Chapter 14
raw, guttural howl fills the darkness, and I don’t understand at first that it’s my voice. As I drag myself toward Cygnus, I’m commanding him over and over to live. Screaming that he is not allowed to die. Not like this. First, I need answers.
He’s fallen face down. It takes all my strength to heave him over. Ripping his shirt open, I discover a deep pincer slice across his pectoral and bicep. I rip another strip of the fabric and knot a tourniquet, hard. It won’t be enough. He’s lost so much blood already.
I reach for my magic, but there’s nothing left after that fight. The absence is like a missing limb. I can feel what I need to do, where the threads of his life force are withering, fading into nothingness.
Violent tremors take over my hands. I press my palms on the wound, and blood oozes around my fingers. “Please,” I’m begging, but to whom? The Gods? My Talent? Him? I press harder, and my vision blurs. It must hurt, because Cygnus’s eyes flutter open.
“Water,” he rasps.
“What?”
“Water,” he repeats, with even more strain.
“I know, I know, you’re probably thirsty….”
Cygnus’s eyes drift shut, and I can tell he’s fighting for every breath.“Takeussstothhhewater,” he slurs.
I finally understand.
Wobbling upright, I seize his good arm and one leg. Then—agonizingly slow—I drag him toward the gleaming onyx surface. It’s all I can do to get him knee-deep into the shallows. When we’re semi-submerged, I wait, shivering.
“What now?”
No answer from Cygnus. His eyes are closed, his face expressionless.
I realize he’s lost consciousness again. “NO!” I shake his shoulders, and when that fails, I slap him as hard as I can.
“Come back!” But he won’t rouse.
I look down at the water, and a wild idea seizes me. I drop to all fours, plunge my face into the lake, and start gulping down the icy contents as fast as I can. The taste of mud and ten-thousand-year-old bat shit almost upheaves my stomach, but I clamp down on it with an iron will. Keep going.
Another gulp. Another. I drink until my stomach is bursting, then pull up and gasp for air.
It’s working. It worked. I giggle in hysterical shock as warmth spreads from my stomach, like the first rays after a storm.
I don’t know why or how, but the river is healing me.
Strength surges back into my limbs. Then, like a familiar old friend, power bubbles through my skin, pooling in my palms. For once, I welcome the heat.
I hurry toward Cygnus. His life force has faded to embers, an emaciated ghost of a soul. I place a palm on his chest and bid my Talent to flow.
It’s not until it’s over that I realize I’m weeping.
After carrying Cygnus to the shore, I wait a long time for him to stir.
When he finally does, it starts slow: a twitch in his feet, a slight shift of his torso. Then finally he groans, reaching toward the wound on his shoulder.
“I’m not sure that’s done healing,” I say quietly. “You’ll want to be careful.”
Cygnus sits up and looks over at me. Swallows. Then he says roughly, “I should have told you they were down here.”
I burst out a laugh of complete disbelief. “You knew they were waiting for us?”
“Yes.”
If we hadn’t just cheated death, I would throttle him. As it is, I just sink my head into my hands. “All right—answers. Now. What is this place? How did the magic water just save us?”
Cygnus sighs, meeting my eye. “What do you know about the Everwell?”
My brow furrows. “Nothing?”
“Well…” He hauls in a deep breath. “The Everwell is believed to be the source of all magic. Legends say it was gifted to the Elves thousands of years ago by the Goddess Elowyn, and they built a temple and a series of gates to protect it.
“The entrances to the spring are guarded with spellcraft, so that only Elves with pure intentions can ever approach it. That, up there”—Cygnus gestures toward the portal we tumbled through—“is an Everwillow. To humans, it’s a regular tree.
But Elves used to travel back and forth between the spring and Evermore regularly.
After the war, Verdin ordered all Everwillows to be chopped down, during the same time he was hunting down fyrehounds.
But there is still one in the queen’s garden, maybe as a trophy.
Or maybe not. I’m not sure Davina or Rodrick even realize its significance. ”
“You said only Elves can enter?” I ask, instinctively glancing at his ears. They’re rounded.
Cygnus notices the glance and brushes his earlobe self-consciously.
“My mother was Elven. She was born here in the Hartlands, a few years before the Dornik invasion, and grew up during the Long War. Apparently, she had some personal grievances against the Elven royals. So she worked with Verdin selling secrets and became his most valuable spy. The information she leaked enabled the invasion of the Hartlands and eventually the fall of Evermore.”
His words leave me dumbstruck.
Out of all people, Cygnus is the last person I would expect to share my heritage. I can’t decide how I feel about it. Relieved? Angry? The idea of his mother selling Elven secrets fills me with a mix of disgust and pity for Cygnus.
“Where is your mother now?” I finally ask.
“She was killed by King Rodrick. I don’t know why, but he grew suspicious of her.
I was only an infant at the time, and the only thing I know about my father is that he was human.
Rodrick took me in as a ward of the Crown.
I assume my father is or was someone powerful, and he wanted me close enough to control. ”
I swallow, allowing this revelation to wash over me. “Did you…” I have so many questions, I’m not sure where to start. “Did you always know what you were?”
“No. I had no idea until I was sixteen. My ears look human and I have no bloodborne Talent. As far as I could tell growing up, there was no difference between me and the princes.” He takes another deep breath.
