Chapter 44
Chapter
Forty-Four
My stomach rattles with nerves as Merlin slips down the hidden path that leads towards Rylan’s cabin.
Cedar’s arms wrap around my waist, tightening when Merlin hops over a fallen log. She lets out a breath. “Where are we going, Everleigh?”
“Somewhere that no one is going to see us.”
I pull Merlin to a stop once I see the field of wildflowers through the trees, the both of us sliding off his back and heading towards the long grass.
Rylan’s form appears on the other side of the field, and I swear even from this side of the grass I see his face drop when he sees Cedar walking next to me. I hold up my skirts as we push through the long grass. My heart races the closer we get to the cabin.
“Who lives all the way out here?” Cedar says from behind me.
“Rylan does.”
We emerge from the field. Rylan stands with an easy smile on his face, the mask he wears so easily. “Cedar,” he says lightly. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought—”
“I made her bring me,” she interrupts me. “I didn’t actually give her much of a choice.”
His eyes cut to mine. Almost searching, as if all the answers to his questions lay in my eyes. He looks back at Cedar. “You wanted to see where I live, Cedar?” he asks.
“I wanted to see your power.” His eyes are back on mine, surprise lit in them.
“She figured it out,” I say. “She’s seen me do things that are…unusual. I couldn’t not tell her about me.”
“And me?” he asks.
“I figured that part out myself,” she says. “It was the only reason I could fathom as to why she trusts you so much.”
He takes a deep breath, hands on his hips as he turns around, and starts pacing in the small clearing.
“Rylan.” I step up to his back, my fingers brushing his. “There were too many things left unanswered, and after Hazel…” He turns around, not taking his hand from mine. “I had to tell her.”
He looks down into my eyes, a windstorm raging through the forest in his gaze. “I’m sorry,” I whisper down the line. “She is the one who found my mother’s fable, who read about Arizaya and the power I—”
“It’s okay,” he sends back, giving my hand a small squeeze. “If I die, my ghost will haunt you, all right?” he says over my shoulder to Cedar.
I smile down at my feet as she responds. “I’m not sure if ghosts are real,” she says. “But at this point, I’ll believe anything.”
“You tired after yesterday?” he asks as he walks us over to the same spot we sat in yesterday.
I let out a sigh. “I’m tired after this morning.”
“Why, what happened this morning?”
Cedar walks over to a nearby tree before sitting down and leaning against it. “We went to Hazel’s,” she says. “And a man showed up with a raging fever and a wound that took up half of his leg.”
Rylan looks down at me, concern in his eyes. I just nod. “The wound…it was like a bite, a bad one. Whatever bit him, its teeth went deep.”
“And then the shield turned up,” Cedar adds.
Rylan’s head whips in her direction before he’s looking back at me. “Why didn’t you start with that?”
“It was the young shield,” I say, sinking down onto the grass and crossing my legs. “The one from Alice’s burial. Reed.”
“Reed?” he says, sitting in front of me.
“Yes,” I say. “He stayed there with Elara to make sure no one else goes in there.”
“Who is Elara?” he shakes his head.
I struggle to swallow. “She was Hazel’s assistant. Her apprentice of sorts.”
His brows pull together as he nods. “So he’s…protecting her?” I just shrug. “And you trust him to do that?”
“He watched out while we were there,” Cedar says. “As far as any other shield would know, he’s doing exactly what he was sent there to do—protect the place from looters.”
“I don’t know why,” I say, “but I trust him.”
“Okay, Rosie.” He nods, as if that is all I needed to say for him to trust Reed too. “Did you practice anymore last night?”
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth as I nod. Rylan shakes his head. “Didn’t I tell you to rest?”
“I couldn’t resist trying it again,” I say.
“All right,” he smiles. “Show us what you’ve got.”
I inhale deeply, focusing my mind as I close my eyes.
I settle my palms against the dirt, letting my mind wander beneath them, down past the layers of dirt, and right into the core where that orb of golden light lives.
I call on it, and the magic responds within seconds, the connection almost like second nature now.
I haul it up through the earth, just as I did yesterday, except today it feels easier, lighter. And then I feel it.
I open my eyes when I feel that tingle. Rylan’s eyes simmer with pride where he sits across from me, and when I turn to see Cedar, her eyes are wide with disbelief.
I can’t help the small giggle that escapes my lips at the sight of her surprise. “I know you said magic.” She shakes her head. “But this is…magic.”
“This is what I saw when I took the mixture,” I say as I lift my hands, twisting the magic around my fingers. “This is what I saw coming from the wall.”
Cedar leans forward. “Why can I see it now and I couldn’t then?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “Perhaps it was something to do with the mixture? It would only take effect on the people with the right lineage?” I look to Rylan perhaps he knows.
He walked me back through the field last night, and I took the time to tell him about the day I found my mother’s study and the journals. He told me about his years practicing magic with his mother, and I found myself envious once again. I never got to have those moments.
“It’s possible.” He shrugs before changing the subject. “Did you bring the key?”
