by V. E. Schwab
Will thought he might be sick. He nodded. “I do.”
Robert let go, wiping his bloodied palm on his black pants. Will stayed on his knees, very still, as the breeze in the hall leveled, and died.
“Clean yourself up,” said Robert, turning away, “and come to dinner.”
* * *
Will made it back to his room, one hand on the silver under his shirt and the other hanging at his side, leaving a bloody trail. He made it across the threshold before the air arced around him, his whole form wavering as the wind slammed the doors and shutters, swept a pair of unlit candles from the shelves and a set of books from the table beside his bed. He’d long since learned not to keep fragile things. The gust had spared a wooden cup, and Will swept it from the table with his hand, and sent it clattering to the floor. He threw open the window shutters—he was not afforded a balcony; his father probably saw that as too much fresh air—and leaned out, drawing several long breaths. His arm throbbed. One line for each time he lost control. He looked around at the room, the floor now cluttered with debris, and knew this probably counted too, but his arm ached and his head hurt, and as he examined the space, he concluded that this had been an act of control rather than a lapse of it. He’d wanted the doors closed, and closed them. Wanted to ruin the order, and ruined it.
He stepped over the books, reached a basin in the corner of the room, and began to wash the blood from his arm, drawing water from the large bowl into a second, smaller one. It was a ritual he knew too well. He cleaned the wound and dried it, drew a fresh bandage tight around the cut and then tied it off. He flexed his fingers, making sure he hadn’t cut deep enough to damage the tendons, and while his fingers ached with the movement, he knew he would heal. He always did. When he leaned forward to wash his face, his pendant knocked against the lip of the basin. He straightened, and took the silver piece between his fingers, turning it so he could see its face. A W was carved into the metal, half worn away from the years he’d rubbed his thumb over the letter.
He’d worn it as long as he could remember, not just a trinket, but a charm, a piece of petty craft, meant to calm him. Will didn’t know if it really worked, or if he only believe it worked, or if those things were any different, but when he touched the metal, the power beneath his skin quieted. According to his mother, the pendant had belonged to his real father, the man that had given him his gray eyes, and his power, and his name. Not that Robert knew of Will’s namesake, of course.
Of his real father, Will knew little, and wished he knew less. The man was a shadow, a ghost, a witch, sweeping through only long enough to seduce Lady Katherine, and vanish. His mother never spoke ill of the man, but Will couldn’t help but hate him. If he hadn’t left, his mother never would have wandered into Dale. Into Lord Robert’s bed.
He rubbed his thumb over the W, and let the pendant fall back against his shirt.
The only things protecting Will were his resemblance to his mother and Lord Dale’s pride. It wasn’t simply that Robert Dale thought his nephew, Phillip, too weak to rule. Denying Will would mean admitting he was not flesh and blood, and that would mean acknowledging that his wife, Lady Dale, was not his. Had not always been his.
Will pulled the sleeve down over his bandaged arm. Robert saw magic as a sickness, and meant to bleed it from him. If it were that easy, thought Will, straightening his cloak, he would have emptied his veins for his father long ago.
But the wind did not run in William Hart’s veins. It ran deeper, through his bones and between his muscles, rooting somewhere beneath his heart, or between his lungs, a place he could feel but never find. Wherever it came from, it couldn’t be cut out, and that scared him more than anything. It was getting stronger—he was getting stronger—and the pendant, and the cuts, and the fear of Robert’s wrath, none of it seemed enough to silence the magic.
He tucked the pendant back beneath his collar, felt his heart slow as it settled against his skin, and went to dinner.
3
Will was standing in the middle of the crowded market, and he couldn’t move. His arm was still bleeding, a trickle of red running over his wrist and falling from his fingertips into the dirt. It dripped one, two, three times, and then the wind started. At first, only a tiny swirl of air, right around the red drops. Panic rippled through him, and with it, the wind picked up, whipping around his body.
