23. Mancella Amaryllis Cliff, Title Uncertain
23
M ANCELLA A MARYLLIS C LIFF , T ITLE U NCERTAIN
|2 DAYS UNTIL THE ASSURANCE|
My first act as possible Prime of the Cliff Realm is to sob into my knees.
For a long, long time.
Some weak, traitorous piece of my heart wishes that Silver would appear, wrap his arms around me, and tell me again that I’m strong. But my more rational parts tamp that fantasy down, because there’s no way to know if he even meant that or if it was just another part of the manipulation.
I won’t ever be able to trust him again.
The next thing I wish is that my Captain would show up with her army, but as I search the horizon, I see no sign of them. Whatever “drills” are occupying them, they must have been a long way off.
Which means I’m on my own.
My forehead thunks against my folded arms and I take a shuddering breath. If I’m wishing for useless things as it is, then I wish Mara were here. I wish she’d just appear next to me with some snarky comment, like—
“See, now, this time I actually believe that you’re desolate. You’ve come a long way with the crying thing. Great work.”
It takes me a minute to realize that the voice wasn’t in my mind. I jerk my head up to see Mara stuck halfway out of a skylight.
At first I can only blink at her, thinking she must be a figment of my imagination.
But then a wave of jagged joy washes over me, and my eyes prickle with a renewed swell of tears.
With an incredulous half laugh, half sob, I hurry to help her, hauling her over the edge and onto the tile. Then I throw myself at her in a crushing hug, almost knocking both of us back into the skylight. She rubs my head tolerantly, pretending to be annoyed as I sniffle into her shoulder. But she doesn’t push me away.
“Mother and Father?” I warble.
“Both alive,” she says.
My head rushes with dizzying emotion. I’m glad, but it’s also… complicated. A minute ago I didn’t know who I was without my father, but having him thrust back into being doesn’t feel good either. I can’t go back to the way it was before. I won’t.
It’s uncomfortable. Not knowing how to feel. My animals churn in confusion, and it’s so overwhelming that I feel like I might black out.
But then I force myself to sober, and my animals settle.
Because if everyone is still alive it means that today’s events are far from over.
With one last shaky exhale, I loosen my grip on Mara and sit back. “There’s a lot we need to talk about.”
“You’re right,” she responds grimly, and her tone makes me snap to attention.
It’s only then I realize that the arm I was just clutching has an enormous gash in it, and half-dried rivulets of blood coat her skin.
“You’re hurt!” I cry, dropping her arm immediately, only to reach for it again to examine the wound. “Why didn’t you say anything?” Then I shake my head, scolding myself. “No, I should have noticed. After all, I saw the blood in the room. I knew Rift had managed to hurt someone .”
“Actually,” she says. “Our dear old dad did this.”
My fingers slow their anxious probing and I look up at her, brow furrowed. “What?” I ask. “Why?”
“Because—” She cuts off mid-sentence, suddenly looking nervous. It’s an odd look on her, one I haven’t seen in a while.
“What?” I ask again.
She frowns, though only half her mouth is visible beneath the ever-present scarf. “Mancella,” she says. “There’s a secret I’ve been keeping for a long time.”
Oh, good. More secrets. “Is this about your magic?” I ask dryly.
She rears back in surprise. “You know?”
I go back to tending her wound, ripping a strip off the bottom of my dress to bind it. “Not much. Only that you have it and that you… made that bracelet? Is that true?”
Her face falls. “About that… I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what he planned to use it for. If I did, I… well, I don’t know. I’m not the best at standing up to him. Not like you. But I swear I didn’t make it for that.”
I pull the bindings tight, avoiding eye contact. “What did you make it for, then?” I ask.
She winces, although whether it’s because of my question or because I’m binding her wound a little too snugly, I can’t be sure. “I don’t know,” she says morosely. “I never know what any of it’s for. He asks me to try to do something and I just do it. It keeps him off my back, keeps him from coming up with creative ways to force me. Besides, he usually spends most of his energy on—”
“Me,” I interrupt. “You were hiding behind me.”
