Chapter 46 Arwyn
ARWYN
Asteady, high-pitched beep dragged me out of my sleep.
I woke to sheets tangled around my damp body, tucked so tightly at my sides that my initial reaction was to fight.
Rough, guiding hands fought against my bare torso, pushing me back down onto the cloud beneath me. Someone was shouting something, but it was hard to hear a word when the beeping bounced around my skull.
“Don’t be an idiot, Arwyn.”
My eyes were dry, seemingly glued shut. Something was down my throat, rubbing against raw flesh that ached as I tried to scream.
“Lie back down!”
Light blinded me, so stark and brilliantly white that I thought I’d finally made it to heaven.
Once it settled, the blurred outline of a face came into view.
I blinked back the tears, gagged on my pleas caught at the base of my throat, and found that my momentary strength faded like ash on the wind.
Romy was beside me, her hands forged against either side of my bare chest. She urged me back down against the bed, deep creases cut across her brow. “Please.” Tears rolled down from her familiar eyes. “You need to rest, or you’ll undo all their hard work.”
Whose hard work?
The last thing I remembered was catching faint glimpses of Hector as he sat at my bedside. But that room had been dark, the air ladened with dust and age. This place was sterile and clean, so much that I could practically taste lemon across my dry tongue.
I began to look around when the choking began.
It was like a snake had burrowed its way in my throat, slowly sinking to see how far it could travel into my body.
Romy was desperate, but not as much as me.
I clawed at the slimy beast in my mouth, tugging it out with numb fingers.
As I pulled, I could feel every inch of where it clung, which made me gag harder, encouraging bile to follow with it.
Relief was short-lived. I sucked in a breath, trying to fill my lungs and cope with the ache. What was in my hands was not a snake, but a tube. It hissed like the serpent I thought it had been, except the noise was wasted air from a canister at my bedside.
It was a breathing tube.
I dropped it to the floor, clasping my tingling fingers around my throat. That was when I noticed more wire-like contraptions attached to my arms, and other places hidden beneath the thin sheet.
“Is. This. A. Trial,” I gasped, forcing each word out with determination.
Romy looked at me, eyes wet and glistening. “No.”
“Where. Am…”
“Hector banished us from the Witch Trials, Arwyn. We’re back in London.”
Both statements seemed impossible, but as my sight steadied, I could make out that the room we were in was almost pure white.
The floor, the walls, and the ceiling blended into one.
It looked like a hospital, except it was small and empty.
Besides my cot, the only other one I could see was to my side.
Sheets had been lifted over the outline of a body.
I could only just see a glimpse of shocking red hair poking out the top.
“Hector,” I cried out, spit dribbling down my lips. I could taste blood, maybe from a nick the air tube had left in my throat. “Where is—”
“I just told you,” Romy snapped through her river of tears. “He banished us. He used Bahmet’s magic against us, and sent us packing.”
I looked back to the other bed, my foggy mind piecing together who was laid beneath the sheet.
Romy clocked it, cleaning her cheeks with the back of her hand.
“Kai forfeited the magic keeping him alive. He is… dying. We got here in enough time for the healers to hook him up to machines that will keep his heart beating. But I don’t—” Romy screwed her eyes shut and looked away as if the vision before her was too much to bear.
“Without those machines he’d be dead already. ”
I reached for her hand, taking it in mine. I noticed that a few of my fingers were bandaged, where the others were mottled with bruises so vicious it would make an artist jealous of the colours.
“What can I do?” I asked, voice hoarse.
Romy shook her head, her eyes still closed whilst her fingers unfurled enough for me to get a better grasp.
“Until Hector wins the Witch Trials, there’s nothing that can be done.
We have witches trying to send messages into Bahmet’s realm, whilst the majority are still out of these walls attempting to grapple with peace between our kind and the world. It’s in shambles out there.”
