Chapter 38
Ophelia dropped her head back the moment Carolina was gone as she was overcome with a wave of hopelessness. She was in agony, she was exhausted, every breath was excruciating, and every lift of her head flexed the muscles in her abdomen around the steel buried in her.
The truth was that she didn’t know if she had enough left. She didn’t know if she could even muster the strength to free herself, let alone remove the stone covering the hole in the earth. But she’d promised Carolina, and she was the only one there who’d stand a chance against Simon, and she knew that she had to move that stone or die trying.
Every gaze in the courtyard was on her as she finally lifted her head. Every soldier and crewmember and captured enemy around was watching as she wrapped her hands around the grip of the sword. She tested the strength of the stone it was buried in at her back, and found that even the slightest tensing of muscle while she pulled was torture.
She dropped back again as Berkeley knelt at her side and said, “Tell me what to do.”
“I think I need you to pull while I focus on the stone,” she told him. “But as soon as it’s out, I’ll start bleeding again, and I won’t have long to reopen the earth.”
“ Can you do it?” he asked, and he studied the remorseful look on her face for several seconds before blowing a hard breath through his lips. “Does it have to be you?” he asked eventually.
“What?”
“Vana said that everyone could Ascend,” he said. “If you can open the hole without moving, I’ll go. Then I can heal you. ”
“If we had time, maybe,” she said, and shook her head. “But you don’t have the training. Even if you managed to heal me without killing me, I’d still have to Ascend to beat Simon. It has to be a Caster. It has to be me.”
He sighed and stared at the ground for a few seconds more before clenching his fist and meeting her eyes. “Well, dying’s not an option then, got it? We’re getting you down there, you’re going to Ascend, and then you’re going to beat Simon’s miserable pale ass into next week.”
She smiled at him and murmured, “I do always enjoy your optimism.”
“What else am I good for, right?” he chuckled, but his amusement faded quickly as he stood. “When you’re ready.”
As much as she wanted to avoid the pain she knew was coming, she wasn’t getting any stronger. So she nodded, inhaled as deep a breath as she could, and let her hands fall behind her to set on the small hill of stone.
“Count of three?” Berkeley asked as he grabbed the hilt. She nodded. “One.” He inhaled a breath and tightened his grip on the sword. “Two.” He adjusted his stance to plant his feet. “Three.”
He strained upward as she focused all her attention and might on altering the rock beneath her. And she tried. Despite her muscles tensing around the blade. Despite it making her more agonizingly aware of every slight shift of steel as Berkeley pulled. Despite it draining her of what meager, taxed energy she had left. She tried.
She grunted, bracing against the pang as the barest change in the ground beneath her gave Berkeley a mere inch to pull, and then paused to suck in several quick, shallow breaths to brace herself for more. She focused. She grabbed at the cracks in the stone beneath her as if that would help force it into submission as she tried to alter it, and she stopped to gasp for air.
“Don’t give up,” Berkeley said. “Come on, Ophelia, you can do it.”
She nodded and grunted against the pain as she tried again. She strained as hard as Berkeley was, her grunt escalating to a growl in hopes the sound would drown out some of the torment. And it gave her another inch all at once as the hill sank, dropping her that small distance until her back hit and she cried out in agony.
But she didn’t let it distract her. She yelled for Berkeley to keep pulling and bellowed her anguish to the night sky. She let her scream turn her throat raw and concentrated on that feeling to get in one last burst of alteration .
It never came.
As she ran out of air and the ground held firm beneath her, her holler faded into a whimper, and she went slack over the stone and let new tears stain her cheeks as a dizzying white encroached on her vision. She couldn’t do it. She had nothing left.
“I can’t,” she whispered, sniffling and swallowing down the taste of fresh blood as she shut her eyes. “Tell her I’m sorry.”
Berkeley grabbed her hand and squeezed it between both of his as he took in a trembling breath. They stayed there in silence for half a minute to mourn their failure before the sound of cracking earth tore her eyes open. She lifted her head as Abner stood at the edge of the hole, swirling his hands. There was a deep crease between his brows as he focused, jaw clenched while trying to work an element he probably wasn’t used to altering. He was sweating with his effort to move the stone, but eventually he’d pushed away all that Simon had filled.
When he was done clearing it, he turned to them and strode over, and Gerald joined him as they squatted at her side. “Tell me when you’re ready,” Abner said, “and I’ll free you.”
Ophelia lost sight of them through the blur as her eyes flooded with relief and gratefulness, but she asked, “You couldn’t have done that sooner?”
“To be honest,” Gerald shrugged, “we thought you’d be able to do it yourself.”
“You’re still a pain in the ass,” she murmured.
“You’re one to talk,” he accused with a smile.
She laughed, coughing around the pain and blood that surfaced because of it.
“Should I try healing you once the sword is gone?” Abner asked.
“I’ll take my chances with the abyss, thanks.”
