Chapter 42
Chapter
Forty-Two
Ifeel weaker than I care to admit when I pull myself out of my sheets the next morning.
My head pounds as soon as I stand up straight, the effects of using my power for the first time weighing on my body. We spent hours out there in the grass, Rylan making me draw on the earth’s magic over and over until I could do it in less than a minute.
And I can feel it today, just as he said I would. I can also still feel heat lingering on every single part of my skin that he touched, my lips remembering the feeling of his. It was every single feeling that I remembered and more, his effect on me lingering more than the magic.
It was almost as if when Rylan touched me, everything was heightened. My thoughts my emotions, my feelings. Almost like that awareness that now sits comfortably somewhere in the back of my mind came alive.
But last night was also the first night in a long time that I slept soundly. My body and mind were so exhausted that I collapsed into my bed almost immediately once I returned home—but not before I practiced my siphoning once more, just to be sure that it was real.
The ride back from Rylan’s cabin was quiet, but in a way that felt peaceful, not eerie. Merlin walked at an easy pace, and I found myself imagining Rylan riding into town each day, making his way up the hidden path knowing no one would be following him.
I long to feel that kind of peace again for more than just a fleeting moment. But I fear that kind of life is far from me now.
I run my hands through my hair, massaging my head in hopes that it will soothe the ache, but it does nothing to help.
A knock on the front door has me groaning. “I’m too tired, Rylan,” I moan. “All of that mag—” I stop short when I see Cedar and Elara standing in my kitchen.
“Hey,” Elara says, her eyes tired. Cedar’s don’t look a great deal better.
I pull my hands out of my now tangled hair. “Tea?”
The both of them nod, and I move to join them in the kitchen. “How are the two of you holding up?” It feels like an absurd question, and one I know the answer to no less, but I ask it regardless.
“It doesn’t feel real,” Elara says as she leans back against the counters. “I feel like I’m floating in some sick dream that I can’t wake up from.”
I nod as I fill up the kettle with water. I know what she means. Rylan and my magic lessons were the one thing keeping me grounded yesterday, giving me a purpose and distracting me from every rotten feeling that still lies inside of me.
“That day,” Cedar says, her voice light, as if she’s lost in a dream. “Hazel…dying,” she forces out. “That wasn’t the only thing that happened.”
I turn to face her. “What do you mean?”
“Silas said something after you got hurt. Do you remember?” I shake my head—everything was so hazy. All I remember is Hazel. “Rylan… he came to help you, and Silas…he pulled you away. He said you aren’t safe with Rylan.”
I shake my head. “Silas has never liked him,” I say.
“No,” Cedar says. “It felt different. He had such conviction in his eyes, Everleigh.”
I take a breath as I hear whistling from behind me and turn to pull the kettle off the element.
“Rylan is…” Someone who would never hurt me.
Someone who knows things about me that no one else knows, the same things I know about him.
I think if I am safe with anyone, it is with Rylan.
Putting me in danger would only do the same thing to him.
I open the kitchen drawer and pull out a small pot that I pour the water into before adding some lavender and lemon balm. I think the three of us could use something to help calm us down.
I put the lid on the pot before turning back around. “I think Rylan is the one person who I know I am safe with. It certainly isn’t Silas, not anymore.”
Cedar reaches for the three cups sitting on the countertop, the three that we used the last time she and Hazel were here. I watch as she hesitates for a moment before walking over to the table.
“What if we could have helped her?” Elara says as she pulls out a chair. “With the gods’ blood?”
I nearly drop the pot before I place it on the table. “We don’t even know what it can do,” I say. “What it is supposed to do.”
“Well how are we meant to find out until we try to use it for something?”
“That stuff,” Cedar says. “We can’t go wasting it just trying different things—”
“Are you saying that trying to save Hazel would’ve been a waste?” Elara’s voice wobbles.
“Okay,” I sit down. “No one is saying that. But Cedar is right—those vials could be valuable.”
“It could also be nothing.”
“It’s magic, Elara,” I whisper.
She leans in, her hands on the table. “We don’t know that for sure. Your mother’s fable could be just that, a story.”
“It is more than a story.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know the mistake I’ve made.
“How could you possibly know that for sure?”
I run my hands over my face, planting my elbows on the table. “Look,” I say, “I don’t know if it’s gods’ blood, but the way it shone when you held it? That has no explanation. At least not a logical one.” I’m still not certain why that happened, even with my newfound knowledge.
Cedar eyes me warily, but Elara just chews on the inside of her lip. “We need to figure it out somehow.”
I pick up the teapot and pour a steaming cup of tea for each of us. “I’m going to head back to my old house tomorrow,” I say. “See if I can find anything else in that study that can explain this. I didn’t know what I was looking for the last time.”
“Do you want company?” Cedar asks.
I just shake my head. “It’s okay, I don’t think there will be anyone out that way. No shields anyway.” And if there is, I’ll be inside a room that doesn’t even exist.
“That’s actually why we came to see you,” Elara says. “We were going to head to Hazel’s this afternoon, go see if we can save anything before Hawthorne can get in there. I overheard him talking with one of his putrid councilmen this morning, talking about scoping the place out for evidence.”
I nod. “I’ll come with you.”
Elara sips down her tea before standing. “I just need to go visit Thorley first, but I’ll meet you guys there?”
“Sure,” Cedar says. “In an hour?”
“An hour,” she nods before she is out the door like a wind that just blew through.
I wonder if she’s ever felt a loss like this. I don’t know anything about her family, but I think she looked at Hazel like family. I think many people thought of Hazel that way. I can’t help but wonder what is going to happen to all of her patients.
