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Agott wasn’t quite sure what exactly compelled her to knock on Coco’s door two hours past midnight.
Maybe it was because she’d been restlessly tossing and turning in the bed that had grown too small for her at least a year ago, and the silence in the atelier was suddenly too much for her to bear. Maybe it was because they were all scheduled to take the Fourth Test in six months’ time, and somehow the thought of it terrified her more than any test before. Maybe it was because there was a letter from her mother sitting at the bottom of her desk drawer, offering her a position at the Tower of Tomes upon her graduation, and it had been there for over a week.
She hadn’t yet shown that letter to anyone, not even Master Qifrey. She couldn’t say why. She’d spent hours rereading it over and over again, running her thumb over the elegant swooping curves of her mother’s handwriting. She hadn’t written back yet, either. It should have been easy, to pen her gracious acceptance and send it off, knowing that her future was secure at last. And yet every time she tried to sit down to do just that, her stomach twisted uncomfortably, and her quill shook in her hand.
She didn’t understand what was wrong with her.
When she was younger, her mother had always warned her never to let her heart make decisions in place of her head. The heart was a fickle and foolish thing. But when her thoughts were all tangled and twisted and her mind was like a labyrinth, she found that her heart always led her back to one place: to Coco.
Whatever the reason, Agott’s restlessness drove her out of bed. She slipped quietly out of her sheets and pulled on her shoes, before emerging into the darkness of their shared workroom and creeping across the hall to Coco’s bedroom. She knocked gently on her door, but there was no response. She waited for a moment, and then tried again.
“Coco? Are you awake?” she hissed. Still nothing. She felt briefly guilty, and then the heat of embarrassment rushed to her cheeks. What was she doing? Coco was almost certainly trying to sleep, and here Agott was pounding at her door when she should have been doing the same.
But there was something gnawing at the back of her mind, a quiet sinking feeling that made her pause. She pushed gently, and found that the door was unlocked. The room was dark, illuminated only by the faint silvery glow of moonlight. Coco’s bed was empty. Agott stepped further into the room, brow furrowed. Where had she gone?
It was then that she spotted two shapes on the bed. A small note, written in Coco’s familiar messy scrawl. Next to it was Coco’s bag, stuffed with what had to be at least a week’s worth of food from the pantry, her pen and her palm quire, and a number of other odds and ends. Agott snatched the note and scanned it quickly as a cold sense of dread trickled down her spine.
“I’m going to fix everything.
I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I promise that I’ll do everything I can to make it back to you all safely.
I have to do this. I’m sorry.”
Agott’s heart dropped into her shoes. Her throat was closing up. She couldn’t breathe.
No. No, no, no, no, no—
“Agott?”
She whirled around. In the doorway stood a horrified Coco, fully dressed in her sylph shoes and her traveling clothes. Her hair still hung over her shoulder in the messy braid that Agott had done for her only the day prior. Her round-framed glasses glinted in the flickering light of the lamp that she held by her side. Qifrey had bought them for her a year ago, when he realized she could no longer draw her casting seals or read her spellbooks without squinting.
She never wore them this late.
“No,” Agott whispered aloud. Coco quickly shut the door behind her and crossed the room in two long strides, hands raised placatingly.
“Agott, please, just listen. I need to—”
“No! What is this, Coco? Where the hell are you going?”
Coco frantically grabbed her shoulders.
“Please, keep your voice down.” Her eyes darted around Agott’s face before she drew in a shaky breath and broke her gaze. “I...I have to find the Brimmed Caps. I have to find Iguin.”
Agott’s blood turned to ice in her veins.
“Iguin?”
“I received a message from him two weeks ago.” Coco stepped back and wrapped an arm around herself, shifting uncertainly from one foot to the other. “He wants to meet with me. Face to face.”
Agott stared at her. She hadn’t been the only one sitting on a secret letter, it would seem.
“And you’re just…going to do it?” she asked, her voice sharp with disbelief. “Alone?”
Coco met her eyes again.
“Are you going to tell anyone?” she asked quietly. Agott stumbled backwards and slumped down onto Coco’s bed, rubbing her face with one hand. None of this made any sense. And yet…
“No…no. Of course not. Damn it, Coco.”
Coco set the lantern down on the floor and carefully took a seat beside her. The mattress dipped, and their shoulders bumped together.
“I'm sorry,” Coco said after a long moment. “None of you were supposed to know.”
“That doesn’t make it any better.” Agott hated the way her voice was already trembling. “You big dummy.”
