Chapter 18 #3
Silence fell over the room, the cadence of our labored breathing the only reprieve as the vile sludge slowly seeped through the floorboards.
Lynette fell back onto the table, holding herself upright with trembling arms.
“Was that the Cardinal?”
“Tobias,” Bastien breathed, scrambling to his feet once more and dashing over to the table. Azrael was the second to reach him, and I kept my distance for a moment, too afraid to confirm what I could already feel.
“He’s not breathing,” Azrael whispered.
Bastien fumbled with his pocket, swearing as he pulled back a bloodied hand, the phial with the next spell component shattered in the scuffle. He braced himself against the table, a hand on either side of Tobias’s peaceful face as tears fell into his coppery curls.
“We have to keep going,” Azrael pleaded. “Please, Bast. We have to do something.”
“The spell won’t work if he’s already dead,” Bastien whispered.
“You can bring him back, like you did before?”
I stood, unmoving, at the edge of a sorrow that felt too immeasurable to comprehend.
When would the tears come for me, I wondered, though in that moment I felt nothing but numbness echoing through me like the coldest of corridors.
After everything, we had failed him. The crushing reality was too much to bear.
I wanted to shout. To curse the heavens and tear my clothes.
To sit in the ashes to mourn like the days of old.
The last hope of Tobias Greene had evaporated before our eyes, and there was nothing I could do.
“Too much of his magic has returned to the Ether,” Bastien explained. “He’s already been revivified once. It was never meant to be done a second time. There just won’t be enough of his magic left to bring back. It will have gone back to the Source.”
The Source.
Could it be possible? The Source dwelled within me, but did that mean I would be able to perform miracles? If Tobias’s magic returned to the Ether, but there was no Source to welcome it….
I joined the others at Tobias’s side, neither of them looking up as I did. They wouldn’t be distracted from their grief, the reality of Tobias’s death looming too large to look away.
“Magic returns to the Source as it dwells within the Ether when someone dies,” I said out loud, needing Bastien to understand the idea. “But the Source isn’t in the Ether any longer. It’s here.” I placed a hand over my chest.
Bastien’s gaze lifted from Tobias, landing on me with an abnormal blend of hope and skepticism.
“Can you cut a rift into the Veil?” I asked him.
“You’re going to try and call him from the Ether?”
“That’s my plan, yes.”
“Is that possible?” asked Azrael.
“I’ve never come across it,” Bastien answered.
“Trust in me,” I told them, the heat now surging in my chest steeling my resolve. It was as if the Source reacted to my intentions, pulsing under my flesh like it was reaching out of its own accord.
Bastien began to speak in the language of the Reviled, jabbing two fingers into the space above Tobias, and dragging them along an invisible surface as he went. Immediately, the heat under my flesh surged, as if being drawn to the invisible opening that Bastien had cut.
“It’s done,” he announced, pulling back his hand as his gaze focused on me once more. It was still there, blooming behind those golden eyes, that glimmer of hope that now kindled into something larger. I couldn’t stop to think about what would happen if this proved to be a venture in failure.
Source guide me.
I offered the prayer in silence, knowing that the Source had never been closer than in this very moment. And like those times I had communed in its presence, I could feel an overwhelming sense of peace wrap around me, pressing all doubt from my mind.
Fingers outstretched, I made contact with the torn Veil, and was ripped from my body in the blink of an eye.
The muted colors of the Ether washed over me as I drifted above the spell-working room and the bodies of those below.
I couldn’t recall much about my previous time in the Ether, when Lynette had torn the magic from my chest a few months prior.
But there was a sense of familiarity here, that much was certain.
“Guide me,” I repeated, exhaling a deep breath and allowing the Source to expand beneath my flesh.
Though no words were spoken in reply, a quick tug downward drew my gaze to those below, and I floated to the ground, the uncanny sensation of watching my physical body from outside weighing heavily on my mind.
But then there was a glimmer of color against the pallid backdrop, and I watched as a thread of gold shimmered into existence over Tobias’s body, snaking its way upward and disappearing through the ceiling above.
That was him. It had to be. A trace of his magic.
Taking one last look at those around me—those counting on my efforts—I floated up through the ceiling, following the trail of gold as it led me up and away from that place.
The shimmering thread exited the library through the beautiful skylight on the top floor, continuing upward over Paradise proper. Even with the hues drained of their vibrant pigments, it was difficult not to get lost in the beauty of the town nestled within the mountain.
Above the gridded roads and houses, I followed the thread higher still, up through the layers of cragged rock and stalactites that rested above the city, till finally I could see the sky.
I exhaled a breath, stopping in my tracks as I beheld the sight.
Stars burned across the night sky in streaks of vibrant colors, trails of stardust weaving across one another in a tapestry of spectacle unrivaled by anything I’d seen before.
“You found me.”
His voice was like balm to my very soul. Like the first breath that soothes the ache of your lungs when your head breaks through the waves. I easily tore myself away from the beautiful sights above to behold the most beautiful sight of all—
Tobias grinned, two flawless dimples framing the world’s most perfect piece of art. And the beauty of him alone stole every word from my tongue.
“I wanted to see the sky one last time,” he continued, though his sights were clearly honed on me. “I’ve been asleep for so long, I was starting to forget what it looked like. But now, I can’t bother to look up. I just want to take you in for as long as I can.”
“Come with me,” I said, reaching out a hand. “There’s so much that I want to tell you. But the others are waiting.”
Tobias shook his head, his smile fading. “I can’t, Cirian. I’ve already cheated Death once. I don’t think there’s much hope of me escaping their embrace a second time.”
“Let them try,” I replied, drifting closer.
Here in the Ether, I knew that I could not touch him, but with the Source’s blessing, perhaps those rules no longer applied.
His eyes—two brilliant emeralds that outshone the splendor of even the stars above us—watched me as I reached out to embrace him.
As my arms wrapped around his ethereal frame, my suspicions were proven correct, and I felt the shape of him fold against me, slotting in like a key finding its lock.
Tobias let out a shuddered breath, his hands pressing into my back with surprising force.
“At least I’ll have this—one last moment to propel me into oblivion.”
“Won’t you listen? There will not be oblivion for you, Tobias Greene. Only a life filled with more love than you could have ever imagined. Now come, the others are waiting for us. And we have all waited long enough.”
Confusion still twisted his fair brows, but Tobias nodded, showing no sign of a want to let go. So, I led us back down through the mountain, arms locked around one another as the beautiful sky above vanished and we descended through the layers of Paradise.
I wanted to tell him about the time that we’d been away.
About the ways the world had changed at his and his sister's hands. I wanted to tell him about the others, and how the bonds that he’d created had only grown stronger in his absence.
About the pockets of happiness we’ve been able to carve out for ourselves, even as the world has descended into chaos.