“Mentally?” The old man’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure. But she was there. And when I asked her how she managed it, how she could do anything after what she went through last night, do you know what she said?”
“I’m going to find out,” Horatiu muttered, also looking at the ceiling.
This time, it was Mircea who took him by the arms. “She said, ‘It’s only bad when we’re both awake at the same time.’ She knows, Horatiu. She knows there’s two of her, a light and a dark. The girl she should have been, and the monster I made of her.
“A monster I’m going to shut away—forever.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
The vision, or whatever it was, snapped, leaving me staring at Claire’s hallway. And visibly shaking and feeling like screaming; I wasn’t sure why. I suddenly had so many reasons to choose from.
The fey weren’t looking much better. Two of them had naked swords in their hands, but were being held back by Tall Guy. Coffee Lover was plastered to the wall, one hand on his sword hilt and the other clutching his mug, most of the contents of which were sloshed down his front. The final fey was on the ground underneath me, his face red with gore and broken blood vessels, his expression as shell-shocked as I felt.
Because that . . . What the hell was that?
Nobody spoke. Sunlight was streaming through the octagonal window, the beams lighting up the dust in the air and putting an ironic halo around the head of Angry Ass. The fey weapons were sliding back into their sheaths, courtesy of a terse gesture from Tall Guy, who must have noticed the change in my expression. Because Dorina’s rage—or mine, or a combination of both—was simply gone.
It looked like time had rewound and I’d just come out of my room, except that I was sitting on a fey.
I sat there some more.
Dorina, I thought blankly, but didn’t get anything back.
One of the fey cleared his throat. It wasn’t the guy on the floor, whose eyes were starting to pop, I realized. I slowly pulled my fingers out of his flesh and a sigh rippled around the hall, along with a fervent sentence from Coffee Lover in a language I didn’t know.
I also didn’t care.
“Dorina?” I said again, my eyes flicking around, as if I was waiting for her to materialize out of thin air.
Nothing.
“Dorina!” I waited, my heart about to beat out of my chest, my breath coming heavily as it hadn’t during the fight.
More nothing. She wasn’t going to talk to me. And there was a reason for that, wasn’t there?
“I didn’t tell Mircea to do that!” I yelled. “It wasn’t my fault!”
The silence was deafening. And accusing. But I couldn’t defend myself if she wouldn’t—
“Damn it, talk to me!” A sudden surge of emotion tore through me: anger, fear, longing, sadness. I didn’t know what it was, or why it was there; I just knew I was tearing up. Which made me even more frantic, because there was nowhere for the emotion to go.
She wasn’t here.
But she had been here, just a minute ago. And now she was gone, because, what? There was nothing left to talk about?
“Dorina . . .” I said, and even to me, it sounded sad and broken and weak.
No wonder she didn’t want to talk to me.
Someone cleared his throat. “It is Dory, yes?”
I looked up at Tall Guy, half-blind with tears I didn’t understand. He was staring at me along with everyone else, but instead of looking angry or shocked like the rest, his face was almost . . . gentle. It confused me.
“Are you unwell?” he asked, after a moment.
“I . . . don’t know.”