Chapter XI
A Line of Attack
IT HAD BEEN the week before the Hogwarts Express left for London. Harry's office had been messier than usual, with books and bits of parchment scattered about the table. In the centre of all the clutter sat Rowena Ravenclaw's lost diadem, although lost was probably a misnomer at this point.
Do you know about horcruxes?
Of course I knew, I was a Black. But the statement was too weary; devoid of its usual pride and tinged in regret. I had read about them in Nero's journals last winter, when he sought immortality in fear of assassination. And then I had been foolish enough to cross-reference the term in other books. Too eager for knowledge and hungry for truths that I did not know how to handle. That whole fiasco had resulted in nightmares and more knowledge about horcruxes than a sixteen year old girl should ever possess, daughter of the House of Black or not. I still remembered the faded words inked on crumbling vellum.
After consulting the warlock Herpo, I have decided the sacrifice required too great a risk.
He had decided that ending a dynasty with faked suicide and sacrificing the good of the Empire was less foul. I wholeheartedly agreed. It was a good thing, too, what with him running off to England in the end.
"Sorry, what the fuck?"
"He made six of them."
"Seven? He split his soul into seven pieces?" I asked for the third time, the reply still not computing in my brain. "You have to be fucking kidding me!"
It made sense. In its own, utterly twisted way it made sense. The most powerful arithmantic number. Seven, closely followed by three and seventeen. The only tiny tiny miniscule issue—disregarding all concerns of morality and sheer fucking sense—was that splitting the soul that much would most definitely have side effects.
"Would that not make him unstable?" I asked as I tried to recall more details from books I had tried my hardest to repress; speculations and calculations running havoc through my mind.
"It is a possibility," he said after a pause. "I haven't really had the chance to chat with him lately, but he was quite deranged in the future."
I picked up the diadem, balancing it on my index finger as I considered it. The little gemstones blinked back at me, refracting my face into hundreds of broken images. Was this how a shattered soul looked? I tilted my head to the side, letting my hair fall across my face, and a hundred Narcissas tilted their heads back at me in unnerving synchrony. The little circlet seemed to be far too little, given how heavily it weighed on my conscience. I took a steadying breath, trying to get back on topic. "Right, and you said this used to be one of them?"
"Yup. I think it was also behind the DADA curse."
"Are you saying it was hidden in the castle?"
"The Room of Requirement, actually."
That was… terrifying, really. Clever, but terrifying. My mind went off a little tangent about the possible implications of how the Room folded space, since the objects inside were undetectable but could apparently still exert magical influence, but very quickly ran into several walls that said I would need to reference further literature.
"Interesting. So, how did you un-horcrux this?" I saw his jaw clench tight as he looked away. "Come, now, I feel like I have heard just about everything at this point," I said with a sigh, already resigning myself for the worst.
He looked at the diadem as I ran my wand across its surface, searching for any residual magic. It came back blank. "The killing curse," he said, never looking into my face. Perhaps afraid of my reaction or ashamed for what he had done; perhaps just weary. My stomach dropped, a little. "I know you can also use fiendfyre or basilisk venom, but… well, it seemed too precious to destroy like that. Since, unlike last time, I kind of knew what I was doing."
I tilted my head again, letting my hair fall into my face like a curtain. Looking at Harry, I was painfully reminded of how little I knew about him. I did not think he was the sort of man to throw out Unforgivables on a whim, but I still remembered the callous way he cast the imperius on Malfoy's elf. Yes, elves were expendable and yes, he had every right to want the bastard dead.
And yes, maybe I was becoming jaded.
"Clever," I said as I crawled into his lap, my mind made up. His eyes flew wide open in surprise as I tipped his head back and kissed him. "I know you probably feel bad about what you have done, but at least this way you managed to save a priceless artefact that Riddle warped to his own twisted desires."
"You… You don't mind?"
I shrugged. Did I?
Red liquid dripped down the front of the dummy, splattering on the floor and into the shocked silence of the room.
Being gruesome, Mr Quirrel, is better than being dead.
"No, not really. It was not a person."
Was it?
I paused, looking into his eyes, remembering all the things he said about Dumbledore and his parents. The way he talked about protecting people, regardless of who they were. "And even if it was… I think I know you well enough by now to believe that if you ever wanted anyone dead enough to cast it, they deserved it."
"Sometimes, I'm not so sure of that anymore."
