"They can bewitch them by a touch and a look, or by a look only…"

—Malleus Maleficarum Part II, Question XIV

"For witches generally use this manner of speaking, or something like it, when they wish to bewitch a person by looking at him."

—Malleus Maleficarum Part III, Question XIII

The upper city was on fire, the sky choked with ash and smoke—the last few coals were flickering gently in the hearth. Jasper's face seared in agony as blood ran into his eyes—a wispy, feathery something was tickling his cheek. A girl was screaming, a heartrending wail that went on and on—a girl was sighing, stirring awake with a soft murmur.

The dueling dreams had him in their grip, each in turn: the cries of the dying beneath a red sky, the searing pain and whirling confusion—and the cozy, fading hearth-light, the drowsy warmth of skin against his own. The more he fought to stay in that peaceful place, the more the first dream ripped it open again, clawing him away from the tender dark, the trusting presence beside him. No, no, he didn't want to be back here, he didn't want to see this place. He didn't want to see her. She wouldn't stop screaming—make it stop, he had to make it stop.

"…up," came a faint voice. It was scarcely audible above the wailing.

"Jasper. Jasper, you're dreaming." Of course he was—neither place was real.

But the voice was insistent. "Wake up!"

He did. There was a moment of disorientation as the world swirled back into focus—where was he? But he knew this room—it was the peaceful place, the cozy hearth with the dying fire. The abandoned cottage in Marcote, his waking mind supplied as he sat up. Only in the dream, someone…Alice had been nestled in his arms, not perched across the room on her borrowed cot as she was now.

"You were having a nightmare," she said.

He nodded. It was impossible that he should sleep peacefully two nights in a row. The dueling dreams were new, though. He couldn't recall the last time he'd dreamt something good.

Alice was eyeing him the way she might look at an animal she didn't wish to startle. Devil take him—had he been thrashing in his sleep? Crying out and clutching at his long-healed face? He tried to hide his mortification at how their roles had been reversed, to act as though it had been nothing worth noting.

"I…think I'll step out for a moment," said Alice.

"Don't go far," he warned. Dammit, she didn't need to treat him with such delicacy. He was fine.

It only took a few minutes to collect himself and tidy up his pallet and Alice's cot (no need to leave the rumpled blankets hanging halfway off.) He took stock of the supplies again, unpacking and partially repacking the salvaged leather pack.

He left out the most important thing: the fading, mildewed map he had pulled from a chest.

He spread it out now in the morning light slanting through the open shutters, tracing over his discovery. If the map was right, they were only a few leagues northwest of a village called Wythe. If Jasper took the road out of Marcote and followed it east, he was reasonably certain he could be there and back in a day on horseback. The plan newly firm in his mind, he went behind the cottage to tack up the stray horse from yesterday, which he'd hitched beside a trough. It was only a farmer's nag, but it would do for this short trip.

When he led the horse out into the square, Alice was leaning over the well, its bucket upturned beside her as she tried to wash the caked river-mud from her hair. As he watched, her fingers snagged on a tangle and she cursed under her breath, jerking her hand violently free.

"Careful," he blurted.

Alice looked up, giving him another quick, wary once-over before seeming to decide he required no more walking on eggshells. "It's no use anyhow," she sighed. "Did no one in this village own a comb? I should just cut it all off." She glared reproachfully about at the plundered houses.

"Might look good that way." He'd meant to be flip, but she seemed to consider it, tugging thoughtfully at a lock by her ear.

The horse nosed impatiently at the loose cobblestones by his feet, reminding Jasper of his intended mission. "I…must speak with you," he began.

She crossed her arms. "You're leaving."

"Just for the day," he promised.

Alice scuffed a dirty, bare foot back and forth. "I don't like it."

Jasper's heart sank. Of course she would be angry with him for leaving her unprotected. He was of two minds about it himself. Yes, they needed supplies, but he had promised to keep her safe. He had long since gotten used to being regarded a faithless coward, but to have Alice think of him that way…

She shrugged, still pouting at the ground. "I didn't see anything last night, so you might not encounter any danger, but I can't be certain."

