Chapter 6 #2
A part of me was glad about it. A part of me wished that we never got to experience magic here on Earth because I’d seen what it could do. I’d seen how it could destroy.
A man had died—a king—not at my hand, but with my help. I hadn’t hesitated to use my magic against the Midnight King—I’d have killed him, too, if I could. I’d have killed him a hundred times before I let him hurt Rune.
Look what I have become.
I was most definitely not me anymore.
But luckily, we didn’t talk about me for at least a few hours while we sat there and drank lemonade and ate cupcakes. Only the good parts of magic. The beautiful things, the sparks, the lights, the colors.
And then Dad had to leave to meet up with his coworkers. They needed his help, and though he had taken the day off, he had to check in only for a little while, he said.
“Today,” he told me. “Take today to think about it, pup. Tomorrow we’ll talk again, and if you still want to leave…”
His voice trailed off and I saw how torn he was by the look of his eyes. I couldn’t tell him no if it fucking killed me.
“Tomorrow, then,” I said with half a heart. “Tomorrow.”
Fi was ecstatic. Betty looked a bit panicked, but she didn’t make a single comment, even when Dad left with the promise to bring sushi when he got back.
I asked the girls to come with me for a walk in the forest—to stretch my legs and to find some shade because the sun was really hot today, and my shirt had long sleeves.
They didn’t hesitate, though I thought they knew that I was planning to get close to the Aetherway again.
Just to feel its magic. Just in case Rune made his way through it from Verenthia while we were there.
They followed me without complaint but didn’t stop asking me questions for a single second.
It was easy for me to feel the magic in the air now, to know which way it was more intense, and in which way it faded.
It was easy to feel the pull of the Aetherway without even meaning to, and while it happened, while I searched for it and moved in its direction unconsciously, I didn’t think it was weird at all. I thought it was normal.
Perfectly normal to feel the magic and to follow the magic. Perfectly normal to have the one underneath my skin respond, as if I had been this person my whole life.
Then there were the trees between which was the portal. The gateway to Verenthia.
Empty.
No Rune, no Lyall, no Vair. No soldiers coming for me.
“You’re not going to actually leave, are you?” Fiona whispered after a long moment. I’d been telling them about the winter roses in the garden of the Ice Palace, and I’d stopped talking mid-sentence, my mind wiped clean at the sight of the Aetherway. “You told Dad—”
“I’m not leaving,” I told Fiona, and made an attempt to smile at her, to put her at ease. “I’m not. I just…I wanted to see if someone was coming.”
No Rune.
How much time could have passed in Verenthia? If over two months there—and I hadn’t even counted the days as I should have—were eighteen days here, could Rune have already made his way to the Neutral Lands?
Was he even coming?
“Well, nobody is. How do you even know that there’s something there, anyway?” Betty stepped forward, looking curiously between the large trees. “All I see is…more trees.”
She didn’t see the shimmer of magic stretching between the barks, below those branches that were reaching out for one another still, just like before.
“There is. I feel it,” I said, and went closer, too, raised my hand as if to touch the magic radiating in the air. It was there, all right. I felt it all the way to my bones, and my own reacted to it.
“I don’t think I’m ever gonna get used to that,” Betty said, leaning closer to look at my hand, at my fingertips that had just lit up from the inside—and we could see it much better here under the canopy where the sun couldn’t quite get through.
Fiona leaned in from my other side. “That is so cool. I am so telling my friends,” she said, and my heart about burst to hear her saying that. “Hold on, let me try to…”
She took her phone out and turned the camera on, but it wouldn’t work. Her screen remained black.
“What is up with that black ink, by the way? I saw the tattoo yesterday when we put you in bed, but…” Betty pulled down my shirt as much as she could and pushed my hair back to see my neck. I didn’t stop her.
“I can’t believe Dad didn’t disown you before you even woke up,” said Fiona. “He said he would do that to me when I asked him if I could get one once.”
“It’s not a tattoo—it’s a mark,” I told her. “And it’s not forever. I’m…I’m going to have it removed.”
Marked. Banished—that’s what I was.
