48. Elara
Chapter 48
The line on my arm was deep red, the color almost indigo as I stared at it for the first time. I had seen it before when the Boy would change my bandages, but it had always been caked with blood seeing as we had no way to wash it. Now, there was nothing obscuring it, the last of the dried blood having been scrubbed away by the priestess in my bath.
The line ran from my wrist to past my elbow. The bones ached, every movement sending pain from finger to shoulder. Slices of agony ran over that line of dark skin, where my mother had drilled into me. Where the skin had split apart.
I wasn’t even sure how I had survived that.
She will do it again.
That man had come from nothing and vanished as quickly; his words roared through my mind and I attempted to turn, if only to make sure that the priestess who was tying my corset was, in fact, a priestess. She tsk’d and pushed me forward before I could see her face, but I suppose that was answer enough.
I had no idea where the man, that Fae, had come from, or where he had gone, but his words played on repeat, not that they made sense.
Releasing light, words I had apparently given him… and that word written on the wall.
Caspyn.
It was all nonsense. I had lost a lot of blood, perhaps I had simply hallucinated it all.
I stared at the long raised wound as the woman with a voice like wind tied the long corset bindings on the long pale blue dress. I looked like the sky to match the clouds that I walked through.
“Are you ready, miss?” The priestess asked in little more than a breeze before she turned toward the door. She hadn’t even waited for an answer. I didn’t get a say I supposed, not that it mattered. It was time for the ceremony, Aeinya and my brother were to be wed.
Then I would leave.
I hadn’t planned to make my escape in a pale blue silk dress with no cloak, but hopefully when I convinced those pilgrims to take me in and hide me I could convince them to give me some new clothes. After all, the sale of the dress would more than make up for any expense.
With how they had glared at me when I walked past them, their eyes wide at the sight of the blood, I was sure there was no way they could refuse.
In a few hours I would be free, the Boy would meet me where we had agreed, and we would run. Now, if I could only chase away the last of the nerves that were tangling their way through everything from my throat to my gut.
Thinking about freedom eased them, if only slightly, the sensation settling further with the dream of lifting that veil and seeing the Boy for the first time. Heat rippled over my skin, that familiar wave of magic raging to life at the thought.
The ice that had swathed me every time my magic flared over the past few days did not come, it was only the burn of heat that rattled through my bones, twisting as if I was being swept away on a furious wind. I flexed my hand, the bracelet there seeming to glow faintly.
I could feel it there, somehow stronger than before without the ice to chase it away.
“The bind on my magic,” I whispered as a tiny spark of flame waved over the surface of my skin.
The room was growing far too warm.
I clenched my fist and pushed the magic away before anything got out of hand.
“What was that, miss?” The Priestess pulled me from my thoughts, her windy voice more like a gale before a storm as she stood in the door, a few courtiers and what looked to be Aeinya’s mother already making their way down the long hall toward the ceremony.
“Nothing, nothing,” I sighed, my arm aching as I picked up the dress before taking a step in my boots.
They had set out dainty silk slippers for me, but I refused. Perhaps that was selfish, but if I planned to make my escape I would need good shoes. These boots… they were the first gift I had received in years, and my last of this life... I would never give them up.
Lifting the dress enough that I wouldn't damage it, I made my way into the hall, only to have the priestess shut the door without another word. All of the wiggling knots of my nerves tangled further as that heat continued to rumble beneath my skin, a lightness filling me as though I was made of air.
The sensations of magic were as foreign as they were familiar, but they did nothing to calm the panic that was everywhere.
It wasn’t that I was scared of being alone, although it was a new sensation, I had never been alone before, not really. The Boy had always been there. Now, the knots tightened into a boulder at the image of the guards leaning against the carriage. Of their smiles.
So similar to when they had dropped him on the chaise, when he was dying.
“Please let him be there,” I whispered, keeping my skirts high as I followed the others toward the wedding, the heavily perfumed aroma of the bath following me with every step. Everyone’s clothing were in the muted colors of the sky as they walked down the piercing white of the hall. Sky blues, pale yellows, the pinks and purples of a sunrise. A beautiful sunrise for Aeinya on her wedding.
I walked slowly, careful to keep my boots from catching on the delicate hem of the expensive dress as everyone passed me in hmphs and guffaws at my pace, or perhaps simply at the disaster that I was. I didn’t know which, and I certainly didn’t care. Not anymore.
One by one they held their noses in the air and bolted past until I was the last one left in the hall, and the last one through the door at the end. The large wooden surface was carved with the image of a girl in a forest, long hair flowing down her back as she ran towards something on the other side of the door.
‘Very soon you will be faced with a moment in which you alone can change the course of time.’
His voice echoed in my head, but I pushed it away, along with the magic that was tingling over every part of me now. Wedding first, escape next, and then I could worry about the weird messages left for me by Fae wanderers. Or whatever it was that he had called himself.
The heavy stone was silent as I stepped into what could only be a welcome hall, the short squat corridor of white stone was carved with trees like the Forest of Ok, bright stars twinkling above them, and the very real man standing amongst them.
