Page 24 of The Golden Enclaves
“You and me both,” I said. She drew her paw back and watched unhappily as I put the power-sharer on, and then gave a small shiver and crawled back up and got into my pocket again.
I put the paper from Ophelia in my other pocket, like a counterweight, and went out to say goodbye.
Ifaced objections almost immediately.“First of all, I’m coming with, and second of all, we’re goingin the morning,” Aadhya said, as soon as I pulled her aside. “You look like someone went over you with a Zamboni a few times.”
“We will look worse if there isn’t enough mana in the Scholomance when we try to go inside,” Liesel said, disagreeing, having come over and horned in; she was already poking at her phone. “The best flight will be in four hours. We should go to the airport at once.”
After Liesel started drawing actual charts to explain all the horrible things that would happen to us if too many enclaves pulled their mana out while we were inside the school, Aadhya gave in on the departure time, but she insisted on my coming upstairs to her bedroom while she packed. “Okay, seriously, what is Liesel’s deal?” Aadhya demanded, while she hurriedly threw things into a large trunk. She’d hardly been back a week, but the closet was already full of clothes, and I had to navigate a minefield of posh shopping bags to get tothe bed to sit down, explosions of tissue paper scattered everywhere around, evidence of a massive spree. “Why does she want to come along? Why is she even here in the first place? Isn’t she a London enclaver now?”
“If you get an answer out of her, let me know,” I said. “I expect she would like to hurry things up, though; Alfie’s waiting in London, and she has a plan to get herself onto the council.”
“And she’s running around after you anyway?” Aadhya said. “El, that makes zero sense. She’s got to have something else going on, and if she’s not telling you about it, you’re not going to like it. Is there some reason you haven’t ditched her?” I couldn’t help but squirm inwardly, which delayed my answer long enough that Aadhya turned around from packing and stared at me with narrowed eyes. “Isthere a reason?” she said, in dangerous tones.
“Well,” I said feebly. I’d known it was coming, and that I didn’t have an acceptable excuse.
“Okay,no,” Aadhya said. “Liesel?”
I groaned and flopped backwards on the bed and covered my face with my hands. “It was a moment of weakness?” I said, muffled.
“A moment of total insanity maybe!” Aadhya said. “That’s even more awesome. El, Alfie is herride.He got her into London enclave, now he’s going to get her on the council? No way she would risk cheating on him unless she had acrazygood reason!”
“She’s not cheating,” I muttered. “He knows about it.”
“Great, because it’s all part of some kind of plan togetat you,” Aadhya said, unmercifully.
And even if I’d turned down Liesel’s alliance offer, Aadhya was fundamentally right, and I knew it. I still couldn’t besorry;even now I felt almost pathetically grateful to Liesel forthe ocean-deep relief of physical release and dreamless sleep she’d given me, not to mentiongettingme here. But I should absolutely have made her tell me what she was looking for in returnnow,instead of just letting her keep tagging along after me, being helpful, as though that was all she wanted. That wasn’t what anyone wanted, and Liesel wasn’t even the doormat sort of person who’d pretend it was for any length of time. She was the highly strategic sort of person who was just waiting to hit me with an appropriately large demand right when I was most vulnerable, and I should absolutely have known better. Even if the Scholomance hadn’t taught me better, my entire life was an object lesson in the dangers of not getting the price tag up front.
“I’m warning you right now that if you move into London enclave and start a ménage withLiesel and Alfie,I’m hunting you down with chains,” Aadhya said. “Also if the Scholomance wasn’t literally a time bomb waiting to go, I would be chaining you upright now.El. It wasn’t your fault.” I dragged a breath in, painful in my too-tight chest, and sat up to hunch over it.
Aadhya came over and sat next to me on the bed and put her arm around me. “You didn’t get Orion killed,” she said. “The planworked.You were at the doors. All he had to do was jump out. I don’t know why he didn’t, but you’re acting like you left him behind, and I don’t need to have been there to know for sure that is just not a thing that you did. And he wasn’t stupid, so he never thought for even a second that you’dwantto.” She snorted. “Why would he shove you out if he thought you’d go? He knew youwouldn’t.”
