Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Nova
“I need to go for a walk.”
Thalia’s brows rose immediately in suspicion.
“My dog is…restless.”
Phantom lifted his head and cocked it briefly, curiously at me, but then he began to play the part without questioning it, hopping to his feet and spinning around in circles. He was acting, at first, until his tail actually swept across the tip of his nose—then I think he began chasing it in earnest.
I cleared my throat.
He stopped with his jaws opened wide, an instant from snapping his teeth around his tail. He read my unspoken command and then darted off down the hill.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, rushing after him.
I felt Thalia’s stare like a physical weight against the back of my neck. But whether because of confusion, curiosity, or mere indifference, she didn’t attempt to stop me.
I caught up with Phantom at the bottom of the hill. He started to slow, but I subtly encouraged him to keep running. I didn’t look back to see if any of the others were watching my retreat, not wanting to see the questions on their faces; I was already dealing with too many questions of my own.
We ran for several minutes, Phantom leading the way, before I slowed to a brisk walk to catch my breath.
He circled back at an easy lope. ( Where are we going? )
“I’m not sure.” I wrapped my arms around myself, huddling against the cold, and walked faster. “Just…away. I’m testing something.”
Part of me wanted to simply keep running into the depths, regardless of what became of the things I left behind. It had been easier when it was just Phantom and me on this mad, impossible journey—or maybe I’d just gotten used to it only being the two of us on all our missions.
I supposed familiar and easier felt the same, sometimes.
“I want to see what happens when my magic isn’t near Aleksander, influencing whatever impact his power might have on this realm,” I explained to Phantom.
I don’t know how far we traveled—over a mile, at least—before something finally happened: A trembling in the ground. Faint, but unmistakable. I watched as it rattled the rocks around my boots and sent little puffs of dirt into the air.
I stopped in my tracks, the heavy truth of the situation settling over me. Though the path ahead stretched wide and empty, it felt like I’d just had a massive iron gate slammed in my face.
Phantom must have felt it, too; he skidded to a stop and spun back toward the ones we’d left behind.
Holding my breath, I turned and looked back as well.
A light was shining far in the distance, like the only star twinkling on an otherwise empty horizon—one that was growing larger and bolder with every passing second.
“Damn it,” I muttered.
I tried to turn away from the sight, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk any farther.
Now what?
Even without staring directly at it, the glow soon became impossible to ignore. The light flickered and expanded, flickered and expanded, over and over—now a star getting dangerously close to explosion.
Magic .
It had to be Aleksander’s magic; I had yet to see anything else in this realm even come close to the brightness he created.
And I couldn’t just pretend I didn’t see it.
Going against nearly every instinct I possessed, I turned back toward the others and set off at a jog that quickly transitioned into a sprint.
Even running as fast as I could, Phantom kept getting far ahead and having to circle back. Finally, he shifted into a larger version of his canine self and swept in front of me, forcing me to a stop.
( You aren’t fast enough, ) he said pointedly.
I hesitated, only until I remembered how much more solid he’d become since arriving in this realm. Steeling my nerves, I grabbed a fistful of the fur around the ruff of his neck and hoisted myself onto his back.
He bolted forward, nearly flinging me off as he did.
It took effort, but after a few seconds, I managed to balance between his shoulder blades and stay there. Keeping my balance required staying low against his body, however, so I was mostly blind as we raced back across the dark landscape, my face buried in his silky, wind-swept fur.
But I didn’t need to see the destruction to know we were approaching it.
I could feel it.
It was no longer a mere trembling, but a steady wave of power rippling through the ground, making it buckle and sway. The power was overwhelming, but the heat was worse; my lungs seemed to expand with every inhale of the searing air until they felt close to bursting.
I continued to press my face into Phantom’s strong back as he unleashed a cold wave of energy. For most, that energy was a warning, a disorienting shock to their system. For me, it provided a familiar jolt of comfort—enough to bring me back to my senses. Lifting my head, I squinted in the direction where most of the heat and power seemed to be originating from.
I spotted Aleksander kneeling in the center of a storm of Light energy, his head bowed and his eyes closed.
The others were nowhere in sight.
A terrible thought clutched me—had a part of this world already broken apart and swallowed them up?
Just like the world swallowed up my father and so many others seven years ago…
It all felt so similar to the night in Rose Point—only with our roles reversed. Here Aleksander was, in a world that didn’t embrace his magic, same as I’d been that night. And now the power he channeled was threatening to rip the realm apart at the seams.
But what did it all mean ?
I didn’t know what to think, or what to do. But if I didn’t do something , then there was a very good chance neither of us would live to figure any of it out.
