Chapter 17: Caspar Begs

I shook Hedda awake with one hand and put the other on the window latch.

"There's a man on my sill," I said.

"Is it Dahl? Because I'll have things to say about the roof."

"It's Caspar."

Hedda sat up in her boots with a candle snuffer in her fist.

She looked, to be fair, ready for a fight.

"Let him in," she said. "Slowly."

He climbed over the sill and stood on the rug, dripping snow, with his hair in his eyes.

There was no gold on him anywhere.

His good coat was torn at the shoulder.

He looked, for the first time since I'd known him, like a boy who'd been left out in the rain.

"Linnea," he said. "I need five minutes."

"You have until the candle's lit."

Hedda struck the flint.

He took a breath.

"I knew," Caspar said.

I said nothing.

"About the ring, about all of it. Mother told me the winter I turned nineteen." He swallowed. "I'd failed the entrance test twice.

"She'd never once looked at me the way she did the night the first lamp lit in my hand."

"And that was enough."

"It was everything."

His mouth twisted.

"The Academy has examiners in every market town. They tested you at fourteen. Unawakened, sleeping, a rare one.

"Mother said, a girl from the north who'd never know what she lost, and I said yes."

"And did you ever love me?"

I hadn't meant to ask.

He looked at the floor.

"A little," he said. "At the start. Before I knew what you were for."

Hedda made a sound like a kettle.

I didn't.

"That's the first honest thing you've ever said to me."

"I know."

"What do you want, Caspar?"

"The ring."

He said it quickly, as if the word burned.

"There's a Wellspring chip in every sleeve I own, and Mother cut me off it last night. The examiners have my cuff.

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