Jasper blinked. She was worried about him? He floundered, caught between mild offense and an odd tenderness blooming in the pit of his stomach. "I'll be fine," he managed, before the feeling could sink its roots in too deep.

"You should be warm enough in the cottage," he instructed. "But keep the shutters closed."

She turned her pout on him in full force. "Are you trying to lock me up again already?"

The accusation knifed through him, lodging heavily in his chest for a painful, breath-halting moment.

The next moment she giggled. "Oh, dear. You are sensitive. I'm sorry."

She was joking. Joking about…that. The sheer madness of her apology for upsetting him with a reference to the time she had been his starved, beaten captive was not lost on Jasper. It was as if he'd been dashed with a bucket of cold water, the warm feeling from earlier extinguished. He swallowed. "Don't be sorry. Just…be careful."

She rolled her eyes. "I'll be sure to summon one of my servants and have them draw up water so I don't risk falling down the well."

He held back a sigh. "Alice."

"Yes?"

"I'm serious."

"You always are," she observed, looking him up and down with a small smile.

"If Felix and Demetri—if anyone comes, you're to—"

"Douse the fire and hide, I know. Don't worry."

An impossible request, but he tried his best to obey as he swung a leg over the horse. Alice drifted over to pat its unkempt mane, looking smaller than ever from his new vantage point. "I'll be fine," she promised, stepping back out of the way. "I'll do some sewing. Just…" She bit her lip. "Come back soon."

He nodded, struck strangely dumb by the solemn look in her eyes, and kicked the horse into a trot.

The village of Wythe was scarcely big enough to deserve the name, but at least it was populated by living people, who grudgingly sold Jasper some bread and meat once it became clear he had money to spend. He was even lucky enough to exchange the farmer's nag for a faster roan gelding that was much better suited for travel, but there his luck ran out. There was no cobbler in town, and anyone who might have sold him the rest of the supplies he needed had packed up and headed to the larger town of Hareswold, to peddle their wares at a fair tomorrow. Inconvenient, but according to the map, Hareswold was due east of Marcote, close enough that a trip there was not only possible but appealing.

The sun was setting by the time he turned west toward Marcote, another chilly gray evening stealing in. Jasper pulled his cloak tighter and spurred his horse faster. It felt wrong that the prospect of returning to that putrefying place had him in such good spirits.

He had kept a close watch on his own thoughts and desires all day, wondering if Alice's mysterious hold there would dissipate with distance. He told himself it was precaution, not paranoia. That witches might be able to incite the minds of men to infatuation and lust, but there were no such things as witches, and therefore Alice was not a witch. The problem, he mused as he galloped through wisps of thickening fog, was that he didn't know what she was. He wished he could forget Felix's accusations.

A priest, and her own mother.

But turning it all over in his mind would bring no answers. The only person with answers was keeping them firmly to herself.

And wasn't he the same? She had seen him do—ugly things—had seen him kill her friend, and yet that was nothing, nothing at all compared to the ugliness he kept to himself. It seemed they were at a grim impasse.

The fog had grown so thick and the sky so dark that in his distraction, he nearly drove his horse right into the signpost that led to Marcote. By the time he was hitching the beast into place behind the cottage, he could scarcely see his own hand in front of his face.

He opened the door to find it no brighter inside, the fire having dwindled to coals.

"Jasper?"

Alice's voice. He had just enough time to make out her dim silhouette before she was hurtling into his arms, knocking him half a step back over the threshold. He caught her reflexively, cupping the back of her head as she slammed into him.

"Alice?" There was no way to check her over, she was clinging to him too tightly. "Are you all right?"

"I didn't know if you'd come back," she admitted, muffled against his chest. The warmth of her against him, her watery scent and the feathery brush of her hair—it was all stirring memories of last night's more pleasant dream, making it too hard to think. He took her gently by the elbows and disentangled them—but now he was the one holding her.

He cleared his throat and let go. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes. And you're freezing," she accused, seizing one of his hands in both of hers and blowing on it, lips just brushing his knuckles. "Come inside," she urged, pretending not to notice how fast he pulled away. "It's going to rain."

She darted over to rekindle the fire, suddenly all business as he set his saddlebags and rucksack on the rough-hewn table. It was still too dim to make out much, so he began unpacking the supplies by touch.

