Chapter 16: The Circle

"Cassie?" Bea said.

Her voice was a thread, and she was looking at me through hair stuck to her cheeks.

"I'm here," I said. "Don't move. It's all right."

"They told me you made me sick." Her chain clinked as she tried to sit up. "Mom said you'd gone to school to punish me."

"I didn't."

"I know." She swallowed. "I knew at the gate, when you caught me. I felt it go into me. It was warm."

I had not told her about that, and I had not known she'd understood.

"Bea, listen. I'm going to say something terrible, and it's true."

"Then say it."

I said it all, as plainly as the page had said it to me.

I told her Dunstan had held my jaw while Dad opened it.

I told her the rank she'd been so bright with was mine.

She did not cry, and she did not argue.

When I finished, she lay with her cheek against the stone, and her eyes moved across the ceiling beams.

"All my life," she said, "I never got tired."

"I know."

"I used to feel sorry for you. I'd look at you after a run and think, poor Cassie, she just isn't strong."

"You didn't know."

"I should have. I saw you in the mirror every day." She pressed her palm flat on the floor. "How could I not have asked?"

The cellar door opened at the top of the stairs.

My mother came down first, carrying a tray of white candles.

My father came behind her with the green ledger under one arm and a long silver knife in his hand.

Dunstan came last, and stopped on the fourth step from the bottom.

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