Chapter 16 The Things I’ve Lost
The Things I’ve Lost
Desdemona
W
ithout the training, there’s not much for me to do here.
Mial allows me to explore beyond the mansion.
Outside, there’s a large neighborhood full of children and parents—most of them unscathed, without even the human-looking burns.
They play in their yards, kicking balls and laughing, and I wonder if they ever realize they’re missing the sun.
I never thought about the absent moon when I lived on Folkara.
Today, when I step back inside the house, there’s chatter. All seven of the Arcanes who live here are sitting in the main room. The chatter quickly fades as they each look up at me. Then, Mial rises.
“Walk with me,” he says the moment I see him. I fall into step beside him, and he asks, “How are the hallucinations?”
I glance down at my feet. “Did Icarthus tell you?”
“He did,” Mial says.
I nod. They’re not good—that’s for sure. But should I say that?
After a moment, Mial asks, “Is there a new person within them?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
He grips my wrists, and I gasp, looking down at his hands on me as red spreads across my skin beneath his fingers.
“What does she look like, Desdemona?” he asks. He hardly uses my name.
“White hair, pale, still…”
Mial stops walking in the middle of the room, his hands falling tight at his sides. He stares at the wall ahead and says, “I hadn’t expected she might reach you.”
“Reach me?” I ask. “It’s not a hallucination?”
I thought it felt real—the way the coldness lingered in my bones after it had passed. Sometimes, I feel like I can still feel the chill on my skin.
Mial looks away at the other Arcanes in the common room. He shakes his head, muttering, “Come,” as he turns out of the room. We sit at an empty table, him across from me, frowning. I follow his gaze to the ring of red around my wrist—from his grip.
“It’s okay.”
He shakes his head, shoulders tense. “I’ve withheld information from you. Not because you don’t deserve to know, but because I feared it would endanger you.” Mial folds his hands together, pressing them against his mouth as he takes a deep breath.
“I’m Amun and Eira’s last living son,” Mial says.
I scoot back, my spine tight as if trying to make room for the meaning of his words.
Mial continues, “The pale woman is my mother. After her death, my father obsessed over bringing her back. Centuries of effort later, he succeeded—but death is cruel. She returned a corpse, filled with wrath.”
So few words, yet so much implication. Amun and Eira were real—and I’m the one uncovering the truth. A Fire Folk born to burn young, learning the secrets of the universe.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask, voice low.
“You ought to know whose home you’ve been brought into.”
I nod, clenching my jaw. “And how is Eira still… alive?”
Mial nods, as if he expected the question. “She isn’t. Yet when a body is returned, it cannot perish. I placed Eira’s body in suspended animation; it was the best I could manage.” He glances down, shaking his head. “You will not be happy with what I say next.”
My stomach drops. “What?”
“I fear you cannot remain here, if Eira has the power to reach your subconscious.”
My throat tightens. I have to speak—but it hurts to try. He always told me I would go back one day. But now?
Mial lets out a deep sigh. “I offer you my deepest condolences, dear child, for I was not able to keep you safe.”
I stand. I want to run away from him so he can’t send me away. “Mial, please.”
“There is no other course,” he says with a sigh of resignation.
No. I reach for the wolf, then stop myself, not wanting to touch it. I can’t think of Lucian. I don’t want to imagine seeing him when he’ll never see me.
There has to be a way to convince Mial to keep me here. He must be strong enough to stop Eira from getting to me.
“I trust you now!” I shout. “You can keep me safe. I know that.”
Mial’s frown deepens, and my fingers wrap around the little wolf before I can stop them.
Leiholan flashes in my mind—his missing leg, the heat of my hand sealing the wound. Will we have to hate each other all over again, or will he not care enough to argue?
If love depends on circumstance, then none of them owe me anything. When they see me with red eyes, will they see me, or just the story they were raised to fear?
“Mial, you have to understand,” my words spill quickly—faster than my breath, “you’re supposed to understand me. You promised!”
His tone is deep, and his words are slow. “I am aware of what I said.”
“Then why are you doing this?” I step away, as if that could change anything. My hands shake at my sides, and I press them into fists. It does nothing to ease me.
“For you, my child,” he says. “You are not safe here, however I long to make it so.”
“But I told you,” I whisper, on the edge of tears. “I had nothing left to live for—” The words collapse, choking themselves. I knew from the beginning: don’t grow attached. Keep your distance. Or is that inhuman? Will I always find something to hold onto, no matter how hard I try not to?
