Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
GWENNA
The third day is strangely calm.
I wake up what feels like late in the day, but with my phone long dead, there’s no way to tell.
With nowhere to go, nowhere to be, I sit in the Camlann House living room and watch as, wordlessly, Kingston throws one log, then another, into the fireplace.
He’s the only one up and around; Kai is still asleep, Lanz is nowhere to be seen, and Callahan appeared just briefly before slipping to the kitchen, muttering about trying to light the stove.
I shiver as Kingston strikes the match. From cold. From something else. I stare, unseeing, as the little blade of flame bites into the kindling and crumpled paper, fanning up and over until it’s enveloped the logs, picking away at the thick bark with fizzing pops of smoke.
Kingston watches a moment, then rises from his crouch.
The bright gold of the fire is stark, and the hard edge of the shadows make his face look unusually serious.
Grim, almost. I tuck my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around myself, and when he looks back at me, I see the same question in his golden-brown eyes that’s cutting into my mind.
What’s going on?
Before either of us can speak, there’s a knock at the door. I shift to get up, but Kingston signals me to stay put, and strides out to the foyer himself. I retreat, a brief spike of panic in my chest about who might be at the door until I hear Kingston’s voice.
“Professor,” he says. “I—please. Come in.”
There’s the stamping of boots and the click of the door, and I rise to see Dr. Emrys, swathed in an overcoat and looking nonplussed in the gold halo of some sort of oil lantern.
“Oh. Dr. Emrys. Hello.” I blink, feeling a bit stupid and self-conscious.
Even though I know college professors are real people—you know, fellow adults with lives and routines outside the classroom—seeing one in a new context like this still feels as strange as seeing your first-grade teacher at the grocery store.
Even under these circumstances. Or perhaps especially under these circumstances.
“Ms. Vale.” He nods. “I thought I’d pay you a visit, if it’s not too presumptuous to arrive unannounced.”
“Of course not,” Kingston answers. “May I?” He gestures for the professor’s coat, and Emrys obliges as I move aside for him to come in properly, to the small but steady zone of warmth and light around the fireplace.
“You’ll just have to excuse us for not setting out a spread,” I joke, nervously weaving and unweaving my fingers in front of my waist. “Unless Cal’s figured out a way to boil water.”
Outside, the wind howls. Emrys waves a hand in the air as he settles on the couch.
“Perish the thought. I am amply content with nothing more than your company.” He looks from me to Kingston, who’s returned from the hall and sunken into an armchair, hunched slightly, a hand to his fist.
“Something’s wrong.”
Emrys nods.
“Magic?” Kingston asks. “It has to be. Right?”
Emrys hesitates.
“This is far beyond the realm of mere spellcraft, I fear,” he says at last. “No hex could do this, certainly.”
“A ward?” Kingston asks. “There’s…one on Camlann House. I think.” He looks sheepish, like it’s not something meant to be discussed in polite company.
Emrys shakes his head. “No, no, a ward would be protective. Although interesting that your White Brothers would allow such a thing.”
“It’s protective,” Kingston mutters. “For us.” He looks back up. “A curse?”
Again, Emrys shakes his head.
“What’s the difference?” I ask suddenly. “Between those all of these…spells?” I guess.
“Yes. Spells. And it’s a good question.” Emrys leans back in his seat, as if glad to have something more neutral to talk about.
“A spell’s any sort of magical effect, of any valence, strength, or duration, that’s made manifest by specific actions—a catchall term, you might say.
Wards are binding magic to, as I mentioned, protect a given place—those may be active or dormant, depending.
Hexes are small, irksome spells that dog one person in particular, but only for a short while.
Unfortunate, but impermanent. But curses…
curses are much more. They cling to a person—to a bloodline, even. Like…like…” He frowns, searching.
“Like they’re genetic?” I offer, and too late, realize what I’ve said, said in front of Kingston. Someone who has a genetic disorder, who is both the person he is and an orphan because of what runs in his blood.
But if he hears me, if he notices, he doesn’t show it.
Emrys, for his part, nods. “Yes, mostly, save that a curse may be broken. Must be able to be broken, in fact—equipped with a sort of failsafe in the binding of the curse itself. They are…” He waves his fingers through the air, again casting about for the right words.
“Riddle-like, in that sense. Poetic. Precisely why they are so difficult to craft correctly—takes a devilishly clever mind to work out the puzzle-box of it all, on top of all the magical skill needed to execute. But”—he lifts his palms—“I digress. This is no curse.”
Again, the wind howls. I shiver. Even two sweaters feels insufficient.
“Then what is it?” Kingston’s words are terse. “What’s going on?”
