Chapter Thirty-Four
Katherine paced the Sunspot parking lot.
She’d had an endless night of alternating between fidgeting in bed and fidgeting on the couch as her mind ran the gamut of possibilities about what she’d seen the day before.
It was irrational to think that Sylvia’s magic had changed.
It was a trick of the light. She’d had something in her eye.
She’d taken an edible before she left the house and it totally slipped her mind.
Just because it looked different, flowed different, felt different didn’t mean it was different.
Right?
By the time the sun finally rose, she’d waffled between thinking it was nothing to thinking it was the end of the world.
By the time Sunspot finally opened, she’d landed on just needing to get the fuck over here to talk to Sylvia and find the reasonable explanation that had to exist for all of this.
This is all a misunderstanding, she told herself.
Maybe Sylvia had been taking from more ordinaries since Silas arrived.
Katherine hadn’t seen her doing it, but it was possible Sylvia would keep it a secret—she knew how wary Katherine was at the thought of her taking that risk with Noctis breathing down their necks.
Except even that wouldn’t explain the amount of power that Sylvia flooded into that spell. She would have had to completely drain the ordinary for that.
She would have had to commit murder.
Katherine’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the side door slamming open, followed by a smatter of light giggling.
She rounded the corner to see Fiona with her back pressed up against the dumpster by Tess, who had both palms on her cheeks as they kissed.
They seemed so happy and carefree. Katherine’s breath caught.
The noise alerted Fiona and Tess to her presence, and they separated, Tess giving her a sheepish smile while Fiona just stared at her, her brows stitching together with concern.
“Hey, babe,” she said. “What are you doing lurking in the parking lot?”
Katherine didn’t know what did it—the pet name, maybe, or Fiona’s use of the word lurking, or just the fact that she thought to care at all. Whatever it was, it broke something open in Katherine, and there was no stopping it.
She cried. From somewhere else, she heard Fiona say quietly that maybe Tess should go back inside. Heard the door slide open and then shut again. Felt Fiona’s arms wrap around her.
“Please just tell me what’s going on,” Fiona whispered.
“Nothing’s going on,” Katherine lied.
“Come on. You’ve been acting strange for days, and now you’re having a breakdown in the parking lot. Tell me.”
Katherine lifted her head out of her hands, looking at her friend. She tried to think of something that would explain everything—but her brain wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t move past Lily’s body, and Silas’ face as they clung to the walls of his hotel, and the wrongness she felt when Sylvia did magic.
The secrets were weighing her down, sinking her into a deep loneliness she hadn’t felt since after her snap.
And so she told the truth. About Lily. The panic when she’d burned her body, the depression that had hung around Katherine like a cloud since that light was snuffed out.
About Byron. The fury she’d felt when she pummeled him, followed by the immediate shame when she realized he wasn’t the one behind it.
About Silas. The pull of wanting him to stay, even when she told him to go.
And then, finally, about Sylvia. The ordinaries she’d been stealing from for years. The confusion that had gripped Katherine since she saw that flash of strange magic. The fear that she was missing something important, that if she didn’t figure it out soon, everything was going to fall apart.
“Oh, Katherine,” Fiona said when she finished. She wrapped her arms around Katherine’s shoulders, pulling her into a tight hug. Katherine let herself relax into it, breathing in Fiona’s floral perfume. When they separated a moment later, Fiona kept a comforting hand on her shoulder, grounding her.
“Let me start by saying none of this was your fault,” Fiona said. “You weren’t there when Lily snapped. I know you feel like you have to save everyone, but you just can’t. People make their own decisions.”
Katherine nodded, wiping away some of the tears on her cheeks.
“With the Sylvia stuff … I don’t even know how to say…” Fiona started, before trailing off. “It’s just … are you sure something was up with Sylvia’s magic? It seems like you’ve had a tough few days. And you were wrong about Byron and Lily. Maybe this also isn’t what you think.”
Heat ignited low in Katherine’s stomach. “It is,” she said, the words sharper than she intended.
