Chapter 28 Rui
Rui
The door opened before Rui could complete the turn of her key.
Matthias Lin was standing in the doorway, visibly relieved to see her.
“Hi,” she mumbled, pushing past him, refusing to call him Baba like she always did.
Everything in the apartment looked in place. Her father’s clothes were clean, his eyes clear behind his spectacles. Their
fight and her precipitous departure hadn’t derailed him, and for that she was glad. Her father might have kept secrets from
her, but didn’t she keep secrets from him too? And wasn’t she keeping an important one from him now? She had come to make
amends because she might not remember him if things went south in the underworld.
Arms crossed, she leaned against the dining table, trying to keep her expression businesslike. “I’m calling a truce—” she
began.
“I’m sorry I lied—” her father said at the same time.
“You’re sorry?”
“A truce?”
Her father sighed. “I am sorry. I said some things a parent should never say to their child. I wasn’t ready to talk about my past, but it doesn’t excuse
what I said.”
The apology felt raw. Rui nodded gruffly, uncrossing her arms. “Apology accepted. Now will you tell me everything?”
“Wait here,” her father said, and disappeared into the bedroom.
Her phone buzzed as she was grabbing two sodas from the fridge. Multiple text messages were coming in from Ash, which could
only mean something bad had happened.
We found more bodies.
Rui’s chest grew tighter with each message. The Hybrids were continuing their experiments with the rogue talisman and acting with impunity because there was no one to stop them. You can, she reminded herself. But the sacrifice she had to make scared her.
Her phone buzzed again.
You’re not seriously considering Madam Meng’s ritual, are you? I don’t like the sound of it. We’ll come up with another plan.
“Is everything all right?” Her father had returned.
Rui put her phone away quickly. “Yeah.”
Her father placed something on the table: the photograph of him and Song Liming in their Xingshan Academy uniforms.
She picked it up, a twinge in her chest. Her father had looked so happy. But present-day Matthias was staring at his palms,
as if reading his past misfortunes.
“Like you, I was a late bloomer to magic, and I only enrolled in the Academy when I was fifteen,” he said. “Your grandparents
knew nothing about that world, but I was curious, to put it mildly. Xingshan sounded like a place where I could be free to
be myself.” His smile was bittersweet. “It was, and I enjoyed my time there.”
Rui bit her tongue, afraid to ask the most important question of all.
Her father removed his glasses. “I suppose you want to know why I’m unable to channel now.
” The ghosts of his past were shadows on his face, and he took a long sip of his soda before he spoke again.
“Song Liming and I grew close. We were able to do magic that was beyond our peers and much more advanced than our age and training. We had talent, lots of it. But we wanted more. We tried to level up our magic, and one day, an experiment went wrong. There was an . . . accident.” Her father’s voice shook.
“Someone died. Someone who appeared at the wrong place and time unexpectedly—we couldn’t save him.
The Academy hushed it up in public, but they had to report it to the Guild.
Liming got off because he was Song Wei’s son, but my parents had no such influence.
The Guild was already watching me for other reasons—talent is power, and power is always feared.
In the end, the Council ruled that I was the chief instigator and to punish me, they took away my ability to do magic. ”
The table creaked as Rui surged forward, brimming with anger and shock. “They took away— How could they? What did they do?”
Her father pulled down the collar of his T-shirt, showing her the half-inch row of small vertical scars at the base of his
neck. They had healed; the silvery-white skin pulled taut. Rui had seen them before, but she’d never thought much about them
as a kid. But there was something distinct about those scars that troubled her now. Had she seen something similar on someone
else?
“There’s an ancient forbidden technique that few know exists,” her father said. “Although I went through the process, I know
little of how it works. All I know is that it did something to my spirit core and affected my spiritual energy. By the end
of the ordeal, I couldn’t use magic anymore.”
Rui herself had lost her magic once. She had felt hollow, an empty shell of a person.
Matthias Lin was still that empty shell.
“If it’s a forbidden technique, how could they use it?” she demanded.
Her father stared at her, his eyes hard. “You know why, don’t you?”
Rui fought the urge to smash her soda bottle against the wall. The Guild and their Council wouldn’t hesitate to protect themselves,
even at the expense of their own. They had carved a righteous image for themselves, and they sought to protect that through
any means. One rule for you and another for me. Like Song Wei, they were hypocrites. All of them.
“They thought you were a danger to them,” she said, “a danger to their reputation.”
“The Guild protects itself. It’s their way of survival.” There was no judgment in her father’s tone as he polished the lenses
of his glasses with the hem of his T-shirt and put them back on. The act seemed to settle him. All the pain Rui had witnessed
was carefully hidden away again.
But she was still fuming. “Don’t you want to expose them for what they did to you?”
Her father shook his head slowly. “What good would come of it? Someone died because of me, and I was punished for it. Rightfully
so.”
Rui gripped her soda bottle, resisting the urge to throw it at the wall. “It was an accident. Song Liming wasn’t punished—he didn’t have to lose his magic. How is that fair? How is that right?”
“I’m under no illusion that it couldn’t have been handled differently,” her father said. “But it’s done, and I’ve moved on.”
Rui slumped back. She didn’t quite understand why her father had let this go, but she had to accept that it was his decision.
“Did Mama know?” she said, voice barely audible. She wasn’t sure how she’d feel if her mother had lied about her father’s
past to her too.
“I never told her I spent time at the Academy,” he said. “My parents thought I’d made the decision to leave, and since I went
back to my old path of studying medicine, they didn’t question it. I picked up the pieces of my old life, and that was that.”
Her father reached over and squeezed her hand. “The only thing you need to know is that I would not trade your mother or you
for my magic and the life I could’ve had as an Exorcist. Don’t take on anger and regret I don’t feel. It isn’t yours to bear.”
Her father’s smile was the one Rui remembered he wore whenever her mother was near him.
“I know the guilt that’s still in your heart, Rui,” he said softly. “But I also know that your mother protected you because
she loved you. Her life and her sacrifice . . . it is a gift you should use wisely.”
The neighborhood playground was quiet. One of the streetlamps flickered off and on, and the rest were dim. Probably because
the city council spent more time keeping up the wealthier neighborhoods than the shabbier area her father rented in. Her belly
full of good food, Rui climbed up the ladder. She was almost too large for the slide, but she sat on the top anyway, legs
stuck out in front of her.
She and her father had looked over old family photos after dinner, reminiscing about the happier times they’d spent together when her mother was alive.
She couldn’t remember the last time they had laughed so much.
It was a nice way to end the night, and she had to force herself to leave, giving the excuse that she had to report back to campus.
You’re not seriously considering Madam Meng’s ritual, are you?
The situation with the rogue talisman was worsening, and she held the key to a possible solution. But what if something went
wrong during the ritual? What if the bridge took all her treasured memories? Would she forget her family? Would she even remember tonight?
The clouds hovering in the night sky were tinged with an eerie purple. A storm was coming, in more ways than one. Rui sighed. Who was she kidding? Love was stupid, and so was she. It didn’t matter what Ash or anyone else said. Her decision
had been clear the moment she knew there was a minuscule chance of bringing Zizi back from the underworld. And if she could
save her city at the same time? The choice was easy.
“So be it,” she said. The wind carried away her words.
She tapped the first number on her speed dial. She had promised to share everything, and she needed someone to remember if
she forgot.
The line connected, and she took a deep breath. “Guess what, Ada? I’m going to Hell.”