Chapter 7
seven
It took a lot to shock Betty, or to even just catch her by surprise, but I think I managed the night before for the first time ever.
I told her the story—all of the story, God help me—because I was going to fucking explode if I didn’t let it out.
I drank two and a half beers because I stole Betty’s second one when she was busy trying to process all the information I was dumping on her.
To her credit, she made the connections and understood how Verenthia worked so much better and faster than I did, and she believed every word I said.
Not that I thought she wouldn’t, but it still surprised me when someone took my word for it and didn’t even hesitate.
By the time I was done with the story, the sky had already turned a deep grey with the rising sun, and we decided to call it a night.
We both needed sleep before we could function again, but when I went to bed, I still couldn’t.
My mind was still overcrowded, and so I did the only thing I could do—picked up my phone and searched the Internet for Verenthia.
Nothing.
I got nothing.
Other keywords—like fae and vampire and mermaids and sorcerers—only gave me results on fantasy books and TV shows and mythologies, but as I scrolled down the endless pages, exhaustion finally won, and I fell asleep.
When I woke up to a knock on the door, the phone was still in my hand.
So completely disoriented. My eyes were open and the sunlight slipped through the window, and the fae light I’d made the night before was still hovering near the ceiling somehow.
“C’mon, Dad’s making breakfast,” Fiona said, and it took a few blinks to see her standing there in front of the door, a smile on her pale face.
I thought I said something, and then she was gone.
But even when I stood up and put the fae light off, washed my face and changed into a fresh pair of clothes, I still felt like I was walking inside a dream.
The air had a strange feel to it. Even the scent of eggs and bacon was different from what I thought I remembered.
I blamed it on the beer I’d drank the night before, though I knew it wasn’t it.
Dad and Fiona barely said a few words as we ate. This was strange, too—to sit at a table and eat food that I hadn’t made myself. It had been so long since Dad had cooked for us. I took over the kitchen when I was twelve or thirteen years old.
Strange. All of it, so fucking strange.
Just like their smiles.
“Have you thought about it?” Dad asked when we were done eating but still lingering at the dining table.
“About what?” I asked, just to stall because I knew exactly what he meant.
“About staying, Nilah. About staying home.”
Both he and Fiona watched me with their breath held and their eyes unblinking.
“I can’t do that, Dad. Not yet.”
A nod. He looked down at his empty plate.
“But you’ll come back, right?” Fiona asked, and my God, I could have sworn that she knew. I could have sworn that I read the thoughts in her head, and she believed I was never coming back home again.
Which was so fucking wrong.
“Of course, I’m coming back, Fi. There are a few things I need to take care of in Verenthia, but nothing could stop me from coming back.” That, at least, was the truth. I hadn’t stopped trying to come back to them since I healed Lyall, and no matter what happened next, that wasn’t going to change.
“And…if you can’t?” Fiona asked.
“If I can’t, I’ll just bring you over to me—how’s that sound?” I said, pretending I didn’t feel how my own body turned against me at the thought. Bringing them into Verenthia when I now knew exactly what having magic really meant?
Fi’s face brightened up. “Promise?”
“I promise,” I said reluctantly.
“Then I’ll take it,” she said with a nod.
Luckily there was a knock on the door, and my dad went to answer it, almost ran all the way to it like he was desperate to escape for a moment.
He came back into the kitchen with Betty, who looked both panicked and excited at the same time.
She was paler than usual, her blue eyes bright, and she didn’t know what to even say as she paced about the kitchen, refusing to sit down when Dad and Fi asked her to.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she told them. “What about you? You ready? Packed?”
Packed, she said. “I don’t need to pack. I’m good to go,” I said, and I was. I had the mirror of the Ice Queen with me, and I didn’t even care about a change of clothes, because things were different now. So damn different.
When I went back to Verenthia, I wasn’t going to remain on the streets—I was going to the Midnight Court because Rune was king now.
Rune is king.
And the Ice Palace had revealed its throne to me the same way the Midnight Palace had revealed it to him when he killed his father.
Just like every other time I thought of this, my brain went haywire and my mind about collapsed on itself, so I automatically searched for a distraction.
There were plenty around me at the moment—like the look on my dad’s face, and the forced smile Fiona was giving me.
Fuck, it was hard. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was going to feel like to part ways with them, to say see you later, knowing that I had no fucking clue when that later was. I couldn’t, and so I panicked, and I said, “Are you guys going to see me to the Aetherway?”
Because another hour was going to be long enough for me to gather some courage, I figured.
“Of course,” they said, almost at the same time, and I figured they needed the courage, too.
So, together we walked out the back door and slipped into the forest without a word.
It’s not goodbye, I reminded myself every step of the way.
My eyes remained on the ground and my hands fisted tightly because I was feeling too much of too many things at once, and the magic responded.
I didn’t need to even focus or call for it now—it just responded to the intensity of everything I felt, and it was constantly there, on the brink, at the tips of my fingers, ready to come out.
Then Betty began to talk, to tell my Dad what I’d told her and Fiona earlier about the noxins and imps, about acid-spitting lizards, and I was so damn thankful I could cry.
The silence was getting to me, though it was different here.
The forest felt different, sounded different, smelled different—no magic and no colorful leaves and no moving plants anywhere. Just a forest.
I don’t know why the thought made me so damn sad.
We walked slowly, all of us, and we all jumped in on the conversation, though whatever I said, I said it absentmindedly.
My thoughts were divided—some part of me was still waiting for Rune to pop up in front of me, having just come out of the Aetherway.
Some part of me thought he might be hiding behind trees, not wanting to spook my family, and so I kept searching the branches with my eyes as well as I could.