"I'm coming with you tomorrow," said Alice.

So she already knew of his plan. He waited for that to unnerve him, and found it didn't.

"Coming with me where?" he challenged.

"Wherever it is you're going."

"You know it's too dangerous."

"It is not."

He sighed, not in the mood to quarrel when he was scarcely a minute through the door, his face still aching and windblown. "We'll talk about it later."

The fire flared back to life, casting long, wavering shadows over the walls and letting him see her at last.

Her face was still dirty and her hair was as snarled a thicket as ever, but she had somehow gotten the mud out of it. She was dressed differently, too—true to her word, she had managed to turn the length of blue finespun wool into a serviceable dress to replace her torn and threadbare smock. Either she was small enough or the fabric big enough that she'd had enough left over to add fashionable tippets to the sleeves, like a merchant's wife or a knight's lady. All in a single afternoon's work.

She had caught him staring. "Oh—do I look all right?" she tugged at the skirt. "Of course there are no decent shifts to be had in this horrid place, and it really ought to be girdled, but I did the best I could with what we found…I wish I had a glass to look in,"she sighed, collarbones shifting as she tried to make the fabric hang right.

"You look…good," said Jasper, with a painful half throat-clear. He wasn't sure it merited the radiant, beaming grin he received in response.

"Shall we eat?" he offered. Most of what he'd bought in Wythe was the same dried, salted meat they'd been eating throughout the journey with Felix and Demetri, but he'd managed to get his hands on a cut of fresh mutton from the butcher, just for tonight. He set about roasting it over the fire while Alice snooped her way through the rest of his purchases, pausing here and there to tell him how hopelessly dull and practical he was. They tucked into the meal with relish, Jasper finally warmed through after his chilly ride, Alice wolfing down the food as if Demetri might appear and snatch it away at any moment. Jasper waited until she was picking at the bone to broach his question.

"So you knew I had plans to leave tomorrow, but you didn't you know I'd be back today?"

She set down the bone with a sigh. "I didn't know you were leaving again until after you came back."

"And then you…saw it?"

She shook her head. "That's not how it works."

It had never occurred to him to wonder about the precise mechanics of her strange gift. "How does it work?"

Silence. He sensed she was close to withdrawing altogether. "…If I might ask," he added politely.

Alice considered for a while, then sighed. "Sometimes I dream things," she told him. "Other times I just…know them. And sometimes, it's like reaching."

"Reaching?"

"Like…like drawing up a bucket from a well, or spinning thread, and pulling in...a memory. Something you already knew, but forgot. Only instead of a memory it's an answer."

She fidgeted under the weight of his stare. "I don't do it often," she mumbled. "You don't have to look at me like that."

He hadn't meant to look at her like anything. "I'm sorry."

She was frowning at the table, picking at the wood. "Take me with you tomorrow."

"You don't even know where I'm going," he reminded her.

"It doesn't matter. I'm coming with you."

"It's too dangerous. There will be people from all over at the fair in Hareswold—hundreds of eyes. Anyone could repeat your description to Felix and Demetri."

Her face lit up. "A fair? Oh, but I have to come with you! We don't even know if they're searching for us, and I haven't been to a fair since…Jasper, you can't honestly mean to leave me here again!"

"Of course I do. Didn't you hear me? You can't go out among so many people."

She shook her head fiercely. "So much the better—there'll be so many people, no one will pay me any mind!"

He looked her up and down again, trying to see her with a stranger's eyes. A tiny woman with an enormous mane of unbound, tangled hair…even in the new dress she was still ragged, dirty, and barefoot. Her palms had all but healed, and the bruises about her throat had faded to a less-noticeable yellow, but…

"You draw too much attention," he concluded.

Alice bristled. "Why should I draw any more attention than you do? I'm not the one with half my face covered in—"

She broke off, eyes widening.

Scars. Scars that she had been careful never to mention up until now, except for the day she had thrown his own cruel words back at him. Small wonder she was afraid to bring them up, considering how he had lashed out last time.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, making shame flare in his gut.

