Page 101 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

He’d done what he’d just decided not to do and started thinking.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You’re literally dragging your feet,” she said. “Is it figurative, too?”

That made him smile despite his nerves. “I suppose it is.”

“You’re okay to keep going, though? To do this?”

“Yes,” he said, and was glad that his voice sounded much firmer than his wobbling resolve. Maybe he could convince himself as well as Esther.

His vision seemed to be adjusting to the dark, the wooden walls of the passage growing clearer. Then he became aware that it wasn’t his vision but actual light. They were at the end of the hallway, the wall suddenly visible in front of them, the trapdoor at their feet outlined with light. When Nicholas reached down to open it, the staircase below was illuminated.

Maram again, preparing their way?

He and Esther stood at the top of the stairs, both extremely still and quiet, listening, waiting. The silence grew around them, the narrow walls holding it like pressure building in a bottle, no sound but Nicholas’s heartin his ears and Esther’s breath at his shoulder. When they started down, their movements were painstaking and quiet, their feet barely audible on the steps.

The door opened easily beneath Nicholas’s hand and swung inward without a sound, and they stepped from the stairwell into that mirror-glimmered room. This time the glass reflected only Esther and Nicholas, many iterations of them, all looking shadowy and tired—though Nicholas’s vanity flickered to life at how tall he appeared compared to the very small woman at his side. The vain thought made him feel almost like himself for a moment. Whatever victory looked like, he hoped it allowed for pockets of comfortable shallowness. The forced introspection of the past week had unmoored him.

Esther paused in front of one of the mirrors and crouched, fingers hovering above the floor, and Nicholas saw there was still a faint bloodstain on the carpet. “Is this where Trev came through?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

“Yes.”

“He wasn’t going to kill me after all, was he?” Esther said. “He was going to shove me through the mirror and let Richard kill me while you wrote a book with my blood.”

“Very probably.”

She stood and turned to him, eyes glinting in the low light, looking suddenly like the person he’d watched take down an armed man twice her size. “Would you have done it?” she said. “Taken my blood and done whatever Richard told you to, no questions asked?”

“I like to think I would’ve asked at leastonequestion,” Nicholas said, rummaging around for some indignation.

“But you’d have done it, in the end.”

“I don’t know,” he said, feeling so tired, suddenly, that he nearly sat down. Instead, he leaned against a mirrorless patch of wall. “Richard and Maram, they always had explanations, good ones, sound and rational. Even if things felt... wrong... I didn’t see an alternative that was right.”

Esther folded her arms and stared at the mirror through which Tretheway’s crumpled, broken body had come. Nicholas waited, feeling miserable and uncertain. Maybe he should apologize for the version of himself that would’ve accepted the loss of her life and filled a pen with her blood. But how exactly did one apologize for theoretical monstrosity? He wasn’t even good at apologizing for things hehaddone.

“Well,” said Esther. “Thank you.”

That gave him pause. “For what?”

“You haven’t had many choices,” she said. “And now that you do, you’re choosing to help me. Which I appreciate.”

“Oh.” He could feel heat come into his face. “I’m helping myself just as much.”

“You could turn me over to your uncle and resume your life of fine footwear and blissful ignorance.”

Nicholas looked down. “I’m honestly delighted you noticed the quality of my footwear. They’re custom made, these boots.”

“Thank you,” Esther said again.

You’re welcomedid not feel like a response he could give. He moved toward the door of Richard’s study with a rush of nerves that was a poor substitute for energy but would have to do. He didn’t hesitate in front of the doorway, or at least not physically, though he steeled himself for the sight of his eye still floating in its jar. His body felt like it was moving faster than his mind, which was probably for the best, and he let it carry him, his hand on the doorknob, lungs filling with air, feet moving as his brain scrambled to catch up. Richard’s life, and the end of it, a turn of the knob away.

Nicholas turned the knob.

The study was dark, all the lights off. He took a few steps, hand groping along the wall for the light switch, then stopped. Esther stumbled into him, fingers closing around his arm.

“What?” she said.

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