Chapter 42 #2
Both of my weapons are in the room behind him. And I don’t think I’ve managed to do more than bruise my opponent.
He’s got the upper hand, as he can no doubt see too.
Julita’s rambling takes on a panicked quaver. Oh, fuck. Ivy, you have to get through this. You’re better than him. You can find a way.
Her brother lets out a dry chuckle. “It’s Julita’s friend again. She did pick a persistent one. And just like her, you don’t appreciate what I’m trying to accomplish.”
A snort tumbles out of me despite my desperate situation. “What’s that—bringing on a second Great Retribution? Have you all forgotten that the gods wiped scourge sorcery out the first time around?”
Borys’s chuckle expands into a low laugh. “This isn’t scourge sorcery. Those imbeciles wasted potential. Snuffing out lives like that.” He snaps his fingers. “We’re finding out how much power we’re all capable of together.”
Is that what they’re telling themselves?
Gods help us, Julita mumbles. They’re the insane ones.
At least while I’ve got him talking, he’s not stabbing me again. “The All-Giver abandoned us over magic like this. Even if it’s not quite the same, are you really willing to take the chance?”
Borys scoffs. “We’re going back to what the gods meant this world to be. Energy and action and wildness. The scourge sorcerers five hundred years ago wanted to bend everyone to their will, make up more rules, control the realms—but the All-Giver wanted us to be free.”
For fuck’s sake. Julita’s voice starts to firm with a sharper edge. As if he knows the slightest thing about freedom.
“So instead you’ll send us into total chaos,” I retort.
“That’s how the world began. That’s what the All-Giver thrives on. The Great God truly wants us to have it all. You’ll see.”
Is that what the gods would honestly prefer? For me to release my magic with all the madness that’ll come with it?
What if that is why Kosmel led me so far and then left me to fend for myself?
I swallow against the dryness of my throat. I don’t know what’s right anymore—but I can’t make any decisions about it either way if I’m too unhinged to even care.
Don’t listen to him, Julita says, more forcefully than before. All he ever wanted is to get whatever he can for himself.
“Or rather, you won’t see,” Borys says, adjusting his grip on his dagger. “Because I need to get back to my work, and I can’t have you interfering again.”
As he shifts his stance to strike, my mind flashes back to Wendos in the All-Giver’s tower. Wendos, turning his back on me rather than closing in for the kill.
Borys is obviously the smarter one.
And how ridiculous that back then my magic saved me, and now it’ll only doom me.
Borys leaps at me. As I shove myself to the side to avoid his strike, Julita squirms in the back of my skull. We need him off-balance. My gift won’t help—he hasn’t told us to do anything. But there has to be a way…
Abruptly, her presence seems to stiffen. I can—we can do this, Ivy. I won’t let him cut you too. Be ready.
With those words, she throws herself forward in my head.
My instinct is to resist the wave of dizziness that sweeps over me. I recognize what it means. I’ve felt her uninvited attempts to take control before.
But she knows the man in front of me far better than I could. She’s got more of a plan than I do.
I let go, and Julita’s presence floods to the front of my mind. With her in control, my body scrambles backward down the hall.
Borys whirls on us, and Julita hurls out my voice in a tone that’s all her. “You haven’t grown at all since you were twelve, making me bleed with Wendos, have you, big brother?”
Borys goes rigid in mid stride. He stares at me.
Before he can decide it’s all a trick, Julita hurtles onward. “Oh, yes, it’s really me. And I haven’t forgotten a second of those midnight trips out to the woods—the time you used a sharpened stick instead of a proper blade, the time you scraped my skin raw with the rough edge of a rock.”
In my hazy state at the back of my mind, I wince in sympathy. My ghostly passenger has always avoided going into detail about the torment she suffered at the hands of her brother and his friend.
What I imagined was horrible. It’s worse hearing her describe it out loud.
Borys’s jaw drops for a second before he reels it in.
“Julita?” he says, his voice ragged with disbelief.
She makes a disparaging sound. “Wendos tried to murder me back in Florian, but neither of you understood how strong I am. I managed to hang on with the help of my friend. And I’ve been helping her pick away at your idiotic, psychotic uprising bit by bit.”
I’m not sure what she’s aiming for here. Maybe she’s simply letting out all her bottled-up anger.
But she told me to be ready. She must be going somewhere with this.
I have to watch for an opening.
Borys hasn’t quite let his guard down. He still holds his dagger in a fighting stance.
His eyes narrow. “This is some stupid trick. Or magic. Julita can’t really be here.”
“I’m sure you’d like to think so,” Julita says.
“But I know how you pissed yourself that time Dad’s stallion kicked you in the thigh when you were six.
I know the town boys beat you up on your ninth birthday when you tried to boss a bunch of them around like you were already a count.
I know that when you were ten, you ate slugs on a dare with Wendos and then vomited all over Mother’s favorite tablecloth. ”
“Shut up!” Borys’s eyes flash with fury. He steps closer, his jaw flexing. “You were never good for anything other than filling in when we had nothing better to practice on. I’ll just have to finish what Wendos started.”
“You have always been a spineless, pathetic bully who was too scared of taking responsibility to do anything worth respecting,” Julita spits back at him. “This woman is the best friend I’ve ever had, and you’re not taking her down with you.”
Borys lunges—and the tickle of Julita’s presence by my forehead heaves forward. My awareness jolts back into place in its wake just in time to see her brother clawing at his face as if there’s something in his eyes.
I don’t have time to figure out what’s happened. He isn’t looking at me—his knife hand is flailing aimlessly.
I spring forward, snatch his wrist, and wrench his arm around.
With a sickening sound, his own blade drives into the flesh at the base of his throat.
Borys’s body spasms in front of me. I dodge backward as he crumples over, spewing blood from his neck and lips.
He sputters something as if he’s trying to speak, but not with any words I can decipher. His hands fumble across the floor and drift to a halt.
His body sags, his head lolling to the side. The one eye I can see stares blankly at the wall.
Blood courses across the dusty floor in a steady current.
I got my gash, just like I wanted.
I suck in a shaky breath. “Julita? We did it. He’s dead.”
No one answers. And all at once, I realize I can’t feel her—not the familiar prickle at the back of my skull, not the faint trace of a tingle that lingers even when she pulls herself as deep as her presence can go.
She must have flung herself right out of me to smack Borys in the face with whatever presence she did have left.
She’s what he was clawing at, what distracted him enough that I could attack.
And now she’s gone.