She hangs her head, her mouth dour. “Yes,” she admits bleakly.
I shake my head as I finish up the binding. “Thanks a lot, sis,” I say, letting her arm fall into her lap.
“Do you hate me?” she asks, tone guarded.
“It’s hard to say,” I answer honestly. “I’ve been betrayed by too many people today. I’ll have to decide later which blows I’m willing to forgive.” She starts to respond, a question in her eyes, but I hurry on, not wanting to talk about all of that right now. “So how long have you been keeping this a secret?” I ask. “When did it finally manifest?”
She blows out a breath. “You remember… the tests…”
I nod, feeling sick. I thought Father had stopped conducting his experiments on her because he’d given up, or perhaps because he’d developed some compassion. I should have known he’d only stop when he got what he wanted.
“Tell me about it,” I say quietly, bracing myself.
She looks at her lap. “It was when you refused the wolf,” she says. “He got angry. He… often tested me harder when he was frustrated with other things.”
I swallow a surge of bile in the back of my mouth. “I never thought—”
She holds up a hand. “I know you didn’t. I’ve never blamed you.”
I nod miserably, even though guilt still clutches at my throat.
Mara puts her hand back in her lap and twists her fingers together as she continues. “Anyway… you were bedridden, and Mother never left your side while you recovered, which means you were both out of the way.”
“Wait… she didn’t?” I ask, surprised.
“You know Mother,” Mara says. “She always… tries. She wants to stop him. She’s just never quite strong enough.”
I didn’t know that, actually.
To be honest, I don’t know if it’s better or worse than her not trying at all. But that isn’t the point of this discussion, so I put it aside for another time.
“So… what happened?” I ask in a low voice.
She swallows. “He…” She falters on the word and it takes her a minute to be able to continue. I hold her hand, a pit growing in my stomach. “All the other experiments felt planned,” she explains. “They took forethought. They were horrible, but they didn’t feel entirely real. I knew he wouldn’t actually let me die. But when you decided not to fight that wolf…” A tear leaks out of her eye and she swipes at it, annoyed. “He was so angry. And I was… there. He grabbed me by the hair and threw me against the wall, and before I could get over the shock of it, he had a knife. And then he just came at me. He wasn’t holding back at all. He slashed at me over and over and over.”
She clutches at her stomach, and I realize I haven’t seen it in a long time. She always wears such high-necked, long-sleeved dresses that cover most of her body. I feel sick as I look at the one she’s wearing now, wondering how much it’s hiding.
“I really thought he was going to kill me,” she says, voice trembling. “And then the magic in me snapped, just like he wanted. It craved my blood, too. It liked to feel me bleed out. It wanted more of me, wanted… my pain. But at least it also gave me a way out. When he reared back for another swing, I swiped my blood into a line in front of me, and when his hand came down it hit a wall. And he couldn’t touch me anymore.”
As she talks her breathing gets harsher and she struggles to slow it. “I finished the circle around me and just sat inside it shaking. I almost died anyway, because I didn’t want to break the barrier long enough to let him heal me. I wasn’t sure he really would, even though his words had turned sweet and congratulatory. Eventually he had to just leave the supplies in the room and go. I patched myself up. Then I limped my way to my room and locked myself inside. For weeks. He left food and bandages and medicine outside my room every day. But he never apologized. He never even implied that he regretted it.”
I remember those weeks. I was bedridden myself as he put me back in the arena with wolf after wolf and I continued to refuse to fight. I had no idea what Mara was suffering at the same time.
“Why did you keep it a secret?” I ask.
She gives a dry, bitter laugh. “Why do you think? He liked your power a little better than mine. He wanted our realm to be strong, and he didn’t think my magic was good enough. Of course, he tried to push it as far as it could go at first. In the last couple years, we’ve learned which parts of my body the magic accepts and which it doesn’t. We’ve learned how to make it block magic and not just physical objects. We’ve learned how to infuse the magic into doorways and walls and”—she hangs her head—“bracelets. But when he felt he’d finally reached the magic’s limit and found it insufficient, that’s when he announced the Assurance, when he decided to make you his heir. Even though I knew what it would mean for you… all I could feel was relief.”
