Chapter LVIII. Ellery #2
Ellery supposed that was true. She glimpsed several new Living Wands as she and Julian walked past, clutched in the hands of some former classmates. The cold of each wand’s magic needled at her skin.
“Have any adults been able to bond with a Winter wand?” she asked.
“No, not yet. I’m pretty sure the window rule still applies.”
People gaped at Ellery as she passed. Their gazes darted from Iskarius in her hand to her bright blue eyes and the shadow that feathered behind her, moving of its own accord. They whispered. They murmured. They stared at her with awe.
At last, they’d decided she was a hero. But Ellery knew better.
She was a monster after all.
They reached the door of a familiar conference room.
“You should have some privacy with them, I think,” Julian said seriously. He stepped aside, and Ellery entered.
Sharpe and Glynn were inside, engaged in an intense discussion. At the sound of the door opening, they both glanced up. Glynn rose from his seat and rushed to her, then wrapped her in a hug. Abruptly, he jolted away, gasping. Frost coalesced on his hand where it had brushed her arm.
Ellery knew that after fulfilling the final prophecy piece, she’d changed. But she hadn’t realized how much. She swallowed and sheathed Iskarius, severing her connection to Winter’s power. Then, surprising herself, she hugged him.
This time, she wasn’t too cold to be touched.
“You’re truly awake. You’re here,” Glynn said incredulously, drawing away. “When I visited yesterday, Norwood said … Well, we weren’t expecting you back so soon. How are you feeling?”
“Alive,” Ellery answered hoarsely. “Mostly.”
“Caldwell. You pulled through.” Sharpe’s voice was unreadable. He looked different without Ballathim, less imposing—his smoldering cigarette a paltry substitute. Glynn, meanwhile, appeared almost identical without Aetherium.
“Where are Seong and Hanna?” Ellery asked, sitting. It was them she dreaded seeing most. She didn’t know how she could look either of them in the eyes.
“Mayes is gone.” Glynn sounded pained. “Seong evacuated her during the cataclysm, and they spoke. But apparently Mayes fled soon after, and we haven’t tracked her down. We believe that she ran to avoid the repercussions of her and Syarthis’s crimes.”
“So you know about Syarthis?” asked Ellery cautiously.
“Yes. A wand as Summer’s traitor. It’s no surprise we didn’t see it coming,” Sharpe muttered.
“Seong claims Mayes wasn’t fully aware of what Syarthis was doing to her, that she hadn’t a clue Syarthis tampered with the prophecy until you and Barrow confronted her in the Vault.
Seong feels we should’ve caught how badly the girl was managing—felt guilty enough to resign, apparently.
Between that and Barrow’s…” He took a drag of his cigarette.
“I don’t buy it, though. If Mayes believes herself blameless, why would she run? ”
“I don’t know.” Ellery didn’t believe that Hanna herself had truly wanted to hurt Alderland.
And she understood what it was like to live with the constant pressure of being judged for what she wielded, rather than who she was.
But Syarthis had almost destroyed the country.
It had threatened everything Ellery had sworn to protect.
And it had put her and Domenic through unimaginable anguish.
“Given what Seong told us, it didn’t take a genius to figure that the true prophecy must’ve compelled you both to duel,” Sharpe continued. “Not to mention the state of you. Guess Barrow put up a fight on his way out.”
Ellery flinched.
“Sharpe,” Glynn said warningly. “Surely even you should know to be more sensitive.”
“What? It’s not like tiptoeing around what happened will make it any better. The only reason the public hasn’t gotten wind that we were wrong about the prophecy is because of how quickly we’ve been salvaging the situation.”
“This is what you call salvaging?” Ellery demanded. “Insisting Domenic was a failure? Blaming the Summer wands on him?”
“I assure you, we didn’t relish it,” Sharpe grunted. “But we had no other choice.”
“No other choice?” Ellery had always been so careful with the Council. She was through with being careful. “He died fighting for you! You and your wands, and your magic, and this is how you want the country to remember him? This is his reward?”
