Chapter 45
I was dying. I was dead, and I had passed into the Great Dominion. That was the only explanation.
“Gareth,” I said, his name barely a breath. “But you’re dead.”
He blinked at me in surprise. “I’m not.”
It was the most ridiculous conversation. Everything felt so absurd that I wanted to laugh.
But the Warden had no patience for impossible reunions.
My body suddenly seized, and the binding magic within me drew taut as a wire.
It pushed me down toward her, pressing the knife blade deeper into her throat.
Bright red blood tinged with gold trickled down her neck and into the mud.
So much red and so little gold. My heart sank.
I took this to mean that Zelphenia was indeed very weak, the balance between them skewed heavily in the Warden’s favor.
“Don’t look at him,” she rasped, “look at me. Kill me, Mara. We’ll die together, and we’ll both be free.”
It was something about the mad light in her eyes, the desperation with which her will suddenly pulled against mine. As I stared down at her, fighting her with all my tired strength, I saw the truth as clearly as if she were whispering it into my ear.
Zelphenia was the goddess of the unknowable, mother of demons and beguilers, specters and revenants. So much of her power lay in the realm of death. And the Warden had wanted to punish me, to summon me back to her for this very moment, this final task.
“You knew I wouldn’t come to you if he were still alive,” I whispered. “You made him appear dead to my eyes.”
“I would have killed him properly if she’d let me,” the Warden hissed. “But it was enough. Here you are, and here we’ll die.”
It was too much to bear, this betrayal. I watched her through my tears, hating that this was the final image she would have of me but unable to stop crying.
Gareth wasn’t dead—he was here, he was alive—and still I was locked in this deadly embrace. If I relented for even a moment, the Warden would win. The knife, wielded by my hand, would cut open her throat. Every Rose would die. The Mist would fall.
But I couldn’t fight her forever. Maybe if I hadn’t spent so much of my strength helping Ankaret; maybe if I’d stayed with Gareth’s body and not run away from anyone who might see me and wish to help; maybe, maybe…
I wept bitterly. I’d done everything wrong. Everything was wrong, and I’d never again be able to touch Gareth, or even look into his eyes and see how obviously and completely he loved me. I’d killed him. I’d killed everyone.
“I love you,” I whispered, my arms trembling with the effort of pulling against the Warden’s wrist. I was drenched with sweat; my whole body shook. “Gareth, I love you.”
“Don’t do that,” he said sternly. “I hear that good-bye, and I reject it.”
He reached for me, but some kind of shield had formed around the Warden and me, and it pushed him back with a bright flash and a snap like lightning. The Warden blew out a ragged laugh. No, she wouldn’t let him touch me. Not now, when she was so close to winning.
Gareth hissed and shook out his hands, then came as close to me as he dared.
“All right, Mara, I need you to listen to me. Gemma and Farrin are here, and your mother and father, and Ryder and Talan, and Alastrina, and Caiathos. And Ankaret. We’re going to help you.
I just need you to hold on for a little longer. ”
My mind felt sluggish as I listened to him, like I’d forgotten the familiar sounds of these words. I nodded helplessly.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him hold up his hands. He was cradling something inside them, something brilliantly gold and as small as a songbird.
Listen to me very carefully, Mara, said the thing in Gareth’s hands.
I nearly burst into tears. “Ankaret,” I gasped out.
The Warden’s eyes widened, then narrowed. She let out a furious cry, and her whole body jerked under mine, pulling me closer. My arms nearly buckled; the knife’s blade sank deeper into her skin.
I’m going to move the root of her binding magic into you, Ankaret said. You will carry it now, not her. She will die, and you will live. Our own kind of transference. It is not a perfect solution, but it is what we can manage right now. Do you understand?
I shook my head. “You can’t. She won’t let you.”
You watched me die—you helped me do it. And yet here I am again, reborn, just as I promised you, and still you doubt me.