“Okay,” Fiona said, ever the peacemaker. “Okay. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that she did something bad.”
Katherine’s thin hold on her emotions snapped. “It does, Fiona! It means that Sylvia did who the fuck knows what, and now I need to deal with that too, and it never fucking ends. The shit never stops coming.”
“Maybe because you keep inserting yourself into it!”
Fiona reeled back at that, as if she was shocked that those words had come out of her mouth. Katherine backed up too, the distance between them suddenly three times as wide.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Fiona sighed. “Honestly? I think you seek out trouble. Conflict. Stress. It’s like you can’t live without it.”
“It’s my job, Fiona.”
“No, it’s not,” Fiona said, her volume rising as her frustration grew.
“There are tons of other Executors who live perfectly normal, happy lives. You choose to let your anger eat at you every moment of every day. You choose to antagonize people until they have no choice but to hate you. You choose not to be happy.”
“What do you want me to do? Fall head over heels in love with anyone who so much as smiles at me?”
Fiona’s eyes narrowed. Katherine flinched. She knew that wasn’t fair, knew it was her anger talking, but she couldn’t bring herself to apologize. She couldn’t risk the very real chance that Fiona wouldn’t accept it.
“I don’t have time for this,” Katherine huffed, trying to push past Fiona toward the door. Fiona didn’t let her pass.
“What are you going to do? Confront Sylvia? Scream at her and not give her a chance to explain herself and ruin one of the few good relationships you have left because you have a hunch?”
“It’s not a hunch, Fiona!” Katherine’s voice was rough. She hadn’t been this mad, this emotionally raw, since she’d been …
And then she figured it out.
The conversation was not going well.
Silas had practiced his opener a dozen times last night after storming out of Anika’s, but what he’d practiced was predicated on his parents letting him talk first, and they had not let that happen.
They’d dug into him the second he entered the room, his father pressing for why he’d left Aestas before his mission was done, his mother pressing for why he’d left Sylvia before she was kicked to the curb where she belonged.
A full minute went by before he was able to get a word in edgewise, and by that point, lines of sweat were pouring down the back of his neck, his skin hot and itchy with stress.
“I—” he started, but his mother interrupted him again, stuffing a stack of reports into his hands.
“This is why we need Aestas,” Nina said, her eyes fiery. “Look at their numbers. They’re almost as big as Noctis now. What do you think would happen if they were to continue to grow? If they were to start making their own runes, their own spellbooks?”
“We can’t take that risk, Silas,” his father added. “Our future is at stake. Your future is at stake.”
“But I don’t want it!”
The words burst forth with more force than Silas anticipated.
He’d planned to come in here level-headed and calm, with a rational list of reasons why everyone would be better served if his parents started grooming someone else to be the next head of Noctis.
Someone like Anika—someone who wanted it, and who had the actual skills to back that up.
He could go back to teaching, learning, molding a new generation of witches.
Witches who, he’d promise, would revere the Khatri name above all else.
Calm rationality, though, was out the window. Once the dam burst, he couldn’t find a way to get any of that out around the pounding anger in his head. It ran wild, coursing up his body, leaving lava in its wake.
“Silas—” his mom said.
“Did you ever think to ask that?” he interrupted. “If I wanted any of this? If I wanted to be a part of your precious dynasty?”
His father’s expression was stormy as he stepped around the desk and walked to the window. He tapped his fingers along the windowsill, speaking with his back to his son. “This is the family business, Silas. This is your duty.”
“I want my life to be about more than just duty. I’m not going to forcibly take over a coven where everyone sees me as an enemy.
” Including the one person whose respect he was increasingly desperate to earn.
“I want to live my own life. I don’t want to take over Aestas, and I don’t want to lead Noctis someday.
I want to do something that wasn’t handed to me on a silver platter. ”
“Silas.” Silas could barely hear his father over the sound of his own whooshing breaths. He couldn’t seem to get himself to calm down, couldn’t tamp down the fire that surged in his chest.
