Chapter XXIX. Ellery #2
“What I saw tonight wasn’t careful. Do you have any idea the tremendous risk you’ve taken?
Any … dalliance between the two of you is a national security risk.
What if the public found out about this?
You’re both meant to have one thing on your mind and one thing alone.
Given how young you both are and Barrow’s history, even your most ardent supporters would see this as irresponsible.
And if you undermine the public’s trust in you, there could be a panic.
Not to mention the complication of you two breaking up. Are you still able to work together?”
“We are.”
“And if need be, can you put the well-being of the country before your own?”
“Of course.”
“Before his?”
Ellery’s throat burned. “Are you planning on calling Dom back in here, too? Lecturing him? We’re both Chosen Ones, we both had feelings, we both acted on them. So when you tell the rest of the Council about this, at least have the decency to punish us both. Equally.”
“Ah, but it’s not the Council’s punishment you should be worried about.” Glynn flicked Aetherium. Newspaper clippings cascaded from a desk drawer, then splayed themselves across the surface.
WINTERGHAST INFILTRATES CITADEL IN brUTAL ATTACK
Then a subheading: DOES WINTER’S CHOSEN POSE ADDITIONAL RISKS?
“This is tomorrow’s front page of the Gallamere Gazette. Seong shared it with me.”
Ellery studied the picture of herself below the headlines, an unflattering shot from a publicity event. “This makes it seem like I could be dangerous. But they’ve never questioned me like this before. Wh-why now? What did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything. But Maltherius’s attack has stoked the public’s anxiety,” Glynn said gravely.
“Some of your classmates gave fear-mongering interviews. They’ve included several anonymous NDC sources who spoke about your use of Winter magic during the fall of the border.
Altogether, it poses a worrisome line of thought about the nature of who you are. ”
“But I used my Winter magic to protect those people,” she protested. “I saved them.”
“I know that, of course. But people are frightened. And in their paranoia, they’re searching for something or someone to blame.
Valmordion’s destiny to protect Alderland has been proven time and time again throughout history.
I’m sorry, Ellery, but Iskarius’s destiny—yours—doesn’t have such guarantees.
You say you want to be punished equally?
Well, you and Barrow aren’t equal, not as far as Alderland’s concerned. You never have been.”
A fissure split through Ellery’s heart, and she staggered away from the desk. Ugly, painful sobs clumped in her throat as tears streamed down her cheeks. She clapped a hand across her mouth. It only seemed to make her sobs sound worse.
“Ellery,” Glynn said. “Oh, goodness. Ellery—I did tell you to sit down, didn’t I? Well, if you’ll just—”
He rounded the desk and gestured tentatively to the armchair.
“Stop!” Ellery choked out. “S-stop trying to comfort me.”
“Please, if you’d just sit—”
“You don’t get to be disappointed with me!
” she said, still crying. “You don’t get to lecture me about how you expect better and then say that Alderland was never going to accept me anyway.
And you know what? Of course it was foolish of me to think I might win the country over when I can’t even win you over.
When somehow I’m still not good enough for you. ”
“Why would you ever think that?” Glynn asked, aghast.
“Why? Glynn, I know every wandlorist you admire. I can recite the plot of each important opera in the Aldrish canon and the details of your and your husband’s hunt for the perfect antique dining table, but you’ve never so much as invited me over for dinner.
A-and I thought it was fine, I really did, but seeing Dom with Seong, even Peak… ”
“You think I don’t love you,” he said, and the look on his face was so wretched that Ellery instantly knew he did.
Maybe it wasn’t so difficult to believe.
When Ellery had first arrived in Gallamere, Glynn had tutored her through the academy curriculum, waiting patiently as she worked up the bravery to use her magic again.
After she became a student, he’d made a point of seeing her once a week, answering her questions about magic and Citadel life.
And although he’d never gone with her to explore Gallamere, he was the one who’d encouraged her to find a home within the city that had always been his home, too.
Of course she’d wanted to become his successor.
She was living proof of how much his work mattered.
And even after Glynn learned she wielded the magic of Winter itself, he’d stood by her.
But the knowledge that all this time he had loved her, that anyone had ever loved her, didn’t heal the fissure in her heart. Instead, it cracked her open.
“Why the hell would I think you cared about me that much?” she rasped. “You’ve never said so.”
“No, I haven’t,” Glynn said seriously. “I thought it would be easier that way.”
“Easier,” she echoed. “Why?”
“I…” Glynn muttered a curse. “Did I ever tell you why I took the job as Director of Education and Recruitment?”
Ellery blinked in disbelief. Surely he wasn’t about to lecture her again. “You have. You took the job because nobody else wanted it.”
“No, they didn’t.” Glynn used Aetherium to arrange two armchairs beneath the window.