Mial steps forward, wrapping me in his embrace. His chest is steady, his warmth a fleeting fortress of safety. He’ll be leaving me soon.
“You do not yet comprehend what Eira shall do to this universe, should she awaken,” he whispers. “You are powerful. Yet she is the eldest of all Lyrians known to womankind. If she desires your hand to free her, you shall obey.”
I shake my head, words hot on my tongue, but Mial speaks before I can, “I offer you a parting gift before you go—”
“No.”
“How to end the hallucinations,” he says.
I stiffen. “It’s tricky, a dangerous thing to those around you.
But with time, you’ll learn to discern illusion from truth.
Subtle signs reveal themselves: shadows bent wrong, a man with six fingers.
Hold fast, and little by little, you will learn to part hallucination from truth.
” His hand holds mine, once gentle, now tightening until my knuckles are white.
“And when at last you can tell the difference… you must kill the one that haunts you.”
Of course murder is my salvation. What irony.
Mial backs away, holding my shoulders. A single tear falls from his eye. “You will be safe. You will return, one day. But what you do now… this is true strength. True power.”
“I’m leaving now?” I spit, stepping away from him again.
His hands fall, dangling at his sides. “I wish we had more time.”
This doesn’t feel like power. It feels like I’m destined to lose everything I try to hold onto. How many times has this happened?
Mial reaches into his coat pocket and holds up a vial, the blue liquid glinting in the light. The world is moving on before my eyes. If I don’t move with it, I don’t know what will happen.
“This shall carry you back to Elysia,” he says, sounding so calm. I envy it. I want to emulate it.
I stare at the vial. Has he been carrying it this whole time, waiting to throw me away?
My blood runs hot. I was worried about growing attached to something here—and he was waiting to get rid of me.
I frown and snatch the vial, wanting to throw it to the ground. But he probably has a million more bottles waiting.
The glass is cool against my lips, and I cough as the liquid burns down my chest. Heat floods me, almost like there’s fire in my palms again.
“Where do you wish to go?” he asks.
What a stupid question. Nowhere. I wish to go nowhere. But I say, “Visnatus,” as I hand the vial back to him.
Where else can I go?
Mial offers me a solemn nod, placing a hand on my back. We step forward to the mirror. He reaches for my trembling hand, calming me with his touch.
“Whatever may befall, know I hold faith in you.” He palms a knife and slices the blade over his hand, drawing blood.
I’m doing this. I’m going back to Visnatus. I’m going to see them again.
Mial places his bleeding hand on the mirror. The red seeps outward, crawling over the surface. It swallows our reflection first, then stretches to the edges until crimson devours every inch. It’s the same thing Icarthus did for my mom.
But I don’t remember her drinking anything.
Mial lifts his hand from the mirror and slowly turns to face me. “Whenever you’re prepared,” he murmurs.
I take a deep breath, staring into his eyes—eyes like mine. Red. Dangerous, to the people in Elysia. But I like who I am here. I’m not an outcast. I’m not a girl from the septic or a Fire Folk with deadly abilities. I’m just like everyone else, another Phoenician.
I’m not ready to be ostracized again.
“I shall come for you,” Mial says, “in due time.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to keep the tears from spilling. They fall anyway. I want to stay, if only to avoid facing the things I’ve lost. But he’ll come for me again.
I step forward, and Mial stops me with a hand on my shoulder.
“Till we next cross paths,” he mutters, his voice trembling. It’s the first time I’ve seen him fractured.
But his words remind me that he was once from Elysia, too. So I mirror what we say to our lost. “Until we meet again.”
Then I step through the red mirror.
?
The headmistress takes her seat across the desk from me. It feels almost like the first time I arrived at this school—except then, Hogan, Leiholan, and the headmistress were all in the old cobblestone room I portaled into. This time, it’s just her.
In her office now, she leans back in her chair, studying me. “Desdemona, I take it?”
My eyes widen. I try to take a breath, but it betrays me—shaky and shallow. Maybe she remembers me. Maybe they all do.
“How did you know?” I ask, hope rising fast—flooding my chest, threatening to spill over.
Then she speaks, and the tide recedes. “We found your journal.”
She read it—enough to know my name. I shudder at the thought of what else she read.
“Aralia told you?” I ask.
The headmistress shrugs. “And Lucian.”