And then, the people in the market stopped. All at once, every one of them fell silent and turned to look at him. He tried to warn them to get back, but his teeth were sealed together and they just stood and stared as the wind grew. It ripped through the streets, singing as it toppled stalls and broke windows and buckled doors and tore at the people. The wind howled and spun faster and faster around him until the world beyond it blurred.
He was alone inside the tunnel of air, ears filled with the sound of the wind. And then the air turned sharp, and sliced at his skin, carving line after line until the wind itself ran red around him, and the howl became a scream and the scream was his.
* * *
William sat up, clutching his chest.
The wind in the room was gusting, tugging at his hair and the sheets, and he tore up from the bed and pulled on his clothes in the dark. A couple of rectangles of fresh air wouldn’t be enough. He needed more.
He fastened his cloak, and set one foot on the windowsill. Judging by the sky beyond, there was still some time until dawn. His mother’s rooms overlooked the gardens, but his were at the back of the Great House, with a view of the town’s spine, a steep set of narrow paths and alleys cutting all the way down to the valley of lakes that stretched at the base of Dale, and the fields beyond. He climbed through, down three stories of vine and stone, his boots hitting the path at the bottom with a hushed thud.
Will pulled the hood up over his head, and wove his way through the darkened streets to the base of Dale. The buildings changed, growing shorter and older and farther apart, and the ground beneath his boots changed, too, went from rock to dirt, and then to grass. He hurried across a narrow band of green between two lakes, and did not slow until he reached the moors beyond. Vast expanses of grass, high as his knees. A breath of relief escaped as he waded through the fields. He was safe here. A breeze swayed the field, and he didn’t know if it was his wind or the world’s, and it didn’t matter. The nightmare clung to him, but this wind was soft, gentle, soothing. Calm spread through his limbs, as tangible as anger had been the night before.
He turned and looked up at the outline of Dale, a shadow against the deeper dark of night, a mass flecked here and there with torchlight. From here, it seemed quiet, small. All his life he’d lived there, and still the moors felt more like home. His mother said that it was the wild in him, the open space calling. She said it was part of him, as much as blood or bone. Why couldn’t she tell Robert that?
His arm felt tight, and he undid the bandages with slow precision. The cold air ran over the freshest cut, and the pain seemed to lessen. Will ran his fingers absently up his forearm, each mark less noticeable, tapering away to calm skin close to his elbow. How many marks had he made over the years? A hundred? More? None of them scarred.
Will redid the bandage, wincing as he cinched it, and looked off in the direction of the unrisen sun. Light was just beginning to prick the edges of the sky. He had time, and so he sank to the grass, the blades swaying as he stretched and tucked his hand behind his head, and took a long breath.
For his thirteenth birthday, he’d been given a tutor named Nicholas Stone. Nicholas was an older man with a close-cropped beard and a faint but perpetual smile. He’d been hired to teach Will history and politics and logic, but a year ago, after Will’s temper had slipped over a tricky concept and he’d emptied half the library shelves in a single terrifying wind, Nicholas added an element to their lessons. He set aside an hour every day to teach Will stillness. The two would sit on the library floor, or the floor of his room or sometimes, when the weather was nice, in the gardens, and Nicholas would show Wi
ll how to breathe, how to stay calm.
“Energy’s like a knot,” he’d say. “The more you force it, the worse it gets. You have to untangle it. Close your eyes, and breathe. Picture the knot untangling a little with every breath.”
And it had worked. Will had laughed, amazed, and Nicholas had told him to remember the feeling. Memorize it. For the first time in years, he didn’t slip. He went more than a month without earning a new mark.
And then, three months ago, Robert Dale had walked in on a breathing lesson. He accused Nicholas of encouraging witchcraft, and dismissed him on the spot. When Will defended his tutor, Robert struck him, hard, and Will struck back, not with his fists but with the wind. That was the day they broke Will’s wrist, the day his father carved a line bone-deep into his arm, and that was the last time he made the mistake of slipping in Robert Dale’s presence.
