Chapter XXXII. Ellery #2
“Why haven’t you tried to tell the Order about this?” Ellery asked. “Why haven’t you tried to tell me?”
“The NDC’s sent people up here, but they don’t know we’re Winter magicians.
They just think we’re Order rejects with a death wish.
As though they’re not the ones all excited to die on some battlefield.
” Kester snorted derisively and set down their glass, now empty.
“And as for you, do you have any idea how hard it is to reach a Chosen One? All your correspondences and appearances are screened.”
“Julian could’ve gotten through.”
“He only showed up a week ago. But he didn’t need much convincing about Winter magicians.
He immediately wanted to talk to you, but the phone lines here are terrible and the mail is slow.
So he was about to head to Gallamere to tell you in person.
Julian wanted me to come, too, said that a Winter Chosen One needed to know about Winter magicians, and that he could definitely get us a meeting. But instead, well, here you are.”
The timing was quite the coincidence. More than coincidence. Maybe Kester thought so, too. Their gaze bored skeptically into Ellery as they fiddled with their rings again.
Warnings raced through her mind. This could still be a trap. Kester could somehow still be the traitor.
But Ellery didn’t think so. And with each passing second, she suspected—no, she was certain—that she’d been brought here for a reason. Her hand slid toward the winterghast hearts in her pocket.
“Julian was right to want to tell me about this,” she said determinedly. “And I think he should come back. All three of us need to talk.”
Kester went to fetch Julian. When the two of them returned, he handed Ellery a glass of red wine—her favorite—before sliding into the booth beside her. Ellery thanked him, then removed the hearts from her pocket and set them upon the drink-stained table.
Kester frowned at them. “You wanted to show us … enchanted seeds?”
“Not quite,” Ellery began cautiously. “But before I explain, I need you to both promise me that you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone.…”
They promised, and so Ellery explained the Dire Three as briefly and clearly as she could, fielding the necessary follow-up questions about the other Living Wands, including Valmordion and Iskarius.
But rather than seeming wary, as soon as she was through, both of them reached eagerly for the seeds.
Kester grabbed the pinecone. Julian snatched the aspen pod.
Instantly, silver light radiated from Maltherius’s heart, casting their dark corner booth in a cool glow.
“I can feel it,” Julian gasped. “My magic suits it, somehow.”
Ellery’s hope flared brighter. “I think it could be your wand.”
“I think so, too.” He stood abruptly. “And you said all we have to do is take it to an aspen tree? We should go, now—”
“Wait,” Ellery said hastily. The horror of Ravfiri’s vigil was still fresh in her mind. So was the vision of Nordmere that Maltherius had shown her.
It had led her directly to its potential wielder. That couldn’t be a coincidence, either.
Maybe it wasn’t Kester she should’ve been worrying about, but Julian.
But he couldn’t be Summer’s traitor. She’d known him for too long to think him capable of betraying his country.
And the idea that he might somehow have colluded with the winterghast who’d hurt their former classmates, many his own friends, was unfathomable.
“If Maltherius is your wand, you need to understand what it was like as a ghast,” she continued solemnly. “It’s the Winter equivalent of Syarthis. It’s no small burden to wield a wand like that.”
Julian paused. He was from the half of their class who’d survived that day only out of happenstance, his schedule shielding him from tragedy. “Syarthis, huh?”
Ellery touched his arm gently. “I didn’t get much say in my fate. You deserve to choose yours.”
He studied the heart a moment longer. Then he shot her a grin, his dark eyes alight with familiar ambition. “I always knew I was destined for a strong corporeal wand. I’ll wield it.”
“Mine’s not doing anything,” Kester grumbled, examining the pinecone.
“I don’t think Eledrium suits you,” Ellery said. “I’m sorry.”
Kester scowled but set the seed down. “Well, are there more?”
“That depends on if we can get this to work.”
Kester rose from the booth. “Then what are we waiting for?”
They exited through the back, past the dumpsters. Trees crowded at the edges of a snowy backyard, and their trio strode quickly into the forest behind it, still cloaked, until they found the nearest aspen.
None of them spoke, but anticipation hummed palpably between them as Julian walked to the tree. He held Maltherius’s heart to its trunk.
For a second, the night was still. Then, with a creak, a branch began to bend. Ellery’s breath caught in her throat. Her gaze locked with Kester’s, on Julian’s other side. And Ellery saw her own hope reflected back at her, and beneath it, something deeper: awe.
After the horror-struck magicians at the border, Maltherius’s attack, and the awful headlines, she’d assumed no one would ever look at Winter’s Chosen that way again.
Then the branch stiffened. The tree stilled. And the light within the heart dimmed.
Julian muttered a curse. “My magic is reaching for its magic, but they can’t touch. There’s something blocking it.”
Ellery’s hope withered. She was in Winter territory, with the right potential wand, the right wielder. But it still wasn’t enough.
“I don’t get it,” she whispered. “What else could be blocking the wand from being made? What else is there?”
Julian and Kester exchanged a glance.
“El, you should know why I wanted you to meet Kester so badly,” Julian said fervently.
“Because you see now, don’t you? Nothing about magic is how we thought it was.
Winter’s territory, Winter magicians, Winter wands …
Winter’s not inherently dangerous or wrong.
You know that better than anyone. So we think—we hope—that you might be able to stop Summer from destroying its potential. Our potential.”
Ellery had seen Julian like this before, his squared shoulders, his argument seamlessly rehearsed. But Ellery struggled to share his conviction. All she’d learned tonight had only made her less certain of what part she was meant to play, her future suddenly distorted.
“I know there’s more to Winter than what most people see,” she said.
“But that doesn’t change the fact that for the past thousand years, Winter’s terrorized this country.
That ghasts and scurges could be killing people right now.
