Chapter 36 #2
How could I have been so reckless?
I want to blame that frosted callous on my heart, the ugly streak disfiguring my hair – but no. I’m not lost to Shadow yet; I’m still in possession of my reason; I know right from wrong; and I have to take responsibility for my mistakes.
Mistakes I can’t let happen again.
*
IT’S TIME TO go. Briar raises her head, watching me from the corner of the cabin she’s claimed as her own.
Again, a stab of regret low in my gut, a burning behind my eyes, as I meet her stare.
I force myself to go to her, bending low to stroke her muzzle.
‘I won’t forget your sacrifices. And if I live through this, I’ll see the Arx Magnum bled, as he bled you. ’
Briar noses into my palm. We stay like that for a lingering moment before I turn for the door, ready to join the others who are waiting outside, already a little distance up the mountain.
Except one of them isn’t. Blayze is blocking the doorway.
I search over his shoulder, but he’s alone – not even Serafine with him.
He shifts his weight onto his walking staff. ‘I told the others I forgot something. We should talk. We might not get another chance.’
‘Talk?’
‘Clear the air. I was pretty out of it, Sparkles. But not so much I don’t remember what happened.’ His gaze drops to my lips.
I look away, down at the icy floor. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. I—’
‘That forgettable, am I?’
My eyes snap up. He’s laughing at me. Of course he is.
‘Were you just going to lie to yourself, pretend it never happened?’ He’s baiting me, but there’s something earnest in the way the slash of his brows are drawing together, in the purse of his lips.
‘It was a mistake,’ I mutter, heat flooding my cheeks. ‘Call it survivor relief – some kind of madness.’ I clear my throat. ‘And if we’re talking about lying, you’re the one who’s got explaining to do.’
A muscle ticks in his jaw. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I know.’ I enunciate the words slowly, eyes drifting to his torc. ‘I know what you are, Blayze Arcuri. Why you wear that collar.’
He staggers against the open door. Now he’s the one unable to look at me. ‘How?’
‘Tansy told Maris to remove it while you lay unconscious. To help you breathe.’
His eyes grow wide, desperate. ‘Do the others—’
‘I don’t think so. No one’s said anything, and I put it back on, once you were out of danger.’
Blayze exhales. His self-loathing is so evident, it makes me bristle. Who is Blayze to sit in judgement of me? But then I remember the secrets I’m keeping, and the fury winks out, replaced by the sour writhe of guilt. Looping my fingers through the straps of my pack, I straighten my spine.
‘Don’t worry, Clanschief. Your secret’s safe with me.’
‘I—’
‘We’d best be going, don’t you think?’ I go to push past him, but he places a hand on my waist, restraining me.
‘You’re sure it was a mistake?’ Warm lips brush the shell of my ear.
I shiver and turn to face him, expecting to see that mocking smile again. But his expression is… pained. Mere inches separate us now.
Too little. Too much.
‘Maris…’ I croak, voice embarrassingly husky. I say her name as much to remind myself, as him. I can’t betray her again. I won’t.
He shrugs. ‘What she and I had was only a bit of fun.’
I step away from him. ‘Things change. People change.’
‘Have you changed your mind about Astrophel, then? Is that it?’
I open my mouth. Close it again. Yes – no. I don’t know. This near to him, I can only think of Blayze. He eclipses everyone else.
‘I know you feel it,’ he says, when I don’t reply. ‘You kissed me back, Sparkles.’
‘It’s the pull of the brandmagic.’ I push against his hand, try to strain past him. ‘That’s all it is. All it ever was.’
He leans in closer. ‘Fine, deny it if you want to.’
I’m afraid to move, afraid of how badly I want to close the gap between us, to feel his lips on mine again. When I take my next breath, it’s ragged as the fraying ribbon I lost to the ice.
Blayze cocks his brow. ‘I knew it. I can always tell when someone wants me.’
Starshine itches my palms. Oh, I want him all right, I want to slap him. ‘The women in Oralia must be less picky in their bed-mates. I do not—’
A dangerous glint lights his eyes. ‘Who said it’s always women, Sparkles?
And I assure you, anyone who’s ever visited my bed came there willingly, and left more than satisfied.
I was never lonely in the pit. Not in that way.
’ He pauses, swallows. ‘You think I want to feel this way about you? A spoilt, stuck-up Starspawn? It would be easier to go back to hating you. Don’t think I haven’t tried.
’ He shakes his head, a bitter smile curving his lips.
‘You’re right. That lightning must have addled my brain.
What sane man would choose you over Maris? ’
My breath catches low in my throat.
‘I didn’t mean that,’ he says quickly, sagging against the doorway again. He stares at the floor, the fire in his eyes doused, replaced by the anguished expression they radiate every time brandmagic is mentioned.
Silence unspools between us.
‘For what it’s worth, I did want to tell you,’ he says, at last. He’s still looking at the ground, but his voice is gentler.
‘I tried that night we searched for Fifi together. And again, in Galtair, after I did whatever I did to your starshine. But it’s hard to say it aloud.
’ His lips twist. ‘I wasn’t born like this… ’
I fold my arms. A freak, he means. Like me.
‘The mark appeared after I journeyed to the Burning Mountain to retrieve ignastium for my father. As soon as I gathered the ore, it sparked something.’
‘I thought the Sistertouched were born not made?’ The question bubbles up before I can stop it. Piqued interest winning out over hurt pride.
Blayze spreads his arms. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been able to tell anyone, to ask them what was happening to me.
For scorchings now, I’ve been living a lie.
’ He sighs. ‘At first, it was just the mark, but slowly my strength grew. I hid the extent of it, used it to my advantage in the fighting pits. But stifling all that power took its toll. That’s when I turned to dreamroot.