I swatted him lightly. "Tough luck, pretty boy, I am not letting you go down that road." Or so I hoped… "Now, where are the other ones?"
"That's the issue. I don't know."
"Brilliant. Do we at least know what they are?" I asked as I took the diadem again, squinting at the tiny runes that ran along the inside. Wit beyond measure is a man's greatest treasure. I put it on with a shrug, deciding that maybe it would help, even if it was no longer enchanted.
"Some of them," he said as he tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, adjusting the way the diadem sat on my head. "I've already got a ring he left in the Gaunt family shack. He hid Slytherin's locket in a cave sometime in the late seventies. Then there was his diary, given to Lucius Malfoy, and Hufflepuff's cup, which he gave to—" He cut off suddenly, eyes wide with panic. "—er, it doesn't really matter," he finished, lamely.
"He gave it to Bella, right?" I asked, already steeling myself to hear the affirmation. In all our limited conversations about the future, I had not asked him about who Bella had become. I did not have to. He talked about Ana and Malfoy and dozens of other people, but he never talked about Bella. Not even once, even if he told me he knew what she looked like. And I was not stupid. "You don't have to hide it from me, you know? I am not stupid, I saw her at Malfoy Manor too."
"She put it in the Lestrange vault. It wasn't fun getting it out of there."
"Right, let me get this straight. Disregarding the fact that my sister may have a piece of an immortal Dark Lord's soul, and that he will probably never give one to Malfoy after the stunt we pulled… We know what some of the horcruxes are, but we do not know about all of them, and have no idea where they are? Great. Just… fucking great."
···
I stared at the yellowed pages as the grimy wrongness of the book seeped into my fingertips, trying to find something. Anything. Any hint, clue, or even a nudge in some direction where I could look.
Last week, I had learned of Tom Riddle's greatest secret—his greatest achievement, or his greatest folly, depending on how you looked at it. I had shelved the problem away, focusing on everything and anything that came in the way, grateful for the distraction. Anything tangible that I could use to distract myself with. First, I had worried about Ana. Then there had been Cara and the Midwinter Ball and the family Yuletide dinner. But the clock was ticking, ever ticking, and people were dying.
I rubbed my eyes, trying to figure out when it all went so wrong. In the span of my winter holidays, I had probably become one of the leading authorities on how to make horcruxes. I knew the runic sequences so intimately they started haunting my dreams.
I had gone through all the Black libraries in search of anything and everything that was even tangentially related to soul magic. My desk had piles of books ranging from homing spells to two copies of Secrets of the Darkest Arts. One of them had been very thoroughly annotated.
Of course, a standard homing spell had no chance of working. I had figured that out very early on into my research. It was like trying to divine the location of all the stones in Britain—you knew they were in Britain, and you knew they were in all directions.
Finding ways to destroy the damned things had also proved inauspicious. You either removed the soul—like a killing curse—or completely annihilated the matter that held the soul—like fiendfyre or basilisk venom.
Oh, and you had to hope that your own soul was not corrupted or overpowered by the horcrux while you were knowingly committing murder. It was one of the most vile perversions of magic I had ever seen. In a treatise from the seventeenth century, Bilius Hobble postulates that since the soul is a part of an inanimate object and therefore defenceless, the intent behind destroying a horcrux is technically murder. And intent was everything when it came to magic.
And that was the crux of the problem. Intent. A spell was something that could be written—spelled out—in runes and equations. Its purpose and effects were all definite and nicely quantifiable if you knew what you were doing. But what if you needed more than magic? What if what you were reaching for was something as ephemeral as immortality? That was why horcruxes, and indeed all ritual magic, was so fucking impossible to unmake. Because nobody really knew what they were in the first place. It was like trying to strangle mist.
I threw down my quill and snapped the book I was reading shut. It splattered ink all across my notes, but it was not like they were worth a damn. I had wanted to find a nice, clean solution to the whole problem that involved next to no risks to anyone I cared about, but those seemed to be in short supply.
I wanted to talk to Ana. She always had a knack for these things.
There was nothing for it, I sighed as I scratched my nose in irritation. I needed a horcrux to study. The books agreed on nothing and oftentimes relied on conjecture. After all, the number of people crazy enough to make a horcrux and then write about it in a book was miniscule.
I wished Harry had not destroyed all the horcruxes, even if I understood why he did it. It would have been so much easier to find a solution if I could study one. Which meant I had a new question to answer: how do I get a horcrux?
