Star Cursed

Page 73

Maura.
My sister stands on the sidewalk, eyes narrowed at Finn. My Finn.
She wouldn’t do this.
Not my own sister.
“Yes, Brother Belastra, that’s yours,” Maura says, her voice ringing out in the rain. “You were about to return to your lodging for the night.”
“My lodging. Yes. Quite right.” Finn puts a hand to his head. “Sorry, I’m feeling a bit muddled. I’ve got a splitting headache.”
I stumble down the few steps. “Finn—”
Maura gives me a warning look, but Finn offers up a shy smile, rain dripping off his nose. “Oh. I know you, don’t I?”
“Yes.” My breath catches. He has to remember me. No matter what Maura’s done, it can’t have erased me.
“You come into the shop, sometimes. Get books for your father. Not much of a reader yourself.” Finn snaps his fingers. “It’s Miss Cahill, isn’t it? Or—pardon, is it Sister Cate now?”
Sister Cate. My eyes fill with horrified tears.
“Yes, Sister Cate. And Sister Maura,” my traitorous sister says sweetly. “You came to call on us, inquiring about news from home. I’m sorry you’re not well. Why don’t you get into the carriage, out of the rain? We’ll fetch our coachman, and he can drive you.”
“Well, I don’t want to be any bother,” Finn says, “but my head does ache something fierce. I can hardly see straight.”
“No, it’s no bother. Not at all. Robert can walk back; it’s only a few blocks. I’ll send him right out.” Maura ushers him into the carriage while I watch, stricken.
Our first kiss, feathers and the gentle touch of his hands on my back: gone.
Talking about pirates in my garden: gone.
Asking me to marry him, giving me his mother’s ruby ring: gone.
Sneaking out to meet me at the convent gate: gone.
Showing me my very first library and the signed copy of Arabella: gone.
All of it has been erased. Everything that makes us Finn-and-Cate.
Maura clears her throat. “I’m sorry, Cate, but—he’s a member of the Brotherhood. He’s the enemy. He can’t know our secrets; you heard how he reacted about the council. You never should have told him about your magic.”
But that’s everything. Our romance and my magic have been intertwined since the very beginning. If I weren’t a witch, if I’d had no need to protect my sisters from the Brotherhood, I would never have sought out Finn or the banned books in his mother’s bookshop.
If I weren’t a witch, I wouldn’t be the woman that he loves.
I understand that now.
I raise my head. Ice tumbles through my veins. “Do you hate me so much?”
“It isn’t about you,” Maura says, but her eyes fall to the rain-darkened sidewalk. “Inez asked me to do it. To prove I could put my feelings aside and do what needs to be done. And when my visions start . . .”
I look at Maura, her red hair the only color in the New London night, and I know that she is the child who used to run after Paul and me, begging to play with us; she’s the girl who hid romance novels under her floorboards and dreamed of far-off adventures; she’s the sister I would have done anything to protect.
Now I feel nothing for her but a weary contempt.
“They won’t,” I say. “You aren’t the oracle. It’s Tess. It’s been Tess all along. I wanted to tell you, but she wasn’t sure she could trust you. She was right, obviously; you cannot be trusted.”
Maura staggers backward, as though I’ve slapped her. “No.”
“Yes.” I give her a glittering, serrated smile. It is not Cate’s smile, but then I feel very little like Cate at the moment.
Finn looked at me as though I was a stranger. As though I’m not the girl he kissed and called beautiful five minutes ago. As though I’m not his Cate.
And I’m not. Not anymore. Countries are forged by war; perhaps girls are, too. New England and I will be reborn together in this war between the witches and the Brothers. Between Maura and me.
I am newly wrought—a girl of steel and snow and heartrending good-byes.
My magic is renewed by my heartbreak. It spills out my fingertips, swirling around me. The wind picks up, bitter cold now. The rain turns abruptly to snow, haloing the gas streetlamps like iron angels. Enormous snowflakes begin to fall—fast, faster—obscuring my sister, hiding her and Brenna and the carriage and the gray stone building that has become my home.
I am all alone in a sea of whirling white.
It feels right that it should be so.