“Ellery,” Glynn cut in, “we know how much you cared about him, but—”
“No! He’s a hero. You know he is. He deserves to be treated like one.”
“Our opinion of him doesn’t matter,” Sharpe said grimly.
“If we tell Alderland the truth, well, he still lost, didn’t he?
And you go from the country’s hero to its villain.
It’s not pretty. It’s not nice. But the Order still has a duty to this nation, to rebuild from the brink of disaster.
” He sighed, exhaling smoke. “And it’s not as though the boy’s around to cry over what they’re saying about him now. ”
“So you used him when he was alive, and now you’ll use him for whatever story you need to spin after he’s dead?” Distress seethed in her. “That’s how it’s always been, hasn’t it? Every single Chosen One who’s died for Summer. How convenient that they never made it past their cataclysms.”
Glynn recoiled.
“You knew?” Sharpe asked.
“Oh, yeah, we figured that part out weeks ago! That everyone else who had our shitty job died! That you lied to us!”
“I wanted to tell you from the start,” Glynn said vehemently. “But you did make it out, Ellery. You survived your cataclysm. You—”
The door banged open, and a familiar figure stalked in. Immediately, Ellery felt a shocking, brutal chill.
“Hey, Ellery,” Kester said coolly. They looked just as at home in the Council’s conference room as they had in a Nordmere dive bar. In their hand was a wand wreathed in crackling blue veins, like lightning.
Kythion.
“K-Kester?” Ellery stammered. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, where else would I be? It’s a Council meeting. I’m kind of obligated to attend.” Ellery watched, astounded, as they pulled out a seat and lounged in it. She half-expected them to kick their feet up on the table.
“You’re on the Council?” she asked.
“We’ve had to make some changes,” Sharpe grumbled.
Julian hurried into the room a moment later, Demelza a step behind him.
The magician starlet sank into the seat beside Julian, her eyes glassy, her blond hair limp.
She stared at her lap as though she would rather be anywhere else.
A staticky cold flared from the hilt at her hip.
Although she did not draw her wand, Ellery recognized it, too: Eledrium.
Of course these three had been recruited for the Council. They might’ve been young, but they wielded the most powerful Winter wands aside from her own. The Dire Three.
“We were about to explain,” Glynn said. “We’ve re-formed the Council with the entire country’s best interest in mind.
Sharpe and I will train each of our new members to take up their predecessor’s positions.
Norwood will replace Mayes as our historian.
Turner, as befits her background, will take on Seong’s responsibilities as head of Public Relations.
And although the NDC is now defunct, Wright will oversee the other nature magicians as they transition into a more peaceful role.
And perhaps prepare for the slim possibility that whatever resided within our Summer wands are not dead, but … changed.”
The room fell silent for a moment. Ellery considered the word none of them seemed willing to speak aloud.
Summerghasts.
Maybe Syarthis had gotten its way, after all.
“That makes sense,” Ellery said. “But what about me?”
“When you’re ready, we hope you’ll join us on the Council,” Glynn said. “Whatever it is you wish to do, we’ll find a position. Perhaps you could be in charge of student outreach like you once wanted. But we understand that you need some time to heal.”
“In the meantime, we’ve got a new role for you,” Sharpe said brusquely.
“Alderland needs a happy, pretty face to reassure them that everything will be fine. A few interviews here, a few photo shoots there. Whatever the country needs to sleep soundly at night and know that our new magicians still have destiny watching over them. All we need you to do is show up and smile.”
Ellery’s stomach roiled, and she stood abruptly, grasping for Iskarius.
“I won’t play your bullshit parts anymore,” she spat. “I did my duty. I’m done.”
She turned on her heel and left.
As soon as the door shut behind her, she cloaked herself, then ducked into the stall of a nearby bathroom. One hand clutched the most powerful wand in the world while the other dabbed at her face with toilet paper.