Coco radiated a gentle warmth at her side. Agott slowly pulled her hand away from her face and turned to look at her. The determination in the other witch’s eyes hadn’t wavered, though now it battled with the guilt bubbling up from underneath.
“You’re so smart. I know you are. Why are you doing this?” Agott asked finally. Coco smiled a little, though it didn’t quite reach her tired, conflicted eyes.
“Which is it? Am I smart, or am I a big dummy?”
When Agott only glared at her, she sighed.
“Iguin was the one who gave me that spellbook, all those years ago. He may be the only witch in the world who knows how to reverse the spell on my mother.”
“But—surely you needn’t turn to him? There has to be another way to—”
Coco only shook her head. The dark circles beneath her eyes, a permanent fixture on her face for years now, were visible even in the low light.
“I’ve tried,” she said softly. “For months and years, I’ve tried. Nothing else has worked. There’s nothing at the Tower of Tomes. There is no other way.”
She still remembered when Coco first returned from the Tower of Tomes after her Librarian’s Trial, empty-handed and hollow-eyed. She would return to the Tower twice more after that, and the result was the same each time. After the third time, she had broken down in Agott’s arms and wailed for her mother in the privacy of their shared workroom.
Agott had felt helpless, then, unable to do anything but hold her. She felt helpless now.
“What are you going to do?”
“What I have to,” Coco replied simply, her voice steady. Her expression hardened. “But whatever happens, I can’t just sit here and wait anymore.”
Agott worried her bottom lip between her teeth.
“...Do you trust him?” More than you trust me?
Coco’s eyes flashed. She blinked at her.
“No. Of course not.” Her fingers ghosted over the once-jagged edges of her old burn scar, angry crimson long faded into a pale reminder. “But the Brimmed Caps have answers that I need.”
Then her eyes grew distant, and her gaze dropped to her lap.
“Not just for my mom, either, but...for Master Qifrey.”
Something gripped Agott’s heart and squeezed.
“Does he know about this?” she asked quietly.
“No.” Coco’s hands wrung together in her lap. “He’s been through enough. He deserves whatever peace he can find now.”
Agott stared at her incredulously.
“You think this will bring him peace? He’s going to hate this.”
“I know.” Coco let out a weary laugh. “Though...I suppose that might just be a good thing.”
She removed her glasses and held them in her lap, gently running her thumb over the lenses.
“I just have to hope that he’ll understand. I know he’s always wanted answers. And I’m going to give him that. I’m going to save him.”
“By running off to who knows where.” An ugly bitterness crept into Agott’s voice, curdling and sour. She couldn’t help it. Coco only studied her with a solemn furrow to her brow, her green eyes like deep, dark pools in the dim light.
“I don’t have any other choice,” she said finally. “He tries to be cheerful, but...he’s not getting better. It’s going to kill him, Agott.”
None of them liked to talk about it, but Qifrey’s condition had been slowly deteriorating over the past few years. It had been subtle, at first, but the symptoms had only continued to worsen.
These days, his hands were constantly trembling, and his joints ached more often than not. He was perpetually exhausted, rarely able to take the apprentices out on excursions anymore. On his bad pain days, which were growing more and more frequent, he often found himself unable to leave his bed, on which occasions Olly and the girls would sit with him for hours at a time. His vision in his remaining eye had been gradually weakening, and in the past year or so he’d taken to navigating with a cane.
It seemed the silverwood could only be kept at bay for so long before it grew too hungry to remain dormant.
“And it’s going to kill Custas, too, sooner or later,” Coco continued somberly. “We need to know how to remove it.”
Her gaze shifted to the vast and lonely night sky outside the window. Almost absentmindedly, she rubbed her right wrist with her other hand.
“He’s still out there, somewhere, with them. Him and Tartah. I can save them, too.”
There was something terrified and desperate writhing in Agott’s chest.
“But why does it have to be you?”
Coco slipped her glasses back on and gave Agott another hollow smile.
“I’m Iguin’s ‘Child of Hope,’ remember? If anyone can get the answers out of him, it’s me. And this way, nobody else needs to get hurt.”
So this wasn’t just some foolhardy plan. Coco had really thought this through. Agott tried to swallow down the panic rising like bile in her throat.
“But—in half a year’s time, we’ll all be fully fledged witches,” she protested weakly. “You, and me, and Tetia and Richeh. We could figure it all out together. If you could just wait—”
“We don’t know if Master Qifrey has that much time,” Coco interrupted her softly. Agott opened her mouth, and then closed it again.