He wanted it—wanted the cup. So he murdered her in her sleep and framed her elf for it! All for a trinket! A marriage gift for Rodolphus and me! Do you understand?
I understood all too well. It had taken me a few hours to connect the dots, but I understood. There was a bitter irony in that.
I pulled out a drawer from my desk and carefully took out a vial with a few strands of Bella's hair. I had picked them off my dress after my confrontation with Bella, hating myself all the while. It was one thing to impersonate some nameless busybody, and entirely another to turn into your sister.
But it did have its advantages. And after days of trying to ignore the possibilities it offered, drawing up one failed plan after another, I decided it was time to start thinking of desperate measures.
I kicked my trunk open, tucking the vial into a protective holder next to all the other ones in my little potions kit. Tomorrow, I would be back at Hogwarts. And that meant that tomorrow, I would set my plan to motion.
"Minky!" I called as I started going around the room, throwing all the things I wanted packed on the floor next to the suitcase.
"Yes, Miss Cissy?" the elf said not two seconds later.
"Could you pack all the books and notes on the table, and launder and pack all my clothes, please?"
"Yes Miss Cissy! Minky can does that right away!"
"Thank you, Minky," I said as I entered my bathroom. I was going to take a nice long bath and try to scrub the sticky, cloying wrongness away.
···
"Cissy! Here, Cissy!"
I stood on my tiptoes, trying to make out where the shout had come from. A moment later, I spotted Marlene waving at me from the door of a train carriage, almost sending the poor kid behind her sprawling as they tried to haul their trunk onto the train.
I squeezed my way through the crowds of platform nine and three-quarters, repeating greetings to people I vaguely recognized and apologies to everyone my luggage bumped against. It was not very large, or very heavy after all the featherlight engravings I etched into it, but the platform was too full to manoeuvre without collision.
By the time I managed to get on the train and into the compartment my friends had claimed, the train was already blowing its first whistle. Alice arrived soon thereafter, completing our quintetto.
"Had a good Christmas?" Emmy asked once we had all said our hellos.
I shrugged a shoulder, remembering the long hours spent behind my desk pouring over half-crumbled books by candlelight. The daily ritual of reading about murder in the papers at breakfast. I saw Cara mirroring my answer as she leant against Marlene.
"Amazing! Spent most of it with Frank at Longbottom Hall! Merlin, I have so much to tell you! I think his mother is clinically insane—you met Lady Longbottom, right?"
"We are acquainted, yes," said Marlene. "Was she really that bad? I always thought she was just a tad too strict, really."
"Strict? Merlin, I'm not surprised her husband left us so long ago. She planned our whole wedding and how many children we will have and even gave Frank a list of respectable baby names! She…"
Alice talked. Little by little, I felt myself relax, slowly peeking out from the shell I had built around my mind to protect me from all the fucked up stuff I read. At some point, Marlene took over with all the gossip she had heard about Lady Augusta, and then all the other ladies that were at the ball. When they ran out of gossip two hours later, they turned their questioning on Emmy—she had gone with her family to France to do some muggle sport and got endless ribbing for it.
"So you tell me you went all the way to France to slide down a mountain on some sticks? And they don't even fly? That sounds…"
"It's not any worse than you zooming around on your broom, Marlene!" she retorted as her ears started to turn pink. I did not think I had ever seen Emmy get so worked up by anything. "And with four different balls, no less!"
I tuned out yet another argument about the wild world of muggle sports and watched as England turned to Scotland and the countryside gained more and more vertical definition. When Alice and Marlene went off to the prefect meeting, I excused myself from the cabin. I had barely spoken three words since boarding the train and I was not sure what I would be able to add to their conversation. We had not mentioned the murders, the papers, and the impending threat of war. I did not want to be the one to drag the boggart from under the bed.
Instead, I excused myself and walked the length of the train, mindlessly spinning a galleon in my pocket to the rhythm of the train. I bought a chocolate frog and a packet of licking liquorice when I passed Mrs Mason with her snack trolley. The frog left the world before it had a chance to jump with a satisfying crunch. I vanished the card of Hesper Starkey as an afterthought.
I watched as the frost on the window panes got darker from soot. I watched as a murder of crows took flight and followed the train for a while, disturbed from their prime pecking place on the bridge. They reminded me of Bella.
I was almost back at our compartment when the door opened and Rabastan Lestrange stepped out, almost running into me. He shouldered past me with a muttered "Watch it, Black."