As I take this in, I look at the already bloodstained cloth wrapped around her arm.
“So that’s why he cut you today,” I realize.
“Yes,” she says, nodding. “To make us a shield around the parlor. Mother and Father are still there. I slipped away while Rift was distracted looking for another entrance. Anyway. I could have used spit or hair or tears, but blood is fastest and strongest, and… Well, Father made the choice for me.”
Of course he did. Disgust churns in my gut.
“You know, Mara,” I say, voice low. “If you had told me… I would have acted as your buffer willingly. You didn’t have to lie or trick me to ensure my protection; I would have given it to you.”
Her face crumples, and again the expression is startling on her. My sister is always so composed. I hadn’t realized how much she was dealing with all on her own.
“You’re my little sister,” she tells me. “I’m supposed to be the one protecting you. I’m…” She chokes on the words. “I’m so sorry. You don’t know—”
I sigh, my own feelings complicated. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad.”
“You have every right to make me feel bad. I should feel bad. Listen.” She reaches a hand into her pocket, fiddling with something there. “Before I lose my nerve and go back to being a coward, there’s something else I have to tell you. Something Father doesn’t know about yet. An experiment of my own. I’ve been saving it for the right time, and I thought that might be the Assurance, but maybe it’s now.”
Despite the certainty of her words, she hesitates before drawing her hand out of the pocket. When she does, she shows me a necklace, one with strange, oddly colored glass beads. Leaning closer, I realize that each is filled with something horrific. Hair, blood… I think I even see a tooth.
“What does it do?” I ask warily.
Her eyes trace each bead, lingering on memories I’m not sure I want to hear. Then she looks back at me.
“I’ve made a lot of barrier necklaces,” she says, thumbing the two at her throat, which I now realize are the exact color of congealed blood. “Mostly they’re just physical barriers that can trap a person in place. The bracelets I make trap magic. Some of my jewelry can block both. But this…” She leans forward, like she’s afraid to even speak it. “It doesn’t just block magic,” she whispers. “It takes it.”
My skin prickles. “Really?” I find myself whispering, too, even though there’s no one else out here. But the idea is so unthinkable, so forbidden, that it almost feels sacred.
“Yes,” she assures me. “At least… I think so. I haven’t had a real test subject to work with for obvious reasons, but… I made it for you. Every time he did something truly awful to you, I made another bead. And when I heard about the fight with the Grasslands, well… let’s just say it’s finished now. It’s your choice, of course, but… I think it can undo what the Broken Citadel did to you. Untwist what was twisted. Make you truly normal. Free .” Her hair falls in front of her face. “I owe you that. Especially if someone’s running around killing those of us in line for the throne. If you get rid of your magic, well… you’d be ineligible. You’d be safe.”
My mind sticks on the words “untwist what was twisted.” I didn’t know that’s what it felt like to her, too.
And she’s offering the chance to undo it. To go back to the moment in time when my life went down the wrong track, and straighten my path, my very soul.
“Yes,” I say, without realizing I’ve spoken. The word isn’t actual assent, just me marveling at the very idea of it. The concept is just so thrilling, so enticing . Far more than a mere shield in a bracelet, she’s offering to make me whole.
But she must have interpreted the word as an agreement, because she holds the necklace up and it begins to glow, an unsettling bruise-like purple.
“All right,” she says, “brace yourself.”
Before I can react, she puts the necklace over my head and the glow surges into my skin, creating a sucking, hungry emptiness inside of me that gnaws at parts of me nothing else has ever touched.
It doesn’t feel like fixing.
It feels like ripping.
In the space of a gasp, every insect I have is wrenched from my inner well and obliterated. They leak out of my skin in swarms, ignite in that same beaten purple, and then disappear. I can’t feel them anywhere. While I scramble to process that, toads, frogs, lizards, and mice are thrown out next, convulsing on the ground as Mara’s power eats them away.