“And...my mom...” Coco’s expression crumpled a little, before she set her lips in a grim line. “I’ve already stolen five years from her. I refuse to steal any more.”
Agott’s fingers dug painfully into her thighs.
“If word ever gets out where you’ve gone—”
“I know.”
“And—and you know that Easthies would be elated at the chance to finally erase your memory. You shouldn’t give him a reason.”
“I know.”
Agott balled her hands into trembling fists.
“Stop saying that,” she ground out through gritted teeth. Then Coco took Agott's hands in her own, enveloping them in warmth.
“I know the Knights could have taken my memories years ago. I know they still can.” She sighed deeply, running her thumbs over the back of Agott’s knuckles. “But...I can’t just look away now, Agott. The people that I love are suffering, and I finally have a chance to fix it.”
Coco’s eyes gleamed with a sudden and startling intensity in the lamplight. The dim glow cast stark shadows across her face.
“I can’t let anyone tell me who to be anymore. Not the Brimmed Caps, not the Knights Moralis. I can’t let any of them stop me from doing what I feel in my heart to be right. That’s the kind of witch I want to be.”
Agott’s chest swelled with a strange and electrifying rush of emotion that nearly left her breathless.
“I just…I wish you didn’t have to do this alone. I wish I could go with you,” she said, almost without thinking, and yet the words felt as natural as drawing any casting seal. Coco squeezed Agott’s hands.
“I couldn’t just let you throw away your entire future for me. Not after you’ve worked so hard.”
“But that’s what you’re doing.” She squeezed Coco’s hands in return. “What about your future? It’s not fair.”
“You think I want to leave?” There was no anger in Coco’s soft voice, only bone-deep fatigue. “This is…it’s just what I have to do.”
Guilt clawed sharply at Agott’s stomach, along with the sinking certainty that she would have to let Coco go. The feeling nearly choked her, burning at the back of her throat and behind her eyes. Instead, however, her resolve sharpened like iron.
“Fine, then. If you haven’t returned by the time I’ve passed the Fourth Test...I’ll come and find you, wherever you are,” Agott said decisively, raising her chin. “I’ll send a letterbird. I’ll track you down. Whatever it takes.”
Coco shook her head and chuckled softly, smiling in spite of herself.
“I suppose I can’t really stop you, can I?” Her smile fell. “But...what about your mother? And the Tower of Tomes? You’re going to be a Librarian, aren’t you?”
How insignificant all of that seemed, now. Agott thought of the week-old letter festering in her desk drawer, and suddenly everything clicked into place. She shook her own head in frustration, causing a few dark curls to fall into her eyes. Her hair was getting longer again, tumbling around her ears and just past her chin, and she hadn't cut it yet. Coco had run her fingers through it the other day, and told her with a radiant smile that she thought it was pretty.
Why was she thinking about that now? Her face was quickly catching fire. Coco’s hands were too warm in hers.
“That’s not—I don’t—you—”
She buried her burning face in her hands and groaned. Her words weren’t working right. They so rarely did when Coco was involved. Agott peeked between her fingers to see Coco still watching her with a mix of confusion and gentle concern. The moonlight streaming in through the window and the flickering lamp at their feet illuminated her face in silver and gold, giving her an almost ethereal glow.
She was beautiful. That same thought had already crossed Agott’s mind countless times, but it made her heart gallop like a pegasus taking flight all the same.
Agott took a deep breath and ran both hands through her hair, staring up at the ceiling while she gathered her racing thoughts. She wasn’t worried about preserving her dignity anymore; Coco had seen her act like a bumbling fool far too many times already. This, however, she wanted to get right.
“My heart…lies with you,” she murmured at last. “I know that now. I mean—you and everybody here, Tetia and Richeh and Master Qifrey and Master Olly, but…especially you.”
Her voice broke like a storm-tossed ship wrecked upon the shore.
“I can no longer envision a future without you in it.”
Saying the words aloud felt like her ribs were cracking open, like all her tender insides were spilling out, but they rang with a truth that she had long been aching to give voice to. The weight of it hung heavy and cloying in the air between them. It was suffocating, and Agott decided then that she would gladly drown in it.
Coco’s expression morphed into something else, shock and guilt and heartache shifting across her features like ripples across a still lake.
“Agott…”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Agott whispered, averting her gaze to stare at the floor. “I just want you to know.”
Coco turned away. She was silent for a long moment before Agott heard her blow out a breath through her nose, and then her shoulders began to shake. Agott’s chest crumpled in on itself.
“…Are you laughing at me?”
Coco whipped around to face her and frantically waved her hands.