“Get me closer!” I told Phantom, shouting to be heard over the crackling and hissing of magic.
He hesitated for a beat before following the command, bouncing precariously over the rolling ground, dodging bolts of Light energy as they struck the shaking earth all around us. A particularly violent crack of energy lashed the dirt right in front of us and Phantom jumped straight up, his reflexes suddenly more cat-like than dog-like.
My grip on his fur slipped, sending me bouncing wildly into the air.
He managed to slide underneath me again just before I hit the ground. I rolled clumsily across his back and slid down his side, planting my feet and somehow managing to stay upright after a few stumbling steps.
Shadows swirled to life on my skin as I drew closer to Aleksander. His skin cracked and light bled through the fissures as if in answer to my power—as if that light had only been waiting for me to arrive, eager to slip free, to tangle with my darkness. And I felt a surge of eagerness, too. An unmistakable pull…
My shadows wanted to collide with him.
Desperately.
I didn’t understand it, but I had to get to him, no matter the cost.
Phantom paced restlessly behind me, occasionally nudging me with his cold nose and trying to convince me to hop onto his back once more. But I had a sudden surge of confidence and sure-footedness—I would cross the rest of this perilous ocean on my own, and not risk my best friend as I did it.
I sprinted forward, muscles straining and balance rocking as I fought to stay upright and keep Aleksander in my line of sight. The magic grew thicker. The heat was just short of suffocating. But I was getting closer.
Twenty feet.
Ten feet.
Five feet—
I stretched out my hand.
And as soon as my fingers brushed Aleksander’s arm, the world around us began to… bloom .
Like the forest I’d first found him in, everything around me—the withered grass, the scraggly roots of long-dead flowers, a nearby tree previously devoid of all its leaves—exploded into life, filling the air with a blinding brightness.
Once again, it all died just as quickly…but with the death came a relative calmness. The ground no longer trembled. The light stopped crackling and shooting out from Aleksander’s body, leaving us in a twilight-hued silence. Not a peaceful quiet, but one heavy with the possibility of more to come, like the silent note in a symphony just before an impending crescendo. I kept waiting for it to come—the clash of cymbals, the rising notes before a bone-rattling climax…
But as I gripped Aleksander’s arm more tightly, the silence stretched on and on, until finally, I trusted it would stay.
For now.
Aleksander kept his head bowed and his eyes closed. The light-filled cracks on his skin had mostly faded, save for a few on his arms, and one that ran the length of one side of his face, right through the middle of his right eye. Traces of magic still bled from those fissures, dripping down his cheeks like tears made of liquid gold.
Clinging more tightly to his arm—mostly for the sake of balance, now—I looked around.
The ground was buckled in a few places, but otherwise, no worse for the wear. A few shallow cracks remained…and there were little shoots of green sprouting up through several of them. A few of the shoots even had flower buds on them.
I was almost certain none of that had been here before.
So apparently, everything hadn’t died as quickly as it bloomed.
Somehow, this struck me as one of the strangest things I’d seen yet: A living garden taking root in a world meant for the dead.
What the hell was going on?
Shakily—cautiously—I released my hold on Aleksander and rose to my full height. I heard voices and turned to see Zayn, Thalia, and our two remaining soldiers standing a short distance away.
They were all staring at me—except for Thalia, who was staring at the budding flowers.
Zayn moved first. He looked me over as he approached, but for once, he seemed entirely speechless. After struggling and failing to find words, he walked right past me and instead hurried to Aleksander’s side. Rowen and Farren immediately followed him.
The king didn’t stir at their approach, remaining in his kneeled position with his head bowed.
Was he back to sleep for another year now?
I was so busy watching him—and occasionally sweeping another confused, disbelieving stare at the garden growing around him—that Thalia’s sudden appearance at my side startled me.
“Necromancy…” she said, her gaze drifting once more over the blooming garden. “And yet, you seem to be helping him bring life, rather than death.”
“But I didn’t do anything,” I said, breathlessly.
“You didn’t use any spells against him?”
I vehemently shook my head. “I barely had time to think, much less summon magic.”
She kept her gaze on the garden; several of the flowers were now opening, their colors brilliant and bold shades of red, orange, and yellow. All of them were golden-edged and glowing, as if catching bits of the sun—a heavenly object that didn’t even truly exist in this world; there was only that strange orb of light wrapped in the shifting, cloudy energies. That orb still hadn’t moved. Still, looking around, I felt the same way I did whenever I sat on the porch at Orin’s and watched the sun rising over the trees.