Then the magic comes for my kitten. He tumbles out of my body, yowling as the glow ignites his fur, writhing like he’s in pain, and within me, that emptiness begins to gobble up the space in my soul that is his.
“No,” I scream. “No, no, no!”
I unclasp the necklace, flinging it off. That seems to stop it, but to be sure, I dismiss my kitten and then summon him again into my arms.
He looks as frantic as I do, but as I run searching fingers through his fur, I find no hair out of place, no residual magic clinging to his form. I bury my face in his warm, fuzzy side, breathing deeply.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Mara says, wringing her hands. “What did I do?”
I try to summon the butterflies, the bees and gnats and mosquitoes that I’ve slapped throughout my life, but they aren’t there. I call on my reptiles and rodents, but absolutely nothing comes forth. There are only spots of gaping absence where they used to be. And I feel… less.
“It’s okay,” I say, both to myself and to Mara, even though those pricks of emptiness feel like yawning caverns. “I just… I don’t want them to go away. I may hate how I got them, but they are still mine. They are still me. I am who I am because of what I’ve been through, and while I wouldn’t exactly do it over…” I lay my hand on my kitten’s head, thumbing his ears. “I’m not giving up what I’ve gained, either. We’ll… we’ll come up with another plan.”
Mara’s face is stricken, and I soften, laying a hand on her knee. “Thank you for making it, though. I can’t imagine what it cost you, and I appreciate that sacrifice. More than you know.”
This seems to cheer her a little, and she gives me a small smile. Then she scoops the necklace up and presses it into my palm.
“In case you change your mind,” she says.
I doubt I will, but I still accept it, sliding the beads into my pocket where they clink against the bracelet already there. If nothing else, it seems to give Mara a small measure of relief to be rid of it.
“All right,” I say. “Now what are we going to do about Rift?”
I secure my dress in place, concealing the armor now clinging to my skin beneath.
Mara stands in my doorway, having draped herself in jewelry and scarves I’ve seen her wear a hundred times, never questioning why the black threads woven into the fabric are the exact shade of her hair, or why so many of the beads are filled with a clear liquid that looks like tears. These, she tells me, are her best barriers, capable of containing both physical and magical matter. They’re not as powerful as the weaponized necklace that still sits in my pocket, but they’ll make a nice trap.
“You ready?” she asks.
My eyes drift to the dirty saucepan sitting on my bookshelf. The starsprout I planted there has grown bigger now, multiplying so much that it barely fits into the handful of soil within. The poor thing will need more space to grow soon. With a wistful smile, I pluck one tiny bloom and tuck it behind my ear.
“I’m ready.”
We steal back across the rooftop, trying to keep our steps light and soft, until we finally huddle around the skylight overlooking the dining room.
Rift paces below, prowling in front of a dark stripe of blood that paints the doorway to the parlor. My parents stand on the other side of it, unmoving. Watching.
The creak the glass makes when I wrench the skylight open shatters the tense silence, and Rift whips around.
“Good luck,” Mara whispers, sinking into the shadows just out of view.
Feeling Rift’s eyes on me, I don’t respond. I merely drop down into the room below, and then stand tall, meeting Rift’s gaze with my own.
As we predicted, he doesn’t try to talk. He simply folds into shadow and skims across the marble floors toward me, leaving a dusky wake.
But this time I don’t run. I hold firm, counting down the seconds until he reaches me.
Three.
I glance up at Mara, who has reappeared at the edge of the window, clutching a weighted chain.
Two.
Rift hurtles forward, closing the distance rapidly, and I tense, readying myself to sidestep at just the right time.
But before I can get to one , something slams into me from the side.
Unprepared for it, I crash to the floor, a considerable weight slamming down on top of me.
Rift veers to follow me, having somehow felt the vibrations of my movement, and Mara’s chain clatters uselessly to the floor in the spot he would otherwise have been.
My mind races, and I need to recalibrate quickly, because Rift is still hurtling toward me and I’m now out of Mara’s range.
Angry and panicked, I shove at the weight on my chest and look up at it.
Only to see Silver lying on top of me, wearing a sheepish grin.