“I fear I can only guess,” Emrys says. “But I suspect my guess and yours may be the same.”
Kingston’s silent a long moment. “I just said I don’t know. I don’t have a guess.”
I scoff out loud before I can stop myself. Kingston frowns. “What?”
“Come on,” I say, and my voice is trembling when I speak. “You do. Of course you do. You’re not stupid, Kingston. You’re just…in denial.”
His face stays blank. So I suck in a breath, clasp my hands tightly in my lap, and look at Emrys.
“It’s me, isn’t it?”
Both men look up at me. Emrys with warmth, sadness, a kind of resigned pride. Kingston with concern—no, panic, almost. Desperation.
“It’s me,” I say again, no question this time. “The Spring Maiden, the Grail, the viriditas, whatever it is I’m supposed to have. Or be. I don’t have it, I’m not it, it isn’t here, and everything is dying.”
There. The thoughts I’ve been holding in my head and my heart for the past however many hours and hours of darkness have poured out of me, rushed out of me, so hard and fast I feel like I’m going to choke.
“It has to be me,” I finish. “Doesn’t it?”
Nothing.
“Doesn’t it?”
I’m shouting.
“No,” Kingston says sharply. “No. I won’t let it—”
“Won’t let it?” I cry. “It’s not up to you, Kingston. It’s up to—I don’t know, God, or nature, or the universe. If Moroslav had just killed me in that church—”
“Which he didn’t,” Kingston interrupts, and doesn’t apologize for once. “Because I won’t—we won’t—”
He stops, suddenly, mid-sentence. Moves his mouth, but says nothing. His golden-brown eyes go wide, panicked, and he looks at Emrys, at me…
What’s wrong? I ask.
No, try to ask. Because I can’t speak either.
Click.
Emrys snaps his fingers. Kingston gasps, and so do I, my throat uncomfortably warm like I’ve just gulped a scalding cup of tea.
“Apologies,” Emrys says. “But I had to intervene.”
Kingston rubs the front of his throat, his face the closest to a scowl I’ve ever seen.
For my part, I’m too astonished to be mad. I knew Emrys was a mage—a theoretical mage, as he put it—but I’d never actually seen him cast a spell. “Since when can you do things like that?”
“Oh, forever.” Emrys shrugs. “I’m adept at party tricks, and that’s about it. Try not to deploy them unless absolutely necessary—although you have no idea how tempted I am to use that in class from time to time.” He exhales. “Can we proceed civilly?”
Kingston nods. I do, too.
“Thank you. Now, as I was hoping to ask—and I am truly, sincerely loath to ask it—but ask I must.” He levies his even gaze at me. “How, exactly, did they try to kill you, Ms. Vale?”
The question knocks the wind out of me. The kind of thing I haven’t been asked since Roaring Brook, demanding a memory so heavy I can barely turn it over in my mind without the weight of it crushing me.
But I suppose I have no choice. So I try. Eyes closed, hands on my knees.
“They put me in the church,” I recite. “It was full of flowers. Icons. The throne. And they put me in…”
My memory wavers, remembering the girls ripping off my clothes, my naked skin in the chill air of the sanctuary, their strange songs and eerie laughter…
“In…”
I can’t do it. My eyes fly open. And when I do, Kingston is staring at me from across the dark room.
“Wait here,” he says.
He takes a taper candle from the mantel, lights it in the flames, and disappears—disappears downstairs, I realize. Far downstairs. To the secret heart of Camlann House.
When he returns, he’s holding something.
Folds and folds of red fabric, embroidered in bright blues and yellows. A flat red disc, glimmering...
My stomach seizes. It's the clothes. Those clothes. The ones they put on me in the church, the wretched dress and heavy crown that went on my head.
I didn't realize he'd saved them. As soon as we'd secured some normal clothing for me back on the mainland, I'd cast them off like they were burning me. I'd assumed they'd been thrown out.
"These," Kingston says simply, and sets them on the coffee table. “They put her in these.”
Emrys keeps his brows knit, leaning over the material like they’re some sort of ancient artifact--which, for all we know, they are—and examining them in the flickering firelight. “I see.” He looks to me. “Did they elaborate on the…nature of these items, Ms. Vale?”
Kingston, too, looks at me.
"Not really,” I admit. Now that I know it's here, out on the table, I can't look away. My eyes are glued to this strange costume, transfixed. “They didn’t explain much.” Or maybe I can’t remember much. “Mostly the part where I had to..." I hesitate. "To die."
"Hm." Emrys nods. "I presume there's some ritual meaning to these. But whether symbolic, representative, or--"
"Imbued?" Kingston finishes for him. Emrys nods.
“Yes.”
I frown. "I don't follow."