CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I lingered at a market stall, my finger brushing over an amethyst necklace when a familiar voice cut through the crowd.
“Lyra!”
I turned back and saw Ella’s blond curls bounce as she stared right at me. I frowned and continued through the crowd, pretending I hadn’t heard her, not with all the burdens I already had to bear.
I loved Ella—dearly—but I wasn’t ready to take her burdens on as well, and let her lie to herself like she’d done at the palace.
“Lyra!” she yelled again, this time closer.
I felt her tug on my arm and whirled around, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “What do you want, Ella?”
“Hi,” she said.
I sighed.
“Please don’t do that,” she said, her brows coming together.
I shot her a look. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, Ella, not after you—my best friend—shook me down on the stairs in front of all the other servants and abandoned me. You left me alone with Anna and Drea after explicitly promising me you would never do that. And your first word to me is hi?”
Her shoulders slumped. “Sorry?”
I rolled my eyes and turned.
“Wait!” She grabbed my arm once more and I let her tug me back, my heart already prickling with guilt over my coldness toward someone who had once been my best friend in the world.
“I… I think what you’d expect is that I want to hear how Prince Theodore is doing, or the twins, or even you, but I know I don’t deserve that information. I don’t even really want that information—well, except to hear you’re okay.”
I shuffled my feet, my fingers loosening their tight grip on my arms.
“But if all you want is to go, I won’t stop you,” she continued. “The only thing I have to express is that what I said to you, what I did to you, is the biggest regret of my life.”
I raised a brow. “You don’t want to hear what Prince Dreamy has been up to?”
A corner of her mouth lifted. “It wouldn’t hurt,” she joked, and I cracked a smile.
“But no, not really. No connection I could have made with Teddy could match that of my best friend of so many years. My biggest regret isn’t just that I insulted you, it’s that I pushed away my only pillar and lost two years that could have been spent laughing over mistakes and men with you. ”
I levelled her with a look. “You really screwed up on that one, you know?”
“Could you ever forgive me? I’m not asking to go back to where we were—I don’t think we could if we wanted to. I’ve changed, and you—” her eyes scanned my new gown, my braided hair, the topaz stones hanging from my ears—“you have clearly changed.”
I smiled.
“But if you have questions…” She took a deep breath, tears filling her eyes. “I promise to answer truthfully. No more lies.”
My expression softened. “I’ve been plagued with questions ever since you left, Ella.
” I stepped forward to take her hands in mine.
“It took me forever to sleep peacefully again. Worry kept me up most nights. Mrs. Calloway, goodness, even Anna changed. But the thing that bothered me most is that when it mattered, when you needed someone, you spit in my face.”
“I was scared,” she said. “I didn’t want people to know.”
“Why? We could have helped, Ella. We wanted to help, all of us.”
She wrinkled her brow. “I wish I knew, but I don’t. I just deeply believed that the minute people knew what happened, they would either hate me or force me to leave my parents, and I couldn’t bear either choice. I needed the freedom to choose my Ma and Pa, as awfully as people see them.”
“But what if they are awful?” I pressed.
“Why can’t you just admit that they are not good people, Ella?
What kind of parent treats you like a slave, or pushes you around, or insults you so much you cry yourself to sleep at night?
And when I pried, you always shrugged me off, despite the tears clearly streaming down your face from some horrid dream. ”
A tear rolled down her cheek. “It’s as if my mind knows what you’re saying to be true. Those are not kind actions. But my heart doesn’t understand. They’re all I have. They’re my mother and father. They love me, just not in a way others understand.”
I shook my head, stepping closer to her. “That’s not love, Ella.” I lifted my hand to her face. “I swear to you on my life, that’s not love.” I pulled her into my arms, my heart sinking as her body shook in my embrace. I blinked back tears, but they slipped free anyway.
“I missed you,” she whispered in my ear.
“I missed you, too.”
After hours spent strolling the market and the nearby river, catching up on all that we missed, I bid Ella farewell with promises to visit, and trudged back home to continue my research. There were only a few weeks left to submit my treatise topic and pray it be accepted.
Our discussion lingered in my mind. I was proud of Ella, and how she had begun to reclaim her life for herself. She was delighted to hear I’d pursued magic in her absence, after years of goading me into quitting service for studies.
Ella was right: I had changed a lot in the two years since I’d seen her last. We both had.
Nostalgia, it seemed, had settled in my heart like a well-fed cat beside a winter’s hearth.
At home, I pushed books onto the study’s shelves, my fingers lingering over Papa’s journal.
I hadn’t opened it in ages. My reliance on it had dwindled after memorizing the words and spells within.
I flipped through the pages, wishing earnestly for Papa’s strength when I found my own diminishing rapidly.
Even his journal felt heavier within my arms.
A piece of parchment fluttered from between two pages, twirling in the air before it hit the floor.
I paused when I noticed the restored gash across the middle.
That infernal piece of parchment.
I leaned down to pick it up, running my hand over the scars formed when Thomas mended it so long ago.
Rip it, he’d told me.
A faint smile crossed my lips at the anger that he’d stirred in me over it. I couldn’t believe how prideful I’d been. I wouldn’t dare take the same approach with Master Carter.
And now that I had another mentor, I recognized Thom truly had been a good tutor. He’d been patient and intelligent, only snapping when I goaded him, really.
And I had goaded him, at least once or twice.
He was certainly flawed, but he wasn’t the only one.
My finger trailed along the parchment’s mended tear.
Why rip things? I’d asked. I’m in the business of fixing them.
And why should I rip things apart? Even now, my love was in performing, in making daily life easier, in finding a cure for the illness that racked my niece’s body.
Why would I ever want to use magic to destroy?
I thought of Ella, of the way her life’s rupture had started something new inside herself.
Couldn’t destruction itself be another way of building?
I considered my demonstrations, which disrupted the norm. Part of the magic was defying what my audience expected. I enjoyed it. It spoke to something deep within me as I’d defied the expectations I’d had for my own life, choosing to follow an unpredictable but thrilling path.
My desire for a cure was to destroy a sickness that was cruel and hungry. Couldn’t that be a useful method of destruction?
Even my water pillar, a feat I hadn’t practiced since my argument with Thomas by the pond, came from an unspoken desire for more, to destroy his expectations of me as a simple commoner, to destroy my expectations for myself as an unskilled mage.
So why couldn’t I destroy the parchment?
I thought back to his expression—intrigued and studied—when he’d asked me to try ripping it. He’d told me he had a theory he wanted to test. What theory?
Was it possible Prince Thomas expected more of me all along?
Had he suspected something about my magic that no one else had, including myself?
I pressed my fingers to my temple, an ache building within. There was so much I didn’t know, so much left to learn. About magic. About myself. About others.
And I couldn’t just assume the answers anymore. I’d already missed too many opportunities by letting my assumptions shape my destiny, my view of myself.
Something was missing.
And by the Great Mage, I was going to figure out what it was.