I’m sworn to protect Alderland. You can’t ask me to turn my back on that. ”
“I’m not,” Julian urged. “I’m asking you not to turn your back on us.
We’re part of Alderland, too. In every interview, you and Barrow talk about how you want to reclaim Summer’s territory.
But do you really think that’s the right thing to do?
To take all of this away, when some people want to keep it? ”
“I don’t know! I only just learned about this. I need time to think. And I’d have to talk to the Order before I could ever make that kind of decision—”
“As if the Order would care,” Kester cut in. “Let’s say you do side with Summer. What do you think the Order will do to you after you finish? You think they’ll pat you on the head and give you a reward?”
“Kester,” Julian said warningly.
Kester hiked up their chin. “No. I’m done playing nice. All she’s done all night is question everything we stand for. Everything she should stand for. But she hates Winter. She hates herself.”
It clicked, suddenly. Kester’s goading tone. She’d heard it before.
“It was you,” Ellery breathed. “You’re the one who called in on Wilder’s radio show and asked me all those questions about destroying Winter.”
Kester made a show of twisting toward her, the heels of their combat boots crunching through snow. “I sure did.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought my questions might get through to you. But you’re not just unreachable because you’re a Chosen One.
Even now that you’re here, you’re still hiding.
First you show up cloaked. Then you can’t believe you’re stronger up North until I ask you about it.
And guess what? You’re hiding from people who would’ve embraced you as a hero.
So where is your conviction? Where’s your self-respect?
You have a wand that could level a fucking city in your hand, but you spend your time surrounded by Summer, playing Alderland’s paper-doll princess. And you just … take it.”
A cold, unending fury swept through Ellery. An anger she’d never let herself feel before because she didn’t think she was allowed it. But now, it was the only thing she could feel.
Frost wafted from her lips. Ellery’s shadow uncoiled in the silver glow of Iskarius, then grew, engulfing the surrounding trees until it loomed above them, around them. Until the very stars dimmed behind the veil of her magic.
Julian stiffened. But Kester grinned wickedly.
“I ‘take it’ because I have no other choice,” Ellery snarled.
“I sit there and smile while the Council debates behind my back whether I’m dangerous or not.
I watch every single thing I do or say or even wear, because for all people insist they believe in destiny, they’re awfully damn willing to overlook it when it doesn’t line up with what they want to be true. And the truth is … the truth is…”
“The truth is what?” Julian asked softly.
That destiny had never asked Ellery to fight against her nature. But she had. She’d punished herself her entire life. Because she’d believed, deep down, it was what she deserved. What all of Winter deserved.
“It’ll never be enough,” she whispered. “I will never be enough. And they will never change their minds. The Order will use me, because they need me. But they’ll hate me all the same. And when we finish fulfilling the prophecy … when they don’t need me anymore … I don’t know what they’ll do.”
Julian squeezed her shoulder gently. “I know how loyal you are, and I know how much we both wanted to be part of the Order. But you don’t deserve to be hated, El.
You deserve to be part of an Alderland that actually respects who you are.
And that Alderland could exist. Maybe you’re destined to build it. ”
Ellery remembered Glynn’s warning that Iskarius’s destiny was unprecedented, uncertain.
Ellery had dismissed it—she knew she was fated to save Alderland. But what if saving it meant transforming precedent entirely?
“What would you have me do?” she asked somberly. “I want to help you. I want to get rid of the ghasts. I want to make Winter wands. But I still don’t know how.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Kester said. “It might be Winter now, and we might be in Winter’s territory, but it’s Summer that controls this country. If that changed, I bet we could make wands of our own.”
Ellery bristled. “I’m not waging war on the whole country.”
“I don’t think you have to,” Kester said. “We also call Chosen Ones champions, don’t we? A champion doesn’t need to lead an army. They fight on behalf of one. Except now, for the first time, we have two champions. One Summer Chosen One who’s supposed to fight Winter. And you.”
Slowly, insidiously, a despicable understanding took root.
“You want me to fight Dom?” Ellery choked.
“You can’t possibly mean that, Kester,” Julian said, aghast.
“I’m not saying I like it,” Kester said gravely. “But it makes sense, doesn’t it?”
It did. All this time, Ellery had insisted she couldn’t be Summer’s traitor. But here she was, being asked to rebel against it. Being asked to fight—no, to kill—Summer’s Chosen.
“No. No, it doesn’t make sense,” Ellery growled.
“Maybe the rest of the Order will never support Winter magicians, but Dom will. You don’t know him like I do.
He might be playing a part in the news just like I am, but he’s smart and passionate and he cares so much about doing the right thing, about protecting everyone.
Dom’s an actual hero. And he will listen to me. ”
“Shit. You’re not hesitating because of Summer and Winter at all, are you?
” Julian narrowed his eyes. “This is about him. I should’ve seen it earlier.
But I was your best friend for five years, and I was a distraction.
And it took you, what, a few weeks with Barrow to put destiny on the line for him? What the fuck, El?”
Ellery flinched. When she’d apologized to Julian about their relationship, he’d acted like he’d forgiven her. But he hadn’t.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Kester said. “Are Alderland’s Chosen Two sleeping together?”
“It’s not like that,” Ellery protested, even though it would’ve been easier if it had all been some fling. But the truth was that it didn’t matter that they’d broken up. That she’d lied to Domenic about giving up on Winter wands, that he’d hidden the Council’s suspicions from her.
She was in love with Domenic Barrow anyway.
And if she truly was destined to become Summer’s traitor, then she would fail. Because the only person she could never betray was him.
“Think whatever you want about me. I don’t care.” Ellery tore the aspen pod from Julian’s grasp, then stormed away, leaving behind what could’ve been the only place she truly belonged.