Selfish Is the Heart Read online

  “Think about it,” Deliberata urged. “You might be surprised to learn that even a made-up story of bits and pieces is a true vision, after all. Go on, now. Read your letters. Go to your studies.”

  And Annalise, unexpectedly obedient, went.

  One letter was indeed from her parents. All was well at home. Several of her sisters were with child. They were proud of her, of Annalise, for taking this path and hoped that when she took her vows they would have a chance see her before she left the Motherhouse. One from Allorisa, filled with bragging of her new life.

  And the third, the final and thickest letter, the one that made her fingers tremble to open . . . was from Jacquin.

  Chapter 17

  Annalise?” She wasn’t looking at him, and Cassian realized how quickly he’d become accustomed to her attention now they’d declared the truce. “Have you something to add?”

  She’d had her head bent over her desk, still at the back of the room, and now didn’t look up even at the sound of her name. As one, the other novitiates turned. Concerned, Cassian made his way down the aisle to stand before her. Was she truly unwell, the way he’d thought earlier?

  “Annalise?”

  She looked up then, her eyes tinged with pink in a too-pale face. She wet her lips before speaking. “Your mercy, sir. I was distracted.”

  He looked to the desk, to the text, closed. To her journal, also closed. She had a letter spread on the polished wood, her hands flat over it. She’d smudged the ink onto her fingertips and must have touched her forehead with them, for a smear of darkness marred her dusky skin.

  “Are you unwell? Ought I send one of the girls to fetch a medicus?” He touched her shoulder, wishing instead to put the back of his hand to feel for fever but too mindful of the eyes of so many.

  “I’m fine.” She cleared her throat.

  Her eyes said otherwise.

  “You are all dismissed,” Cassian said.

  Annalise’s eyes widened. Her mouth thinned, clamped tight on some protest he would refuse to hear. The class murmured, texts closing, papers shuffling, chairs squeaking.

  “Now,” Cassian said in the voice of thunder that had never let him down.

  “Sir, should I fetch a medicus?” Wandalette asked from his elbow.

  “No,” Annalise said.

  “No?”

  She looked at Wandalette, then Cassian, then at the letter on her desk. “No. I’m well, truly. I think perhaps I ate somewhat that disagreed with me. That’s all. Truly, Wandalette, you need not fret.”

  Wandalette made a doubtful noise, then looked at him. “Well, you’re with the master, and I suppose we know he’ll make sure you’re taken care of. So if you’re sure.”

  Her simple acceptance—that he would take care of Annalise—set him back a step. “Go, please.”

  Wandalette nodded. “Yes, sir. Annalise, I hope you feel better.”

  Cassian stood straight and tall without bending until the last novitiate had filed from the room. Then he pulled a chair toward her, so fast the legs scraped curls of wax from the floor. He sat, knee-to-knee. He took her hands in his and chafed their chill.

  “Tell me what has you so distraught?”

  “Not distraught,” she told him. “I am quite undone with joy.”

  She looked as far from joy as the Void was from the Land Above. He squeezed her hands again and settled them onto her lap. She blinked at him, her eyes bright, but no tears sliding down her cheeks. For that he supposed he ought to offer gratitude.

  “It’s a letter from Jacquin. My betrothed. My former betrothed, I suppose I should say, though he has now said he wishes me to reconsider our engagement.”

  “And . . . do you wish to?” He tried to think what she’d said of him, this other man, and could not. He wished he’d more thoroughly read the letter he’d so childishly stolen from her before, so that he might know better how to judge what she was telling him now.

  “Of course! Why would I not?”

  “I thought you were finding your place here,” Cassian said.

  He pushed away. Had to move away from her, lest he open and everything inside him tumble out onto the floor where she might see. He made a show of tidying the texts on his desk but neither saw them nor felt the leather covers in his hands.

  “You’re going to undo all the work we made.” She said this from just behind him.

  He didn’t turn. He didn’t want to think about that day in the closet. How she’d tasted, and her heat and how she’d writhed. He didn’t want to remember how tightly her fingers had tangled in his hair.

  “What are his reasons for seeking to renew your agreement? Can you be certain they’re honorable?”

  “Jacquin was ever honorable,” Annalise said, a bit of bite in her tone. “It was not he who ended our agreement. I did it.”

  Cassian turned. “You must’ve had good reason.”

  Emotions slid across her face as they always did, but this time he could not read them. He couldn’t tell what she thought or felt. He bit his tongue to keep from saying more and hoped for the taste of blood to distract him, but even that eluded him.

  “I have ever had good reason for all I do.”

  “I’m sure that’s so.”

  She tilted her head to look at him, but he didn’t find it as endearing now. “He says he wants to come here. Speak to me in person. He feels we might be able to work out our difficulties. He wants to try, at least.”

  “Now? And not before?”

  “Before,” Annalise said, “we tried and were unable to accomplish an agreement.”

  “And you think now it might be different? What’s changed?”

  The slow, small, and secret smile she gave was not for him. It churned his stomach. This was the smile she had for another man.

  Cassian hated that smile.

  “I suppose I won’t know until he comes, and we see if we are able to . . . improve upon the situation.”

  This had the tone of intimacy and it set his teeth on edge. He turned from her. “My best wishes for you both.”

  “Cassian,” she said as though just now realizing she might have been being self-involved. “He says he loves me.”

  The words hurt worse than the smile had, for he might combat her feelings but he could never compete with those from another.

  “But I—” he began, and as so often with her, stopped himself from saying more.

  And Annalise, unlike so often with him, did not ask him what he meant to say. With another slow and secret smile that was not for him, would never be for him, she tucked her letter against her chest and sighed. Then she turned and left the room.

  Cassian stayed behind.

  Once as a child Annalise had been taken ill with a fever so fierce her parents later told her they’d feared she would die. All she recalled of that time was being in her bed, too weak even to wail for her mother’s cool touch, and the underwater burbling of adult voices that sounded far away but came from beside her bed.

  And then, one day, she’d opened her eyes and sat up in her bed. She could see again. She could hear. She could move her limbs, unweighted.

  That was how she felt now.

  Unweighted.

  Where had the vision she’d created come from? Had the mix of bits and pieces from commentary and text been random, as she’d intended, or had the Invisible Mother truly had a hand in its creation? The more Annalise contemplated it, the more convincing such a possibility became.

  She didn’t want to discuss such a matter with Tansy, nor Perdita or Helena. Not even Wandalette, who might understand the best of all the other novitiates.

  The letter from Jacquin had been delayed, which meant the visit he’d proposed to make in a sevenday’s time would, in fact, happen sooner than that. Annalise spent the day in the sanctuary, forgoing her studies and even meals, though her stomach gnawed itself and her head began to spin.

  Cassian found her there after even the priests had gone. She’d left the pews to Wait in front of