Her blurry gaze focused on a piece of crude graffiti, scrawled in painfully familiar handwriting. Its enchantment had begun to fade:
D. B.—even better than advertised
She let out a sudden, incredulous laugh. It echoed off the tile walls as Ellery trembled, aching for him, his voice, his smile, his touch. It was selfish to crave what she’d so cruelly ripped from the world, yet she did it anyway. Her treacherous heart still loved him. She always would.
She fortified his enchantment so that no magic could eradicate it. Even if the Citadel crumbled to dust, his vandalism would still be there, glinting amidst the rubble.
And as Ellery stared at his words, she knew she would never escape Domenic Barrow. In truth, she didn’t want to.
After months of obligation, Ellery had nowhere to be and nowhere to go. Returning to her apartment was unthinkable. Another version of her remained there, the version who dreamed of an impossible future in Domenic’s arms.
As she invisibly wandered the Citadel, something pulled at her, urgent and insistent. Her body seemed to move of its own accord, down abandoned paths that led deep into the bowels of the Citadel. Until she crossed beneath the archway, into the Vault.
Someone had cleared out the cases that had once held Living Wands. In their places, glowing like tiny fallen stars, were hundreds of seeds. They stretched down the aisles, encased in glass, waiting for a wielder to transform them into a Winter wand.
On the wall behind them was a door. It opened without her touching it.
Inside, roots coiled over soil and stone, so numerous they nearly covered the entire expanse of the cavern. As she walked inside, Iskarius’s silver core illuminated the ivory: they were alban roots. Two golden handprints glinted on the floor.
In the cavern’s center, despite the lack of sunlight, a dozen leaves had grown in a neat circle, like a wreath. Each was blank.
But Ellery knew what would appear on them one day.
Prophecies.
She thought of the Chosen Ones who’d died before her. The ones who’d follow after her. Of Iskarius dormant in the Vault one day, awaiting its next wielder.
Ellery whispered the words destiny had once whispered to her. Now that she understood that she and Domenic had fulfilled two separate prophecies, not one, she puzzled out the pieces that had been meant for her and her alone.
the unveiled truth of everything you are
is power that will rise from your own ruin
Domenic had believed he’d fulfilled this piece during the winterscurge in Oldermere.
But as Ellery recalled the fight with Eledrium—how terrified she’d been, how she had almost frozen to death—she felt the significance of that final word: her ruin.
How she’d overcome it only by admitting that she had always been Winter’s Chosen, no matter how long she’d tried to hide from it. It was her power. Her truth.
join an old legacy to a new fate
uncover the tangled roots of the past
Ellery had fulfilled this piece at the solstice ceremony, alongside Domenic.
She’d thought it was their joined magic that had triggered it somehow.
But that was the night she’d confessed the deepest depths of her past. After a lifetime tangled in her parents’ cruelty, she had finally let it go. And she’d looked toward the future.
in treacherous land an enemy lies
but what was lost invasion can reclaim
And of course, Syarthis. For Ellery, treacherous land was Summer’s territory, not Winter’s. It was the first piece of the prophecy that had been lost. And invasion hadn’t meant Summer or Winter. It had meant invading the wand itself.
where devastation left the land a grave
revive the past and claim a new future
bring Winter glory on a silver throne
the whispers of the trees will guide you home
Ellery could decipher the first two lines; she’d healed the Barren, then claimed it as Winter’s territory. And she’d brought Winter glory after giving herself over to the alban trees. But she still didn’t understand the mention of a throne.
And of course, the first piece and yet the last one. This, at least, required no explanation.
as Summer wilts and Winter lays its siege
an ancient battle shall be waged anew
and from the ruins only one endure
or see the land destroyed forevermore
She’d fulfilled it to the letter. She’d nearly followed it to the grave.
Ellery stared at the wand in her hand. She wielded the ancient, primordial magic of an entire season. Yet even she was not as powerful as the force that truly controlled this land: destiny.
But destiny could be tampered with. And for all superstition claimed that destiny knew the future, its words came piece by piece. It was responsive. Reactive.
Maybe it wasn’t all-powerful.
Maybe it could be changed.
Maybe it could even be thwarted.