’ His arm, the one not holding his walking staff, falls slack at his side.
‘It started as a way to take the edge off, to quiet my racing mind, to still my thrumming body – to sleep. But then it sank its claws in. Soon enough, I couldn’t go a night without it.
’ Storm clouds gather in his eyes. ‘It cost me. It cost me bitterly.’
Understanding dawns. Sweat is beading his forehead. Sweat that shouldn’t be there. The fever is long past, and it’s freezing on the mountain. I remember his darting gaze, his inability to sit still. Ever since Galtair, when his dreamroot was confiscated by the Arx Magnum.
Blayze is an addict.
‘Can you fireweave – metalbend?’ I blurt the words out, still trying to process this latest revelation. The Branded have unique magical fingerprints; our abilities manifest differently, and I’ve no real understanding of the powers of the Flameborn.
Izarius once mentioned Arden could manipulate fire and metal, but then she, like the rest of the Elemagi, was no ordinary member of the Branded.
Dabbling in Shadow Lore conferred greater powers on them all.
They could wield abilities connected to all four Aethers after their Blood Bond.
For the normal Sistertouched that’s impossible.
Like succumbing to Shadow, trying to appropriate the powers of an Aether we’ve no affinity for cracks something in the mind and body, eats our magic away, leaving behind a damaged shell.
Husks, they called them, the Branded foolhardy enough to have tried.
Blayze shakes his head ‘No. At least – I’m not sure.
I don’t know what I did to your light in Galtair; I’ve never done anything like that before.
I’ve always had a natural flair for metalwork, but I’ve never been able to conjure fire or manipulate ores outside the forge.
I tried once or twice, in secret, but…’ He flexes his hand.
Sunlight glances over the burn-scars there.
Not accidents; failed experiments.
Blayze tugs as his torc. ‘I hid the brand the moment I returned to the Necropole. I’ve been trying to curb my powers ever since.
If anyone had seen, found out… well, I told you what the clans did to our kind.
’ His mouth twists again. ‘That’s why I took the book, the one you found in my pack.
It was Arden’s once, gifted to her by your ancestor, so legend claims. Forgotten when she fled the Fortress.
Before then, they say it belonged to the Sisters themselves.
Thank the Flame, Astrophel didn’t leave it in Galtair. ’
My chest tightens, giddiness sweeps through me, and I have to grind my heels into the floor to stay upright.
But it’s not the altitude, not the tincture wearing off.
Not this time. The Book of Mysteries – the focus of all my childhood dreams, the means to rid myself of magic: it’s here, now, right in front of me.
Inches away, in the pack slung casually over Blayze’s left shoulder.
‘My forefathers tried to burn it – but it can’t be destroyed.
Not by mortal hands or flame, anyway.’ Thankfully, Blayze is still staring at the floor, else he’d see the shock that must be written all over my face.
‘It’s in some ancient language I can’t read, but Arden annotated parts in Flametongue, fragments of a key.
I took it when I was made Clanschief, hoping that if I could learn to decipher it, it might tell me how to reverse this. How to rid myself of this… this…’
‘I get it,’ I choke. ‘You think I’m – we’re – monsters.
’ Hearing Blayze talk like this – like me, a few moonscycles ago, when I fled Meissa in search of this very book – makes me realise I’m not that girl anymore.
Experiences carve out a person, and I’ve been whittled into something new in the course of our journey, just as surely as Blayze whittled that pine branch into a walking staff.
I no longer think the star silvering my wrist makes me any less human, any less worthy. Any more cursed.
I shudder, fingers drifting to my ruined hair. Or perhaps that’s only because I’m well and truly star-damned now.
Blayze’s eyes are more tortured than ever as he steps towards me. ‘Sparkles, I—’
But whatever he was about to say dies on his lips at the sound of approaching boots.
Astrophel rounds the corner. ‘Are you all right?’ He looks first at me, then at Blayze.
Blayze gestures to his staff. ‘Just a little slow since I got torched.’ He attempts a laugh, but Astrophel’s eyes narrow.
His aura flashes green, though the creep of jealousy clears as quickly as my blurred vision after reading it.
‘Well, come on. Everyone’s waiting and it’s freezing.
’ He gives me a pressing look that speaks of my mother, acknowledging we’ve no time to lose.
I breathe a silent sigh of relief, grateful to him for lessening the burden of that secret at least, for sharing my heartache. Grateful too, that though Astrophel might suspect there’s something between Blayze and me, he doesn’t know. Not for sure.
Because there’s nothing to know. That kiss was a mistake – one I won’t be repeating. I need the Quaternity united to find the lost sceptre. The last thing I want is to drive wedges between us, especially now we’re so close to finding it.
And Blayze is so consumed with self-loathing, hates our shared magic so much, he can’t possibly feel anything for me. He’s confused, misreading our brand-connection, just like I did.
As I trudge behind Astrophel to rejoin the others, my steps clumsy and faltering thanks to the ice-shoes, I studiously ignore my skipping heart, the part of me that wishes Astrophel hadn’t interrupted us.
We round a large boulder, and something glints on the snow, catching my eye.
I stoop to pick it up. A button. Mother-of-pearl, carved with strange markings.
I look closer: tongues of flame circling a central motif that’s no longer legible.
I shudder, slip the button into my cloak pocket, and search the mountain.
Arden.
No tracks, no sign of her, but she was here. The button is proof she was within feet of us. However else the Shadow Mark might be corrupting me, I’m not yet losing my mind.
I lift my gaze to the sharp peak towering above us and set aside all misgivings about starting our ascent.
Yes, this button is proof.
I made the right decision.