“What key?” Cedar asks.
I give her a sidelong look before I focus, letting go of the magic and letting it drop back into the earth. Letting the magic go is just as important as drawing it up, that’s what Rylan said yesterday.
“Imagine if you held onto it, keeping it with you as you travelled back and forth. Imagine the way that thread would tear up the earth beneath the soil as you pulled it one way and then another.”
He wondered if that is what happened in Arizaya, if these people who crossed the line, who overused their power, never let the magic go. Perhaps if enough people did that, the earth wouldn’t be able to repair itself, the damage would be irreparable.
I reach into my pocket, admiring the key before I hand it over to Rylan. “I found that in a secret compartment of the medicine box that Hazel gave me.” I have to force her name from my throat and hold the emotion in. “It was my father’s.”
“The key or the medicine box?” Cedar asks.
“Both?” I respond. “He built the box, but what I don’t know is who put the key there.”
“It is imbued,” Rylan mumbles.
“It’s what?” I ask. “Imbued? What does that mean?”
His gaze meets mine, slides over to Cedar, and then back to me. “You don’t have to be of the right lineage to use the magic, only to call on it.”
A frown pulls at my brows as he speaks.
“I wasn’t going to get to this part of the lesson yet, but everyone who holds the ability has a certain…speciality.”
“A specialty?” Cedar’s eyes narrow.
Rylan raises his own. “Oftentimes it passes down through the maternal line, like the ability to draw on magic itself,” he explains. “And sometimes you can inherit your own specialty. It simply depends on the individual.”
“What is yours?” Cedar asks, her eyes still wide with wonder.
He looks down at the key. “This. I can infuse the magic into objects,” he says. “I can imbue them. So could my mother. We shared the ability.”
The puzzle pieces click together. “So…”
“Your mother imbued the key that was found in Everleigh’s medicine box?” Cedar says, scooting closer to Rylan to look at the key.
My mind turns. We know that Aurora knew my mother, but that was before they travelled here, before she ever met my father. How did he end up with a key infused with magic by Aurora?
“What does the magic do once it is attached to something like a key?” I ask. Why imbue it in the first place?
Rylan turns the key over in his palm. “The thing with imbuing is that you have to move the magic into the object with intention,” he says. “The dagger I gave you, I imbued it. That dagger will cut true every time you choose to wield it.”
My breath comes quickly. He gave me a weapon with extra precision, and I didn’t even know about it.
“That is why it is heavier,” I say. “Like the key. As soon as I picked it up, I wondered why it felt so leaden…but it’s the magic.”
Rylan nods, his eyes glittering in the golden sun as it lowers in the sky. “Yes.”
“So why would your mother infuse magic into a key?” Cedar asks. “For what purpose?”
“To unlock a door,” Rylan and I echo. His ears lift along with the corners of his mouth.
Cedar shakes her head. “What door?”
“I don’t know,” Rylan mutters.
“For the love of the gods.” Cedar falls back, landing in the grass. “Another mysterious thing we have to keep under wraps. A fable, a key, god’s—” She catches herself, and my heart beats so loudly I fear it might burst my eardrums.
“What is it?” Rylan asks, picking up on the tension hanging in the air between us. Cedar sits up, her panicked gaze jumping to where I sit.
“If we want to understand what all of this means,” Rylan says, “we need each other.”
He is not wrong. I tilt my head as I look at Cedar. This is all of it, everything we know, but Rylan is at just as much risk as we are. He deserves to know what we do.
“You can trust me.” His voice appears in my mind, and when I meet his gaze, I see the ache in them, the need to know.
“My mother left three vials,” I say.
“Everleigh,” Cedar says, and I wish I could speak into her mind too, to tell her it’s okay, even if all I have is my intuition as proof.
“We don’t know exactly what they are, but that fable, the one that speaks about Arizaya and the earth’s power…it seems to suggest that it is the blood of the gods.”
I don’t mention Elara, or how the blood reacts to her, choosing to leave her entirely out of this.
His eyes dart around my face. What he is searching for I’m uncertain, but I let him see the honesty that is pouring out of me, the undeniable trust I am putting in him.
Rylan stands, pacing back and forth before he is facing us once more. “Do you know what it is for?” he asks. “What it can do?”
“Nothing,” I shake my head. “But Rylan…Imogen knew what they are.”
“Imogen? The apothecary?”
I nod. “I never asked her about Arizaya because I asked her about the vials instead. At that time, I hadn’t read the fable, so I hadn’t a clue as to what they might have been, but Imogen knew. She told me to destroy them, that I would never be safe as long as I had those vials in my possession.”
He runs a hand through his hair, pulling on the strands as he thinks. “And no one else knows about the whole…gods’ blood thing?”
“Only Elara,” Cedar says.
He pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, rolling it back and forth as he paces. I know how dangerous this is. He knows it too. Hazel’s death did nothing but remind me of how fragile our existence is, especially while we keep a secret like this.
“Okay,” he finally says. “Then we need to figure out what this gods’ blood can do before there’s none of us left to use it.”