Will never saw Nicholas again.
He stretched in the grass as the sky grew lighter. This is calm, he thought, as his chest untangled. Remember this. Memorize this. But even as he thought the words, the ease began to bleed away.
These days, breathing didn’t seem to be enough.
He took hold of the pendant.
This is calm, he thought, clinging to it.
This is calm.
Be this.
Be this.
* * *
The sun was too bright.
Will rubbed his eyes, squinting up at it for several moments before he realized—the sun. He sat up. It was full morning. He scrambled to his feet, grass clinging to his black cloak, and spun to face Dale. The lakes that circled the town’s base were dappled with clouds and morning light, and the town itself was alive with movement.
Will cursed, and ran. He ran out of the field and along the stretch of land between two lakes, and up the paths and the alleys that led toward the Great House. It was too late and too bright to climb the vines back into the house. He’d have to take the front steps. He smoothed his hair and skidded out of an alley, slowing his pace to blend in—as much as he could—and was one road shy of the great stairs when a body blocked his way.
Phillip stood, arms crossed, half his face in the shadow of a house. For once, he didn’t have an entourage.
“I was wrong about you,” he said.
“Get out of my way,” said Will, trying to gauge the time by the sun.
“You’re not callous. You’re a coward.”
“What are you on about?” snapped Will.
Phillip stepped forward. A bruise was blossoming beneath his eye. “You can’t even fight your own battles. You run to your father. Who runs to my father.” He gestured to his face.
“So you come whining to me?” Will clenched his fist, and his arm ached. “And you did provoke me…”
“It’s not my fault you can’t control your power.” Phillip shoved him. The wind rustled through the alley.
“Don’t,” warned Will.
“I don’t fear you, cousin,” said Phillip, shoving him again.
“I don’t think you’re a god or a godthing or even a monster. You’re nothing but a pathetic boy hiding behind his magi—”
Phillip’s face snapped sideways as Will’s fist connected with his jaw. He stumbled back to the dirt.
“I’m not hiding behind anything,” said Will.
Phillip wiped a line of blood from his lip, and grimaced through reddened teeth. Will turned to go.
“Running away, as always,” growled Phillip.
Will spun back to face him. “You didn’t push me over the edge…” he said, coldly. “But I couldn’t exactly tell my father the truth.”
Phillip got to his feet.
“It was Sarah,” said Will, forcing a cold shrug. “She just couldn’t keep her hands off me—”
Phillip swung again, but Will spun easily aside, and caught his cousin in the chest with his knee. Phillip collapsed forward to the ground, coughing. And Will felt… calm. Not the calm he’d felt in the field but hollow. Empty. He wanted to relish it, but the path to the stairs was finally clear, and he was late.
“I warned you, cousin,” he said, striding from the alley. “Stay out of my way.” And to his surprise, Phillip did.
4
Will passed through the main doors of the Great House, rubbing his hand. Three men lounged in the foyer, all wearing the Dale insignia on their white cloaks. The royals wore black and their guards wore white, and the rest of Dale wore whatever it pleased. One of the guards, a broad-shouldered man named Eric, looked up as Will passed, quirking a brow as he took in Will’s grass-brushed clothes and his messy hair and his reddened knuckles, but then he turned back to the others and resumed whatever story he’d been telling.
Will was very late. As he made his way to the dining room, he tried to rub the red from his hand and decide on a lie, a line, a defense. Through the doors, he could hear his mother’s voice, soft and pleasant, and he was about to step through, when her tone changed.
“About William,” she said, and he paused, fingers pressed against the wood. “He’s trying. He really is.”
“You’re too easy on him, Katherine,” said Robert.
“And you’re too hard.”
“Not hard enough. I’m doing this for him. For his future.”
“I believe you,” said his mother. Will didn’t. “But,” she added gently, “he looks up to you. He wants to please you.” Will didn’t care about pleasing his father, only avoiding his wrath. “You show him only your might. But you have other strengths. Show him those, too. Believe in him, my dear. One day he will make a wonderful—”
Will didn’t want to hear more. He pushed open the door. His mother’s eyes lit up, and his father’s narrowed.