“No! No, I’m sorry.” She scrubbed at her eyes with the heel of her palm, and Agott realized that she was wiping away tears. “It’s just...what awful timing, huh?”
There was a crimson flush rising to Coco’s cheeks now, matching Agott’s own. She stared.
“I…I love you. So much that sometimes it feels like I’m going to break open,” Coco confessed through tear-choked laughter. “And it’s...so terrifying.”
Oh.
So maybe they were both falling apart, then. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to break open.
Agott was aflame as her heart stuttered and stumbled in her chest. She felt nearly dizzy, her insides all light and fluttery as if she could simply float away without warning. Owlcats. It felt like her stomach was full of those fuzzy little glowing owlcats. How completely and utterly ridiculous.
“You’re terrified?” she finally managed to say, even with her heart lodged firmly in her throat. “After I realized how I felt about you, I hid in my room for three days.”
Agott watched as Coco’s pretty green eyes came alight with realization. She swatted her shoulder in mock indignation, rosy-cheeked and grinning.
“That’s what that was about? You told me you were sick! I brought you soup!”
“I know. And it was so sweet of you. It really didn’t help matters.”
The other girl snorted before breaking into a fit of giggles, a sound as bright as a bell chime and sweet as honey. It pierced Agott’s aching heart like an arrow. It felt almost cruel.
Agott wanted so many things. She wanted to be selfish. She wanted to crawl into Coco’s arms and stay there. She wanted to tell her that if she truly loved her, she wouldn’t go. She was no stranger, she supposed, to wanting things that were far beyond her reach.
She let her head fall against Coco’s shoulder, gripping the soft fabric of the other girl’s cloak in her fists. She felt more than heard the way Coco’s breath hitched in the back of her throat.
“I don’t want you to forget me,” Agott admitted quietly, her voice raw and bleeding. Coco brought a tentative hand up to rest between Agott’s shoulder blades.
“And I don’t want to forget you,” she answered gently. “I won’t let that happen. I promise.”
“You can’t promise that,” Agott muttered darkly.
“...Maybe not.” Coco drew in another shuddering breath. “But I’ll try.”
They stayed there for what felt like an eternity, and yet somehow also hardly any time at all. Coco buried her nose in Agott’s curls, and traced gentle patterns on her back with her fingers. Agott kept her face tucked into the crook of Coco’s neck with her eyes screwed shut. As soon as she opened them, it would all be real again.
“When they realize that I’m missing, just tell them you never saw me, okay?” Coco murmured. “There’s no reason for you to get in trouble, too.”
“…Okay.”
She felt Coco’s throat bob.
“And...please...don’t tell Tetia and Richeh where I’m going. At least not until you all graduate. I don’t want to put them in any more danger if I can help it.”
Agott let out a shaky sigh. She slowly sat back and met Coco’s eyes.
So she wanted her to lie not only to their masters, but to their friends as well. If it were anyone else, Agott would think that perhaps they simply didn’t understand the gravity of what they were asking. But it was Coco. Coco, who was looking at her with such sorrow in her beautiful, meadow-green eyes. Coco, who followed her loving and courageous heart wherever it led her, even now.
What else was Agott to do?
“You do know I’m a terrible liar, don’t you?” she deadpanned. Coco’s teary eyes crinkled at the edges, the tension in her brow loosening ever so slightly.
“I guess that’s true,” she said, but her fragile smile slipped away again as soon as it appeared. Her hands had returned to her lap, clasped together too tightly. Agott heaved another sigh and shook her head.
“Fine. But only on one condition.”
She held out a hand.
“Promise me. Promise me you’ll be safe until then. Until I can find you.”
Coco’s brow furrowed.
“What? But you said—”
“I know what I said.” Agott swallowed hard, blinking away the hot tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. “Just promise me.”
Coco finally took her hand, her calloused palm sliding against Agott’s own. Agott pulled her close, gently resting her forehead against their clasped hands. Coco did the same. Her skin was warm against Agott’s knuckles.
“Okay,” Coco whispered. “I promise.”
“Don’t go somewhere I can’t follow,” Agott pleaded, and then the tears spilled over at last.
“Agott…”
She cupped Agott’s face in her palms and carefully swiped at the tears now trickling down her cheeks. Her touch was so gentle, and soon it would be gone. Agott wanted to scream.
This would all be so much easier if she could just be angry like she used to, if she could just yell at Coco for being so stupid and reckless, if she just could storm out of the room and slam the door behind her. Instead, the burning fire only sputtered out in her chest and melted away into bitter sorrow, like the last snow before the spring. It hurt so much more than she could’ve imagined.
