Page 94 of Our Crooked Hearts
Then the light went off and she could see the people looking down at her and one of them was Ivy.
Marion would’ve needed a different kind of heart to feel it swell, to feel it break. But it did ache to see the girl so close, so real. She had Dana’s hair, a gentler riff on Dana’s ruthless face. All the certainty of her younger self had bled out with hermagic. Marion was flush with triumph, drunk with thrill, but laying eyes on this tipped-out version of Ivy sobered her up.
You don’t remember me,she wanted to say,but you will when I’m through.
Not yet. They had world enough, and time.
Marion had forgotten she was naked until Ivy took off her own shirt and threw it to her. She snatched it up, her brain already unraveling its scents.
She let the girl leave, for now. “Thank you, Ivy,” she called, and was gratified to see her startle, looking back over her shoulder in the moonlight.
Good.This was the start. Marion had to get her bearings, had to move at proper speed. She’d been watching when Fee warned Dana against simply reopening the golden box. It could break Ivy again, and worse. She had to be lured back into the thickets. Magic had to glitter a while at the edges of her sight. The seeds must be planted and coaxed from the soil before she was ready to receive everything.
With one hand she would give Ivy back her magic. With the other she would pick Dana to pieces. She would plant a bomb in the middle of her lovely life and make damned sure she heard it ticking.
