“I’m not. Truly. I know it must have been hard for you to deal with her behaviour on top of everything else, and naturally you’d look for explanations for it, especially when she didn’t respond to your treatments.”
“Forget it.” I swing my legs off the bed and he holds up his hands.
“Wait. I’m sorry. I’ll listen to you, please.” When I don’t make any further movements, he continues. “Look, we’ll get her released and bring her here and then we’ll see, all right? We’ll get her out before the next full moon and then we’ll see what we can do. If the Elixir helps, so be it. I’ll make it for her.”
I look down at his gloved hands as the full weight of what he’s offering – what I’d asked for – hits me. His life for my mother’s.
“I can’t let you.” I speak so quietly I don’t know if he hears me.
“I made myself a promise once,” he says suddenly, looking at me. “When I was growing up, I saw my father crippling himself to save lives. Every time there was a knock at our door, I was terrified that it was someone begging for help. Well, two years ago, he got a call for help, and as always he went to make the Elixir. The Nigredo stopped his heart.”
My hands rise to my face, covering my mouth, which is gaping open behind them.
He looks down. “It didn’t kill him straight away. I made the Elixir to try to heal him. It … it was my first time. It didn’t work; we were too late. The Elixir can cure anything, but it can’t restart a dead heart. After that … the knocks came for me. And I found that like him, I couldn’t say no. How could I when my refusal would mean certain death, or at the very least, a lot of suffering? So I made a decision. No marriage. No children. No relationships. I swore my loyalty to the Sisters. That way I’d never put my wife in my mother’s position; she’d never have to watch me kill myself to save others. And there would be no children to worry I was going to die every time I made the Elixir. Or to have to take my place when I did.”
“Silas…”
“When I saw you lying there, broken, I didn’t even stop to think. Even if it meant the Nigredo taking my heart, I would have done it. And gladly.” He stands and crosses the room, somehow taking an age to walk the three steps to where I am. He kneels before me, his hands resting on my knees. “I couldn’t lose you, Errin. I couldn’t have stood it.”
“What are you saying?”
He looks up at me, swallowing. I watch the lump in his throat bob, then meet his gaze again. “I don’t know,” he whispers.
Slowly, I reach for his hands, peeling the gloves off, holding them, touching the black skin, folding my fingers through his. He closes his eyes and I look at him, at the white lashes resting just above his sharp cheekbones, his skin flushed, his lips parted. I realize his hands are shaking, and I squeeze them gently. When his eyes open, his pupils are wide, dark discs at the centre of the gold, and my heart skips, fluttering like a bird. When he tilts his head, my stomach swoops.
“Silas, your – oh.” We whip around and Dimia flushes bright red in the doorway. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry; it’s your mother.”
“What about her?” he asks, sounding as frustrated as I feel.
“I’m waiting for you.”
Behind Dimia a woman appears. She’s tall and thin, and there is something hawk-like to her face. She’s dressed in a long robe with bell-shaped sleeves, and though the robe is black, with a short cape, when she puts her hands on her hips I glimpse the gold lining of the sleeves. She wears a headdress that leaves her face exposed; her neck and the rest of her head are covered by a tall hood that fans out as it leaves her forehead, the top of it shaped like a wave. As she turns to look at Dimia I see the hood is shaped the same all the way around, triangular in design.
She stares at us, glancing back and forth between us. “I warned you,” she says, fixing her gaze on Silas. “I told you that you were