"Don't be." Jasper fluttered a weary hand. "I know how I look. You may have a point," he admitted with a grimace.

She looked up timidly. "You're…you truly aren't angry?"

"Why should I be? You spoke the truth."

It was her turn to fall silent, picking at the table again.

Then she blurted: "Sometimes I see you with another scar."

It was not at all what he'd expected to hear. He could feel how nervous it still made her to say the word aloud, with the memory of that fight hanging between them: I shall tell you mine if you tell me yours.

It occurred to him that he could tell her now. Smyrna, the knighthood, the melted, leathery ruin that was the upper right part of his face…he could let the whole sordid tale spill out at her feet. There was nothing to stop him except himself.

But the round little face turned up to him was so piercingly earnest under its smudges of dirt. How would she look at him once she knew?

"Another scar?" he replied instead. Coward.

She nodded.

"Where?"

Her brow knitted as she rose onto her knees and reached up. Jasper held utterly, perfectly still as the warmth of her fingers made contact with his face. Eyes downcast, lower lip between her teeth, she brushed a featherlight path across his as-yet-unmarred left cheekbone, stopping just past the corner of his eye.

She was so close he could have counted every eyelash. The breath stuck in his lungs. He had the sense that if he let it out, he might do something foolish. Alice's eyes snapped up to meet his, wide and questioning, and he wondered if she sensed the foolish thing, too.

She drew her hand back suddenly, as if pricked by a needle, dropping her gaze along with it.

"There," she said.

Jasper swallowed. "I see."

"But it's…faint," she hurried to assure him, twisting her hands in her lap. "It comes and goes. I don't think it's certain to happen."

He shrugged. "One more won't make much difference."

She looked as if she wanted to say something more, but seemed to think better of it. "So you'll let me come with you?" she demanded instead.

Not this again. "I didn't say that."

"Yes you did," she was quick to insist. "You said I had a point."

"That doesn't mean—argh." He cut himself off with a huff. She did have a point, however he might grudge it—with his face a gnarled wasteland from cheek to hairline, he stood out just as much if not more than she did. He weighed the idea of taking her with him against the prospect of another day spent alone, fretting that she was unprotected.

"Fine. You can come." She was grinning before the words left his mouth.

"I haven't been to a fair since before the pestilence," said Alice the next morning, as he tacked up the horse. "I wonder why they're having one now?"

"Merchants have to eat, too," observed Jasper, tightening the girth. "They must be growing desperate."

When the saddlebags were situated, he climbed into the saddle and reached down for Alice, ignoring the odd little jerk in his stomach as he pulled her up behind him.

Hareswold had chosen the perfect day for their fair—the previous night's chill had given way to a morning so clear it stung, without so much as a wisp of fog to pollute the autumn-scented air. It made it easier to keep to the road, letting the tempo of hoofbeats lull him into a kind of contentment. After a while, Alice launched into her sad little song again—I am stretched on your grave and I'll lie here forever…but with the sun on his face and her skinny arms around him, the melody had lost its grim power. The road to Hareswold flew by beneath them, and by late afternoon the town was a growing blot in the distance.

Jasper dismounted and took the gelding's reins when they reached the main road, slowing to a sedate, unremarkable walk to blend with the steady trickle of fair traffic.

"You must let me do all the talking," he instructed. "Don't look anyone in the eye. Don't stay in one place for too long—nothing that will draw attention. We'll find what we need, acquire it, and leave."

"Or," said Alice, rolling her eyes, "you could stop fretting long enough to let us enjoy ourselves! Look around, Jasper—it's a fair. Who's to notice us among all this excitement? I know well enough how to keep my guard up."

She had a point. Fairs had been so few and far between since the pestilence struck that this one seemed to have attracted half the county, and would no doubt be crawling with sights more interesting than two bedraggled travelers. He sighed. "I'm sorry," he grumbled. "I know you can manage yourself." He didn't, actually, but it seemed important to give her the chance to prove it.

"It's all right," she informed him. "You like having something to worry about."

Not something, he corrected her silently. Someone.

Her dirt-encrusted feet swung cheerfully back and forth, dangling a comical distance above the stirrups. "We'd better find a cobbler first," Jasper decided.

