Chapter 43 #3
She has been through enough torture, I reply, even as Ember’s heat surges through my veins and races toward my fingertips.
Callie spreads the fingers of her right hand, readying to silence Ember again, but Ember’s not about to be fooled twice. Before I can stop it, golden light erupts from my palms, striking the ward bars with such force that blue energy shatters like glass. The sound is deafening.
Callie recoils as I step through the broken wards, golden brilliance still streaming from my hands.
“What did they do to you?” Ember asks Callie with my voice, walking toward her.
Whatever Callie sees in my face, in my eyes, makes her both cower and curl her lips.
“What did you let them put inside you?” Ember presses.
My voice. Ember’s voice. It comes from my mouth, but it isn’t me speaking.
A cold dread washes over me, far worse than any pain from the manacles or the blood loss.
She can just take me. Use me. My own hands, still glowing gold, feel alien.
I am a puppet, my body a stage for Ember’s rage.
I try to pull back, to reclaim my own tongue, but she holds fast, an iron grip on my very essence.
Ember has taken over. She’s wearing me like a skin.
Callie stares, her amber eyes wide with a fear that mirrors my own. “Stay where you are, Verily. Don’t come any closer!”
I push against the thick, foreign substance that seems to stop me from moving my arms, my lips, my legs. My limbs march forward without my permission. Ember raises my hand to strike, gold fire gathering in my palm to incinerate the girl who helped me survive the catacombs.
Then I realize.
My limbs belong to the fire now, but my mind remains my own. If Ember wears my skin, she must also wear my heart. I close my eyes in the mental dark and shove.
Memory. Callie shares a crust of bread in the damp dark. Memory. Her calming voice, how she helped me study when she received nothing in return. Memory. Her insistence that I was strong enough to endure the torture.
Let me talk to her, I plead.
Fine, Ember grumbles, but you are wasting time with a girl who cannot be saved. Like usual.
The golden light flaring from my palms stutters. Ember’s rage hits a wall of sudden, crushing grief. My grief.
My hand drops an inch. The snarl twisting my lips softens into a grimace.
Control bleeds back into my jaw.
“You weren’t always this cold and unfeeling,” I say now, my voice fracturing between Ember’s resonance and my own. “Remember how we survived the catacombs? By finding each other in the dark?”
Callie’s back hits the wall. “That was a long time ago.”
“I’m not your enemy, Callie. But I need to get to Falcen, and I can’t have you trying to interfere.”
Her face twists. “Then you would be making a mistake. The Master Keeper sent me here to keep you contained. If you interfere with his plans for Falcen, he won’t just hunt you down. He’ll do worse than kill you.”
“If you hate Falcen now, fine. That is your right. But if you ever loved him, help me. Because if I don’t get out of here, he dies.”
Callie pushes off the wall, but she doesn’t move toward the door. Her lips pinch flat, but there’s a vision of the old Callie flickering beneath her new mask.
“You’re so dramatic,” she mutters, but her voice shakes.
I push harder. “You think I want to beg? You think I want to watch them drag Falcen out in front of everyone and tear him open to prove a point? Even if you hate him, you know what this place does to people it wants to make an example of.”
She stares at the floor, lashes low, fingers curling and uncurling at her sides.
“He left me,” she says, barely above a whisper. “He chose himself.”
“That isn’t true, and you know it. He left because they were turning him into something that would hurt you. Falcen left to save you.”
A bitter laugh cracks out of her. “You sound like every storybook girl who thinks love fixes monsters.”
I keep going. “We saved each other, you and I. You once told me I was the only one who listened. So listen now. Falcen is dying. Not years from now, not in some theoretical future. Today. If you block me, you’re the one killing him, not the Master Keeper.”
Callie looks up at that, amber eyes shining, and for a moment, I see the girl who kept me alive in the dark, who kept me motivated, even though I was half-dead and terrified.
The old Callie who whispered jokes through our shared wall and made sure I had enough knowledge to survive becoming an initiate in a world I had no clue about.
Her mouth twists.
“Don’t do this,” I plead. “Don’t let them win. Don’t let the Master Keeper turn you into another one of his monsters.”
Callie’s eyes shrink into a glare.
“I am not a monster.” She spits out. “I’m full Soulren now. I am stronger than I ever was.”
“You don’t get to decide when love stops. If you did, you wouldn’t be here, arguing with me after I broke out of my cell instead of restraining me, risking your neck for a brother you claim to hate.”
She opens her mouth, then closes it, the denial stuck somewhere between grief and fury.
“I need you, Callie. I need you to let me try.”
Callie’s hands flex at her sides, nails scoring lines in her palms, but she doesn’t move to block the corridor.
“If you fail,” she rasps, “I’ll watch him burn.”
I half expect an attack, a soul-silencing pulse to my ribs, a cold hand at my throat. But Callie only shudders, then turns her back on me.
“Go, then,” Callie murmurs. “Get yourself killed for him.”
I edge past her. The corridor opens ahead, lined with sconces and warded doors. My body is a patchwork of aches and new flesh, wrists red and throbbing beneath scabbed skin. Ember simmers, not silenced, but pacing with purpose.
Don’t waste your second chance, she warns. Everyone is preoccupied. You can escape the academy. Run from their horrors, and never return again. We can build a new life, a quiet one, far away from here.
I stagger, then steady myself, teeth gritted. “He’s in the arena.”
Ember’s disappointment, her shame in me, is as heavy as a shawl being draped over my head.
You are not healed, Ember warns. You are stitched together, nothing more. If you pour yourself into him again, you will die.
I can’t let the academy have him.
Footsteps sound out in front of me, the sure stride of a Keeper.
Ducking into an alcove, I press flat against the wall, holding my breath until I hear Callie’s voice intercepting the Keeper from coming any further and starting up a curt conversation where she insists she had to knock me unconscious due to my hysteria over Falcen, and I am not to be disturbed.
The Keeper must be satisfied, as she replies, “Then I suppose I have more time to witness the unveiling. I’m told that what we are about to witness is unprecedented and the most successful weapon the academy has ever crafted against the Void.
You should be proud, Adept Reaves. Your brother has sacrificed himself for the good of the Vehloria. ”
The Keeper sweeps past, oblivious to my presence. I wait three counts, then dart out, taking the stairs two at a time.
And I swear I hear the sounds of Callie’s mournful sobs trailing behind me.