Chapter Nineteen
The sound of running water wakes me. I blink my eyes open slowly, surprised to feel the warmth of sunlight on my eyelids.
The first thing I see is an open window with green vines climbing along the stone.
I catch a glimpse of the river beyond, swift and silver, flowing between rocky banks.
I’m lying on a rough, straw-filled mattress, a blanket pulled over me.
My arms and hands are streaked with soot, although it looks like someone tried to wipe them off.
Everything comes rushing back at once.
The black magic. The fire. And…
Me.
What had I done? And how?
I sit up, finding that my body feels fresh and restored. Far from the pain and dizziness back in the healing ward. I feel like I could get up and run ten miles without pausing for breath. The energy running through me is surprising, but it feels… good.
I’m still wearing the clothes I’d had on before, a long pale blue nightgown. It’s also covered in ash and soot. I can smell it on me, too, and I can only imagine what my hair looks like. But none of that is a primary concern at the moment. Where am I and how did I get here?
I get out of the bed, which is set in a small bedroom, and wander out the door into a larger room with a stove in one corner, a fireplace, a table, and several chairs.
There’s an open doorway leading outside, so I go through it onto a stone patio.
The river is twenty paces beyond, and there, standing by the water, is Daemon.
As I approach from behind, he turns, a questioning look on his face. I stop a few paces away and we look at each other for a long moment, clearly neither of us knowing quite what to say.
“You’re awake,” he says finally.
“Thanks for bringing me here… wherever this is?” I offer a tentative smile.
He nods. “We’re on the north side of the compound. The castle seemed far from safe. I came across this little cottage years ago. Most don’t even know it’s here.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“About two days.”
My eyes widen. “Two days?”
“Does that surprise you?” Daemon cocks his head to the side. “How much do you remember of what happened?”
“I remember… everything,” I say slowly. “Although… I don’t understand what it is that I remember.”
He eyes me like he’s seeing me for the first time, his sea-colored gaze so intense I have to work hard not to fidget. “You’ve never done anything like that before?”
“No,” I say, the answer instant and automatic. “I’m… I’m just a human. I mean… how is what happened even possible?”
A smirk. “I think it’s fair to say that you’re not just a human.”
“But—but I’m certainly not fae,” I stammer, crossing my arms over my chest.
“No, but humans can possess magic.” He shrugs.
I shake my head. “Not magic like that.”
He nods, a concession. “That’s also fair. At least none that I’ve ever seen.”
Silence falls between us for several moments.
“I know you can’t remember your past,” he begins, his gaze on mine, questioning. “But do you think maybe this is why you’ve been hunted all these years?”
I haven’t had time to think about it. About any of it.
But now, as I absorb his words, a whirlwind of feelings and questions move through me.
“It has to be related,” I say, my words coming out as a choked whisper.
“But how did those men know I had this… whatever this is? I didn’t even know.
And Professor Julian has been testing me for months, without even the slightest of responses. ”
But even as the words come out of my mouth, I remember that sensation I’d had when I summoned the flames into me. A feeling of connection. A feeling of familiarity, of rightness.
And I think, all these years, I’d suppressed the fear that simmered below the surface of my first memory. Because it’s too awful to contemplate. The terrible realization I’d had two nights ago in what I thought were my final moments.
What if I had caused the fire that killed my family?
What if I killed them?
Somehow, the men chasing me must know. Either they’d known I possessed this strange magic before I created that fire, or they’d heard of it afterward and come looking for me.
After all, the locals had all clamored on about how unnatural the fire was, how fae magic was suspected.
I’d heard it from their mouths myself. So, if word had spread…
Maybe, all these years running, I’d been running from justice. I’d been running from the punishment I deserved.
A shudder moves over me, and I spin, turning away from Daemon and walking back down the path toward the cottage. Tears sting at the corners of my eyes, hot and angry and horrified tears. Why can’t I just remember exactly what happened?
I turn before reaching the cottage, taking a side path into the woods.
A moment later I’m walking in the dappled shadows thrown by the trees.
A raven screeches overhead, as if it knows what I did and is issuing judgment.
The tears are burning down my cheeks now.
I’d wanted the truth, and now I have it.
Or, at least, most of it. The pieces all fit.
This whole time I’d thought I was the victim, but really, I’m the villain.
My vision is so blurred by tears that I can’t see where I’m going. I nearly crash into a tree, scraping my shoulder against the rough bark so hard that it spins me around. I sink to my knees in the cool moss and cover my face with my hands.
I killed my family.
I need to turn myself in, before I hurt anyone else.
Daemon arrives so silently that I don’t know he’s there until he sinks down to the ground beside me. “Embyr, what’s wrong?” he asks softly.
“Everything,” I manage through my tears, my voice coming out choked and froggy.
