Fear is the greatest motivator of all, is it not? You will require my help if you wish to escape the noose. You know not how to deal with darkness; you are powerful, but that power is raw—unformed. It is not enough to save your life.’
Cybil swallowed, clenching her fists. ‘I am a Harding. I do not need you to save me.’
Richter chuckled. ‘Shall we test that theory?’
