My sincerest apologies for being a bit behind in posting. I can only work on this fic during the weekends, so my time is very limited.
Anyways, again, I stress that if you have any criticism to give on the writing, the characterization, plot points, give it by all means, and happily too. Mind, I don't want flames telling me how much I suck, erm. If something wasn't particularly done well, please give me a few pointers on how I can improve.
As always, anything that is remotely recognizable from the books, I do not own. They are property of Miss Libba Bray.
Words, weightless. Murmured softly in the hush of dark. There is the growing sound of footsteps: swift, wary, light. The shrill, indignant cry of a door as a pale, thin hand presses insistently against it, pushes it open with an impatient thrust. A violation, a savage burst of light. A figure, long, uncertain, shapeless; it drifts towards me with questions, ill demands.
It drifts towards me with purpose.
"Give her back to me,"
"Kartik, heavens, it is only I-"
"Give her back to me this instant,"
"Kartik—! Stop this madness at once!"
I come to from fitful sleep with a nervous, violent start.
My breathing is mercilessly quick, the near insufferable cool of mid-April unsheathing itself within me to reveal a dagger that stabs with an eager persistence at the labored heaving of my lungs.
A tight, careful whisper cradles my name in the dark, "Kartik..."
The faint Scottish brogue only takes me but a second to place, and the pit of my stomach is taut with the grip of foreboding.
"Miss McCleethy?" I look about the poorly lit room in apprehension, trying to place her slender, imposing figure there, amidst the effortless pandemonium that is my several unlaundered clothes.
"Down... here..." Miss McCleethy informs me with what sounds like enormous difficulty, and I nervously lower my gaze as directed. What I discover there nearly drives me into the only too welcoming arms of dementia.
"Miss McCleethy!" I shout, alarmed, "Gracious, I am so very-"
"Insane?" She proposes incredulously in what comes out as a weak and strangled rasp, her dark, narrowed eyes unusually bright with the strong glimmer of hot, reproachful tears. "Let me go..."
I immediately remove my fingers from where they are wrapped tightly around her neck. She rolls off from beneath me with an astonished cry, rubbing hard at the dark, ghastly impressions I've left on her skin.
Quickly, I flee the suffocating dim of the sitting room, and bound like mad for the comforts of the kitchen. I burst open the cupboard doors, and from the cold, fetid murk, I lift a sorry, stout nub of a glass gone horribly cloudy from years of neglect. I attempt to clean it as best I can with my shirtfront, before filling it to the brim with icy, bubbling water.
I thrust this glass into Miss McCleethy's trembling hand the instant I've restored myself to her side, and she is quick to swallow the water in hearty, greedy gulps. She does not utter a word of thanks once she's emptied the glass, and I cannot say I expected her to.
"I don't suppose a customary good evening, or a proper hello ever occurred to you, Kartik?" Miss McCleethy fixes me with a sharp, penetrating glare intended to punish, and my cheeks flush hotly with renewed embarrassment.
"I am sorry," I offer quickly, mortification squeezing my voice into nothing more substantial than a whisper, "I was..."
"Having a nightmare?" Miss McCleethy suggests in a tone dull with unconcern, and I suddenly stand from where I sit, painfully close to her on the tiny, tiny bed.
"Why have you come?" I ask with a boldness that does not shock her in the least. She leans in, her elbows perched precariously on her knees as she surveys the shifting tones of my emotions like the sweeping turns in a kaleidoscope.
"Are you aware that Miss Doyle has returned to Spence?" She picks at a nonexistent fray on the hem of her skirt with affected care, and I stiffen.
"Oh?"
Miss McCleethy's lips curl into something faintly reminiscent of a sneer.
"You shall have to forgive my forwardness, Kartik, but at present, I'm in no humor to entertain your games. Have you forgotten our little agreement?" Her eyes flash like fire.
"It is not so little..." My words are so faint I nearly wonder aloud if I had actually spoken them.
"Yes, but it is an agreement nonetheless," Miss McCleethy asserts, abandoning all pretense for civility like a mask she's lifted, and tossed happily from her face.
And I see it now. That desperate, long-suffering cling to a dream whose beauty and reward is simply too great, too vast, too delicious to relinquish, to part to doubt, to fear, to the great, fiery will of a stubborn sixteen-year-old girl. It gleams within the murky blue-grey depths of her fine, piercing eyes, restless with the hunger for fruition...