“It can’t be everything,” he says. “Because you saved our lives. You saved my life. And there isn’t anyone else who can claim the same.”
“I may have saved your life…but I’m… I’m full of dark magic. That’s why those men have been chasing me. I’ve done terrible things.”
He goes still for a moment. “You remember doing terrible things?”
I shake my head. “No. But the night I… the night I woke up. There was a terrible fire. My family…” A shudder moves over me, rattling my jaw, and I can’t get the rest of the words out.
Daemon wraps an arm around my shoulders, rubbing my back gently. “I’m sure you would have stopped the fire if you could have.”
My tears flow for several minutes before I’m able to speak again. Finally, I say between shivers, “But what if I caused the fire that night?”
Daemon’s hand hitches for a moment in his circular motion across my back. “Why do you think you caused it? Two nights ago, you put out the fire.”
I shake my head. “I—I don’t know. But I’ve always… somehow, I always thought it was my fault. Because the fire didn’t claim me, but it claimed them.”
“It was probably just an accident,” Daemon says. “Fires happen all the time.”
“Not fires like that,” I whisper.
Daemon places a finger under my chin and gently lifts my gaze to his. “Even if it was your magic—which I’m not saying it was—you clearly didn’t mean for anything to happen to your family.”
I try to suppress a sniffle and fail. “The men who have been hunting me… they clearly want me to pay for my crimes.”
He shakes his head, jaw rolling. “Or, more likely, they want you for your magic. Fire magic of that magnitude… it’s quite rare. And in a human… unheard of.”
His finger is still resting along my jawline, and he runs his thumb up my cheek and wipes away the tears on one side, and then, cupping my face with his other hand, wipes the tears from the other side.
When he’s done, he goes still for a moment, and our eyes lock.
The blood quickens in my veins for an entirely different reason now, and I realize for the first time how beautiful Daemon is.
Not that I hadn’t noticed before, in the way that all fae are beautiful, but I see him.
His eyes, and his lips, and his stark jawline. The dart of his pulse in his neck.
“How did you find me that night, Daemon?”
The question comes unbidden, and he leans back, stiffening slightly, his expression closing down.
“Please.” I reach out and place a hand on the side of his neck, as if I can keep him from retreating. “I need to know. There are so many things I can’t figure out.”
He looks down for a long moment, and I’m afraid that not only will he not answer, but that I’ve broken the fragile truce we seem to have built. But then he looks up, and his eyes meet mine.
“I…I can sense sometimes when people are in trouble. And I was in the area, and I felt your fear, and I stopped those men from harming you, and I brought you here.”
It takes me several moments to process this. “And you couldn’t bring me inside, because then everyone would know that you left Shadow’s Keep.”
He nods.
“But why not just leave me somewhere else?”
“I…” He pauses, swallows. “I thought Professor Julian would be curious, and help. And he did. I figured it was safer than leaving you somewhere your pursuers would catch up to you again.”
We both wince slightly, because of course, inside Shadow’s Keep hasn’t proven much safer than outside.
“If I had known…” Daemon shakes his head. “I should have known. Most fae are cruel, heartless. I’m sorry, Embyr.”
I reach out and press a finger to his lips. “Don’t apologize. I would have died that night if not for you. Or worse, be someone’s slave right now.”
My touch seems to surprise him for a moment, and I feel a flush creep across my cheeks at my boldness.
I let my hand drop, but he catches it on the way down, winding his fingers through mine and pulling them against his heart.
“I would never let that happen,” he says, his voice dark as the night. “You know that, right?”
A shiver moves over me, his words doing funny things to my body. My blood, and my breath, and the way my collarbone tingles as if in response to my fingers intertwined in his. I can feel the warmth of his skin, and the beat of his heart. I nod slowly. “I know.”
Daemon reaches forward and brushes a strand of hair out of my face, and everything seems to go still around us, the world slowing into a single moment…
Through the trees, the blare of distant horns can be heard.
We whip toward the sound. “The Guardians must be back from the border,” Daemon says, his expression shadowing.
“That’s a good thing, right? That means they won.”
Daemon’s jaw rolls. “Or they retreated.”
I tense, looking off into the distance. I remember what Daemon said about who sits on the throne.
“We should go,” he says, standing and helping me to my feet.
The moment between us is broken, and I can’t decide if I’m disappointed or relieved.
I don’t know what it means that Daemon seems to be on my side, but it certainly doesn’t need to be more complicated than it already is.
I’ve survived for this long in my life by making sure not to place my trust in anyone but myself, and I have no intention of amending that choice now.
Daemon seems to have a similar realization because he turns to me, his expression cold and neutral as if the last few days had never happened. “If Julian is back, and not in a war council, we need to tell him what happened.”
“So he can find whoever keeps trying to kill me?”
Daemon’s lips press into a thin line. “So he can decide what to do with you and your magic.”