“Foul creature,” the Warden hissed, poison in her voice. “Get away from her. We are beyond you now. It’s too late to stop us.”
Ankaret ignored her. She crawled lightly onto my shoulder, easily passing through the Warden’s shield. Her arms and legs were slender as twigs, and stubby little wings of fire illuminated her back. With every movement, tiny whorls of ashes floated around her body.
It is true that I am still weak, Ankaret said, but the others are going to help me. The only thing you need to do is stay strong and resist her will.
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t wrap my mind around what she was telling me. I shook my head wordlessly.
I need you to let me in, Mara. I will not do this without your consent.
“Gareth,” I said, a sob bursting out of me.
I felt him shift closer. “I’m here. Mara, I’m here, and I always will be.”
“I can’t do this.”
“You can.” This time when he tried to reach for me, nothing stopped him. He touched the curve of my wing, and the Warden bellowed in frustration. Whatever she’d done to keep him from me, it seemed she could no longer sustain it.
Gareth wrapped his arms around me and pressed his chest against my back, between my limp and trembling wings. I felt his lips on my nape, beneath my hair.
“I’m right here, Mara,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
It was a sweet but futile thing to say. He didn’t have me. The Warden did. But the sensation of his body curving against mine, when I thought I’d never be lucky enough to feel that again, was better than anything I’d ever known.
“I thought I’d lost you,” I whispered.
“Never. Never.”
“I can’t do this. Not even for you.”
“Certainly you can. Look at you, you’re doing it right now.”
I drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and when I let it out, I felt how easy it would be to keep going, to relax all the way down to my fingertips and let the Warden’s binding magic take hold of me. My eyelids were heavy. Keeping them open was like shoving against something inexorable and immense.
“I’m so tired, Gareth,” I said.
“I know, darling.”
“No, you don’t know. I’m tired. Of all this, everything that’s happened, everything I’ve done…” Their names came to me as whispers: Petra. Posey. Crellin. Everyone I’d lost and every life I had taken.
“I don’t want to do it anymore.” The words left me on a thin breath of air. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t you say that to me.”
The way his voice broke tore at me, but that changed nothing. I meant what I’d said. I let my eyes fall shut. Ankaret pressed her tiny warm hands into the down of my shoulder.
“Everything that happened to you in Mhorghast,” I said quietly. “Everything you did…do you never want to escape from it?”
Gareth’s arms tightened around me. “Of course I do. But if I gave in to those feelings, everyone who hurt me would win.”
“And so what if they do? Defiance alone is not a reason to keep living.”
Saying the words aloud was a relief. Suddenly I felt almost weightless. It would have been so easy to let that feeling bear me away.
“No, but this is.” Gareth put his hands over my heart.
“You and me, and everyone who loves you. Your heart and all its goodness, your immeasurable courage, how deeply you care about everything and everyone around you, even at the expense of yourself. Your life, Mara—that’s a reason to keep living. Your rare and extraordinary life.”
His impassioned words were weakening my resolve, and that made me furious. I didn’t want my resolve to weaken. I wanted him to say, You’re right, Mara, and let me go.
“I’ll never be able to leave the Mist, or Rosewarren,” I said. “Do you understand what you’re asking of me? I’ll be responsible for it, for all of them. And I’ll be trapped—just as I am now, but even worse. I’ll be bound to my duty, ensnared in it, just the same as she has been.”
“No you won’t, not in the slightest.” Gareth’s voice was ragged, as if he were struggling to hold himself together, but his hold on me was strong, his breath on my neck steady and warm.
“By her own doing, she has always been alone. But you won’t be.
We’ll figure out a way, all of us, to make things right.
We have Ankaret to help us, and three gods who will grow stronger every day, and we’ll forge alliances with Olden scholars, and I’ll read every book that has ever been written.
We’ll find a solution. We’ll rebuild everything, including the Order. ”
I shook my head. More work, endless work, and the unknown dangers that would come as two worlds licked their wounds, and no promise of relief. I couldn’t bear all of that. I wasn’t strong enough for it, not anymore.
