Chapter XIX. Domenic #2
“Hey, consider the bright side: if we annihilate the whole country today, you’ll only be stuck with me a few more minutes.”
They laughed more, and more, until not even the darkest jokes could cast their task as light by comparison.
Then, once Glynn and Hanna settled on a route, the group trundled off through the wooded trails.
Domenic swathed them in a warming spell, but it required little concentration, and in the solemn silence, again, his attention roamed.
He marveled at how vivid Valmordion’s filter could render nature, how he could now perceive a thousand shades of green and brown and silver he’d never noticed before.
Then his gaze stopped at his feet. Despite the blazing sun, he still had no shadow.
Maybe it’s ’cause you’re Summer’s Chosen, Domenic told himself. However, even if he’d conceded to believing in prophecy, like the bow tie and the designer watch, the title felt too grandiose to suit.
Then the hairs on his arms prickled. He halted.
“There it is,” Ellery said, speaking the very words about to tumble from his lips.
The alban tree stood tall and apart from the others around it, as if the forest genuflected out of respect. Its leaves burgeoned in all of Summer’s splendor, so golden and paper-thin that even the tree’s shade could be mistaken for daylight.
Hanna crouched to examine the gnarled, white roots threaded across the ground. “In every memory I found, the past Chosen Ones accessed the network by touching a tree. I realize that’s not much to go on, but it’s a start.”
“Fortifying the network could take a great deal of magical energy, and according to Hallemund’s Third Law of Magic, magical energy cannot be created or destroyed.
” Glynn adjusted the bridge of his glasses, sounding uncannily like Mr. Abney, whose excruciating Continued Studies in Enchantment lecture Domenic had skipped only five days ago.
“Thus we must assume that it’s your magical energy the network will draw from.
Even for magicians of your caliber, you run a risk of draining yourselves… ”
While Glynn droned on, Domenic treaded toward the tree.
The thought of touching it stirred one of his most distant, most fragile memories, withered from years of doubt.
His hand against ghost-white bark, his skin sunburnt and crusted with dirt, his focus sharpening as if finally rousing from a dream.
“Yes, we understand Hallemund’s Third Law,” Ellery said, with a sort of weariness that made Domenic wonder how deep Glynn’s admiration for Hallemund really went.
“But Glynn, even you have to admit theory can only take us so far right now. Domenic and I are as ready as we’ll ever be. So let’s just give this a try.”
Something clouded across Glynn’s face, but he nodded. “Very well, then.”
“How far away should we stand?” Hanna asked, not looking at Domenic. She’d spent the entire hike seemingly incapable of looking at Domenic.
“Far,” Domenic grunted. So if we blow up, maybe you won’t, too, he almost added. But Hanna didn’t need another reason to doubt him.
As soon as Hanna and Glynn had retreated to a distance, Domenic said to Ellery, “Well, any last words? Just in case?”
Ellery tugged on the crystalline pendant at her throat and mumbled, “We better not die. I refuse to have spent my last day alive getting lectured by Glynn in the middle of nowhere.”
He channeled his own inner Floyd Wilder. “‘Such chipper words from your Chosen One, folks.’”
“Oh, come on. You can’t tell me this is how you’d have wanted to go out.”
Domenic mourned several dirty jokes he knew better than to say. How onerous nobility was.
He wagged a finger. “I really think we ought to focus here.”
“Mhm, how mature and responsible of you.” Then, biting back a smile, she strode to the base of the tree. “All right. Are you ready?”
She placed her hand on the tree.
He set his next to hers. Only an inch between them.
“Ready,” he echoed.
Cautiously, Domenic reached into the tree with his magic.
The moment he connected, like a match dropped in kerosene, a flash detonated behind his eyelids.
His power exploded, spearing automatically out from him like lightning pulled to the earth.
It splintered across countless paths of roots, miles and miles of them.
Until he could feel the entire land awaken from a silent slumber, sizzling with energy.
No, not the entire land. In the far reaches of the North, his connection cut out—the border of the fallen territory.
But Domenic didn’t have the chance to dwell on that disturbing notion, as suddenly, he sensed Ellery’s magic.
Not simply within the roots, but beside him where he stood, startlingly, exhilaratingly cold.
And even as he touched the bark, he swore her palm lay against his own.
As if reality had severed any distance between them.
As if in connecting to the network, so, too, had their magics connected to each other.
They wrenched back from the tree, each leaving behind a handprint: one silver, one gold.
Domenic’s awareness of the roots faded away. But even as both he and Ellery bent over, panting from exertion, he felt each shudder of her breath like a breeze against his neck.
“You feel it, too,” Ellery whispered, somewhere between a statement and a question.
“I sure do.”
They straightened and stared at each other: Ellery seemingly with bewilderment, Domenic with alarm.
He staggered back, but two steps, four—it made no difference.
He wondered with mortification if she could somehow sense the yearning that scorched within his stomach, if her every sense was as attuned to him as his felt to her.
As if he hadn’t already felt that way about Ellery Caldwell. As if he didn’t automatically angle his body toward her or keep constant measure of the distance between them or think of her beside him when she wasn’t.
This is it, he thought direly. Not a scurge. Not a ghast. This will be what kills me.
All around them, the trees swayed, a melody of rustles and scratches and creaks. And in it, Domenic heard words.
when the darkness descends to its deepest,
a hero’s flame illumes the cast of night
“We did it,” Domenic gasped.
“I know Mayes—Hanna—called it fortifying,” Ellery gushed, “but it felt more like … awakening. Like beneath the country, there’s an ancient living thing. And our magic revived it. It’s so much stronger. It’s … What? Why are you laughing to yourself?”
“I heard the next prophecy piece.”
She hitched her breath, and even with four feet between them, the graze of it made goose bumps prickle down his spine.
Another laugh escaped him, a little unnerved, a little thrilled.
Ellery pressed her hand against her check. She’d felt his breath, too.
Simultaneously, they smiled.