fight,” countered Tilbury, as the wind lashed his hair into wild white spikes. “Should the men fall, or should they have been on a quest elsewhere when the attack commenced, the womenfolk would defend the fortress.”
“I should’ve never,” gasped Mittie. “How very plebeian!”
Sophia snorted. “Then you’d have been slaughtered. Or worse. Isn’t that so, Professor?”
“Indeed.” Tilbury squinted at the pair of them, then at the rest of us. He blinked a few times, apparently just now grasping where the conversation was headed. “But let us reflect more on the bravery of such souls rather than the outcomes. It happens that, despite numerous attempts, Iverson was never completely overrun, not once. So the gentlewomen who dwelled here surely led lives of uncommon fulfillment.…”
I stopped listening. I walked away from the others to the edge nearest me and let my hand slide lightly along the border of a hiding-stone, feeling for pocks. The rock was cold and chipped, whether from invaders’ arrows or time, I could not tell.
The channel opened before me in a wide, flat spread of navy chopped with froth and melting into forever. Even beneath the clouds, it was beautiful. More than beautiful.
It was … touchable. The high wind as well, now a tangible thing, thick as pudding. It filled my mouth and nose and ears, rushed into my senses. I leaned forward into it, testing its resistance.
I was certain, certain, I could raise my arms—a goddess of sea and sky, celebrating her reign—and allow the wind to lift me. And I’d be safe. I would not fall.
After all, I’d done it before, hadn’t I? I’d forgotten about it—forgotten on purpose, let the grimy haze of my London life smear away the memory. Or perhaps it had been only a dream … but surely I’d stood like this before, tilted out over an abyss. If it had been a dream, it seemed so real.
I’d climbed out the window at Blisshaven. I could still feel the slick cold glass against my fingertips, hear the squeak of the frame as I’d hefted it open.
Smoggy air on my face. The empty dark. My body feeling lighter and lighter, lighter than air.
I had tipped into that emptiness below, and then—
“Eleanore.”
I opened my eyes, just now realizing I’d closed them. Sophia had her hand on my sleeve.
“Watch it,” she said, quiet. “You’re about to make a hash of yourself.”
I looked down. I had climbed atop the low barrier between two merlons and was balanced at the rim of the stone. The tips of my shoes poked out over a dizzying drop, black leather against faraway boulders and a viscous, surging sea.
No smog. No darkness. The violence of the surf below me was clear as crystal.
I came back to myself in a sickening rush. My stomach lurched. My knees buckled. My fingers clutched at the stones.
I moved my left foot, then my right, slinking down again to the safety of the roof. Sophia released my arm.
Bloody hell. I’d nearly done it, I’d nearly stepped clean over that edge—I’d wanted to—
“Tedious lecture,” Sophia murmured while gazing at Tilbury, who was still rhapsodizing to his captive audience about the joys of medieval life. “But hardly worth ending it all, I would think.”
“Hardly,” I murmured in return, when I was convinced my voice would not break.
A frown creased her perfect brow; her eyes skimmed my frame. “You know, for a moment there, it almost looked like you were … smoldering.”
That caught me short. “I beg your pardon?”
“Like you were smoking. Your hair—your neck and hair—blurring into smoke.” Sophia shook her head once, hard. “Never mind.”
“I—”
“It’s all this wretched wind and salt, no doubt. I cannot wait to graduate from this pile of rocks, I swear.”
She walked back to the cluster of the other girls. They parted and reabsorbed her into their midst without seeming even to notice.
• • •
It wasn’t until we were leaving that I saw it. The lesson was concluded, and Mittie’s shivering had finally started to look real. Tilbury opened the access door and there was a short, ladylike tussle to see who would get through first, but I waited. I wasn’t sure how my knees felt about creeping down those corkscrew stairs just yet.
The clouds had thinned sheer overhead, transforming the sun into a hard silver disk. It lent a peculiar light to the limestone, blurring some crannies but heightening others, and when I gave a final glance back to the merlon I had first touched with my hand, I detected a faint tracing