Chapter 14 #2
Instead, my own voice spun in my head and continued to whisper in my ear, and I knew it was Vair. I knew how he spoke, how he pronounced each letter, how he sounded when he said my name.
God, it hurt. Even if the pain hadn’t taken complete control of my body, I couldn’t have screamed with Dad and Fi sleeping on the couch next to me. My hands were fisted and my breath held—endure, endure, endure a second longer, I begged myself, because the pain always let go. It never lasted.
Only this time, it didn’t let go.
This time, the shadows grew darker, and my voice from Vair’s tongue became clearer and clearer, until—
Now.
That’s the word that filled my head and made everything else come to a halt. The shadows, the colors, the pain, my heart.
Now, Vair said, and the hold he had on me disappeared. The whispering disappeared. My body was suddenly mine again and I was able to sit up straight, finally breathe with my hands in front of my mouth as to not make any sound.
Tears streamed from my eyes as the aftermath of that pain rolled over my body, and the shadows that had marked my arm and shoulder and neck were hot. Heavy. Restless.
Now.
Vair wanted me to try now.
And, by God, I would.
Kissing Dad and Fi on their heads while they slept and had no idea what was happening might have been one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do.
I couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t stop the tears from coming as I put a blanket over them and turned the volume of the TV down so they could sleep a little longer. Until I was gone.
Just in case I didn’t come back again.
For now, at least.
There was a letter I wrote for them a few nights back, hoping they’d find it among my things if I somehow managed to get through in one of the times I tried. Tonight, I left that piece of paper on the kitchen table, as if I knew for a fact that I wasn’t coming back, which I didn’t.
But they’d find it when they woke up. They’d read it. I hoped with my whole heart that they’d understand.
Fuck, it was like a part of remained in that living room with them, and I had never felt a worse person than when I walked out the back door on my tiptoes.
I had the queen’s broken mirror in one hand, and my phone in the other, only to text Betty because I couldn’t do this on my own.
I needed her there. And I needed Arez, too.
That’s why I changed my mind about the Aetherway.
The ley lines were much stronger than it, anyway.
I could attach my magic to them with much more ease.
By the time Betty got in my dad’s truck, I’d wiped my tears and had forced the panic and the anxiety down as well as I could.
It was dark, and Betty could probably see my swollen eyes, but it wasn’t exactly unusual to find me crying lately, so she didn’t even ask.
I was thankful for it because how could I tell her that Vair spoke to me, said more than just my name—and that this time, finally, it might actually work?
I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t, even if that made me the biggest villain in the world. I might have had half the soul of a fae queen inside me, but I was still only human. And I’d been stretching so far for so long now that I feared I was going to break if I tried to take on more.
Arez was surprised to see us. She’d been projecting a movie onto the white sheet on the wall, too—while her laptop was on her lap and she was typing away at it at the same time.
I said nothing, just that the Aetherway was too weak and that I’d rested, and I wanted to try the ley lines one more time for today.
“Well, then? What are you waiting for? Go ahead!” she waved me off when I remained there standing like an idiot, looking at her, at Betty who’d already made herself comfortable on the mattress with a bag of chips, watching the movie playing on the wall—The Devil Wears Prada.
“Right,” I muttered and turned my back to her quickly before she saw the tears pooling in my eyes.
I’d done this so many times before that I didn’t need to think twice about where I stepped or where I sat, how to reach out my magic to connect with that of the ley lines that flowed underneath.
Coward, said a voice in my head, repeated it over and over. I was a coward because I didn’t dare to even look them in the eye, hug them, tell them that I might break through this time, that I might really leave Earth and go to Verenthia.
Because I might not.
Yes, Vair had said now, but he’d called my name plenty of times, and it had never worked.
Not a single time. This time would probably be no different.
I was still going to be here when the pain threatened to knock me out cold and I let go, broke the connection.
There was no need to freak them out like I was freaked out.
That’s what I told myself.
“Hey, Nilah, you okay?”
I looked up to Arez who stood in front of the mattress where Betty lay, and for a moment she looked so suspiciously at me I thought she knew exactly what I was hiding.
“Yep. I’m fine,” I forced myself to say.
Whether she believed me or not, I didn’t wait to find out. I turned to the ley lines and poured out my magic into the hole on the floor with barely a thread of hope holding me together.
The connection began the same way as always. It felt me, I felt it, and the magic merged together, became almost one. You couldn’t really tell where one ended and the other began.
