Chapter 49
CHAPTER
I fell back into my own mind just as Lexington crashed into my foundation with a resounding thud.
His invasive consciousness had grown bigger since last night’s events. The length of his fleshy body stretched out like one of the bulbous roots of a palm tree. His head was reared up to twice my height, and the gaping hole in his face spread wider than a spoked wheel.
I no longer had my knives—either in the real world or in my own mind—but I remembered all of my lessons with Garvis like he’d imprinted them on my soul.
Eventually you’ll be able to Manipulate your own mind with more ease. But that requires getting to know your subconscious better… which most Mind Manipulators don’t do until their second or third year.
If I wanted a fighting chance at preventing Lexington from destroying the integral part of me in here, I needed her.
My subconscious.
I was already turning to run, but the sight of my own mind nearly stopped me in my tracks.
My walls—they weren’t covered in thick slabs of ice anymore. Only the thinnest veil of frost bordered the edges, while steady trickles of water ran down the moss-lined cracks in stacked stone.
And between those cracks—vines and flowers.
Climbing hydrangea, jasmine, and a beautiful, drooping plant of purple petals I’d never seen before, all glittering with dew drops beneath the light of my sickle moon.
I hadn’t even realized until this moment that my foundation was no longer snow, but a stone pathway leading toward my gate, surrounded by bursts of wildflowers among trees.
There was no time to gawk, though.
I shot toward my open gate and the maze of hedges beyond.
Another thud sent tremors through the ground behind me. From the furious hiss that followed, I could tell Lexington knew. He knew I was a Mind Manipulator now that I’d run from him, but I didn’t stop even as I flew threw my gate and took the main pathway straight into the center of my mind.
In the real world, my body stayed pressed against that dead-end brick wall, suffocated with a band of exhaustion from all the fighting and running in the smoke.
In here, though, my muscles and lungs felt alive with the scenery I sprinted past. The hedges were at once soft and domineering, the rosebushes beautiful and thorny, the trees gentle and powerful.
The streams of melted ice gathered along the pathway and streamed inward, a gurgling creek leading me straight to my destination.
Leading Lexington, too.
I could hear his monstrous form sliding along after me, a sort of hissing friction that strung mucus along my foundation. It made me cringe, both inward and outward, to have his presence taint such a sacred place.
Because that’s what it felt like in here. Sacred. Something I wasn’t surprised I’d had to coat in armors of ice for so long to protect what lay beneath—what had always been beneath.
This is what Steeler had seen in me on my first day at the Esholian Institute.
This is what he’d said he could have gotten lost in.
Neither a vicious jungle nor a perfectly-trimmed arboretum, but something in between.
A wild garden that was made of more than just trees and flowers: stone and water and the faintest flow of wind at my back.
What would Lexington do to it if he caught me? If he destroyed me? Would it still exist, or would all of this wilt and crumble and decay?
Spurred on by the thought that I just needed enough time to say goodbye to Steeler, even if it was for good, I increased my pace and found myself skidding to a halt in front of that marble gazebo moments later.
The center of my mind was the only place that still needed defrosting. The only place still swirling with flakes of ice and snow. The gazebo itself was still frozen white—and so was the woman sitting inside.
Me.
My subconscious turned her head to look at me, and just as I felt the gaping mouth of Lexington at my back, she lifted a hand.
Ice shot up from the ground around us, curling into a dome above our heads, solidifying into something so hard and strong that when Lexington tried to barge through, his distorted shadow on the other side didn’t make more than a vague thump.
Breathing hard, I swiveled back toward my subconscious.
“It’s nice to see you again, Rayna Drey Reeve,” she said.
I stared at her frozen curls, the snowflakes glittering on her lashes. My breath fogged out in front of me when I finally managed to speak.
“What do I need to do?”
She tilted her head, surveying me with regal curiosity.
“Ask me a question. Any question.”
Rubbing my hands together, I peeked over my shoulder to find the shadow of the giant worm sliding along the outer circumference of the dome to encircle us completely.
“Eyes on me,” my subconscious said, and she passed me a coy lift of her blue-tinted lips. “In other words—look inward.”
“Right.” I turned back to her, and exhaled a shaking breath, pushing out the question I dreaded most. “What are you hiding?”
“That which matters most to you.”