“Alright, then,” he chuckled. He nodded at both her and Berkeley. “Get ready.” Berkeley took another firm hold on the grip of the sword. “One,” he counted, reaching out to touch the stone beneath her. “Two.”
On two he altered it, flattening it back to the ground in three jagged lurches so that she fell straight to the brick every time. She yelped as she finally hit solid ground, clutching at the wound in her stomach as Berkeley went teetering backward with the sword in his hands. She was free, and she was such a mixture of weak and relieved and still in agonizing pain that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or pass out .
The sword clattered to the ground as Berkeley threw it aside and raced back to her. He scooped her up without a word, leaving behind the already thick pool of blood beneath her to carry her to the edge of the chasm. He set her on her feet before it, holding her steady as she slumped forward.
“What now?” he asked.
She stared down into the darkness as more blurry white intruded on her vision. “Let me go,” she told him. He hesitated, leaning forward while he held her to look down. “It’s alright, Berkeley,” she breathed weakly, “let me go.”
He looked at her, said, “Good luck,” and released her.
And she fell.
And fell.
And fell.
Until the opening to the night sky above was just a speck.
And until that speck disappeared.
Until the air around her grew cold and until the wind blasting past on her descent felt like ice cutting at her cheeks.
And still she fell. Until the whiteness surrounding her vision left her only a narrow window to stare through at the pitch darkness around her. But then she realized that it wasn’t the dizziness in her head that was causing the white. It was below her, rising to meet her every moment she plummeted. An end to the seemingly endless fall in a whiteness that blinded her as she neared.
All at once she reached the end of the tunnel and burst into the chasm at the core of their planet. Her descent ceased as she suspended amidst the bright light emanating from the very heart. It was a perfect sphere of polished mineral she’d never seen before, colored a swirl of white and light blue reminiscent of the sky and so massive it might’ve been the size of their smallest moon. It glowed a brilliant white, but the chasm itself was still so large that even the brightness of it couldn’t illuminate the walls. All it revealed were the heavy shards of volcanic rock slowly floating by and around her.
It was like she and the heart were suspended in an infinite void. No heat. No gravity. No other light, and no life but hers.
And maybe a god’s.
But she didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know where to direct her plea for help. Or if the mineral heart she was squinting her eyes against was even alive. The only thing she knew was that she didn’t have time to stay there guessing, and she inhaled to shout for help.
Before she could get it out, a gentle voice said, “You’re in pain.”
It filled the infinite space around her, and it felt like warmth. It felt like love. It felt like the embrace she so desperately needed after being so close to giving up, and all she could do was nod as her eyes flooded once more.
“I’ll fix it,” the voice told her.
She nodded again, and the light around her surged, enveloping everything in its brilliance so that even closing her eyes wasn’t enough. She shielded them with her arm as a radiant heat filled her. It soothed her pain, and her exhaustion, and any hopelessness she had left. It was all gone in a matter of seconds, and when the light faded and she could open her eyes, she felt new.
She was crying. She didn’t realize it until a tear met the corner of her lips and she tasted the salt on her tongue, but there was a waterfall of them cascading down her cheeks.
As she wiped the back of her hand across her face, the voice said, “How can I fix that?”
“You can’t,” she cried. “You don’t need to. I’m just… relieved. Amazed.” She laughed at herself through a broken sob as she reached into the space between them. “You’re beautiful.” The heart didn’t respond, and several seconds of silence passed so that Ophelia withdrew her hand. “Hello?”
“I’m here,” the voice replied.
“How long have you been here?” she asked.
“Always.”
“Vana said you’re the source of our magic,” she said.
“Your connection to me is the source. Some of you are more in tune to it than others.”
“Is that how Vivienne found you?” she asked.
Somehow, the voice managed a wistful sigh as she said, “Vivienne.”
“You remember her fondly?” Ophelia asked.
“I waited a long time to be found. She was the first, and she loved me like I always loved you.”
After a couple seconds of quiet, Ophelia prompted, “What do you mean?”
“Humans,” she answered. “I have one purpose here — my energy keeps us spinning. It keeps day turning to night. Keeps the wind in your sails, and the tides in your lakes. But I watched you for millennia and my love for you grew, and so I did the only other thing I could. I gave you the islands.”
“The Great Rise,” Ophelia whispered.
“Yes.”
She couldn’t help that her brow furrowed. The Great Rise did give them the islands, but not before it separated kingdoms and cities and families. “How? Why?”
“The other minerals filled this space,” the voice said. “They kept me warm. Protected me from the fire between here and the surface. But you never looked for me. Your eyes were always up, at the stars and the moons. So I gave you the minerals to lift you closer to that which you treasured.”
“You ripped apart the surface to put us closer to the stars?”
“Yes.”
“Did it hurt?”
There was another long span of silence, and then she said, “Most of the fire flowed to the surface as the islands rose, but some of it found me. I rested, and by the time I woke, the fire had cooled, and it was but a skin to shed.”