“What kind of a mark?” Betty asked, rising on her tiptoes to better see under my collar.
“Just a mark to show that I’ve left Verenthia. It should disappear when I go back,” I lied.
And I did feel awful about it, but I wasn’t going to traumatize my little sister with the truth right now. Though I was desperate to utter the words, I bit my tongue and smiled at her again. “It’s magic, nothing more.”
She believed me. Betty didn’t, but she knew not to comment, and so she steered the conversation to Verenthia on our way back to the house.
She wanted me to tell her all about the hot guys I’d seen, specifically about Lyall.
It sucked to have to talk about him when I hadn’t told them about the monster he truly was, but I did.
I walked extra slowly, constantly looking over my shoulder, hoping to find Rune popping up between the trees any second, or to feel his magic, or to see the little bird made of light flying toward me. The bird that meant he was near. He was coming.
He didn’t come, though.
And no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, an ugly voice in my head whispered that Rune would not be coming for me any time soon.
Sleeping was out of the question. I couldn’t even make myself stay in bed for longer than five minutes, and everything—everything was so fucking strange.
I didn’t understand myself. I didn’t get why I turned the lights off and then made a fae light the size of a tennis ball to float about my room. The color of it, a mix of pale gold and silver, was much more soothing to my eyes than the yellow of a lightbulb, and it beat me.
Had I really gotten used to being away from home so quickly? Had I really changed so much in a matter of months?
Then, there was my phone. Fiona had charged it and had turned it on, and I kept getting notifications every few minutes from all the apps I used to check on the daily, but I couldn’t bring myself to even pick it up. I couldn’t bring myself to want to see.
I missed Rune so much it made me physically sick. My stomach was constantly turning and the magic inside me was becoming colder by the hour, or so it felt to me.
I missed Vair, too.
Then the phone on the nightstand vibrated again, this time with a text. The only reason I opened it was because I saw Betty’s name flashing on the screen.
Garage in 5, said the text, and my heart jumped. I didn’t wait a single second—I climbed out my already open window and went to wait for her on the rooftop of my dad’s garage right away.
Something about closed spaces. Or maybe it was the memories that clung to my room, of who I’d been when I’d lived here? How little I’d trusted or valued or respected myself? How foreign those concepts had been to me before?
So much had happened. My entire mind felt rewired, and all it had taken was a break. Distance from the life I lived to put things into a different perspective.
Then Betty came with beer.
She always took some from the fridge when she came to meet me.
She had four cans hidden in the oversized pocket of her hoodie that she’d worn for that purpose only.
I didn’t realize how perfect of a plan it was to get drunk right now until I saw the alcohol.
I was going to pass out right away—because it was midnight already, and there was no way I was going to fall asleep sober.
“I was banished by the Midnight King and this ink on my arm is called a traitor’s mark.” The words slipped from me as Betty sat down on rooftop as silently as she could. We always took our shoes off the moment we got up here, just in case my dad or Fiona were up and could hear us.
Betty paused, cans in hand still, and looked at me.
“I also helped Rune kill the Midnight King—who was his dad, and now Rune is the new Midnight King.” I flinched.
“I think. The guards bowed to him, called him my king.” My eyes closed and the memory was right there behind my closed lids.
“And-and-and the throne accepted him, Bet. It came out of the dais—you should have seen it. It came out just like the one in the Ice Palace did when I was there.”
I looked at her again, and she hadn’t moved.
Betty hadn’t moved a single inch, still on her knees, barefoot, with the last two cans of beer halfway to the rooftop near where she’d put the first ones. She hadn’t even blinked at all.
Well, damn. “I think maybe you should sit down first.” Which was far too late, I got that, but…
Betty laughed.
She burst out laughing like we didn’t do when we were up here on the garage, but could I blame her?
I hadn’t even realized how desperate I’d been to say those words out loud all day, and I had just dumped all that information on her within seconds.
Information that would make no sense to her at all.
Information that still made such little sense to me.
But Betty laughed and finally sat down, took off her hoodie and opened our beers. She gave me one, and clanked her can to mine, and said, “Start from the beginning.”
It was a long story, and a very long night.