Chapter XII. Domenic
XII
DOMENIC
WINTER
Two hours later, Domenic sipped a bland cup of tea. His stomach heaved. He set the cup back on the conference table, his bandaged hand trembling.
“Something else I can getcha, Dom?” Councilor Peak asked brightly. “Coffee? Water?”
Domenic shook his head.
The rest of the Council’s voices drifted in from an office down the hallway.
Though Domenic couldn’t make out their words, their furor exploded off the stone walls, each echo sharp as shrapnel.
The Council’s wing was considered the most revered sanctum of the Citadel, and despite the few occasions Domenic had visited to deliver Iseul or Hanna a late-night dinner, he hadn’t truly explored it.
If not for the Gallamere skyline glittering out the windows, he would’ve felt transported back in time.
Here, electricity didn’t dare disgrace any shared workspace or cubicle, each sconce and chandelier instead alit by motionless flame.
Every piece of furniture was antique. Even the vending machines were enchanted and framed in ornate panels of hardwood.
Suddenly, the argument quieted as a single word rang out, ugly and immaculately clear.
Peak hastily shut the conference room door.
Councilor Tennyson Peak headed the Nature Defense Corps, and Domenic had heard countless tales of Peak at the academy.
That he held the record for more winterghasts slain than any member of the Order, living or dead.
That he’d once taken on a horde of them single-handedly, with an unconscious rookie slung over his shoulder.
That he’d staggered upright even after a ghast had torn the flesh right off his leg—then he’d decapitated it.
Domenic would’ve bet anything that the people who spread those rumors had never actually met Peak.
Peak had impulse-purchased a swanky penthouse condo but still slept most nights in his truck in the Citadel parking garage.
He knew the names of nearly every magician in the Order as well as their spouses, children, and pets, yet he misplaced his wallet so often that Domenic had once witnessed him try to bribe a hot dog vendor with his own autograph.
He sneezed like a bomb. He had an unseasonable devotion to shorts.
And he was the only person other than Hanna and Iseul who called Domenic by his nickname, despite them being barely acquaintances—Peak and Iseul had divorced the year before she’d taken in him and Hanna.
Then, despite the many empty chairs in the room, Peak chose the one beside him, groaning as he did so. He smiled, dimples creasing his pale skin at the corners of his beard, and he clapped Domenic’s shoulder—hard. “Between you and I, I always knew you had it in you.”
Domenic choked out a deranged laugh. “Did you?”
“What, you never had a hunch growing up that you were Chosen? Not even an inkling?”
After hours spent refusing to acknowledge it, finally, Domenic’s gaze swiveled to Valmordion.
It looked surreal, a millennium-old relic of incomprehensible power resting on a conference table beside a forgotten fountain pen and a sooty ashtray.
His blood still stained its thorns, and his wounds still ached, wounds no wand had managed to heal.
Yet his magic reached for it, like flowers craning toward the sun.
Again, Domenic’s stomach lurched violently.
“If destiny really Chose me,” he rasped, “it Chose wrong.”
Peak’s smile snuffed out, replaced by an expression he didn’t recognize.
Domenic didn’t care. In all the time since he and Caldwell had been removed from the grove and Domenic had been instructed to wait here, he’d been told nothing.
Nothing. It was growing harder to convince himself that this was all a nightmare when the nightmare refused to end.
At last, the door opened, and Iseul and Hanna hovered at the threshold.
Both Domenic and Peak stood with a start.
“They all done?” Peak asked.
“Not quite,” Iseul answered. “But Tenney, would you mind giving us three a moment alone?”
“Yeah, sure thing. You need anything, though? A drink? Those crackers you like?”
Iseul smiled weakly. “No, but thank you.”
As soon as Peak closed the door behind him, Iseul threw her arms around Domenic. Domenic leaned into her, inhaling her gardenia perfume. A sob shuddered through him.
It was a relief, to finally break.
“I can’t be the Chosen One. I-I can’t,” he blubbered. “And that’s why they’re all arguing, isn’t it? Because I’m the last person anyone would want near that wand, let alone wielding it. And—”
“Dom.” Iseul drew away, her features etched deep with concern. “I know you’re upset right now, but we need you to calm down—”
“Calm down? I watched that wand torch one of my classmates tonight!”
“I know. But it’s not so much you the Council has been arguing about. For Caldwell to create a Living Wand—it’s unprecedented. We haven’t told anyone yet, but Sharpe’s been on the phone with the Prime Minister about you for the past hour, and I’ve been fielding calls from radio stations—”
“The radio stations? They— They already know about me?”