I’d never liked the feeling of helplessness before. It was rotten and poisonous, and ate away at me from the inside. In truth, I wanted to get out of this bed and tear the fucking walls down, claw my way back to Hector and do something… anything.
But I knew better. My body was weak, both hot and cold. No doubt some sort of infection was inside of me. I couldn’t begin to comprehend how much time had passed since the previous trial, but my body and soul suggested it had been a while.
“He stayed behind… to win?”
Romy opened her eyes again, the whites stained red. “Hector knows that Tomin can’t win without a witch. He also knows we need Bahmet’s sway to save witch-kind.”
“Again,” I gasped, thinking back to Eleanor Letcombe.
“Yes, again.”
My ears pricked at the sound of footsteps. Romy noticed, her head turning slightly to the side. A door opened, the footsteps growing closer. Then a face, so similar to the one before me except older, but equally as exhausted, came into view.
“He’s finally awake,” Verena said, keeping a cautious distance from her daughter. “Good.”
I could read in Romy’s reaction that she was uncomfortable, and yet her body seemed to lean slightly towards her mother, as the pull of a compass was always pointing in the direction of true north. “Any news?”
Verena shook her head. “We have eyes on the White Tower, and no one has passed through the gate yet. The second we get word that Hector has returned, we will know about it.”
“And my… father?” I asked, not because I cared about his well-being, but because he’d not been mentioned yet. Kai, Romy and Verena had made it out, which left Hector and my dad. I needed to hear someone acknowledge him.
“Still to be determined,” Verena confirmed, firm and factual. “Time works, as we’ve determined, slightly different during the Witch Trials. What is a day within Bahmet’s realm may only be a matter of hours here. Rest assured, the moment we are tipped off that Hector has returned, we will go.”
I kicked my legs over the bed, ready to pounce. I wasn’t happy just waiting here, knowing that any second Hector could return, and it wouldn’t be my face that he would see.
“Steady,” Verena said. “You’re in no position to go running about yet, Arwyn.
Not only have the bones in your fingers barely set from their breakage, you got yourself a rather impressive blood infection.
You might feel strong, but that’s just the adrenaline.
Once that fades, you’ll be useless to our cause. ”
My lip curled over my teeth, a reaction I couldn’t control. “And what cause are you talking about?”
Verena and Romy shared a look. It was brief, but long enough for me to sense the unspoken tension.
“Spit it out!” I shouted, feeling anything but weak now adrenaline was coursing through me.
“Kai and Hector have a plan.” Romy took control; perhaps she knew it would be better coming from her. “I barely got the bare minimum of information about it before Kai lost consciousness, but I have to trust that they know what they’re doing.”
It wasn’t good enough. Not for me.
“Tell me,” I growled. “Everything.”
And so they did. When Romy couldn’t finish speaking, Verena took charge. She told me of their brief encounter when Hector went to save her from my father. She recited their conversation as best she could. Romy told me about what happened after she traded places with Hector.
I think they believed it would calm me. That a normal person would take the information they provided, and let it settle into their bones.
However, I was no normal person.
By the time they finished recounting the little information they had about Hector and Kai’s desperate plan, I was tearing the remaining wires and tubes from my body, and throwing myself out of the bed.
Blood spluttered from the cannula I ripped out of both my arms. My bandages tore from my rushed movements.
I barely heard their attempts to stop me. My head was full of the final words they’d said.
And so, I was running. Barrelling out the door into a corridor full of startled witches. I had no knowledge of how to get out of the secret base, but I trusted I would find it eventually.
I didn’t bother looking behind me to see if either of them followed. No one had lived with the devilish whisper of Bahmet inside of their head. No one but me had battled against his will, and discovered just how alluring the promise of his dark power could be.
My only focus was getting to the White Tower as soon as possible. I had to reach the stone gate before Hector came through it. Not so I could see him first or welcome him home with praise and celebration that he won.
No.
Because I had to save him from what waited on the other side when he finally made it.