CHAPTER 8
When I left the tower, I didn’t return to the kitchen. I couldn’t face anyone there, and I didn’t have my own room to retreat to like the apprentices. Every night, I slept on a straw mattress in the kitchen, sharing the area with other servants. I fled to Ronan’s room to cry privately. I assumed he’d join me soon. Mage Wolfson wouldn’t keep him long.
A looking glass stood on Ronan’s shelf; the fine sort needed for various spells. I took it down, almost afraid to peer into it.
Three deep welts snaked across my face from my eyebrow to my chin, pink, puckered, and horrible. I gasped and the mirror fell from my hands.
Disfigured. That was the only description for me now.
I will never marry, I thought. No man would want a wife with such a face. Not even Ronan would. I stopped myself before I let that thought take hold. The one person who wouldn’t judge me for my scars was Ronan, but then, he was going to leave Docendum.
I would stay and people would turn away from me, avert their eyes. They’d tell tales and give warnings to children lest they anger the wizard and meet my fate. And yet I hadn’t done anything to deserve this punishment. I’d only ever been a pawn,someone Mage Wolfson could use when it came time to force Ronan into doing his will. He’d given me to Ronan to entrap him.
I stood for some time, a hand pressed to my scars, crying. Then I noticed the pieces of glass at my feet. The mirror had broken when I’d dropped it. I stared at it, fixated on the jagged edges of its ruin, and was overcome with a need to repair it.
Ronan had given up so much to save my life. I didn’t want him to think I’d been careless with his tools. Wizards had spells for fixing objects. I could repair it before he knew what had happened. I put the pieces on his desk, forming them together. With shaking hands, I took a magic book from his shelf and sat down on the floor, my back pressed against his door. I would levitate it back to his shelf as soon as he approached.
I read page after page without finding anything useful. It didn’t matter. As long as I was reading, I wasn’t thinking about my ruined face, even if my scars—which felt both itchy and taut—were determined to remind me. I hoped to find a spell to remove scars, but it was a narrow hope. Ronan had already told me wounds were hard to heal and some couldn’t be healed at all. Even mending bones was difficult for a wizard, and given enough time, a person could accomplish the same results with a splint.
Could a beauty potion help? My face was probably beyond the realm of such enchantments.
I flipped pages, kept reading, kept searching. I found spells for mending horseshoes, coach wheels, roof beams, and tapestries. None for repairing glass. One would’ve thought the nobility never shattered anything.
An hour went by. My neck and dress were smeared with dry blood but I made no move to clean them. I finished the book and started on another. Every few minutes, my fingers foundtheir way to my cheek and the ridges that had this morning been smooth flesh.
At last, I heard footsteps coming toward the room. I levitated the book onto the desk and stood just as the door opened. Ronan trudged inside, ashen and weary. His normally bright eyes seemed pinched, haunted almost. I threw my arms around him and a new set of sobs rose in my throat.
He wrapped his arm across my back and rested his forehead against my shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” He repeated the phrase several more times.
“It isn’t your fault. It’s Wolfson’s.”
Ronan shook his head. “I should’ve known. I should’ve seen it years ago.” He took a step away from me and raked his hand through his hair like he wanted to pull some out. “When I was fourteen, I wanted to go home. He wouldn’t let me write to my family and ask that they come fetch me, so I told him he was a lonely, miserable, old man. I used those words. He said I was young and stupid, and I’d understand when I was older.”
Ronan’s hand dropped from his hair. “The next week he made you my study partner. I should’ve realized what he was doing.” His gaze turned to me, fell upon my scars, and he winced.
Guilt caused that wince, I told myself, not revulsion.
“You need to go,” he said, “and you mustn’t come back to my room. Don’t speak to me in the hallways or elsewhere. Otherwise, he’ll use you to manipulate me again.”
My heart stuttered and plummeted in my chest like a downed bird. Ronan might as well have asked me to give up eating. “But how will we talk to each other?”
His gaze couldn’t rest on my face. It flitted around the room. “We won’t. We can’t anymore. You must see that.”
I took a stumbling step backward, his words ringing through my head like a slap. I wanted to say, “But you need me.” Howfoolish. He obviously didn’t. It was only I who needed him, and now he was telling me to leave. I stood there for a moment, breathing hard. I nearly pointed out that the other servants had already ostracized me, and now, disfigured, my misery would be tenfold.
I was a servant, though. I had no claim on him.
And besides, I couldn’t argue him into loving me.
A third time his gaze traveled to me and just as quickly fled to the wall behind me. It was too painful for him to even look at my face now.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered again. “I’m sorry it must be this way. I’ll do what I can for you.” He turned and paced to his window, keeping his back to me. That was all. He’d dismissed me and was waiting for me to go.
I glared at his back, at his hands gripping the windowsill. Every muscle in him was rigid.
“Are you going to burn down the village?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.