Chapter LVIII. Ellery
LVIII
ELLERY
WINTER
Ellery dreamed of burning. Flames crashed against her in excruciating waves, then yanked her down in an undertow of memory. And yet she didn’t wish to resurface, even as her flesh blistered and charred and peeled away, leaving nothing behind.
At last she bolted upright, the name on her lips crumbling to ash before she could speak it.
Her hands were clenched in starchy, unfamiliar sheets.
Iskarius sat on her bedside nightstand. She stared blankly at the rest of her surroundings: neutral, impersonal furniture, a window with the curtains pulled shut, bland canvases hanging on beige walls.
She was in a private infirmary room at the Citadel.
“You’re awake.” A person sitting at her left stirred, then rubbed his face.
“Julian?” Her throat felt raw and crusted over.
“So you know who I am now. That’s good.”
But before he could say anything else, she coughed, and a clump of blood and wet soot splattered into her lap. An echo of Summer’s magic seared through her chest. Sweat beaded at her temples.
“I should be dead,” she rasped.
Domenic’s face flashed in her mind, frozen, agonized; she whimpered; she thought she might faint, wished it even—
“Hey,” Julian said. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Her vision blurred as he kept speaking, and reality blurred along with it. She clutched frantically at the sheets, trying to ground herself. It was several minutes before her sobs slowed and her breathing steadied.
Julian handed her a glass of water. As she drank, her gaze caught on the hilt at his waist. Cold, clammy magic pressed against her.
“Is that Maltherius?” she gasped.
“Yes,” Julian said somberly, and drew his wand.
His Living Wand. Maltherius wasn’t identical to Syarthis, but the resemblance still unnerved her.
Its aspen eyes were clustered closer to its hilt, and there was a symmetry to the grain in its bark and the precise triangle of its point that reminded her of Julian.
Its eyes turned toward her, then blinked all at once, as though curious.
“A Winter wand,” she murmured, scarcely able to believe it. She had fought so hard for this moment, this victory. “Are there more?”
Julian smiled. “Yeah, El. There are more.”
Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “How many?”
“Forty-one, as of this morning. Although the number increases every day. The Order’s still trying to hunt down all the seeds the ghasts left throughout the city, but—”
“Wait. How long has it been?”
“Since the cataclysm? Ten days.”
“Ten days,” she echoed, trying to process it. “I was unconscious for a week and a half?”
“Well, the Order was using training wands to keep you alive at first. It was all they had left.”
“So the Summer wands are really gone. Every single one.”
A haunted expression stole across his face. “Yeah.”
Somber silence stretched between them, and Ellery wondered if he too was thinking of that morning not so long ago when they’d sat in the student lounge and dreamed of their bright futures. Before they’d known Valmordion had thawed, before any of it.
She could scarcely recall who she’d been. She could scarcely fathom who she’d become.
Julian cracked his knuckles. “Anyway, that’s, um, that’s part of why healing you was so rough. By the time I got down here, it was a struggle just to stabilize you, so I’ve pretty much been sleeping here to stay on top of it. Honestly, I was starting to worry you wouldn’t…”
As he trailed off, Ellery took him in more closely. His usually crisp collar was rumpled, his dark coils disheveled. His sharpness seemed blunted by exhaustion.
“You saved my life, didn’t you?” She reached for his hand. “Thank you.” Julian blinked in surprise as she squeezed it. Then, cautiously, he squeezed back.
“You’re welcome. But it was the least I could do after you saved Alderland. After you saved everyone.”
Words echoed in her mind, once so comforting, now accusatory:
What if you save me, and I save you, and we save everyone else?
Ellery tugged her hand back. “Y-you don’t know what I had to do.”
“I do, actually,” he said gravely. “And I know I was harsh with you about Barrow back in Nordmere, but … I’m so, so sorry, El. I know it must’ve been a terrible choice to make.”
But he didn’t. He couldn’t. The only person who possibly could understand was gone.
“But you did what destiny asked of you,” Julian continued. “You shouldn’t blame yourself for that. And if those wounds are any indication, he almost killed you, too.”
Yet Domenic hadn’t killed her. He could’ve. He could’ve been the one to walk away as Alderland’s savior. It should’ve been him waking up beside people he loved.
Instead, he’d hesitated. Maybe he hadn’t been able to go through with it.
And Ellery had.
Even if destiny did bear the blame, it’d been her hands that had held Iskarius. Her magic that had cast the killing blow.
