Chapter XX. Ellery
XX
ELLERY
WINTER
Ellery sat on her hotel bed, restless. After a long afternoon debating what the newest prophecy piece might mean, they’d come to a consensus: “darkness descends to its deepest” and “flames” had to refer to the Aldrish solstice ceremony, when the country lit candles to brighten the longest night of the year.
The solstice was two-and-a-half weeks away—a long wait after their breakneck last few days. But with potentially only two to four pieces remaining, Ellery had assured herself it was a wait they could afford.
However, the prophecy wasn’t the only reason she felt restless.
She drew Iskarius and cradled it in her lap. Despite the hours since she and Domenic had fortified the alban network, so long as she held the wand, the connection between them remained as steady as ever. Heat gusted behind her shoulder in what she now knew was the rhythm of his breaths.
The hotel phone rang shrilly.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Hey. Hi. You’re up,” Domenic spluttered. “The draft that’s blowing around my room right now? That’s you, right?”
“Uh…” She focused on Domenic, three doors down in his hotel room. “Did it just get stronger?”
“Yeah. How are you doing that?”
“I don’t know! Since this afternoon, I’ve still … felt you?” Ellery cringed. “I can try to stop it—”
“No,” he said hastily. “I mean, just tell me how you did it. I want to try.”
“Are you holding your wand?”
After some shuffling and muttering noises, Domenic returned. “Okay. Got it.”
A few moments later, Ellery sensed Domenic, as though he’d sank onto the bed beside her. If she closed her eyes, she could half-convince herself he was there. The unmistakable scent of honeysuckle drifted through the room. And a sudden warmth chased away any hint of cold.
His presence was an overwhelming sensation, but not an unwelcome one.
“Ha!” Domenic exclaimed into the phone. “That worked, didn’t it? It’s like you’re right next to me.”
Ellery suddenly, desperately wanted to know how her presence felt to him. “Guess you don’t have to knock on my window the next time you want to get my attention.”
“Hey now.” Domenic’s exhale brushed against her ear. “I’ll be honest, even if you hadn’t done … whatever you just did, I don’t know if I could’ve fallen asleep.”
“What, because of the prophecy piece?”
“No, it’s not that. I thought magic on the scale of what we did today would be terrifying. But it wasn’t. It was easy. And I can’t stop wondering what else we can do, what else we might be capable of.”
Ellery’s grip tightened nervously around her wand. “Oh?”
“So I guess what I’m asking is…” He paused dramatically. “Wanna go find out?”
“Why do I always have to drive?” Ellery teased as she turned onto one of the bumpy back roads away from the quiet village of Undermere. This time, they hadn’t stolen the car; they had keys to the same Order vehicle they’d taken into the forest that morning.
Beside her, Domenic waved Valmordion, and frost melted from the windshield. “I thought you liked driving.”
“I mean, I’d think you do, too. Doesn’t your dad own Darby Motors?”
“He sure does. It’s the family business.
My two older brothers work for him.” Domenic’s voice sounded falsely cheerful, no different than when he’d mentioned his family during the press conference.
“But believe it or not, they never taught me how to drive. Up until recent events, they barely remembered I exist.”
Typically, Aldrish citizens were honored to have a magician in the family. But when it came to family, Ellery refused to pry.
“Do you think things with them will be different now?” she asked.
“Shit, I hope not.” Domenic lowered his seat, then pushed it as far back as it would go, claiming the maximum amount of legroom. “What about you? Do you think your parents would be proud, if they knew you were Chosen?”
Ellery white-knuckled the wheel. The road outside seemed to narrow as snow whipped past the windows. “I seriously doubt it.”
Craving a distraction, she cranked the radio dial. A familiar melody crackled through the airwaves.
“Oh, I love this song,” she said.
“Huh. I’ve never heard it before.”
“How is that even possible? It’s the biggest hit of the year! You can’t go anywhere without hearing it.” As she spoke, she felt a painful twinge of nostalgia. This was Julian’s favorite song.
Ellery hadn’t heard from him since his parents had brought him home from the Order.