“It’s as I said before,” I whispered, “I merely touched him when I woke him up, too. I swear it.”
Thalia was quiet for so long that I thought she would never answer. That she would never believe me.
Finally, she said, “How… odd .”
I held my breath, almost afraid to ask what conclusions she was coming to behind her troubled eyes.
“Your magic. His magic. They seem to have a profound effect on one another, no?”
I couldn’t deny it.
“So you’re…” She seemed to be searching for the correct word. “... Together ,” she settled on, tapping her fingers against one another for emphasis. “Magically bonded to one another.”
I made a face. “ Bonded is a very strong word.”
She didn’t offer an alternative.
My eyes slid back to the king, despite my best efforts to keep them from doing so.
Peaceful, meditative, motionless—yet he still looked utterly terrifying. Alarmingly powerful. Like he could open his eyes at any moment and send light crackling across the landscape once more, ripping it all apart faster than I could blink.
Except, it wasn’t terror I felt whenever I looked at him.
It should have been.
But it wasn’t.
I didn’t know what it was. But as I stared, a memory fell, unbidden, into my mind. One of the first time we’d met—as children, when he’d found me hiding in the courtyard at my old home.
We’d been so young.
I’d been so upset—exasperated with my lessons, with my teachers who had been trying their best to teach me to crush the shadowy parts of myself away. This had been before my mother gave in to Orin’s offers to tutor me. Back when she’d believed there was still a chance for me to hide my magic and live a normal life without it. Back when I had wanted nothing more than to make her happy by doing just that—when I would have given anything to just be normal .
Aleksander had comforted me that day; I still remembered the warmth of his magic as he summoned a show of light to distract me from my tears.
And then he’d done something unexpected: He’d asked me to summon strands of my shadows, too, so that we might create something by weaving together both the light and the dark—something like the shadow puppets my father sometimes entertained me with at bedtime, only more elaborate.
I didn’t really remember anything we’d spoken of that day. Only the stories we’d written with sunlight and shadow on the brick walls around the garden—that, and the way the flowers around us had bloomed like an eager audience coming to life at our show, and how my heart had felt truly at peace for perhaps the only time in my entire childhood.
But politics and other twisted, sharp-edged things had long since gotten in the way of whatever peace I’d felt that day. He had changed. I had changed. There were too many questions between us, too many plans gone astray, and I didn’t want anything to do with him anymore.
Still, the evidence could not be ignored.
Our magic desperately wanted to weave together once more—to cast another story upon the walls of this world we’d found ourselves in.
And until I figured out why , it seemed we were bound to one another whether we liked it or not.
We decided to pitch a proper camp and rest before deciding what came next. I slept—though poorly, and only after Zayn repeatedly insisted that he would be the one to keep the first watch.
At some point, I startled awake from a nightmare, opening my eyes to a bottomless abyss.
It took me several seconds of blinking to realize I was staring at the sky. Or what passed for a sky in this world, anyway; I was alarmed at how deeply black it was. I hadn’t realized it could get darker than the expanse I’d fallen asleep beneath. But it was as Elias had told me: there was an observable day and night cycle in this realm—and it was clearly the dead of night, now; the light I desperately wanted to call a sun was completely hidden behind swirls of dark clouds.
Even though I couldn’t recall the nightmare that had woken me, I still felt its claws in my mind, tightening every time I tried to close my eyes again.
With a sigh, I sat up and crawled out of my bedroll—but I only made it a few inches before I froze.
Because Aleksander was right there , sitting with his arm draped over a bended knee, mere feet away from where I’d been sleeping. His eyes were open, bright in the dark and focused on something far in the distance.
My entire body flushed hot. Had I been tossing and turning, caught in the throes of my nightmares, while he watched?
I swallowed down my discomfort as best I could, settling back down on my knees. “You’re awake,” I said.
“You’re observant.”
“Have you just been looming threateningly over me the entire time I’ve been asleep?”
“I’m hardly a threat. Especially with him so close,” he said, nodding to a nearby patch of shriveled-up grass where Phantom lay, resting with his head upon his shaggy paws. The dog’s sides rose and fell with the slow breaths of sleep, but one ghostly blue eye occasionally cracked open, watching us.
“And I would stay much farther away from you, if I could,” Aleksander added, “but the more space between us, the more restless my magic becomes. A cruel trick the universe seems to be playing on me.”
On you and me both , I wanted to snap.
But I didn’t, for some reason. I merely got to my feet, stretching, and muttered, “Well, glad I could help settle you down.”
My attempt at a placid tone didn’t fool him.