All I wanted was to go home.
That was what I’d wanted more than anything for as long as I could remember.
And here at the crossroads of my life, with the Warden’s will scraping mine raw on one side and an endless stretch of days unfurling on the other, it was the purest thing I could think of: Ivyhill, and all its parks and hothouses, the vines grown by my mother’s hand, every cheerful shuttered window that I’d painted on the walls of my room at the priory.
Suddenly I was ten years old again, my heart in pieces as that fearsome black carriage took me farther and farther away from everything I’d ever known.
That heartbroken girl had hoped something marvelous would happen one day, sweeping away every pain she had suffered.
On that day, she would be able to go home again.
She had held on to that hope for years, far longer than she should have.
Some spark of it still lived inside me, and now I was considering stamping it out.
“I just want to go home,” I whispered. “If I do this, I’ll never be able to. Ever.”
“Then we’ll build a new home, together,” Gareth said fiercely, “and we’ll make it just as it ought to be. We’ll fill it with happiness, years and years of it.”
Our home. “Our home.”
“Yes, darling. Mara, my love.” He kissed my hair. I felt his tears on my neck. “Our home.”
I hovered at the edge of something colossal, refusing to blink. The world shimmered before my eyes.
When I said her name, I could barely feel my tongue. “Ankaret?”
Yes, Mara?
I took a breath and blinked at last. Tears spilled silently down my cheeks. “Do it.”
She obeyed immediately, skimming down my arm with her long firebird’s tail streaming behind her. She wound herself around the spot where I gripped the Warden’s wrist, faster and faster until the shape of her disappeared and became simply a spinning ring of fire.
“Mara, don’t let her do this!” The Warden was insensate with anger. It jolted through me like poison. “This is the only way! Our freedom, Mara!”
I closed my eyes, pulling back against her with all my strength.
My hand and her wrist were now fully wreathed in fire; we were in it up to our elbows, and it kept expanding.
The Warden writhed, trying to buck me off of her, but Gareth was holding on to me, hands clasped at my waist and his face buried in my neck.
And as Ankaret’s fire raced through me, and through the Warden, and then back into me again, a feeling beyond pain took ahold of me—a white, quiet feeling, like the highest reaches of the sky—and suddenly I could see the entire beach.
I saw Farrin holding on to Gareth’s waist, and Gemma holding on to hers.
I saw Talan and Ryder, my parents, fierce-eyed Alastrina, and solemn Caiathos, muttering to himself as if in prayer.
They made a chain of bodies, digging their heels into the earth and holding onto me with all their power.
Tears streamed down Gemma’s face. Farrin sang under her breath, her brow tight with concentration.
I felt their heartbeats crowd against mine; I heard the thunder of their lungs.
They poured their power into the river of Ankaret’s fire and held onto me, keeping me upright even when everything in me longed to fall.
Don’t let go. Farrin’s voice, and then Gemma’s. Don’t give in. We love you.
“Stay here with me,” Gareth murmured against my hot skin. “Stay with us, Mara.”
I was burning, everything I knew was burning—but instead of becoming ashes, all the inner pieces of myself shifted, expanding, and my bones turned unbreakable and golden.
Soon my skin would peel away to reveal the old magic beneath—this ancient power of binding that was now mine to carry—and as my mind began to buckle under the stress, it recalled a line from one of my old books at Rosewarren, one of the first I’d been tested on during those early years of training.
Aelum: A fundamental substance, invisible to everyone but the gods. The basis of all magical life.
That was what Ankaret was doing, I thought, feeling strangely calm.
She was moving aelum from the Warden’s body into mine, shifting the very foundations of our bodies.
Distantly, as my vision turned black, I heard the Warden start screaming.
Even after everything she had done to me, I found myself wanting to comfort her. My heart and all its goodness.
Then, all at once, it was done. The world turned cold and dark around me. I fell into its quiet gladly.