15. Syrus
Syrus
When she reaches out to me in the middle of the day, I’m foolish enough to hope. Hope that maybe last night changed things, that it was the first step in her letting me closer again. That maybe she’s prepared to accept that not every wound and gulf between us is my doing.
It had been both paradise and purgatory, getting to be with her like that again.
By the time I left her mind, I felt as if I’d almost lost my own, I was so strung out on the heady drug of her pleasure.
Then I found Viz and immediately stepped up our plans.
I could see the concern in his eyes, wondering what had spurred on this manic energy.
If he knew that all it took was the soft press of her mind around me as she unraveled and the liquid heat of her body racked by the throes of climax, he definitely would have taken back everything he said about Leah making me more balanced.
But my hopes are dashed when I enter her mind and feel it pulsing with the frantic bite of fear. Whatever brought on this summons must be bad.
“What’s wrong? Are you hurt? What are you doing out here?”
I can see through her eyes that she’s pacing along the edge of the terraced gardens where she spoke to her grandfather, overlooking the lower levels of the city.
“I needed some privacy, and these gardens are usually empty this time of day,” she says, leaning her elbows on the wall that borders the gardens as if admiring the view.
“If I go back to my room, I’ll get stuck with Filippa.
She usually waits for me there before we head to training together, and I needed to talk to you. ”
I started examining her the moment I arrived, scanning her body for any physical signs of harm. Aside from the now familiar throb between her shoulder blades, she seems well.
“News about the trials?” I ask.
“Yep, big news,” she says, her fingers scratching, agitated, at the ridges of stone on top of the wall. “I hate to admit it, but you were right. The third trial is the oracle, and it’s going to be a problem.”
“This is an instance where I also hate to be right,” I say, my stomach sinking like a stone. “How big of a problem?”
“It’s powered by the Everlight, and it looks for darkness in fledglings’ souls. If it finds some, it purges it, and not everyone survives. What do you think the chances are that it’s going to count my bond with you as some unwanted darkness, Syrus?”
To my surprise, she sounds nervous rather than totally panicked. What she just told me should have her already packing her things. This isn’t something she can fight or something I can fight for her.
“You have to leave,” I say, trying to give my voice as much weight as possible. “Run away from Aradis. Find the runes to open your own rift. I can have Viz see if he can dig up something to help you, but you’ll likely need to steal—”
“No,” she says, cutting me off. “I’m not going anywhere. There has to be another way around this.”
This is so far from what I expected that it takes me a beat to absorb it. But when I do, I’m infuriated.
“Those pale-bloods have muddled your mind,” I hiss. “Or did you not hear yourself say people don’t survive this thing?”
“I’m making a place for myself in Aradis, and I’m not going to throw it all away because you let yourself get bound to me,” she fires back at me.
“You once promised me you would end the possession if I did what you wanted. Well, now it looks like I might die if you don’t, so what’s the plan, Syrus?
Are you going to free me, or will you let the oracle kill me? ”
I see now why the panic hasn’t totally overtaken her yet. Despite the stakes, she thinks she can still use this situation to her advantage—to be rid of me. It’s smart and ruthless and makes me burn for her just that little bit more.
“Some might say it’s not very fair, using the fact that I care for you against me like this.”
“Unfair is me facing death because you’re a controlling asshole who can’t let go of this bond,” she throws back.
I lean into her mind, lowering my voice so she can hear the hint of threat in it. Anything to jolt her out of this mindset.
“You seemed very happy to use that bond when you thought it could help keep you alive in the trials,” I point out.
I rack my brain for another angle here, a path that doesn’t lead to the inevitable sticking point she’s driving us toward.
“And now it might be the thing that kills me,” she says, matter-of-factly. I flinch. She must know how much I hate it, every time she mentions even the prospect of her not existing anymore. “So what are you going to do about it, Syrus?”
She’s counting on the fact that I would do anything to keep her safe. At least she knows that much about me, even if she’s bent on misinterpreting and mistrusting everything else.