I considered cursing him in the back for a second, but decided against it in favour of investigating why in Morgana's name he came out of our compartment in the first place.
Emmy looked up as I stepped in and closed the door behind me. It took me a second to realise that Cara had been crying, and I immediately regretted not cursing Lestrange. With some unspoken agreement, we exchanged places, with Emmy muttering something about the loo before she all but fled the compartment.
"Hey," I said as I sat down and pulled my best friend into an embrace. "What did that oaf do to get you so upset?" I used my wand to lock the door and draw the curtains shut. A little privacy was the least I could do for her. She sniffled and wiped her eyes into her sleeve, blinking to stop the tears from spilling again.
"Courting agreement," she said before she blew her nose. "I found out last night."
"With that pillock?"
"Yeah. I… I don't know what to do, Cissy. I don't know how to tell Marls! It's… It's just all so… Messed up," she choked out before she dropped her head into her hands.
I stroked circles on her back as I considered the problem. "How long do you have?"
"They plan a betrothal at Litha and, all going well, bonding at Lammas."
Six months.
"We will find a way." I would find a way, I told myself as my blood slowly froze over in anger and frustration. "Tell Marlene the truth. Tell her you will not be marrying any twat your father tells you to. Half a year is a long, long time and many things can happen."
She looked up warily. "Cissy? Promise me you won't do something stupid on my behalf?"
I smiled, then, with all the lethal courtesy Bella was known for and all the unyielding conviction that carried Ana through her life, because I did not do stupid. Because after spending so long planning to take down an immortal would-be Dark Lord, this sounded like a laughably simple problem to fix.
I would be watching, Rabastan Lestrange.
I leant in close, using my wand to apply a cooling charm for her eyes, even as I whispered. "Let me tell you a secret, Cara. Nobody hurts people I care about. I will make little Rabastan dance to the Faerie lands and back. I will make what I did to the Malfoys look like an afterthought if I have to."
She looked at me with wide eyes as she took in the extent of my admission.
The creature in my head smiled wider and wider, with the black venom of power thrumming in my blood. I was a daughter of the noble House of Black. It looked like some people needed a reminder of just what that meant.
Then someone knocked on the door and the moment was gone. I felt my face relax as I gave Cara a wink and flicked my wand to dissolve the spells I had placed on the door. Alice and Marlene sat down opposite of us, still in discussion about some new security measure Dumbledore insisted on.
"Thank you, Cissy," Cara whispered as she squeezed my hand.
···
I had not been able to sleep. I stared up at the ceiling, watching the fish drift around on some deep undercurrent that gripped the lake. I listened to the peaceful breathing of the unknowing. I twisted and turned and my duvet felt too heavy and suffocating, yet without it I felt the cold creep into my hand and legs and deep into my heart.
So I stood up, got dressed by the faint luminescence the water above gave off, and headed to the Room of Requirement. It was just like it had been back when I used to duel with Bella in this room. Back when the world was not so fucked up and everything made sense, in its own twisted way.
I lost myself to the feel of the brush, to the way water and colour seeped into paper. In the lines and strokes and every little feather. I sat by the window, listening to the night make its slow steps through the world, to the hoots of owls that carried like the echoes of the damned through the grounds of the castle. I sat and painted, and for a few blissful hours I did not have a care in the world.
By the time dawn tiptoed into the room, my neck was cramped from where I had bent over the table, painting and painting and letting myself paint my mind blank. When the crow was finished, I used my wand to clean and dry the brushes, the paints, and the little sponge I used to seep out my mistakes. I put them all away with so much care you would think they were the lost treasures of Atlantis.
And then I took the painting, lifted it with wandless magic and held it in the middle of the room on sheer will, because I was not some weak little girl. I was Narcissa Black.
I gripped my ash wand tightly in my hand. Ash meant the remainder after a fire. It meant strength, it meant unyielding determination. It came from the Old English æsc, a rune that meant a spear. And I thrust that spear into the depths of the world and screamed out words of power as fire hissed and billowed out and swallowed the bird where it floated in the middle of the room.
It blazed hotter than the morning sun, swallowing the paper in its hungry jaws until it was all gone. A few specs of ash floated to the ground, settling as dust does. Inconsequential. Forgettable.
I moulded words of will into the air and my raven patronus burst blazing white into the world. Purer, more clever, more like everything I knew and loved, and I sent it out to bring Harry to me.
The morning sunshine was just starting to creep in through the window with the little warmth it could muster during winter when the door opened and Harry stepped in.