“As a child, I was taught to hate the Elves and everything they stood for. I truly believed Rodrick was making the world a better place. I was wholly committed to his mission and was training to be a Healer on the front lines.”
Cygnus’s gaze drifts toward the darkness.
“But on my sixteenth name day, Ragglestaff sat me down and told me about my mother. I was horrified. I went all the way to Belshire in Sontaag trying to escape it, like running away from him would change anything. But school is where I actually met Elves—refugees who had made a home in Sontaag—and began learning just how much I’d been misled.
Verdin tried to destroy all records of Evermore, but the libraries in Sontaag and Ursandor never burned; there’s thousands of years of recorded history showing humans and Elves coexisting in peace.
There was never any threat of Elven domination.
There was no secret council of magic wielders trying to take over the world.
The story was entirely fabricated by Verdin to justify his conquest. Without Verdish imperialism, we’d still have peace in the Midlands today. ”
“It took you sixteen years to put that together?” I can’t keep the judgment out of my voice.
“I know. Believe me, I’m ashamed.” Cygnus hesitates. “But we don’t know what we don’t know, do we? I had no reason to question my worldview.”
I think of Mother and how much she has withheld from me—an ever-lengthening list. Does she know about Everwillows? Does she know King Verdin worked with an Elf? Did she know Cygnus’s mother? I feel sick.
“When I came back from school, I saw everything differently,” Cygnus continues.
“I couldn’t look at anyone the same way.
The people who raised me, people I thought were brothers and friends, they were all complicit in the empire’s crimes.
I was complicit. And I just became so angry all the time. I still am.”
He closes his eyes and then starts shaking softly.
“While I was relearning my worldview and becoming a Healer, Finn was training to be his father’s perfect weapon.
When I completed my schooling and returned to Crown City, I realized I no longer had anything in common with my best friend. Maybe I never did.”
As this painful thought seeps through me, he goes on.
“I changed career course right away. I told the Crown I wasn’t interested in the military anymore and convinced the queen to appoint me to the royal hospital instead.
At that point, our facilities were almost laughably inadequate.
The post was a huge step back in prestige.
People thought I was insane. But I didn’t care.
I couldn’t stomach supporting the expansion, and I was desperate to actually help people.
I stayed on the Thornes’ good side, and gradually, I used my influence to divert more resources to the hospital.
We opened up more and more beds to the public, until it became what it is today. ”
I try to absorb this. “So, that’s what the hospital is to you? Penance?”
“It’s my chance to make the world just a little bit better,” he says fiercely. “I can’t undo who I was for those years. I can’t get back lost time. All I can do is be better tomorrow, and the day after. I can try. That’s all any of us can do.”
My chest tightens against the truth in his words.
“After I came back”—Cygnus shakes his head—“I can’t even describe how lonely I have been. I can’t trust anyone. Even when people are kind to me, I’ll be wondering deep down if they’d hate me if they found out the truth.”
I’m all too familiar with the feeling.
I’m struck by the same sense I had when I found Dante in the garden: overwhelmed with empathy for someone I recognize myself in.
“All my life, there’s only been one thing I could rely on to make me feel better.
It might sound strange, but it’s studying.
That’s what I do best. It’s the only thing I’m really good at.
So, when I was feeling terrible, I decided to do something about it.
I dug into the royal archives and searched for anything I could find about Elven history, which was not much.
I started asking questions, and subtly interviewing patients, and eventually I figured out what’s really happening in Ursandor. ”
Chills rise as I recall what Finn told me in the garden. I need Cygnus’s confirmation to fully believe it. “Which is what, exactly?”
“They’re helping the Elves raise an army.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling like my skin is tightening.
My ribs threaten to compress my lungs, and a dark pit has formed in my gut, an emerging black hole of dread.
I think of the plague and Ragglestaff’s scribbles of PAIN.
SO MUCH PAIN. If the Elves are working with Ursandor, does that mean they are part of spreading it?
Is that the price of regaining our freedom?
Would the innocent become collateral damage?
Cygnus explains, “Elves have been centralizing in Ursandor for years now, streaming in from all over the Midlands. From Sontaag and Dasken and Sulnik. Even people like us, who’ve been hiding in Verdinae. They’re all coming to fight for Evermore.”
I feel like I’m choking on conflicting emotions. “Why…why is Ursandor getting involved?”
“Because Rodrick is winning,” Cygnus says simply, his voice hard.
“He wants to finish what Verdin started, and he’s not far from achieving it.
Sulnik’s almost completely under his thumb.
Dasken has all but surrendered their sovereignty.
Sontaag is just a loose republic—all the free cities are individually wealthy, but their coordination is piss-poor.
In less than a year, Verdinae’s taken a third of their territory.
They’re not going to hold out much longer.
And then it’s just Ursandor against the rest of the Midlands. ”
“What are they waiting for?” I ask, still trying to make sense of this. “Why don’t the Elves strike while Rodrick’s attention is diverted?”
“That’s the plan: attack when Verdinae is weakest. But all the stars have to align, and there’s a lot of moving pieces. Mainly, they’ve got to find the Evermoreans first.”
My knees wobble. The world pitches—
“What did you just say?”
“The Evermoreans,” he repeats. “The Elves of Evermore.”
“I know what it means!” I shout. “The Evermoreans are gone.”
Cygnus just blinks. “The Evermoreans aren’t gone,” he says. “They’ve been under your feet this whole time.”