Ophelia reached out to touch a piece of broken lava rock floating past her as she said, “So it did hurt.”
“I suppose it’s the only pain I’ve ever known,” she answered. “But your kind suffers every day, and you still laugh and love.”
Ophelia sighed and shook her head. “Do you know that you just gave Ascension to a man who will use it to cause more suffering?”
“There is goodness in all of you.”
“It’s not always enough,” she said.
“Maybe not while you’re so young. But I can give you time to nurture it.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t know how to argue with a deity who only saw the goodness in them. And she didn’t know how long she should spend away from everything that was going on on the surface. So she pursed her lips in a half smile and said, “Yeah, maybe,” as she nodded in surrender. “I’ll take it, then, if you’ll give it to me.”
“Come,” the voice told her, but she didn’t do anything herself as the heart drew her in .
The distance between them closed, until she was so close that all she had to do was reach out. And she did. She set her hand on the brilliant heart before her, and it instantly surrounded her with another surge of light. But that time, the surge didn’t just surround her. It filled her.
It shot through her fingertips and her veins like cold lightning. Up her arm and her shoulder, across her chest and down to her toes. It reached her head and exploded into a burst of lucidity like she’d never experienced before. Her eyes shot open, and despite the energy thundering through her, despite the blinding light filling her eyes, none of it hurt.
It all faded as quickly as it swelled. The light dimmed, the wave retreated, but the feeling remained. The feeling of clarity. Of newness. The feeling like she could take on the world without breaking a sweat. But beneath it all was a deep, fresh sadness.
It didn’t matter that Ascension wasn’t what they thought. It didn’t matter that it wouldn’t drive her mad or threaten her with loss of control. It didn’t matter because she’d outlive everyone she knew. Everyone she loved. She’d spend the rest of her immortal life knowing that she had to protect the heart from the rest of the world. And she thought she couldn’t imagine anything lonelier than her last seven years on the run.
But the truth was that not even this gift from a god came free, and it was a price she’d never wanted to pay.
She withdrew her hand, focusing on the fresh energy in her forearm as she flexed her fist instead of on the grief taking root in the pit of her stomach.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
“I need to get back and help my friends.”
“Goodbye, Ophelia.”
“Goodbye.”
Ophelia turned away from the heart and shot a flame in the direction she thought she’d come from, and it illuminated that small opening back to the surface. With a burst of air at her heels, she sent herself toward it, and then altered the wind around her to send her hurtling back upward. She had so much power, so much energy that she channeled all of it into a gale, and she climbed even faster than she’d fallen.
The light at the end of the tunnel appeared within seconds, and she didn’t slow down as she burst out the end of it and shot into the night sky. She stopped as she suspended in the air above the courtyard, looking down at all the shocked faces staring up at her, and then she dropped. She plummeted back to the ground and landed on her feet, altering the stone beneath her soles to soften the landing. The stone rippled outward like the surface of breaking water, sending a small wave through the brick.
Berkeley’s eyebrows were at his hairline as he breathed, “Looks like it worked…”
She nodded, turning around to face the chasm again. “Vana was right,” she said, altering the stone to seal the entrance. “We have to protect this.” She searched for one face in particular, and her stomach sank at its absence. “Carolina’s not back yet?”
She searched the rest of the faces when Berkeley shook his head, but Rue wasn’t there either.
She sighed as her chin fell. That meant they were both captured. Or dead. But she refused to believe that until she knew for sure. The only thing they could do now was go after them, and hope that Simon would imprison them on Glasoro instead of killing them.
“Who’s in charge of Trayward’s guards?” she asked the crowd. A woman raised her hand and stepped forward. “All of you need to guard this spot with your lives. I’m sure Izaak will be back soon, follow his directions once he returns.”
The woman nodded.
Ophelia motioned for Berkeley and the bounty hunters to join her as she stepped farther away from everyone else. “We have to follow Sky’s Honor to Glasoro.”
“We can’t go to Glasoro,” Abner said.
When Ophelia narrowed her eyes in question, Gerald said, “We just saved you and helped you Ascend. I’m not risking my family by getting back on Simon’s path after that.”
“You know who signed my warrant letter,” Ophelia told him. It was a statement, not a question, and the look on his face said he understood that she also knew it was her father. “There’s no reason for him or anyone else to have been told you’ve defected. Use the warrant to get Omen docked at Glasoro, get me to him, collect your bounty, and you’re free.”
Gerald held her gaze for several moments before glancing at Piers and then looking over at Abner, and they shared a long look before Gerald finally sighed and nodded. “Alright. Fine.”
Ophelia held out her hand, and Gerald gave it a hearty shake. “Let’s go save Carolina and Rue. ”
Berkeley grinned and spread his arms to slap her and Gerald on the back, ignoring the annoyed scowl from Gerald as he said, “I love a good rescue.”