“All we want is for you to live the best life possible,” Vikrant continued. “If that’s not doing this, then we’ll figure something else out.”
Vaguely, he registered that he’d won. His father looked at his mother, and he saw his mother sigh before giving him a reluctant nod, and then, as if he was underwater, he heard Vikrant say that they could deal with Aestas some other way, and that they’d find a way for Silas to help the family in a way that made him “happy, if such a thing is even possible.”
He’d won.
He’d won.
He’d won.
But he couldn’t get that fire and rage to go away.
His ears rang. Blood pounded through his head, slamming against the walls of his skull.
His very bones seemed to sing, screaming agony into the ether.
It was all so loud, and his parents were still talking, his father walking up to him, his face racked with concern, but Silas couldn’t hear what he was saying, because there was so much goddamn noise.
And he was hot. Sweating, dripping, he needed to take his jacket off, but he couldn’t seem to move, and his father was right there, hands on his son’s shoulders, and it was so fucking sweltering and he needed them off and—
And the ringing in his ears escalated to a clang, a bell demanding that he follow, no matter where it led. The itch across his skin built with it, so much that Silas couldn’t help but grab his own arms, his nails trying to tear his flesh from his body.
He was on fire.
What is this, what is this, what is—
His mind brushed on an explanation, but before he could catch it, his mom’s voice raised, and his dad’s hands moved to his face, and he felt the pressure building more, more, more, pushing out any thoughts, screaming at him with the urge to be out—
The noise cleared.
“Silas. Are you all right?”
Silas looked at his father’s face, a mirror to his own, and even though his parents had finally said those words he’d always wanted them to say, the sadness over all the time he’d wasted, the frustration over the relationships he’d ruined, the sheer rage over all the things he’d missed out on because of his own cowardice—it all bubbled up to the surface at once, heat and noise and insistence, and then—
Silas burst.
“Unsettled.”
“You think Sylvia’s magic is what?”
Katherine tried to push past Fiona to the door to Sunspot, her body vibrating with the need to run into Sylvia’s office right the fuck now. But Fiona stepped in her way, strong hands on Katherine’s shoulders preventing her from moving forward.
“Unsettled, Fiona. I think Sylvia’s magic is fucking unsettled.”
That was what she had seen in Sylvia’s office. The rough edges, the speed at which she called it up, the way it flowed. The familiarity and fear it sparked in her.
“And what if it is, Katherine?” Fiona retorted. “What are you going to do about that right now, by yourself?”
“I’m going to march into her office and make her tell me where the fuck that magic came from!”
Katherine tried to make another beeline for the door, but Fiona stopped her with a tight hand on her wrist.
“If that’s true—if—then walking into Sylvia’s office and accusing her directly would be a surefire way to get yourself killed.”
“Yeah, I bet you’d be just fine with that.”
Fiona instantly dropped Katherine’s wrist. Tears welled up in her eyes, and Katherine burned with the need to apologize. But she didn’t, because if she did, Fiona might stay. Might follow her down this path, and this path was leading nowhere good.
“You need to leave,” she said.
Fiona shook her head harshly, the motion dislodging some of the tears, sending them cascading down her cheeks, running rivers through her blush.
“I’m not letting you do this alone.”
And damn her, she wouldn’t. No matter how much Katherine tried to push Fiona away, she always stayed.
Always called, always texted, always reminded Katherine that she was unflinchingly, forever there.
It was one of the many things Katherine loved about her.
One of the few things Katherine clung to when she was at her lowest.
“You don’t have a choice.” Katherine pulled out her caster, flicking the blade open. “You know I can force you to do it, Fi. Don’t make me.”
Fiona covered her mouth with one of her hands. Katherine felt her heart shrivel.
“Go inside and get everyone else out, then go,” she said, forcing her voice to stay even. “Now.”
After a moment, Fiona dropped her hand. “I don’t even know who you are right now.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
Fiona wiped her running nose on her sleeve, taking a moment to gather herself before she looked at Katherine again. She pursed her lips, then shook her head and walked away.