“What aren’t you saying?” Cedar cuts into my mind wandering.
“What?” I blink.
“I know you, Everleigh,” she says. “And I know you have a big heart. But what makes you trust Rylan so easily?”
My nostrils flare as I bite the inside of my cheek. Trusting Rylan was anything but easy. Sometimes it still falters.
I don’t know how to explain without telling Cedar everything. Everything about Rylan, and everything about me.
“People are dropping like flies,” she says, and the image of bodies lying on the ground appears in my mind. “And now, Hazel.” She shakes her head. “Suddenly you don’t trust Silas, and instead this guy you barely know—”
“Cedar,” I sigh.
She exhales a shaky breath. “I don’t want to see any more of my friends burn.” She may as well have pulled the dagger from where it sits under my pillow and shoved it through my heart.
“I know there’s something you’re not telling me, but you can trust me, Everleigh. When have I ever given you any reason not to?”
She hasn’t.
I inhale a deep breath. “Silas,” I start off easy, shaking my head. “Something is different about him lately, Cedar. I was there when the shields came to get Hazel. I tried to help her, but…Silas stopped me.”
Her jaw goes slack as her eyes drop.
“After you told me that Finnick was the last person to loan the fable, I went to see Thorley, and she told me that Finnick was always snooping around, getting into things he had no business talking about.”
She frowns. “But your brother wasn’t like that.” Cedar grew up with Finnick and Silas, knowing them since they were kids.
“I didn’t think so either,” I say. “But why would he ever pick up that fable unless he recognised the title? The same title that headed the recipe that led us to my mother’s study.”
“What if he couldn’t see it, like Hazel and me?”
I stand up, needing to move my body as I speak everything out loud. “Even then, he still found the fable. He knew something.”
Cedar leans forward on the table, and I can almost see her mind working behind her eyes.
“So I went to see Silas,” I say. “To tell him everything, to tell him I think that Finnick is truly alive, and I think maybe he went in search of answers.”
“What did he say?” She sits up.
“He shot me down before I could even tell him about the study, about the fable, any of it. He told me I needed to let it go, that Finnick is dead and gone. And as I went to leave, who came lurking out of the shadows but our wonderful new mayor.”
“Hawthorne was at the stables?” I just raise my brows, my hands on my hips. “Do you think maybe Silas shut you down so Hawthorne wouldn’t hear anything?”
“I don’t know,” I shrug. “Maybe. But he hasn’t been acting like himself, and I don’t know what he would do if I told him everything. I don’t know where I would end up.”
“You mean about the gods’ blood?”
I roll my bottom lip along my teeth before I close my eyes. I think of Rylan, of the way he has been living in secret for years. I’m sorry.
“There is a reason for everything, Cedar,” I say, sitting back down at the table next to her. “Why I could see the study and you and Hazel couldn’t.” She flinches at the sound of Hazel’s name. “Why my mother wrote everything in riddles, and why Rylan gave me that dagger.”
“What is it?” she breathes. I can see fear in her eyes, and I just hope that fear isn’t directed at me once I tell her this.
“The magic that was written in the fable, the power that came from the earth. It’s real.” Cedar sits unnaturally still. “And I…have it.”
Cedar’s chest rising and falling with her breath is the only thing that lets me know she is alive. She doesn’t blink. She doesn’t twitch.
“Cedar?”
Her chair scrapes across the ground as she stands and paces the small room until she faces me again. “Okay,” she says. “What the fuck does that mean?”
A sigh of relief escapes my lungs. “I’m still learning. I don’t know anything about how it works, really. All I know is that I don’t have magic within me,” I say. “All I have is the ability to draw on the magic from the earth. It’s almost like a power source.”
“It’s like your mother wrote in the fable,” she mutters. “All of it is true?” I simply nod in response. “So the vials, they are truly gods’ blood?”
“If everything else is true, why not that?”
Cedar sits back down, tapping her finger against the table. “How do you know all of this? Your mother’s journals?”
My mouth drops open, but I hesitate. Rylan has lived with this secret his entire life. I can’t share it for him.
“Rylan,” Cedar breathes. “His mother was from Arizaya too. He has the same ability. That’s why you trust him.” My stomach sinks. I can only hope he will forgive me. “He can’t give you up without risking himself.”
I just raise my brows in response. “I don’t think he would give me up either way, but yes.” Though he might want to once he knows I spilled his secret.
“Your mother and his were both from Arizaya, and both of them passed their magic down to their children?”
“It is handed down through the maternal line.”
Her head tips with curiosity. “What if there are others?” she asks. “Other people from Arizaya, or children of them?”
“I’ve wondered that too,” I say. “But I have no idea how many came from there, and where they might have gone. Rylan’s mother, Aurora, wasn’t from Sylvan, so perhaps they scattered across the continent to protect themselves.”
“Elara,” she breathes. “Is that why the vials glowed in her presence?”
I shake my head. “They didn’t glow in mine,” I say, not that I understand enough about my magic to know if that matters. “I don’t know what that means, but I am going to go to the study tomorrow.”
Cedar nods. “Are you sure you don’t want backup?”
“I’ll be fine,” I say. “But can we please keep this between us just for now? I think Elara has been through enough the last couple of days without adding this on top.”
Cedar’s gaze softens. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“And even then,” I add. “We cannot speak of this to anyone, Cedar.”
She stands up, pulling me up and into her arms. “Thank you,” she says. “For telling me.” I just smile over her shoulder, a wave of relief washing over me after saying it all out loud. “It won’t leave this room, I swear it.”