Most of me was simply terrified of getting to those trees between which was a portal to another world that others couldn’t even see. Most of me was terrified of getting there and finding that it refused to let me through again.
“There they are.”
Fiona’s voice was like a knife through my gut. I’d been caught up on the branches, the trees, searching for Rune, trying to remember his face with clarity, so I hadn’t noticed that we’d actually arrived. Had failed to even feel the magic against my skin.
“It’s there, isn’t it? Those two trees?” She pointed ahead when a moment passed by in silence.
“Yes,” I whispered. “It’s those two trees.”
“How’d you know, little bugger?”
“They’re shaped in a weird way,” Fiona said.
“I didn’t even notice,” Betty muttered, going closer to them again slowly. “Do you think I can just walk through, or would it stop me?”
“No idea,” I honestly said. Pretty sure I’d been to these parts of the forest before Helid brought me here, and I’d never once noticed the shift in magic or the strange shape of the trees, even though I’d always been Lyall’s Lifebound.
Betty didn’t hesitate. Without a word, she went and walked right between the tree trunks.
That my heart didn’t give in that moment told me it never would. Fiona screamed a little, and my dad froze in place completely, just like me.
Betty walked through and around the trees, then came out the side, grinning. “Nothing. There’s nothing there.”
She couldn’t get through the Aetherway.
My eyes closed and I breathed deeply as Fiona screamed at her for being reckless.
Betty didn’t care, though, even when my dad asked her to never do that again.
Instead, she came close to me and nudged my arm with hers.
“You could totally take me with. I’m down for some magic, if you know what I mean.
” She wiggled her brows at me playfully.
“Absolutely not.” Not ever. Not in a million years.
“I could help, though,” she told me—and she was serious. As if she hadn’t heard any of the terrifying things I’d told her the night before. As if she’d forgotten the curses and the magic and the sorcerers and the death.
“Stand back, Bet. I’m serious.” And if she didn’t, I was going to use magic on her and not even care. If she tried to sneak up behind me and into the Aetherway, I wouldn’t hesitate.
“Fine,” she muttered, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Whatever.”
It would have to do.
The Aetherway was close, its energy warm against my cool skin. I could have sworn it called my name, and as it did, the weight of the ink marking my skin became heavier.
Banished.
I was banished from Verenthia by a king. How was I ever going to make it to the other side?
“Nilah,” Dad said, stepping in front of me for a moment. Eyes wide and full of unshed tears.
“It’s okay, Dad. I’ll be back as soon as I can, you’ll see,” I said, driving my nails into the palms of my hands, to keep my voice from shaking. “I’ll be fine, and so will you.”
“I—” he started, but Fiona stepped to his side, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away.
“Let her try it. Let’s see if it works this time—just let her try it.”
My stomach fell all the way to my heels.
“Do it, Nil,” Betty said, pushing me toward the trees gently. “Let’s see if it lets you through.”
The fear became so heavy so suddenly I felt like it crushed my ribcage. Even so, I was moving, going closer to the trees, trying to better feel the magic of the Aetherway, to test it.
And I did.
Someone spoke but I couldn’t even tell whose voice it was.
The warmth of the Aetherway was against my skin, and my magic reacted like it was being invited out.
I stopped between the trees, two feet away from the sheer veil of shimmer I could barely make out extending from one trunk to the other, and I thought of Verenthia.
I thought of the Neutral Lands. I thought of colorful leaves and a bright blue sky, of buildings made of stone and wood, of all kinds of magical creatures going about their business in an ordinary day.
My eyes close and I saw it all in detail, saw the first town of the Neutral Lands as I had that night with Rune. My magic slipped out of my fingers, cold but steady, ice magic instead of frostfire. With it, I intended to ask the Aetherway to let me through, to get me to the other side.
I could have been alone in the entire world, eyes closed and breath held—until my magic touched that of the portal.
The pain was instant.
Not sure if I screamed or not, but my legs could have cut off from under me, and I hit the ground on my knees hard. The ink on my skin burned so much I imagined I had a blade on fire cutting my entire fucking shoulder off my body.
My God, it was rejecting me again. The Aetherway was not going to let me through.
No.
The memory of Rune’s face had become so blurry so quickly.
The lines of his face, the feel of his hair, of his body—it was all fading away from me, and quickly, but not the colors of his eyes.
Those were perfectly vivid in my mind, the deep indigo and the silver circles around his pupils.
My maps that would always lead me to him, I thought.
My focus didn’t waver when I clung to that memory, to those colors, and let out the magic inside me that hurt on its way down my veins.
It hurt because it was frostfire, and while I might not have understood how the hell to use it for anything specific, I had my imagination.
I pictured it as a key to a big lock, as a large hammer crashing down a door, fucking dynamite blowing up an entire building to let me through.
And I imagined it simply as energy that was going to transport me from this world and to another. To Verenthia.
It worked. I could feel that it was connecting with the Aetherway, and I could feel Verenthia’s magic against my tongue like I was already breathing its air.
For a moment, I convinced myself to stand up and walk ahead, straight into the shimmery veil and out of Earth.
I thought I would be able to, that nothing was going to stop me.
It all felt so natural. All I had to do was walk through.
Until the ink responded.
The weight of it crushed me under. The shadows that made it were so powerful, they consumed all the silver light of my magic, and the warmth of the Aetherway within seconds. They stripped us both bare, and it was impossible to push through it.
I tried.
I tried harder than I ever had before, and this time I did scream.
My own voice filled my head as I pushed with all of me against the shadows, but they didn’t yield.
They remained as thick as concrete, and eventually, they wrapped me into a cocoon and pulled me under.
Dragged me down all the way to fucking hell.
My mind and body and magic gave up.