Even as her brother pulled out his wand, Elsie wanted to launch herself at him, tug him away and tell him to not go near it. What if it wasn’t her touching it that had laid the curse upon her? She bit her lip, hands clasped together as she watched him. There was a band around her chest that kept getting tighter rand tighter as she watched her beloved sibling get nearer and nearer to her bed. She flinched when the book was lifted off the bed; there had been something…unnatural about the book, she remembered. Like it had been alive when she touched it, that it had a conscience.

But underneath the anxiety that had settled like a boulder upon her shoulders, she was glad that Ambrose was here. He always held an optimistic quality about him, one that Elsie often held onto when she was feeling on the morose side. And while she always appreciated that when she was feeling down, she clung onto that relief more than ever before like a life raft.

A specialist - yes, of course they would need to take it to a specialist. But despite the increasing assuagement, Elsbeth knew the social repercussions of such a visit to a local specialist might make themselves known. She didn’t have the heart to shoot this option down quite yet; she could see the lines of guilt in her brother’s expression already, ones that she wanted to make disappear. It wasn’t his fault she’d been foolish; it was no one’s but her own.

“I’m feeling…alright,” She responded, her voice tenuous. She held her hands out in front of her, looking down. “It…it stings, I think.” It felt as if her skin were tight, stretching its limits, burning slightly at the edges. And her skin ached where the metal had taken over, as if there were a stiffness injected into her joints.