"I have a plan."
"It's lovely to see you too, Cissa," he said, leaning back against a wall as I stood, still standing in the same spot where I had stood while I burned away my fears. "I take it this has something to do with Riddle?"
"I think I know how to get Hufflepuff's cup."
"That's… Great! Really, really great! I take it your sister has it?"
I nodded. "She told me about it, though I do not think she is fully aware of what it is."
"I was not aware the two of you were talking."
"We are not. It is… complicated."
He nodded, and let the subject drop. "So what's the plan?"
I took his hand and led him over to the window, where a sofa had replaced my table and chair, so we could watch the sunrise together. I mulled over how I would tell him despite replaying this conversation half a hundred times in my head.
"I have Bella's hair, and a reliable source that can get me polyjuice within the next fortnight. I will go into their house and ask the Lestrange elf to figure out where the cup is and then we can figure out how to get it. Their elf has had its tongue ripped out so it will not be able to tell on me if it goes wrong."
He took that in stride, and it made my stomach turn just thinking about what else they had done so that mutilating a house elf did not even make him twitch. At least he was thinking about it, which was good. It was easier to do the next part if he thought the plan could work. "What about the wards?" he asked.
"Not an issue. She invited me to their manor after the whole dinner fiasco at Grimmauld Place—no, do not ask why, it is complicated. It does not sound like much, but intent in magic is everything…" I trailed off. "There is another thing, though. All the books I have read suggest that elves can identify wizards with their magic, kind of like a fingerprint. That is how they know they are being called. Bella is my sister, but I do not think it will be enough. I do not think that we are similar enough."
"What's the solution, then?"
"I need you to put me under the imperius, Harry. I need to believe that I am Bellatrix Lestrange. Because intent… Because intent is everything," I finished, despite the fact that he flinched the moment I said the words, drawing his hand away from mine.
"Absolutely not! There has to be another way…"
"Harry—"
"...you said you still talk to her, so why not just ask?"
"Because I need to protect her, Harry! I cannot risk her knowing—risk Riddle using legilimency or torture or veritaserum or… or…" I trailed off, looking away and trying to clear my mind. Trying to focus on the way the golden light twinkled off the lake and the soft sway of the forest. Trying to chase away the blood and empty violet eyes that kept seeping in through the cracks. Because I still loved her.
"I can't, Cissa," he said weakly. "I can't do it."
"I know you can cast the spell, I have seen you use—"
"That's not the point! Do you know how dangerous it is? What if I mess something up and muddle your head permanently? I can't…"
"You will not hurt me, Harry."
"You can't know that."
Even like this, he looked so pretty, I thought at that moment. Even worried and haunted by the past, he looked so pretty in the morning sunlight. The way it glinted in the eyes that were no longer green, the way it brought shadows to the scars that cut across his cheekbone, his forehead. His own scars from the war. It broke my heart to see him like that.
"I do know that, love. I know that you will not hurt me, because magic is about intent. You can't harm me if… If you really mean it," I said with a hitched breath, hoping that I had judged him correctly. Hoping that I was right.
···
I stared down the length of holly, my throat as dry as last millennium's parchment. I twisted the hem of my robe, my fingers twitchy in the absence of my wand. We had agreed early on that I would not keep my wand on me for the first few times. Just in case.
Breathe in, breathe out.
I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the way my clothes were just a smidge too tight across my chest when I took a breath. I brought forth all my memories of Bella, every little detail that made her Bellatrix Black; Bellatrix Lestrange. Every little facet that made her a wife, a sister, a daughter, a woman. A witch. I broke down the barriers inside my mind even as I rebuilt the kaleidoscope of what I knew to be myself.
It had taken me a few hours to get over the fact that the best place to do this would be the Chamber of Secrets. The Room of Requirement was too impermanent for any sort of runic magic. The office and teacher's apartments were accessible by elves and staff alike, and leaving Hogwarts was just too impractical for how often we would need to work on this to get it right.
"I am ready."
I sat in the middle of three concentric circles, one for reshaping, channelling, and impermanence. Each with seven threads interwoven together. All painstakingly carved into the ground on my hands and knees as Harry had worked to clean up our surroundings. Around me, the snake statues loomed in the shadows, silently watching, as if waiting to strike. I was dimly aware of the fact that there was a thousand-year old basilisk hibernating somewhere nearby.
"Imperio."