He sat in one, then gestured to the other.
Ellery sat, although she refused to meet his eyes.
Instead she stared fixedly at their reflections in the warped, frosty window, his face solemn and drawn, hers blotched and swollen.
“After the Syarthis Disaster, I don’t blame people for being wary of the position,” Glynn continued.
“But from the moment I bonded with Aetherium, I understood my greatest strength wouldn’t be my magical aptitude, but the work I could do within our institution.
Magicians are Alderland. We set it apart.
We move it forward. And each member of the Order begins as a student at the national academy, a student who deserves to be protected.
But we failed in that duty when Syarthis unbonded from its wielder.
I know people believe me to be ambitious, and pedantic, and, well …
the point is, the primary reason I took this position is because I care about our new recruits.
Quite a bit. I audited every wand in the Vault.
I made the qualification exams necessary to ensure no student laid a hand on a wand they weren’t ready for.
And of course, I attempted to give Hanna Mayes the best support I could. ”
Ellery dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “I get it. You take your job seriously. But what does any of that have to do with me?”
“Well, it was only a few months into my tenure that I found you. We’d just lost the North, and after such an assault by Winter, the Council knew it wouldn’t be long before Valmordion thawed.
We kept a close eye on the students who seemed like potential candidates for the wand.
There is no way to be utterly certain someone is Chosen before they bond with Valmordion, but there are signs.
Past Chosen Ones have claimed to know they were magicians before manifesting any magic.
They have an immense innate talent for all categories of magic; they barely need to be taught.
And they seem ill-suited to other Living Wands despite being strong enough to wield any of them, often failing to bond with many before Valmordion thaws.
There are also personality and social signs.
Most were loners who struggled to connect with others, even their own families.
They had a strong sense of duty and occasional grandiosity.
Alice Rhodes, for example, was considered both off-putting and extraordinary by her classmates before she was revealed as Chosen. ”
“I wasn’t a loner at the academy,” Ellery protested, although even as she spoke she recalled herself at party after party, always invited yet plagued by the feeling that she didn’t—couldn’t—belong.
“Alone, these anecdotal parallels may not have struck me as significant. But you arrived here as a hero from the fall of Nordmere, the very event that heralded a Chosen One’s arrival.
So from the moment we met, I was certain you were fated to wield Valmordion.
And I was determined to ensure you’d be ready when the time came. ”
“So all those lessons. All those lectures.” Ellery shuddered as the last five years of her life shifted into a new, brutal focus. “You really did expect me to be flawless. You say you love me, but did you ever actually care about me at all? Or was it only ever about my potential? My destiny?”
“Of course I care about you,” Glynn said fervently.
“I cared about you from the very start. And when I visited you in that hospital, I didn’t just see a Chosen One.
I saw a girl who’d endured horrors well beyond the fall of Nordmere.
Yet you seemed utterly unaware of the strength you possessed—not just your magic, but you.
And over your time at the Order, I’ve been astounded by your ability to adapt to any circumstance.
But although I wished that I could protect you in a way no one else ever had, I knew I couldn’t.
Because one day, you would have to protect us all … no matter the cost.
“I’m so sorry, Ellery. I know it wasn’t fair to keep you at a distance. I knew it even then. But seeing how deeply it has hurt you now…”
He buried his head in his hands. His shoulders shook. Not once had Glynn cried in front of her before.
Ellery stood and stared at herself in the newspaper atop the desk. She watched that girl’s life flash through her mind as though it were someone else’s, each trial and tragedy all leading to one duty, one goal, one impossible purpose: Winter’s Chosen.
To always hold herself apart. To always hold herself together.
To be a hero.
She was responsible for Alderland’s safety, whether she cared about it or not.
And as much as she wanted to rip the paper to shreds, to decry everyone who’d ever doubted her, she did care.
As someone who’d spent so much of her life controlled by fear, she hated that people might fear her, fear that wasn’t even justified.
Ellery could still show them that peaceful future she saw. And she knew exactly where to start.
“Don’t tell me you’re sorry,” Ellery snapped at Glynn.
“It’s too late. And don’t you dare tell me you love me.
I’m the Chosen One you wanted so badly, so treat me like one.
” Then she snatched up Maltherius’s and Eledrium’s hearts and tucked them in her pocket.
She regarded Glynn coolly, silently inviting him to protest.
Instead, he nodded in acquiescence. “If anyone discovers the seeds are missing, Mayes and Syarthis may question me again. They’ll know you took them. But by then, I hope you have whatever answers you need.”
“So do I,” Ellery said quietly.
More Winter wands would change the tide of this war, and they’d change the way Alderland understood Winter magic, too. So she’d find a way to make them, even though it meant lying to the Council.
Even though it meant lying to Domenic, too.