“It’s not that simple,” I say. “You know that this bond goes beyond normal possession. The sorcerers used complex, unusual magic, and our usual methods of separation won’t be enough.”
She straightens up, fixing her gaze into the distance. “What are you saying? That this whole time you never actually knew how to get rid of the bond?”
I can feel the anger boiling up inside her, and I start to shore up my defenses, preparing for the onslaught that’s coming.
“Well, actually—”
I sense the presence behind her a fraction too late. Her head snaps forward, blinding pain radiating across the base of her skull as something hard and heavy smashes into her. Her vision spots, but I’m aware of her slumping forward, her arm scraping against the wall.
“Leah!” I throw my magic into her muscles, trying to seize control, but the person behind her moves too fast, shoving her over the wall. She goes over on her side, body twisting so that I catch a blur of blond hair and a sneering face through her clouding vision.
I feel her falling through the air as her consciousness fades.
No. Please, no.
I try to hold on, to bury my grip tight in her mind. I’ll be ejected the instant she blacks out completely—there’ll be nothing I can do for her. And then I’ll shatter apart as surely as her bones when they hit the streets below.
“Leah,” I call again, desperate that she hears me. “Leah, I love you. Don’t leave me. Wake up. Wake up!”
But it’s no use. I can’t save her. I can’t do anything. I’m powerless.
The blackness swallows her, and I’m thrown from her mind, leaving her to meet her death alone.
Leah
Leah. Leah, I love you. Wake up. Wake up.
The words come to me in my dream. They’re nice words. The kind of thing I once ached to hear from that voice. No wonder my mind conjures them up now. Everyone should get to hear something nice before they die.
But the voice is fading, growing fainter, and that’s sad. I don’t want it to go. I want us both to stay here in the drifting clouds until—
I jolt from the darkness, glimpsing the pale sky of Aradis above me through the hair whipping around my face.
I don’t think I was out for long—maybe just a few seconds.
And it only takes a second more for two things to become crystal clear in my mind: I’m falling, and the hard stones of Luminis’s streets are only moments away from meeting the back of my skull.
I don’t waste time thinking of the ancestors or the goddess or anyone else I should be praying to save me. No, my mind goes to the people I love—friends, family, and a man with a pair of crimson eyes who’s left his fingerprints all over my soul.
A searing pain splits me open, like it’s ripping me in two. I would think I’d finally hit the ground, except it keeps hurting too much for me to be dead. Agony burns across my back, licking like a flame over a pair of burning points between my shoulder blades.
I scream at the same time as a thwump surrounds me—a sound like air getting caught beneath a billowing sheet.
My back flexes of its own accord, a layer of muscle I’ve never felt before bunching and releasing in an entirely new movement. Somehow, my body knows what to do, contracting and spreading the wings that have just sprouted from me, slowing my fall as they catch on a current of air.
I’m still moving downward, but at a less deadly speed, as I drop in short, sharp bursts. Eventually, I’m oriented enough to look down. There’s a street below me—relatively empty, each individual cobblestone becoming visible as I close in.
I still land too hard, legs crumpling underneath me as I list over to one side, catching myself with a palm that scrapes against the ground. It leaves a bloody smear, but I’m not dead, so I’m more than fine with some cuts and bruises right now.
I gasp for air, my heart still racing because it hasn’t got the message yet that we’re on solid ground. But clearly some part of me is paying attention—the raw instinct that saved me, that ripped my wings from my back and told them how to ride the wind.
I survived, despite that bastard Keros trying to kill me. And I know it was him; I recognized that blond hair and ugly face from just the glimpse I got as I went over the wall.
There’s movement ahead of me, a trio of ephilium further down the road who’ve stopped in their tracks, seeing me kneeling in the street. I hold up a hand.
“It’s okay, I’m all right,” I call, but their eyes are wide, and one of them bends to whisper to her neighbor, whose expression is a cloud of confusion.
I follow their gaze, looking for the first time over my shoulder at my new wings. They’re beautiful, the glossy feathers stacked in a precise pattern, curving at the top and tapering down into neat points.
And every one of them is jet black.