“They’re already airing the story, and—oh no. Hold on. Here.”
With a swish of Calynia, the waste bin launched across the room into Domenic’s arms—a second too late. He puked all over the historic hardwood.
After Iseul enchanted the puddle away, she steered him back into his chair. He hunched over the bin.
Cautiously, he glanced up at Hanna, who lurked utterly still in the corner holding a leather-bound book.
Though Hanna spent nearly all her time in the Council wing—Syarthis’s wielder was a permanent member of the Council, regardless of age—she looked childlike amidst the vaulted ceilings, the track-hung oil paintings, the candelabras several heads taller than her.
Like a student lost on a field trip. Like a girl playing dress-up in a blazer and waistcoat.
Yet as he stared, his best friend didn’t offer him any words of reassurance—not even a smile. Instead, she clutched Syarthis against her heart. Its heat pulsed, suffocating. When she squeezed her eyes shut, so, too, did the eyes of the wand.
Iseul knelt in front of Domenic. “As you already understand, to wield Valmordion is an enormous burden. For that burden to be yours … It’s the last thing I ever wanted for you.
But if it bonded with you, that’s because you were always destined for it.
Which means that, whatever the future will ask of you, I want you to remember that you’re capable of it. ”
Domenic managed a nod.
“But even so, you’re not in this alone. Hanna and I, we’ll do everything we can to help you.
The rest of the Council will help you as well, but they also have expectations of you.
It doesn’t matter that you didn’t ask for this or what your past is.
You are our Chosen One, and the future of the entire country is at stake. You understand that, don’t you?”
He did. Even he knew of the Thirty Years’ Chill from history class, when Winter had terrorized the country and claimed over a third of the population. All because a Chosen One had failed.
Domenic didn’t know their name. It was considered bad luck to speak it.
“Even if I could stop the cataclysm,” he murmured, “Alice Rhodes died saving Alderland, didn’t she?” It occurred to him that being Valmordion’s last wielder, Rhodes was his predecessor. Her face was on the ten-cent coin. “Is that what’s gonna happen to me? I’ll light up like a firework?”
“O-of course not,” Iseul told him.
“How can you know that? Is she the only wielder who died?”
As Iseul hesitated, Hanna answered, “No.”
“How many did, then?”
“Only two.” As Domenic’s mind stuttered like a scratched record as he attempted the math, Hanna added, “That’s two out of thirteen. Those are good odds, Dom.”
“But not zero.”
“No, not zero.”
“And did any of them…” His knuckles whitened around the waste bin. “Did any of them unbond with Valmordion?”
For years, Domenic had thought the worst thing he could glimpse on anyone’s face was pity. But as Hanna exchanged a look with Iseul, he glimpsed that same something in both their eyes as he’d seen in Peak’s, something else, something worse.
Fear.
Not fear for his sake, but for theirs—for everyone’s.
Domenic had thought he could be honest with Iseul and Hanna about how he felt. But from now on, he was no longer simply their friend, their family—he was their supposed savior.
“N-never mind,” he blurted. “Of course they didn’t. Stupid question. I mean, there’d be no Alderland left, right? And…”
The door opened. The three other members of the Magicians Council strode inside to take in their Chosen One, stooped over a trash can, vomit still dribbling down his chin.
Sharpe pursed his already thread-thin lips.
At eighty years old, Alexander Sharpe had been a permanent fixture in Aldrish politics for so long that half a dozen buildings, scholarships, and foundations were already named in his honor.
He held two positions within the Order: the Director of Infrastructure and Administration, overseeing magician affairs as well as the maintenance of every roadway, sewer, and enchanted broadcast tower throughout Alderland; and, as the senior-most member of the Council, he was also its president.
At his entrance, Domenic’s chair squirmed beneath him. At first, he thought it was only urging him to stand out of respect, but as he did so, it scooted back with a screech. Domenic realized he’d accidentally taken Sharpe’s seat at the head of the table.
Domenic scrambled aside. He set the bin on the floor and wiped his face on his sleeve.
“Um, sorry. Sir.”
Sharpe’s pitch-dark gaze roamed up Domenic slowly, his frown ever-deepening. As if with every excessive inch of him, he found another thing lacking.
Then Sharpe withdrew Ballathim from his side, along with a cigarette. He lit it from a flame at Ballathim’s tip and sucked in a long drag. Smoke leaked from his nostrils, like a dragon.