“Who else is gone?” she asked.
Julian grimaced and rubbed the scar on his brow. “They’re still working on the final count, but several hundred civilians at least, including some hedge magicians. A few … a few students. And around fifty from the Order, including Councilor Peak.”
Ellery stiffened, stricken. All those people she’d failed to protect. And Peak—she hadn’t known him the way Domenic had, but the man had been kind to her.
“But you saved countless more lives than the ones that were lost. If you hadn’t stopped the cataclysm, it would have destroyed the country. Not to mention, you single-handedly tamed an army of winterghasts. And ended a thousand years of war.”
“Still, savior or not, Alderland must despise me,” she said wretchedly. “I destroyed Summer’s wands.”
Julian shook his head. “No one hates you. No one blames you for that.”
“But how? Why?”
He hesitated. Then he shuffled through some odds and ends on a nearby table before pulling out a copy of the Gallamere Gazette. Ellery snatched the paper from him and gazed at the headline.
A CHOSEN ONE MOURNED
Domenic’s obituary was peppered with photographs of his funeral, which had taken place the week prior in Danmere, organized by his family—how he would’ve hated that. His body hadn’t yet been recovered, but Ellery knew there was no body left to find.
She skimmed the article, growing more distressed with every word.
The spin was clear: he and Ellery had faced the cataclysm together, yet where she’d triumphed, he’d perished, and thus the Summer wands had perished with him.
The scales of Alderland had tipped in the aftermath, leaving it suspended in a new, peaceful Winter.
As far as the obituary was concerned, he hadn’t died a hero. He’d died a martyr at best, a failure at worst.
“None of this is true,” Ellery choked. “This is awful. Why would the Order let this happen?”
“The Council will explain, as soon as you’re able to meet with—”
“Oh, fuck that. I’m going to meet with them right now.”
“You can barely sit up.”
In response, Ellery reached for Iskarius. As soon as she touched it, strength surged through her. The aches in her body didn’t vanish, but they eased. She exhaled, frost twinkling into the air, and pushed aside the bedcovers.
“Is there anything better to wear around here than my hospital gown?” she asked.
“Yeah, in the wardrobe. Although you should probably shower first.”
Ellery glared at him, then touched a strand of greasy hair. He was right. But no sooner had she stomped to the adjoining bathroom and shut the door than he called, “I should warn you—”
“What else could you possibly have to warn me about?”
She heard his sigh through the door. “I couldn’t heal everything. Even Maltherius has its limits.”
Slowly, Ellery opened her hospital gown. Bandages crisscrossed her torso. She peeled back one on her chest, above her heart. The skin was blistered and raw, just like in her dreams.
“They’ll scar,” Julian continued. “But aside from that, you should make a full recovery.”
Ellery bit back a terrible laugh. “Right.”
As she pressed the bandage back down, her fingers grazed the edge of the wound. Instantly, an image of roots veined within her eyelids. She saw a flash of a familiar alban tree. Her handprint gleamed upon its white bark.
Nordmere.
She blinked, and it was gone.
Ellery walked with Julian across the Citadel’s campus, through winding pathways dusted gently with snow. Someone had brought clothes from her apartment to the Citadel, so Ellery wore a familiar wool dress that covered her wounds. She didn’t bother with a jacket.
She gazed down at Gallamere’s skyline, no longer familiar.
Several iconic buildings were gone. Others were partial rubble.
But much of it, most of it, hummed with life.
Smoke puffed from chimneys; lights glowed in apartment windows.
The pond at the center of Valley Park gleamed like a hand mirror.
Flurries drifted peacefully through the air.
And a crystalline layer of ice glistened across the rooftops.
The City of Magic sparkled like a diamond beneath it.
But for however beautiful Gallamere looked dressed in Winter, the Citadel was less so.
In the absence of Summer wands, the enchantments that had maintained the compound had faded, although Julian assured her that Winter magicians were already at work replacing them.
Yet some things could never be replaced.
Every holiday was changed. All the works of Glynn’s favorite magical philosophers, every wand that had made Alderland special, wondrous, great, rendered obsolete.
A thousand years of tradition, overturned. By her.
“I know it’s still a bit rough around the edges, but we’re rebuilding,” he said. “Soon enough, the Citadel will be the pride of Alderland again. Winter magicians can run the country just as well as Summer magicians. Plenty of us were already academy students, anyway.”