“Uncle Jahn?” I jerked back at seeing him there, dressed so darkly against the white of everywhere else.
He nodded in answer, his face lined with a grimace that pulled at his face all wrong.
“Uncle Jahn!” My previous confusion and shock turned to glee as I rushed him, throwing my arms around his neck.
My arm screamed at the movement, but I ignored it, overjoyed to see him even if my over exuberance sent us both into the mural behind him. It was only this close that I realized all the lines of each carving were actually words, spiraling swirling words that made up the stars and trees. Or at least I thought they were words, the letters I recognized, but their order made no sense to me.
“Hello, my dear girl,” he whispered into my hair, his hands wide and firm on my back before I slipped from his grip to my own feet. “It’s been an age since I have spoken to you.”
“Because it has.” I was ready to hug him again before he stepped to the side, the long dark cloak he was wearing rippling ominously through the white that was everywhere in this room. He wasn’t wearing his red Catalysts robes. He wasn’t wearing anything that Catalysts were assigned to wear. He was dressed in a stiff black uniform so similar to the snakes it made my muscles tense. It wasn’t just the uniform either, he stood at attention, his posture stiff, his eyes continually darting from side to side, watching either door as though someone would burst their way in and find us.
As though he wasn’t supposed to be there at all.
“Uncle Jahn?” I was suddenly finding it hard to breathe through the knots that were everywhere. “Is everything alright?”
Only then did his focus dart right back to me, the joy of before replaced by something cold.
“You know it isn’t, Elara. You’ve seen your father. If only you knew–” He stopped himself, running his hand through his hair as he took two steps toward the door I had entered through. I couldn’t tell if he was going to stop someone from coming in, or dart through himself. He twitched and jumped, looking over the mural this time as if it was what was listening.
“If only I knew what?” I asked when he didn’t continue.
‘Very soon the fate of magic will be in your hands.’ Again those words tumbled through my mind, again the warning that made no sense echoed in my ears. Although, now they were starting to feel like a drum pounding against my spine.
“Nothing. Nothing.” He waved his hand to the side, his fingers shaking before he tucked his hand behind him. “I came to warn you.” He was still looking at the mural.
“Warn me?”
“Do not go into the forest.”
I stepped back, the knots that had wound themselves through everything shifting into a familiar heat as my magic flared to life. I clenched my hands, holding them behind me.
Before now, I would have trusted Jahn with this. I had planned on telling him about my magic, about all the power that was within me. But, seeing him in yards of black, that fear screaming out of his eyes, I didn’t think I could trust that anymore.
“Do not meet him in the forest, Elara,” he rephrased and all of that fear was everywhere now.
His eyes were only on me, his gaze dangerous as he stepped closer, some of that nervous energy falling away to reveal the proud and strong man my Uncle was, the man who was born to be Ramal.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” I couldn’t stop the shake in my voice, stop my shoulders from turning in as I tried to step back.
How had he found out? Of course, if he knew, then so did Father, and so did Mother. I had worried that she would have heard, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t go back, not to the Runturin, not to that life. I had a path forward, I had to take it.
“Yes, you do, girl. Don’t be so daft. Do not go into the forest,” he enunciated the words, making it clear that that was not all that he was saying, “It will not only end your life, but others. So many others. There is more at play here. You must stay here. Do not show what you hold.”
“What I hold?”
First, a dangerous strange Fae emerges from nothing, and now my Uncle warns me from escape. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I couldn’t deviate from my plans. I wouldn't.
“I cannot stay.” I was firm, I needed him to understand. He of all people should understand. He had once been born to be the next Ramal, stripped of that title to be bound as a Catalyst, and then removed from his brother's room to who knows where.
We were both prisoners.
We were all prisoners.
“She will lock me away, Uncle Jahn. As she had Father. You should come with me, we could?—”
“You must stay. We all must stay. There is more coming for you,” he hissed, rushing toward me as he again looked at the doors and wall. “I know there is no way you will perfect that magic of yours if you run. If you die in those woods.”
He knew, he already knew. It should have been a comfort, but the horror and panic that he looked at me with took any of that away.
“But I–” He stopped me with a raise of his hand, a breeze that should not exist wrapping through the room and whipping at my hair. It pulled at his cloak, even the carvings of the trees swayed in the gale.
He had magic.
Magic on his own. But he was a Catalyst.
I could only stare at him, eyes wide. The wind died down and he leaned into me, careful to keep his voice in a whisper.
“Don’t go into the forest, Elara. You will not like how it ends. I cannot help you to master your power if you leave.” I could only stare at him as he darted through the door, but not through the entry that would take him to the wedding, through the one that would take him back to the preparation rooms, to the back entrance and the carriages.
Those knots strangled against the heavy beat of my heart as I stood, frozen in the hallway, watching that door. I could follow him, go out through the exit and demand more answers, or simply vanish now, before the wedding.
I couldn’t leave Aeinya.
I would go, for her, and then I would leave.
Before anyone knew, I would be gone. I would find another way to master my magic.
I would be dancing barefoot in the tall grass.
Go forward in bravery, my dear, holding good in your heart.
At least that I could follow.