Chapter 8 Don’t Let Your Walls Down
Don’t Let Your Walls Down
Desdemona
I
spend more time around the other six Arcanes. Phoenicians. Whatever. None of them like me. They all go silent when I’m around. But one always watches me—when he isn’t with Mial. Icarthus. He never says a word.
The only person I actually talk to is Mial, and he has an affinity for killing me. I haven’t killed him yet. Or used blood magic at all. We stand in this red room so often that I’m convinced there’s no other color in this world.
It’s a game, he always says. But every time, I hear my mom. Feel, she told me.
Feel, and I will burn. Play the game, and I will die.
Mial’s words—unlike my mom’s—are meant to lessen the blow before he explodes my heart.
I’ve nearly grown used to the rigorous thumping and that blistering moment before everything disappears.
Sometimes in those moments, I see Lucian.
Sometimes I see my mom. Lucian remembers me, and Mom tells me she hates me. It’s really nice.
It’s a game, and I’m always the loser.
I rise again from another bout of death. It’s beginning to mean nothing to me.
Mial’s tanned skin and creepy smile are the first thing I see. “I felt your grip on my blood,” he says, offering me a hand. “You’re getting stronger.”
Stronger, but I still die, each time as painful as the last.
“Thanks.” I accept his hand.
With innate strength, he pulls me to my feet. I let out a sigh, resisting the urge to clutch my chest. I always want to when I come back to life. Sometimes it feels like my heart might’ve disappeared, like I’m a walking wound.
“I’ll make you a bargain,” Mial says. “If you wish.”
“For what?” I raise an eyebrow.
“To convince your mother to see you.”
My heart stops beating. But this time, it’s not because it exploded.
I don’t believe he would have to convince her to see me.
I’m her daughter. Of course she wants to see me.
Why wouldn’t she? She must have learned to love me by now.
Sure, in the stolen memories she’d get angry, but I have my own memories.
Like the Welding Village—she never took my mind in those four years.
She always gave me love. Didn’t she mean it?
I cross my arms over my chest. “She wouldn’t need convincing.”
Mial studies me, saying nothing.
But maybe he knows all the things she did. Maybe he saw my memories—the same way Wendy did when she took my necklace.
I breathe, clenching my jaw before saying, “What’s the bargain?”
“You must command my heart.”
“That’s it?” I ask.
“Yes.” He sounds like he’s taunting me, and why wouldn’t he? His sole objective is to teach me magic.
He said I almost gripped his blood this time—whatever that means. I try again, raising my hand, fingers curling in, just as a whispering sounds in my ear.
I ignore it.
I search for the blood thrumming in Mial’s veins. The red walls dim, dull like someone drew a curtain of ash over the world. I think the magic is working.
Mial laughs. “Do you think it will be that easy?”
I don’t answer, unsure of what the right response would be for him.
The second whisper is my name, “Desdemona.”
I glance behind me.
“Focus,” Mial says.
Warmth trickles down my arms. Is it his blood? My magic?
Then Mial raises his hands.
That’s all it takes for my fingers to go numb. My hands follow, then my knees, my legs giving out beneath me. I fall hard against the floor.
It was stupid to think I could take him on. There’s a reason I’ve listened to everything he’s said.
“Not only will you never be strong enough to defeat me,” Mial says, stepping closer. My heart races, desperate to pull away from him. But I’m imprisoned in my own body.
“Desdemona?”
From above, he looks down at me and says, “You will never be good enough to be redeemed in her eyes.”
“Desdemona!”
Not even my eyes respond to me anymore. My vision goes white. Specks of black swim through it.
“You are a monster,” he says. A gasp crawls up my throat. I can barely open my mouth to let it out. “Through to bone.”
The pain swirls faster than usual. It starts in my toes and rushes upward, devouring everything in its path, setting my blood on fire. My chest seizes.
The world goes dark.
And then I die.
But my eyes open instantly. I’m held in a steady embrace. Someone whispers my name. The touch is gentle, warm, almost tender. I hadn’t realized how cold I was until now. My chest feels lighter as I release a breath and sink in.
When I finally pull away, I look at Mial, craving his warmth again. I want the soft voice, the steadiness, the comfort. But he called me a monster. It doesn’t matter if I agree; it hurts that he believes it.
I shove him away, hating myself when he’s gone.
“Why comfort me?” I spit, disgusted. Only then do I feel the moisture on my cheeks. My hand jerks up to wipe away the tears.
“You were panicking.” Mial raises a hand and smooths the hair at the top of my head. I could almost lean into his tender touch.
But I don’t. I shout, “You called me a monster!” choking on the words.
“I did nothing of the sort.” He sounds too calm, like he could be telling the truth—but I just saw him. It was right here; we were right here.
Am I losing my mind? Maybe all these memories rushing back at once scrambled my brain. It would make sense.
Maybe I’ve always been scrambled.
Mial slowly raises a hand, like he’s trying to calm a rabid animal. “I have a question that requires your honesty.”
“Because you deserve it?” I shout. Or try to, as much as my broken voice can manage.
He shakes his head, a solemn and sad motion.