She’d called, only to be told he was awake and recovering, but unavailable.
She’d been trying not to think about whether he was dodging her or not.
Maybe he was still angry about their fight.
Or maybe he was upset that she’d confessed to the entire country she was a Winter magician, but in the five years they’d been friends, she’d never told him.
“I don’t pay attention to that stuff,” Domenic said. “You know, celebrities and all.”
Ellery swallowed and pushed her memories away. “I hate to break it to you, Dom, but we’re both celebrities now.”
“So, what, will the next prophecy piece quiz us on pop culture?”
“If so, you really ought to get out more. Go to a concert or something.”
Domenic folded his hands behind his head and grinned at her. “Well, when we wrap up this whole Chosen One business, I grant you permission to take me to one.”
Their conversation carried on in the same witty, easy way that Ellery had come to expect as she steered the car down the snowy roads, deeper into the night.
Ellery parked on a deserted trail on the forest’s outskirts. She left her coat in the car. She was tired of pretending to need it, and with Domenic, at least, she didn’t have to play pretend.
“So,” Domenic declared as they traipsed through the woods, “up until today, obviously I’ve been a bit preoccupied with the notion of saving the country. But Val and Izzy are—”
“Val and Izzy?”
“What, too irreverent? They’re our wands, aren’t they?”
She let out a soft, surprised laugh.
He beamed. He was all giddy momentum, walking so quickly Ellery jogged to keep pace.
“As I was saying, Val and Izzy, being Summer’s Chosen, I thought it all had to be a joke at first. Sure, my whole life, I’ve had to hold back because otherwise I blew through my training wands.
And before I got to the academy, Hanna and I—we received some of the highest grades on the national entrance exam.
But now that I’m starting to buy this whole Chosen One thing, that means I really have been one of the most powerful magicians in the country, haven’t I?
Ha! What I wouldn’t give to have seen Mr. Abney’s face when he found out it was me.
Two weeks ago he called me the most shameless student he’s ever had the misfortune to teach! ”
Domenic waved Valmordion, and illusions spun throughout the forest, so vivid and precise Ellery could spot no seams. An image of rolling green hills reared into a backdrop, cast in the rosy, fuzzy filter of a film screen.
A castle perched upon the farthest one, flags waving merrily in an imaginary breeze.
Fireflies danced to the drifting music, a tune old and stirring, but strange, as if played through a warped phonograph.
It felt real and fantastical all at once, as though Ellery stood at the edge of one of his daydreams. Perhaps she did.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said.
“I thought we’d both like it. Like a movie set, right?
” Domenic lifted Valmordion, admiring it.
The golden light of its core bathed his features, emphasizing the honey undertones of his eyes, the freckles dusting his face like pollen.
Then he tossed Ellery an expectant look.
“The set is pretty and all, but it still feels like it’s missing something. I can’t put my finger on it.”
Ellery drew Iskarius and conjured a phantom waterfall. It trickled down one of the hills then grew into a river, rushing across the clearing in glittering tributaries. Tiny projections of fish rippled through it, blue and indigo and silver, their scales bright as coins.
“Yeah, I think we’re getting somewhere.” With a flourish, Domenic added a trail behind the waterfall, wandering into wilderness. Thistle and clover sprouted across the hills in a polka-dotted blanket. The Winter air suddenly smelled of petrichor, as if coaxed from a fresh rain.
Emboldened, Ellery added daydreams of her own to the illusion.
A city thronged around the castle. Buildings speckled the hills, some clustering into neighborhoods, others sharpening into the modern points of skyscrapers.
The rhythm of life emanated from within the winding streets, people chattering and laughing; the melodic chime of the Gold Line; wind rushing between the alleyways; the drumbeat of pedestrian footsteps—the same sounds that had soothed her so when she’d first arrived in Gallamere. Welcome home, they’d seemed to say.
She smiled at Domenic. “Your turn.”
He shook out his limbs, jumped a few times, then expanded their set threefold.
Whereas before they had gazed upon their illusions ahead, as if an audience viewing a stage, now the stage circled them.