“You would leave, too, if given the choice,” he said. “You were considering leaving earlier, when you went off to talk with that Shadow-wielding woman. I could see it in your eyes.”
Lack of sleep and my growing frustration with the situation made my voice savage. “Of course I was considering it. She would likely be a far better guide than you through this realm—and she hasn’t murdered anybody in my family, as far as I know. So why the hell wouldn’t I want her help over yours?”
He shrugged. “Because we agreed to travel with one another?”
“I’ve traveled with you for all of one day. It was hardly a deal set in stone.”
“And loyalty is for fools, eh?” He didn’t sound particularly combative, for once. Tired, more like.
My laughter was still harsh. “ Loyalty, ” I snorted. “I’ve tried my hand at loyalty over the years. It’s led to more backstabbings and close-calls than I care to think about. Nearly every person I’ve ever dared to trust has let me down in one way or another.”
“That just sounds like you’re a poor judge of character.”
I huffed out another bitter laugh. “Maybe so. Because here I am, close to you—again—back to travel at your side instead of finding some way to bury you and your magic out of existence, so…yes. Yes, I’d say I’m an abhorrent judge of character.”
He met my words with a dry chuckle of his own. “I set up that particular jab against me, didn’t I?”
I shrugged.
“You win that point, then. Congratulations.”
“…Are we keeping score?”
“You seemed like the type who would.”
I considered this, tipping my head back and pretending to mentally calculate the points we’d both accumulated thus far. “I’m ahead,” I concluded.
He smirked, crossing his hands behind his head before reclining back against the ground. The movement lifted his shirt, revealing a band of firm stomach.
I forced my stare elsewhere, biting my lip as heat flushed across the back of my neck and tingled over my scalp.
Ridiculous.
But I couldn’t help it; I was suddenly burning up as if I’d never seen a naked man before, even though I’d seen plenty. Too many, really—but one had to deal with loneliness somehow, didn’t they? I wasn’t above trading favors for supplies or information, either, though I was selective with who I engaged with; with a few of my favorite business partners , it was essentially a win-win for me.
It had been too long since I’d had any sort of business in that department, though, for any reason.
And damn it all if this beautiful specimen of a male was not reminding me of that.
The mingling of our magic didn’t help, either; the buzzing his nearness caused in my power could have been the first sparks of arousal, if I allowed them to be. They felt entirely too similar.
And before I could help myself, I was wondering what sort of response—whether cataclysmic or beneficial—embracing that spark might create.
Talk about bonded .
Biting my lip harder, I tried to stay focused. “So, I woke you in that forest. My magic settles yours. If we continued to travel together…what’s in it for me, I wonder?”
“The pleasure of my company,” he replied without opening his eyes.
“Wow. I’m getting absolutely fucking shorted on this deal.”
I thought I saw the ghost of a smile flirting with his lips, but it was gone as soon as I looked closer.
I wondered, for an instant, what his true smile looked like. Had I seen it in the living realm—maybe when we were children? I must have. So why couldn’t I remember it now?
Why did I want to?
Against my better judgment, I kept talking, kept trying to bridge some of the uncertainty between us. “I did feel…something when I approached you earlier. A surge of strength in my own power, perhaps.”
He said nothing; I wasn’t even sure he was listening.
I didn’t want to keep talking. Didn’t want to entertain the idea that we were magically bonded in any way. But not understanding seemed worse than discovering an answer I didn’t want.
So I said, “The shadows that appear on my skin sometimes…I used to have more control over them. They were always tied to my stronger magic use, but…soon after what happened at Rose Point, they stopped showing up. They had stopped surfacing for years before I found you down here. And now, they’ve appeared on my skin twice in the span of a day.”
He finally opened his eyes, but he still didn’t speak.
I swallowed. “So, your presence seems to awaken the stronger parts of my power. And my nearness settles your power, as you said.”
“Mm. Though it’s very…fastidious.”
“How so?”
“When you’re close but out of reach, as you are now, you just give me a dull, aching headache.” He rocked up into a sitting position and inched closer to me. “It keeps things from raging out of control, yes, but the finer, more nuanced wielding of my abilities is impossible to manage. I’ve noticed, though…” he trailed off, stopping just short of reaching for me.
The moment stretched into one of painful uncertainty, which surprised me; I didn’t think the King of Light was capable of showing uncertainty.
Judging by the confusion and exasperation that crossed his face, he hadn’t thought himself capable of it, either.
“Never mind,” he muttered. “It’s strange. Let’s leave it at that.”
“No—explain it.” I moved closer to him without really thinking about it.