But when I began to imagine the warmth of the Aetherway and tried to shape that magic into a portal just like it, the pain that followed was worse than any I had ever felt before.
Shadows wrapped around me, pulling and pushing and spitting me out.
It all happened so fast, yet so slow that I felt every separate second.
I felt the magic, my own magic, pulling me, my entire body down with it, into the ley line.
On the inside, I screamed. No thoughts left in my head, and my body was moving, but it no longer felt like my body at all.
It felt like raw magic, energy, and it was traveling with the ley line.
My limbs had become the very light it was made off.
I had melted into those threads of iridescent light.
I wasn’t me anymore, even though I was moving.
For a long, long time, back and forth, up and down, in every possible direction.
Then it stopped, just as fast as it had started, and I was pulled back violently as I took my own shape again.
There was no telling how long the whole thing lasted or exactly how far I traveled, but the Aetherway was a fucking walk in the park. There was no warmth here, only ice-cold and sharp blades cutting my soul right out of me before they put it back again.
By the time I felt air going down to my lungs again and felt my eyes blinking, I did not feel like me at all.
I felt like a shell, empty, bruised and broken, bleeding, half—anything but me.
All the pieces of me were sprawled on the ground wherever I’d landed, and I had no idea how to get myself to move, to reach for them, to put myself back together for real, in the way that I was always supposed to be.
Eventually, I felt enough of my limbs that I could move. I blinked my eyes fast enough so that the darkness lifted just a bit to give way for a little light. A little shape over me, pale and small—but it was there.
I wasn’t all alone anymore. The moon was over me in the sky.
With my teeth gritted, I pushed myself to sit up, to look around, to try to figure out where I was, because this was most definitely not the train tunnel.
I needed to know in which direction to run, where to hide—only to find that I was outside in an open field.
Hills rolled on either side, and there were trees in the distance behind me, and other shapes in the dark that I couldn’t quite make out ahead.
Grass underneath me, soft against my palms. I was still breathing heavily, my lungs desperate for air, and I pushed myself to stand with all the energy I had left. The sky was dark and the moon gave me enough light to see, to run, to get to the Midnight Palace right now.
I fell the first three times I made it up.
My legs were too weak to hold me until I tried a fourth time. It took everything just to straighten my shoulders, to look around, to focus on those trees and make out the color of their leaves.
Colorful, not just green.
I was in Verenthia.
A cross between a scream and a cry ripped out of me before I could help it—I made it. My God, I’d crossed through the ley line and I’d become one with it, had actually left Earth, and…
I looked down at my body, the right sleeve of my shirt completely torn, my skin raw red, and no shadows anywhere on me.
The mark was not there anymore. The shadows were gone. I hardly felt my arm, but my skin was clean.
I was not banished anymore. I really was in Verenthia!
Then I heard the howling.
There was no doubt in my mind that I had been alone. All alone just now in whatever part of the realm I was in, but now I wasn’t.
There were at least two dozen creatures running toward me in the dark, some howling, their eyes made out of yellow light—and they were big. They were huge.
They were werewolves.
My legs gave up on me again and I hit the ground on my knees this time. Only then did I realize that every bone in my body felt broken, and it was a miracle I’d managed to even stand up at all.
Within seconds they were there. The werewolves, all shifted, monstrous beasts with teeth sharp and as big as my pinkie fingers, had surrounded me on all sides.
Half of them raised their heads to the sky and howled again, and the sound cut me wide open. My eyes didn’t close so I saw how they approached me, slowly, heads down and tails low and fangs revealed.
So many werewolves.
They could rip me apart in seconds, devour me completely, eat me so that nobody would ever find a single proof that I’d ever existed—and even so, I wasn’t afraid. Even though I couldn’t stand on my own two feet, I wasn’t afraid.
Magic leaked out of my fingertips. Silvery white light that looked like smoke rose in the air, curling as it went.
“Maera.”
The name fell from my lips almost involuntarily, but I felt it all the way to my bones.
I said it again, this time louder, and the wolves howled harder. Came closer. Growled and showed me more of their teeth. Sniffed the air and moved away from my hands, closer to my back.
Taking in a deep breath was like swallowing lava, but I did it anyway. With every ounce of energy in my body, I screamed Maera’s name as loudly as I could one last time.
Then I collapsed face first onto the ground, surrounded by werewolves, and a different kind of darkness wrapped itself around me. I let go.