“W-which is?”
“Him,” she replied without hesitation. “Coen. Every missing piece of him is right beneath our feet.”
I glanced down at the snow-laden ice, the last frozen piece of me. And my own breath rattled like chips of the sharpest ice inside me.
“You stole all of my memories of him? You stole them and hid them here?”
“Yes.”
I stared at her. “You…” I almost let out a shocked, humorless laugh as it hit me. “You were the cause of all my headaches, then?”
My subconscious dipped her head.
“It hurt you, when I ripped those parts away. But I knew—you knew—that they needed extra safeguarding in case another Mind Manipulator was ever able to dredge up your memories. And if you so choose, I can keep safeguarding them, here in this ice.”
I swept my gaze from my own palms to the deathly white backs of my subconscious’s hands that gripped the edges of her throne.
She wasn’t bluffing, I knew. If I asked her to, she’d stay frozen like this, cold and forevermore turning into a bruised blue version of her former self, just to protect the one truth I didn’t want to face.
I had loved him.
I had loved Coen Steeler so much that I’d stowed him away in the deepest, most untouchable part of my mind, cutting him off from anyone and everyone who might try to take him away from me. Including myself.
But now…
Now, I loved Coen Steeler so much that I was willing to set him and all my memories of him free. I was willing to set him free and see if he came back.
I shook my head at my subconscious.
“No more. No more ice or snow or barriers when it comes to him. Let all of the pieces out.”
The icy mirror of me cracked wide open with a smile.
“As you wish.”
And the ice itself began to crack beneath our feet.
The snow melted, pooling around my ankles. Fissures in the ground opened up. I backed up a step as mist began to escape those fissures in twirling tendrils, forming tangible memories as they came up.
There was Coen, pushing open the flap of the tent and locking eyes with me as the power in my chest raged.
There was Coen, flinging me over his shoulder and hauling me to an alleyway to share his most vital secret with me in the hopes that it would help me survive.
There was Coen, fusing his lips to mine when Kimber had walked in on us in his room.
There was Coen, touching me in the cave.
And there was Coen, swimming with me in the Element Wielder lake, our laughs rebounding off the surface of the water that glittered with an inky blanket of starlight overhead.
Our arms were wrapped around each other as we bobbed in place, neither of us knowing that a certain giant octopus bore witness to the words we next whispered to each other in the dark.
“If you could have any magic in the world,” Coen asked me, smiling into my face, “what would it be?”
“Any magic?” I asked.
“Any magic.”
I appeared to contemplate, my gaze sliding sideways to the sparkling reflection on the water’s surface.
“I think I’d like the ability to touch the stars,” I said finally. “It wouldn’t be a useful power to anyone, but… I’d like to be able to know what they feel like without burning myself alive.” My eyes roved back to him, and my lips spiked up in a smile. “Why? What magic would you have?”
Coen ran a thumb along my cheekbone, seemingly mesmerized.
“I would want the ability to weather any storm—to just stand in the middle of all that raging beauty and watch it come undone. Without getting beaten to a pulp, of course.”
I giggled. “I think that would take super strength or something.”
“Well, yours would take super long arms.”
I splashed water into his face, and soon the mist of this memory showed us untangling in fits of laughter, trying to dunk each other underwater.
Then there was Coen and me, joining together in a boat among the same stars I’d claimed to want to touch. There was Coen, digging a dagger into Fergus’s neck and cradling me against his chest as he carried me back to campus. There was Coen, kissing me goodbye.
There was Coen, there was Coen, there was Coen.
And as all of those memories swelled and swelled within the dome of protection around us, the ice gave a last, deafening crack.
Then shattered.
All of my missing memories exploded outward.
Lexington had managed to wrap his entire fleshy body around the dome, but as soon as the first hint of mist touched his skin, he retracted.
A hiss left his gaping mouth. The memories pushed against him, so blindingly bright that Lexington had no choice but to retreat. Like a worm to sunlight, he began to crawl back—away from the gazebo. Away from my subconscious. Away from me.
I looked over my shoulder once to meet my subconscious’s eyes.
A jolt trickled through me at the color that had returned to her: the pink in her lips, the green sparkling in her eyes, the freckles splattered across her nose.
Still sitting on her throne, she raised a hand in farewell at the exact same time I did.