Cobblestones tufted with weeds quilted the earth beneath their shoes.
The buildings took on detail: gleaming glass storefronts and milling customers and chimneys sighing smoke.
Carriages wove among motorcars. Pigeons perched upon a wishing well.
Domenic gestured grandly at an ornate bench, and they sat upon it. The slats of wood pressed against her back. The iron handle was cool against her palm. Their shoulders touched.
“It feels real,” Ellery said hoarsely.
“It sure does.” Domenic craned his head back and marveled at it. His leg bounced. “Maybe this is why I could never focus. All this time, this is the power I’ve had inside me. And somehow, I’ve been expected to sit still.”
Ellery hesitated as the illusion’s performance carried on around them.
It was the most masterful one she’d ever experienced, overwhelmingly complex, unfathomably vast. And although her magic felt no strain, suddenly, she couldn’t stop worrying that it would explode somehow. That it would be all her fault.
Domenic studied her. “What’s wrong?”
Ellery stood abruptly. It wasn’t instinctive for her, thinking out loud.
But it was easier if she wasn’t looking at him.
“My power’s always been tremendous, too.
It keeps me focused, but not in a good way.
It’s more that I’m always so alert, so on edge, because I know how awful the consequences could be if I lose control.
” She walked toward the nearest shop, then halted before a department store window.
Her reflection regarded her, and although she could recognize the loveliness of it, she also saw the winterghast blue of her eyes, the fractal ice crusted at Iskarius’s tip.
Her shadow feathered behind her, layers and layers like the train of a gown.
Its edges undulated even while she stilled.
“But the truth is,” Ellery continued, “I’ve only ever lost control out of fear. And even though I’ve proven I can control my power, it’s still hard to let the fear go. Especially when I see how everyone looks at my wand. At me.”
“Not everyone,” Domenic murmured.
Tears welled in her eyes as he joined her at the window. She studied how they looked side by side, their wands in their hands, the miasma of their magic around them.
For all that they were different, in every way that mattered, they were the same.
She sniffled. “The way you’ve risen beyond everyone’s expectations, I know the rest of the country is saying that was inevitable. But for all the ways you were already special, I see the effort you’ve put into embracing who you are. And it makes me think that maybe I can, too.”
He clasped a hand over his mouth, then laughed breathlessly. “You have no idea how much I needed to hear that.”
Ellery gently knocked her shoulder against his arm. “I think it’s my turn.”
Over the next half hour, she and Domenic transformed the world around them again and again.
Ellery luxuriated in her magic, reveling in each spell she cast. Until at last, the only piece of the scenery they’d yet to change was the sky.
Ellery parted the clouds, revealing the constellations between them.
Then, one by one, they fell, an illusory star shower that graced the whole firmament.
Yet as the twinkling rained upon them, Ellery realized they were snowflakes, each the size of her palm.
She reached for one, and it burst into a cloud of shimmering frost, winking into the night.
It was Winter magic. And it was beautiful.
Domenic gaped at her, his mouth ajar. The frost melted where it touched him, silver sparkles hissing into steam. And as the last of her magic faded, he raised Valmordion.
A hint of color peeked across the eastern horizon.
Then, as Domenic traced Valmordion in a steady, careful arc, the light followed him, lilac and cornflower and calendula, as if he painted the entire sky in dawn.
A false morning flooded over them, sunlight so convincing Ellery felt the kiss of its warmth on her cheeks.
As Domenic lowered his wand, it almost hurt to stare at his vibrancy: his lips pink, his irises umber, some of his loose strands of hair nearly red in the halo of daylight. Like looking directly into the sun.
Yet Ellery couldn’t bring herself to turn away. He was absolutely extraordinary.
And so was she.
“What?” he asked softly.
Ellery clutched her wand with both hands, lest she reach for him. She wanted to indulge in an entirely different sort of fantasy than the one they’d conjured all night.
“Nothing,” she said, turning away.
For all Ellery could embrace herself, this was the one thing she couldn’t have, the one line she couldn’t cross. They still had a duty to Alderland, and they couldn’t risk distraction. Not with so many fates at stake.