Aadhya was right, of course she was right, and I knew it, except if it wasn’t my fault— “Then he was a fuckingwankerwho died forno reason!” I said through my teeth.
“People fuck up sometimes,” Aadhya said bluntly. “You dosomething stupid, and it turns out to be something you can’t fix or take back. Orion made a bad call in one second in the middle of the worst fight of your lives, with Patience coming right at you. That doesn’t mean he was worthless. You’re not dumb for loving him or being sad he’s dead! Youaredumb for letting Liesel bag you on the worst rebound ever,” she added, with a caustic edge, giving my shoulder a shove as she got up to finish packing. “You don’t evenlikeher!”
I grimaced. “She grows on you. A bit.”
“Like a rashling?” Aadhya said, giving zero credence.
I didn’t have anything to wear except what was still on my back, Mum’s baggy linen work dress, and despite Liesel’s cleaning spell, it had reached the limits of what it could bear without a wash I didn’t have time to do. None of Aadhya’s shiny new purchases would fit me, but she gave me an unopened packet of knickers and went for her mum, who brought down an outfit she’d been working on, a salwar kameez in satiny thin cotton, embroidered up and down the neck opening with runes of protection in golden thread; it ought to have cost a year of mana, but she pressed it on me.
Her dad insisted on driving us all to the airport, although he looked at Aadhya anxiously in the rearview mirror several times along the way. It made me feel guilty, but I didn’t even try to tell Aadhya not to come. I wanted her too badly. Ididn’twant to take her into the Scholomance with me when I went in hunting Patience—I wasn’t taking anyone in there for that jaunt—but I did want her to be outside the doors, with desperate selfishness. I wanted someone waiting for me that I’d feel obliged to come back out to.
The flight was late enough that the airport had an odd half-deserted quality, nowhere near empty but muffled, shops mostly closed and people with tired faces dragging their cabin bags along behind them. Aadhya flatly refused to leaveme with Liesel for even a moment, to the point of making me go and fetch the coffee after we’d parked ourselves in the club again.
Liesel noticed. “What do you thinkIam going to do toher?” she said to Aadhya sharply, as soon as they thought I was out of earshot, which I wasn’t, because I’d crept round the other side of the planter to listen in, and maybe catch Liesel out at something that would give me a push to tell her to go back to London and Alfie.
Aadhya had her arms folded across her chest, glaring. “I get that you have zero shame, but she’sfreaking out.”
“Yes,” Liesel said. “Are you thinking I made things worse? I promise you,” she went on, with the grim tones of experience, “to feel good in your body makes thingsbetter,even when they are very bad, and theyare.”
“Yeah, and I think you’re looking to plant a hook in El while she’s messed up so you can yank on it later.”
Liesel made an impatient dismissive gesture. “Yes! You have a hook in her yourself. And why will we yank on these hooks? To make her protect us, save our lives? She will do that for strangers, for nothing. What else? You are her ally. Have you asked her to do anything for you? To make someone give you an enclave place, or an artificer contract? Why not? Because you are also a great martyr, who does not want these things?” She snorted as Aadhya scowled at her. “No! You don’t ask because you know she would sayno.I tried asking myself. But she will do nothing selfish forherself,much less anyone else. And she is not wrong,” she added, in a grudging tone of having been unwillingly persuaded. “Sheistoo powerful. Once she started, there would be nowhere to stop. So there is only one use of ourhooks:tohelpher stop. You had better be glad that I have one, and hold tight to yours, too.”
I stopped eavesdropping and stalked off in total outrage. I couldn’t deny that I was in fact freaking out, and it was very clearly an excellent idea for me to have people around whocouldyank me back onto the rails if I should go off them. Only what business did Liesel have making herself one of those people, and I couldn’t help but see she’d successfully done just that. Because what she wanted, the reason she was helping me, was tostop me from going maleficer,which is the one thing I’ve been desperately afraid of doing since the age of five, and I would absolutely take Liesel’s help onthatproject.
I got the coffees and came back and grouchily handed them round. Aadhya was still scowling at Liesel across the table, but with the same kind of sulky annoyance I felt myself: yes, we were stuck with her, after all.