"And..." I say, after a moment's pause spent entirely riddled with unease, "If I chose not to continue with this agreement?"
Miss McCleethy looks as if I've punched her in the face.
"Kartik, need I remind you the value of your word?" She practically shouts, outrage lending strength to her voice.
"Bargains can be broken," I state simply, and Miss McCleethy is on her feet at once, crossing the little space between us in great, stupendous strides.
"Were it not for my intervention, Kartik, you would surely be dead," She intones acidly with a smile as wide and false as those plastered on eager, fortune-hunting suitors,
"And on that score, I must inform you thanks a bloody lot," For I would be happier dead, I only just stop myself from adding.
Miss McCleethy recoils from the insolence of my response as though I've just spit on her.
"Are you so disgustingly ungrateful that you are unwilling to repay my kindness with-"
"Kindness was it?" I let out a laugh made unnervingly shrill by bitterness. "I wonder, was that all that compelled you to save my life, Miss McCleethy? Or did you come to realize just as your bloody sweetheart was shoving my face into the water that I could tell you all sorts of things about the realms, about Miss Doyle that the dear girl wouldn't dream a whit of imparting to the likes of you?"
"Everything comes with a price." There is not the slightest, discernible trace of remorse or shame in her smooth, hollow voice. It is only one of the many hideous truths that has twined itself fixedly to the reaches of her soul. She is saying something inarguable to her, obvious.
"I didn't ask you to save me," I say quietly, and in some cleverly concealed, inaccessible, unknowable part of myself like a hidden chamber or a locked room, I am finding more and more each day wishing terribly that she hadn't.
There is a queer grip to Miss McCleethy's exploratory stare... as though I were a particularly difficult mountain she is endeavoring to climb, and she soon discovers herself slipping, and sliding at every possible turn. She cannot find a solid foothold...
"And what of your brother?" Miss McCleethy has recovered. "Will you not save him?"
I turn dark, murderous eyes on her.
"That thing," I ground out so savagely I am close to spitting, "Is not my brother,"
"Nothing is ever lost entirely," The hardness that was so purposefully wielded by her voice like a mighty, fearsome blade is gone. It is impossibly soft now... cooing, ever so gentle as a mother's.
"I cannot save something that is no longer there..." I mumble with a certainty that would surely crumble to dust at the faintest touch, and Miss McCleethy is alarmingly quick to sense it.
"But what if it is? What if there is still some small, small part of him that you can retrieve... set free? And you chose instead not to act. Do not forget that I am of the Order. We have helped souls cross over to the other side for many a century. With the magic, I am certain there is some way of saving him, of giving him peace."
Give him peace.
I cannot seem to hold all the weight of myself, for I fall fast to the floor, trembling horridly as if from an insufferable chill. Tears spring, inevitable, to my eyes, searing my lids with the overwhelming intensity of their warmth, these minute heralds of disquiet, sadness, fear. Of doubt.
For although I am almost certain that Miss McCleethy is lying through her very teeth, how could I possibly deny Amar a feasible chance at peace, at a restful soul's end no matter how small, how unlikely?
And then there is Gemma.
Should I agree to this wretched bargain, I would have to play spy for McCleethy. But no. That is not what worries me the most.
You will be death of her brother.
It is like being pulled apart by two entirely dissimilar... yet equally commanding forces. I await the will of the sole, clear victor, but the battle rages... it is relentless.
To save a beloved brother who is possibly lost, eternally captive, forever prisoner to the dark, seductive pull of corruption? Or to bring about the terrible death of a girl whose smile lives within my very veins? Who wears her heart fearlessly on her sleeve, to be treasured, battered, broken, abused. Whose courage and will is such that it rouses me furiously as if from an overlong sleep, urging me to seek nerve, seek spirit, to seek a valor of my own...
And then the answer, the choice I always knew I would make in the end unveils itself before me like a player appearing suddenly from beneath the heavy folds of a velvet curtain. His painted lips part, moving with careful deliberation, and he mouths to me intently: You do not have to choose at all.
"I shall leave for Spence tonight," I declare tonelessly from my miserable spot on the floor, and Miss McCleethy appraises me warmly, her hand suddenly a cold, foreign thing on my shoulder.
"Miss Doyle will not know of our agreement if that is your worry," Miss McCleethy soothes, "We shall take the greatest discretion."
A new battle has started within me.
Between self-hatred and disgust.