The warmth of Coco’s palms disappeared as she carefully withdrew her hands from Agott’s face. She sniffled and blinked away her own tears as she moved to stand from the bed.
“I need to go now, before anyone else wakes up. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll see you to the door,” Agott said hoarsely, because it was the only thing she could say.
The atelier was dark and still around them as they snuck down the stairs and through the kitchen. Agott tried not to think of their masters, their friends, asleep and completely unaware in their beds. The moment the two of them stepped outside, the crisp night air swiftly chilled her through her nightclothes, and Agott pulled the quilt tighter around her shoulders as she shivered. She carefully tugged the front door shut behind them, trying to keep it from creaking.
They stepped out onto the well-worn path leading away from the atelier, and another silence enveloped them, broken only by the chirping of insects and the gentle whispering of the wind. Agott stared at her shoes. Looking at Coco suddenly felt like an impossible task, because looking at her meant that she would have to watch her go.
“Well,” she muttered finally, using every last ounce of her willpower to keep her voice steady. “I suppose you’d better be off, then, hadn’t you?”
A sudden warmth enveloped her as Coco pulled her into a tight hug, her cheek pressing against Agott’s brow. Somewhere along the way, she’d gained two inches on her. Just enough to be noticeable, and just enough for her to tease Agott about, which she did often. Incredibly irritating.
Now, though, she would give anything for Coco to tease her like usual.
“Goodbye, Agott. Thank you.” Coco squeezed her tighter. “For everything.”
Agott melted into the embrace, all of her resolve gone in an instant. She drew in a deep breath and tried to etch it all into her mind. The all-encompassing warmth of Coco’s arms, the faint rose and lavender scent of her robes, the softness of her breath against Agott’s ear. It was over too quickly, and then Coco was pulling away. Turning to face the looming dark. Preparing to take flight. Alone.
No. Please. Not yet.
“Wait!”
Coco stopped and looked back, and the sight of her outlined against the starry sky briefly stole the air from Agott’s lungs.
“Can...can I kiss you? Before you go?” she asked, her breath ragged and trembling. Coco only stared at her, mouth slightly agape. Shame washed over her, burning hot in her gut and on her cheeks. She felt terribly selfish and small. How pathetic could she possibly be? How could she ask that of her, at a time like this?
She was about to apologize and wave the question away and wish Coco safe travels, when suddenly the other witch dropped her bag and closed the distance between them in a single bound. She grabbed Agott’s face in her hands once more and lingered there, her eyes combing over every inch of Agott’s features as if to commit her to memory. And then she kissed her.
Her lips were cold and chapped and desperate. The bridge of her glasses dug painfully into Agott’s nose. Agott could taste nothing but salt as both of their dried tears mingled with fresh ones, and still she returned the kiss just as desperately. She tangled one hand in Coco’s soft hair and clutched at her back with the other, cradling her close, trying to memorize the shape of her. Love, blazing and brilliant love, burst forth from her chest like the light and heat of a dying star. She wanted to burn forever.
Another promise, unspoken, flickering like a candle in the dark of night.
I won’t forget this. I won’t forget you.
Coco pulled away, smiling brightly despite the tears streaking in shining rivulets down her cheeks. Her green eyes glistened silver in the moonlight. Agott didn’t want to look away.
“Go back inside, okay?” Another tearful laugh. “You’re freezing.”
Agott simply nodded, no longer able to speak around the painful lump in her throat. Coco pulled her close for one last kiss, this one soft and sweet and far too brief. She rested their foreheads together as their warm and shuddering breaths pooled in the space between them, and then she took a step back. Agott stepped back, too, digging her nails into her palms as she fought the miserable urge to cling to her, to beg her to stay.
Coco clicked the heels of her sylph shoes together and swiftly rose into the air as the wind gathered beneath her, her cloak dancing in the breeze. She kept her eyes on Agott down below until she was forced to look away, turning towards the distant sea and the vast countryside spread out before her.
Agott watched until Coco was no more than a tiny speck on the silver horizon, and stood there staring for longer still after she was gone. She finally came back to herself as she felt the dewy grass slowly soaking her shoes, and the midnight chill settling into her bones as a cold wind ruffled her hair. She sniffled and felt the sharp sting of the night air inside her nose. She gradually became aware of the growing tremors wracking her entire body. She needed to go back inside. Coco had asked her to. But she couldn’t bring herself to turn away.
She fell to her knees in the cold mud, crumpled in on herself, and sobbed.