One transaction later and Alice was decently shod in the tiniest secondhand slippers available. She clung to his arm in excitement, dragging him about to exclaim over jugglers and pewter trinkets and the young men shooting at targets by the town wall (Yes, Jasper had taken part in such contests before, though never at a fair. No, he wasn't any good. Very well, she had caught him, he was being modest.)

True to her word, she was careful never to linger in one place too long, though she chatted with the various merchants and their customers more than he would have liked (Oh, but that man's pies looked delicious, and they simply had to discover how that thread was dyed! And surely they could spare some alms for the beggar with the withered leg, too?)

She drifted past the throng at the glover's stall and over to a booth of colorful linen and other fabrics, remarking on details of texture and weight that Jasper could never have distinguished. A few Flemish wools were inspected and deemed of good quality before she paused over a simple linen scarf embroidered with red and orange flowers, stroking the design in wistful admiration.

"Excellent choice, Mistress," piped up the merchant, a balding, fleshy-faced man in his fifties. "It's meant to be a kerchief, though for a little thing like you it might do as a mantle, eh?"

Alice looked up to make some witty reply, and gasped instead.

Jasper's hand flew to his sword as he frantically appraised the merchant, stall, and surrounding area, but nothing seemed amiss. Nothing but Alice, who had gone pale as a corpse, her eyes locked on the merchant in dawning horror. The cloth slipped from her slackened fingers.

The merchant frowned. "Are you all right, Mistress? Have I got something in my beard?" He patted it self-consciously.

Alice made no answer, only stood trembling and staring. Her features smoothed into that odd, empty look Jasper had seen before, their horror replaced by a disturbing blankness. He felt gooseflesh erupt up his arms, the back of his neck tingling as a sympathetic tremor shot through his own hands.

The two servingwomen at the glover's stall turned to see what was amiss, as did the glover's apprentices and the beggar with the withered leg. Damn them all. This was exactly the sort of attention Jasper had been determined to avoid. Now a terrible dread yawned like a pit inside him, wider and deeper with each passing second. His hands refused to stop shaking and a colorless pressure was building in the air, like the silent moment before a thunderclap. The servingwomen glanced nervously up at the sky, which was still a cloudless blue. Was it Jasper's imagination, or had the beggar's outstretched hands begun to tremble, too?

Nothing was happening, and yet…it had to be stopped before anything could happen. He had promised.

"It's nothing," he said quickly, and at his words the deafening silence burst like a bubble—the sun was shining, the crowd jostling and chattering by, and his hands were his to control again. One found its way to the small of Alice's back. "Pay my—my wife no mind. She suffers these spells, sometimes—an old illness."

"Oh, is that all? My wife was the same, after childbed," nodded the merchant. "Yours looks like she could use a good meal and a draught of ale."

Irritation curdled in Jasper's chest. Was this man implying that he couldn't feed his own wife? Or—no—not wife—that was the wrong word—but that he couldn't feed Alice? She may have gone hungry in that cage, but they had eaten well enough since their escape, hadn't they? She was just small. It was none of this man's affair.

Jasper snatched up the embroidered linen Alice had been admiring. "How much for this? We'll take it."

Alice was still mute and shivering beneath his hand, but she allowed him to guide her away from the stalls, to a relatively quiet area where he could sit her down atop an empty crate. There was no trace of a fever, but her forehead was clammy. Perhaps she really could use a hot meal.

"You saw something?" asked Jasper quietly, once they were out of public earshot.

A nod.

"And that—that feeling, that…strangeness." He ran a hand through his hair. "That was you."

It wasn't truly a question.

"That's how they caught you," he realized. "Why they locked you up. This has happened before."

Another nod. Her lower lip trembled.

He floundered, half-wishing he still believed in the Church, in some higher power he could call upon silently. What had he just averted? Or had he averted anything at all? On the face of it, there was nothing supernatural about a few tremors and an odd pocket of silence. From the look on Alice's face, whatever had truly happened had happened to her alone.

"Alice," he commanded in a whisper. "Look at me."