He sucked in a sharp breath, as though I’d done something far more intimate than simply closing the space between us.
Intrigued by the reaction, I grew bolder, sliding closer and letting my hand come to rest on his leg.
He went perfectly still, staring at my touch with such intensity that I forgot what I was saying for a moment.
“…When I’m truly close to you like this,” I finally managed to say, my voice more hushed than I intended it to be, “does it bring clarity to you and your powers?”
A pause. Then he raised his hand and his fingertips gripped my chin, lifting my gaze to his. He considered me and my question for another beat, his golden eyes burning into mine.
“Yes,” he said. “For the first time in seven years, I feel like I have a true hold on my powers again.” As if to demonstrate this, a jagged line of light cracked across the hand pressed to my chin. It spread up his forearm and over his bicep, and warmth poured from his skin along with the light, enveloping me.
His gaze seemed to brighten as it raked over my face again, drinking in the sight of me newly awash in the glow his magic created. “Like an anchor dropping in a storm-tossed sea,” he mused, more to himself than me.
His hand moved up to cup my jaw.
I leaned into the touch before I could help myself. “I thought I was Chaos , not clarity,” I murmured.
“It’s still a fitting nickname,” he replied, mirroring my low, slightly breathy tone. “It surrounds you, even if there’s calm at the center.” At the word center , his hand dropped, warm fingers trailing down my neck, splaying across the hollow of my throat.
His mouth tipped closer, his nose brushing against mine.
My eyes started to flutter shut, some deep, buried part of me actually wanting this, wishing his fingers would drop even lower, that his lips would find mine in the next instant—
But… no .
What the hell were we doing?
He seemed to ask himself the same question in the exact same instant. His brow furrowed. A combination of anger and doubt darkened his eyes. But there was also a flicker of what I would have sworn looked like desire .
The shadow markings on my skin leapt to life as though fueled by that desire. The power simmering beneath them was undeniable.
I pulled away, heart pounding like a drumbeat, echoing in the silence. My head was spinning. With even more questions, now…but with realizations, too. Because all of my experiments were yielding the very results I’d been afraid they would.
It wasn’t enough to just occupy the same space as one another.
For me to summon stronger shades of my power, and for him to truly be able to control his power, it seemed we needed to be even closer to one another. Connected. Tangled up in one another’s essence.
This just got worse and worse.
He stood and took a step away from me, lifting his eyes in the same direction they’d been staring in when I woke; there was a hazy lightness above the far horizon. Almost like the glow of a distant city, I thought, even though I knew that couldn’t be what it was.
“A cruel trick of the universe, as I mentioned,” Aleksander said, his tone abruptly cold. “And it makes no sense, based on all of my studies and trainings. Like calls to like , according to all my instructors over the years. My magic should want nothing to do with yours. We’re opposites; we have nothing in common.”
The words shouldn’t have stung; I should have been used to not having things in common with people by this point.
So why did I suddenly care about having something in common with him ?
We were quiet for several minutes.
Finally, I couldn’t keep my thoughts to myself any longer. I said, “Do we really have nothing in common?”
He cut his gaze to me.
“It just…it reminded me of the way my magic always felt so out of place in the living world. Earlier, I mean—when I saw the light ripping out of your body, threatening to destroy everything around us.”
He didn’t reply, but his gaze softened a bit, urging me on.
“You’ve been here for seven years,” I continued. “Seven years of being in a place where your magic earns you the reputation of Beast . And I…I know what that’s like. So we have that one thing in common, at least.”
Meeting his softer, more contemplative gaze was somehow even more difficult than staring into his usual intense, fiery one, so I looked instead to the distant glow on the horizon as I continued. “Because I know what it’s like to not belong in a place,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, “and for your very existence to destroy that place. The only difference is that I actually loved what I destroyed.”
He took a long time to reply. “It never recovered after what happened on the night of your birthday, I take it?”
I numbly shook my head.
“I assume my kingdom has also suffered similarly, given my abrupt disappearance—or my death , as I’m sure it was assumed.”
I finally found the courage to look back and meet his questioning eyes.
And again, I felt a prodding to keep talking, to cross the bridge stretching between us, regardless of whatever rickety, dangerous planks might be hiding, waiting to drop our feet out from under us.
If we were stuck together, I was going to have to be honest with him about some things. There was too much strangeness at work to figure it all out on my own; keeping certain information from him could do more harm than good at this point.
My turmoil must have been obvious on my face, because his brow furrowed with concern.
“Chaos? What is it?”
“Your kingdom is fine,” I told him, frowning. “Because as far as most people believe, you are still alive and ruling it.”