I felt my mind being torn apart from the inside, cotton wool blossoming out of nowhere, coating every surface with an undercurrent of artificial calm and compulsion. I felt my sense of self begin to slip, faint like a breeze, but I had been prepared. I felt it echo inside of me like an empty cavern and I was losing myself.
I was…
Dying.
no…
No!
I panicked, throwing my will and magic and emotion against it like a wooden shield against dragon fire. In an instant, the wood became steel and a shield became a spear and I hurled it against whatever threatened me.
I retched onto the floor, my world spinning and my head pounding from a monumental headache. The stone was cold against my palms.
"Cissa!" I heard someone call, someone I… remembered. Then someone was stroking my back, pulling my hair out of the way and cleaning up the mess I had made. "Cissa, are you okay?"
A face swam into my vision. A pretty face, with pretty eyes, black as a raven. Then it was moving sideways and the cold stone floor crept up my side and there were snakes staring down on me.
"Cissa, please! Love, please, say something!"
I closed my eyes. 'Just give me a second,' I wanted to say. The words echoed inside my head. 'I just need a second to catch… my breath.'
I woke up to the coppery taste of blood in my mouth. My body was stiff and so, so cold. A shiver ran through me.
"Cissa?" I heard Harry whisper.
"Harry? Wha—Whas' happened?" I tried to open my eyes but my head was pounding like I was the clapper of the bells of Hogwarts.
"You… passed out. I think."
That did not sound very good.
At least it explained my current condition… Somewhat.
I groaned.
"Are you in pain?"
I rolled to my side and spat out blood. "I 'sink I bit my tongue."
"I… Fuck. Why hadn't I thought to bring my potions?"
Why would we… Oh!
Ooooh! Right. We were in the Chamber of Secrets, doing some fucked up shit to my brain to make me think I was my sister so that I could steal a Dark Lord's soul fragment. You know, the sort of fun stuff you get up to with your boyfriend during a lovely Saturday in January.
Deep breaths.
"'Sink'm fine."
The pain in my temples had dulled to something less overwhelming, so I squinted one eye open. Just a bit, mind you. I did not want to do anything excessive like have Harry cast imperio on me, because that would admittedly be a bit silly.
"Here, drink some water."
"Sanks."
The good news was that I… thought I was sane. And I remembered… yeah. Stuff was still in its proper place. My mind was crisp as winter air. And complaining very, very loudly about the mistreatment I had put it through.
"I hate that I have to do this but… What's your name?"
"Narsissa Melania Black."
A sigh of relief. "And what were we doing here?"
"Having fun wis' unforgivables!" I managed to say with a laugh that turned to me choking on my water half-way through. "Can I haf my wand? I wans' to heal my tongue." It was really getting on my nerves.
"Oh—yeah, here."
I got it on my first try, yay! More good news. I felt the tingly warmth as my tongue and cheek knit themselves back into proper order. Brrr, that never felt good.
I opened my eyes fully and gave Harry a crooked smile. He was frowning, and probably worrying himself sick. "Good as new," I said as I stuck out my tongue at him. It made him laugh. "I have some pain potions in my bag, can you fetch them please?"
Okay, maybe I had not thought about how this might go wrong either but there were times in a month where a pain potion was a girl's best friend. I chugged down a vial with practised ease, ignoring the familiar bitter taste of birch bark.
"How do you feel? Really feel, I mean. Is everything…"
"Yeah. I think so."
"Good."
"I'm sorry for scaring you."
"I'm sorry I didn't catch you in time."
"Happens to the best of us."
"Yeah… Listen, Cissa. We are not doing this again."
"Not today, I would rather attend a mandrake concert."
"No—I meant like… at all. It's dangerous. I don't want to go through this again." I could see his jaw set in determination, the way it did when he had already made his mind up. "We will find another way."
I shook my head. "It will not be like this again. I… I messed up. Panicked. Tried to fight it too hard. We try again tomorrow, and no, you can't find a way to talk me out of it. I know where I messed up. It was… Much more different than just having you make me sing."
He sat there, spinning his ring around his finger, staring off into the darkness of the chamber. "One more try, Cissa. If this happens again…"
"Then we will find another way. I promise."
"Thank you."
I smiled, stood up, and offered him my hand. "Come, let's not think about this for now, there's a whole bunch of cool stuff we might find in this chamber."
"I know what you're doing and it's not going to work," he said even as he took my hand and stood, and we both knew that was a lie.