She obeyed, eyes wet and fearful, and his throat tightened. He took her shoulders in a firm grasp. "Listen to me. You must put it out of your mind," he instructed. "Whatever it was, it's passed. You're safe—I promise. But we must keep our wits about us. We've enough to worry about as it is." For lack of a better remedy, he passed her the waterskin.

She had recovered herself enough to take a deep pull. "You're right," she murmured, swiping water from her lips. "I wish I could be so practical all the time."

Relief washed through him at the sound of her voice. "I thought I fretted and worried too much." That earned him the shaky hint of a smile.

When he went to put the waterskin away, there was something else tucked into his belt.

"Oh. Here," he thrust the embroidered kerchief at Alice without ceremony.

She blinked. "You bought it?" Evidently she had been too lost in her nightmare-spell to notice the transaction.

Jasper looked away to watch two of the apprentices begin packing up their wares. "You liked it."

"…I do," agreed Alice, sliding the cloth tentatively between her fingers. "Thank you." He felt her turn to look up at him. The apprentices had dropped something small and were crawling about searching in the dirt.

"It will help us blend in," added Jasper lamely. True enough, especially if she were going to be mistaken for his wife. No proper wife went about with her hair loose and uncovered.

"Right." There was a grin in her voice as she tied the kerchief on. "How do I look?"

He glanced down and away. "Respectable," he said, though a few wispy curls at her hairline were already struggling their way free.

She pushed gamely off the crate, but what should have been one of her usual sprightly leaps was unbalanced and wobbly. Jasper caught her before she could pitch forward into the grass.

"Sorry." She let out a breathless giggle at finding herself braced against his chest, his arm around her waist.

"It's all right." He released her, but kept a hand at her back in case she should fall again. "Let's find some food."

"Oh yes!" she agreed. "There's a tavern around here somewhere."

She led him straight to it with her usual uncanny precision, and perched obediently in a corner to watch the fairgoers drink and carouse while Jasper talked the innkeeper into renting them his last room for the night.

The tavern fare was simple, but the merchant had been right—a hot meal seemed to make all the difference, as the fragile and translucent nightmare-Alice slowly flushed pink and alive again. For once she didn't tear into the food with bestial urgency, but ate with a measured neatness he hadn't known she was capable of.

She caught him staring. "What? I can be civilized when I wish," she insisted, and promptly put the lie to her words by licking gravy off her fingers, holding his gaze a second too long as she did.

It was a far cry from the last time he'd been in an ale-house.

"Am I better company than Felix and Demetri?"

His unamused look made her laugh into her tankard, which was so large she had to hold it in both hands. Jasper didn't bother to answer that her simple pleasure at their surroundings, her good-natured teasing and the torchlight flickering over her profile could banish the memory of a hundred Felixes and Demetris.

As she scampered up the stairs before him, he was once again left to marvel at how quickly and completely she shook herself free of the grip of horror—and the more time he spent with Alice, the more certain he became that whatever path had led her to that cage must have been horrifying. It was there in her blank spells and restless dreams, in the things she wouldn't tell him. But it didn't rule her, didn't own her, didn't poison every breath and word and thought. What would it be like, to live so unencumbered by the weight of the past? To drown one day and laugh in the sunlight the next?

Their room for the night was shabby, but clean, and it was a relief to shut the door on the dull roar of the tavern below. Alice had already flitted over to throw open the shutters of the single window and lean halfway out in a teetering way that would have made him nervous, were it anyone but her.

"And before you scold, no, I am not trying to freeze us to death," she preempted him, looking out over the sea of bobbing lanterns, pinpricks amid the blue-black. The night breeze she had let in was gentler than usual, carrying snatches of laughter and conversation as revelers bade each other good night and bedded down. Still, Jasper slipped off his cloak and settled it around her shoulders. It couldn't hurt.

She turned to look at him, clutching the folds about her and grinning a little ruefully at how the hem pooled at her feet. "Aren't you glad we came here? I knew nothing awful would happen."

Evidently, she didn't count her strange spell at the merchant's stall, and it seemed wrong to bring it up now. She had taken out their piece of the evening to admire it, and he was glad that she was glad.

So he bit his tongue and teased, "You knew?"

"Well, not like that—not for certain," she admitted.