“There you are,” said his mother.
“Where have you been?” snapped his father. But then her hand found his arm, and Robert… softened was the wrong word, but a few of his edges smoothed. Will stood very straight and very still as Robert’s gaze tracked from his bandaged arm down to his bruised knuckles. But when he spoke, all he said was, “Sit.”
“I’m sorry I’m late,” said Will, coming forward.
He kissed his mother’s cheek and took his seat across from Robert, Katherine Dale between them like a bridge. Blissfully, his parents both ignored his bedraggled state, and began to talk of mundane things like weather and markets and a spring festival. Will picked at his food, and watched more than listened.
One thing was clear. Lord Robert Dale loved his wife. It showed in the way he held her hand, fingers tangled on the table. It showed in the way he kissed her temple, in the way he served her food. Will hated it, hated that one person could be two people, hated being constantly reminded that Robert didn’t hate everyone the way he hated him. Worst of all was that, despite Robert’s infamous pride, he didn’t seem to love his wife the way he loved power and trinkets, owning simply to own. Lord Dale seemed to genuinely love her. Or maybe, Will consoled himself, he only believed he loved her. Will knew from his pendant that belief was a powerful thing. As was his mother’s kind of magic.
Will took up his knife, and winced, forgetting his arm. He nearly fumbled the utensil, and the chatter around him died.
“How are you feeling?” asked his mother, the way she might if he had a headache, not a piece carved out of his skin. The care showed in her eyes, though, if not her tone.
“Quite well,” he said, but set the knife aside, and soothed his arm beneath the table.
“It’s a lovely day,” she said. “You should get some fresh air.”
“Judging by his state,” said Robert, “he’s already had quite a bit of fresh air.” But if he disapproved of Will fighting, he didn’t show it, and Will himself was growing increasingly sure that Robert Dale wanted him to be a bully. Just not one who relied on magic. His gaze was almost, almost approving. “Still,” he added, “I’ve got a errand you can run for me.”
Will brightened a little. “Really?”
Robert nodded stiffly. “I would do i
t myself, but I’m leading a trip into the forests.” The forests ran in a wall beyond the fields that ran beyond the lakes that circled Dale. “We’ll need wood for the festival. As for the errand, I could have a guard handle it…”
“I’d be happy to run it for you,” said Will, trying to stifle some of his excitement. He knew too well how Robert enjoyed crushing it.
“Good,” said his father. “Eric will escort you.”
Will stiffened. An escort? What if Phillip came back? A guard would make it look like he wished for—or needed—protection. “Father, I hardly think an escort—”
“After yesterday’s performance…” warned Robert, his fingers tightening on the knife in his hand, “…you can’t expect me to let you go unattended.”
“No,” said Will slowly. “Of course not.”
“I think it’s good,” said his mother. “You spending time in town.”
Will nodded. “A ruler,” he recited, “should be among the people, though not of them.”
“Who taught you that?” asked Robert.
“You did.” He watched his father’s brow crease. “Or rather, the book you assigned this week.”
Robert sat back in his chair. “Ah,” he said smugly. “And how are your studies going?”
Will resisted the urge to inform his father that they would be better, if he still had his tutor. He wouldn’t rise to the bait.
“Well enough,” he said, pushing up from the table. “I’ll go get ready.”
“Do you have to go?” asked his mother, and Will paused before realizing the question was not directed at him.
“It’s only for the day,” answered Robert. “I’ll be back tonight, I promise…”
Will rolled his eyes and closed the door behind him.
* * *
Will found Eric waiting for him by the front doors, a slip of paper in his hand. On it were the details of the errand. Will read through, and frowned. His father never would have done this for himself. He didn’t really mind the mundane nature of it, since he enjoyed any excuse to be in town, but the way Robert had spoken of the chore, he’d hoped for something a bit more…