“You are the one who deserves answers, child.” He pats my head again, the gesture almost kind.
But I slap his hand away. He frowns, but that’s all he does.
There’s no malice, no ounce of fight. Only an old man asking, “Did you bring someone back to life?”
I shrink away. What kind of a question is that?
“No.”
But as I say it, Wendy comes to mind. She lay dead on the floor of the academy, and I breathed life into her. Black blood dripped from my ear. What else could that mean?
Mial sighs and scoots closer. “Resurrection is a perilous art, especially for someone with your power. You may not have known. Yet, if you are beset by hallucinations like the one you suffered in your chamber—”
“My chamber?” I interrupt.
“Your first night here, when we were speaking of garments.”
My room. When I saw my mom and Freyr. “What do you know?” I ask.
Mial is quiet for a long while, and when I’m ready to scream my question again, he finally says, “You are a gentle soul, given a cruel lot in life. Not a monster.” He shakes his head. “Your sins were not of your choosing.”
It’s as if my heart were made of stone, and he suddenly softened it to sand. It crumbles in my chest, breaking under the weight of my weakness. For so long, I’ve needed someone to say that to me—to see what the world has done to me and tell me it’s not my fault, that I’ve done the best I could.
I just can’t believe it’s him.
“And what do you know about the things I’ve done?” I ask, my jaw tight.
He smiles—infuriatingly, sympathetically. I frown, angry at the putty in my chest. I can’t let him mold me. I can’t believe his words; they can so easily be untrue.
“I, too, was the most powerful of my kind,” Mial sighs. “It never grows easier. One never knows if those who linger close do so out of love, or fear. Most of all in youth, when your heart dictates more than your wisdom.”
I think of my mom. Did she fear or love me? And Damien… the last time I saw him, the color of my eyes sent him running.
Mial seems to understand it—how difficult power is to maintain.
Behind my eyelids, I can still see the village burning. The smoke tastes like ash in my throat as they beg me for mercy, for a relief I gave only through death.
I’ve killed so many, and each time, Mom took the memory, writing my fate for me. How could I ever control a power I didn’t know I possessed?
I meet Mial’s gaze, keeping my voice steady. “What do you know about the hallucinations?”
His eyebrows crease together, and his expression is aggravatingly sympathetic, as if he knows what it’s like to have a mother call you a monster—whether it’s memory or delusion.
“All things must have their balance.” Mial leans in close and whispers, like he’s telling me a secret, “Most of Elysia believes Sulva and Ayan to be the mightiest of the gods, for they forged the universe. But it was Zola who forged them.” He lets the words hang in the air.
On Elysia, Sulva was always seen as the most powerful—the lunar goddess who created the Lyrians.
Mial finishes, “Her reach is unparalleled. If one were to bring someone back, the price would be their life. Yet we are immortal—our lives are not a currency to be spent.
“Only our sanity.”
?
Each time I walk from the red room to my bedroom, I take a different route, looking for my mom or a weapon or something more about this place.
But tonight, for the first time, I stumble upon a library.
It’s far grander than the one in Visnatus—the only library I’ve ever been in.
Books climb impossibly high, stacked on endless shelves, each one leather-bound.
Some are burnt—the brown leather ashy around the edges.
Ladders lean against the walls, gold sconces illuminating the space beside them.
As I step forward, my footfalls are swallowed by the red carpet. I wonder what kind of secrets each of the books holds. I want them all.
The ceilings are arched, and I step into a secluded corner—an easy place to hide if someone enters—reaching for one of the leather books.
Flipping through the pages, I find nothing written in the common tongue.
The only word I recognize is a name: Amun.
It’s a story I already know. Amun and Eira were the first two people, and they fell in love.
Eira was mortal, Amun immortal. Eira died; Amun killed himself from grief.
The end. Kind of pointless to keep a burnt book if everyone knows what’s inside.
I was hoping for something more.
As I move to place the book back, a chill runs down my spine, spreading to my fingers.
Shivers tickle up my arms, lifting my hair.
I search the room—staring at the shelves—for the chill’s source.
Across the room, a bright blue light shines, tucked between the bookshelves.
I walk toward it, each step bringing the cold closer.
My breath clings with fog, freezing my lungs.
It’s the opposite of the heat I’ve always known. The opposite of my promised death.
As I round the corner, the light grows. But as my eyes adjust, the first thing I see is a body—or the outline of one. An image of a woman, I realize, with the blue light glowing around her. A painting, maybe. But how did I not see it earlier?
I squint against the light, the image focusing.
It is a woman, not a painting. She has white hair and bright blue veins, stark against her unsaturated skin.
I step back, half-expecting the woman to leap out at me.
She doesn’t. The blue around her shimmers like the lunar lake in Visnatus.
The night I followed its glow and met Lucian might have changed my life forever. Is that what lies in store for me now?
I can’t step closer, not without freezing. But I can’t step away, either. It’s like the woman is beckoning me. Then, her eyes snap open—milky white, without a hint of irises. Her pale lips, cracked and trembling, part. A sound like a croaking corpse drifts from her throat.
Two words.
“Save me.”