He wondered if the glimmers of her peculiar ability would ever stop catching at him. All this time they had been alone together, but here, in this dingy little place that was theirs among strangers, he felt they were alone together in a different way. If only he could banish the undercurrent of his own melancholy, his own jagged wrongness. If only Alice's shining contentment didn't cast all the shadows between them into relief. All the secrets. They made him feel…wrung-out, somehow. Tired. Like he shouldn't be allowed beside her.

"You said…when you saw me, you knew I would do you some good," he said haltingly.

She was sure of her answer. "Yes."

"I…What did you mean? What kind of good?"

A sparrowlike tilt of her head as she considered, then a mischievous brightening. "You gave me a kerchief." She tugged at its edge.

"Alice."

"Jasper." The small smile was back. The one, Jasper was beginning to learn, she reserved for when she was having fun at his expense. "Don't tell me to be serious," she ordered with a sigh. "I am. I really don't know what kind of good." She drew the shutters reluctantly closed, then crossed the room to sit on its single low bed.

He nodded. "I…suppose I pulled you out of the river," he offered, stifling the misplaced echo of panic as he recalled that moment on the bank when she had been so still and cold. It felt low and cowardly to take credit for saving her from a predicament that was his fault in the first place.

"That might have been it," she agreed. "Or maybe not. It wasn't clear, back when I first…" She bit her lip, looking down at her folded hands in her lap.

He couldn't stop himself from demanding, "When?"

Her face went so pinched and withdrawn, so unlike itself, that he immediately wished he could take it back. "I should tell you," she whispered. "I should tell you everything. I owe you that." Her hands squeezed each other until he feared her old wounds might reopen. A similarly mangled regret squeezed his own chest.

"No," he insisted, surrendering to the impulse to take her hands. He sank to his knees and carefully untangled them. "No, I should never have asked. I should never have tried to hold my…my friendship hostage in exchange for information. I'm sorry."

She still wouldn't meet his eyes. "But you've trusted me," she said thickly.

"And you me," he reminded her, "even when I gave you every reason not to."

She let out a shaky breath. "But if we're to continue as…companions." Her voice was heavy with dread and something else. "You should know. So you can judge for yourself."

The words echoed inside him until they shook something loose. A sameness. A sudden, spellbinding certainty that she feared all the same things he did. That was it. Like a mirror of his own struggle, she feared he would think differently of her once he knew.

Would he? He couldn't say. Couldn't imagine. He only knew that he did not want to hear it like this, while she was afraid. While she thought she was paying a debt with his knife at her throat. It was too much like before, like that day when he had demanded all her secrets through the bars of her cage.

So he said: "Then so should you. Wasn't that the agreement? I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours." There. He had offered and now he couldn't take it back.

She winced. "Jasper, I'm sorry. I never should have—"

"Yes, you should," he interrupted. "It's all right. We've come this far. You may as well hear."

Having to defend the conviction was shoring it up, filling him with a strange, detached calm. She would have to hear sometime. Better now, before she got too comfortable in his presence, before anything else…happened.

At long last, she looked up. "All right," she whispered. Still frightened, but still trusting, too. It was bittersweet, because it wouldn't last much longer. Not once she knew.

Suddenly the prospect of telling her, of telling anyone, was quickening his pulse, making his thoughts race. The idea of another person in the world who would know where he'd come from, what he'd done…but this was Alice. This was Alice.

So he told her.

a horrifically late chapter, but a meaty one! this chapter brought to you by chickwithkick being an incredibly kind cheerleader on tumblr, and by my broken rib! (I took off on the first day of skiing this year and immediately hit a bump at an...injudicious speed and absolutely ate shit, I mean my face bounced off the ground.) lots of indoor fic-editing downtime this week (҂◡_◡)

I am once again apologizing for the big ol' impromptu hiatus—sometimes I just cease to function for like, five months. The good news is that Chapter 7 is almost done and the next update will be wayyyy sooner! I will also drop the Official™ Perdition of the Witch Playlist next chapter. Until then, happy 26 Germinal (lilac day!)

And huge thanks to all of you guys for always leaving me such kind comments! They really fuel me when I'm having an existential crisis.