Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-two
Imanaged to get the dress off without ripping it to shreds, and finally had enough of an appetite to eat the plate of cold roasted bird and sweet brown bread left on the table. I’d spent more time with sweetwine (and checking out the servingware) than nibbling the party food.
When I’d put the tray outside and washed up, I sat down on the bed to wait. I knew she was on her way. I could feel it, as if her mere presence in the realm was a beacon I could detect. Maybe the Aetheric practitioner hadn’t only hurt me. Maybe he’d made me differently strong.
A flash of light, and she appeared in the middle of the room, barely visible. Her body was a bare flicker, the last light of a dying candle.
“Luna!” I said, and rushed toward her. I reached out instinctively for her arm, even though I knew I’d touch nothing but heat. And even that was weak.
“What’s happened? Did the practitioner do this?” I swore then and there that if I lost her, if he took her from me, from Wren, I would kill him for that alone.
“A war. The god. Trying to free him.” She looked up at me, and there was devastation in her eyes. “I need your help.”
“Of course. Anything. Tell me what to do.”
“I am sorry. I’m not to ask you.”
I didn’t like the mix of guilt and fear in her tone, but what I liked didn’t matter. “How can I help?”
She flickered, disappeared completely, then appeared again. “I don’t have the strength to return to the Aetheric.”
And if she couldn’t do that, there would be nothing left of her. There would only be Oblivion, the eternal Nothingness. There would be no more Luna.
Her true death was absolutely not happening on my watch. “Tell me how to help.”
“I need you to open a doorway.”
I stared at her. “To the Aetheric? Like the Aetheric practitioner?” Luna was asking me to manipulate Aether. “I can’t do that. I don’t know how.”
“For this, I can help you. I’m sorry,” she said again, “but I need you to try.” She flickered again, her eyes wide and sorrowful. “It is this or Oblivion.”
I couldn’t think of a reason she kept apologizing, except…“Will it hurt me?”
She nodded, her gaze dropping to my chest where the scratches were finally healing. “It may. But not in the way it did before. It was not the Aether that hurt you.”
It sure felt like the Aether had hurt me, but I only nodded. “It doesn’t matter,” I said before I had time to give it too much thought. It couldn’t matter because there was no other choice. I could bear pain; I couldn’t bear her eternal absence. “Tell me how.”
“I will help you connect to that place,” she said. “You need only allow the door to open. Get ready.”
When I nodded, she leaned forward and put the flat of her hand against my chest, her strength so diminished that I felt only a whisper of warmth. That warmth met the place broken by the Aetheric practitioner, and the fire in my chest ignited again, hot and jagged about the edges.
It had been days since I’d felt that magic, burrowed as I was in the palace, and I gasped from the sharp shock of it.
My instinct was to move away, to put space between myself and her and the pain, but I knew better.
I squeezed my eyes shut, remembered the voice that had told me to breathe—that seemed so long ago now—and focused on forcing air in and out of my lungs.
I couldn’t scream. That would alarm the guard outside, and he’d push his way in or call the prince. They’d interrupt, and this had to happen, even if it hurt me.
“I am sorry,” she said again in a faint and scratchy whisper.
Her hand dug further, as if she was reaching into my soul to claw out a piece of it.
The pain was exquisite, bright and hard like she’d plunged a fire-hot poker into my chest. My body buckled, sending me hard to the floor.
This pain was worse than what the Aetheric practitioner had done.
Sweat blossomed across my body, which felt like it was burning from the inside.
The stone, at least, was cold, and it had wisps of steam rising around me.
I had been ignited. I was aflame. I would burn to ash.
“I can stop.”
I managed only the tiniest shake of my head. The rest of my concentration was spent on staying conscious and quiet.
“Only a bit more.”
There was another burst of fire, like nails scratching through my soul, like it was being ripped away one bit at a time. My body bowed, my eyes flying open at the staggering heat. The fire would tear me apart, and there would be nothing left.
And then something happened.
Something in my body shifted, rearranged. What the Aetheric practitioner had broken, this seemed to soothe, to smooth. And then a door was opened to a different place, where a different kind of fire burned.
Through that doorway, the Aetheric waited. Watched.
I braced myself for the pain I’d felt in the gambling hall—the breaking of my body.
Just as before, Aetheric fire roared into our world.
But this wasn’t the flaming stars that had settled into my chest that night.
This was fluid, but strong. More powerful than I could comprehend, but gentle.
It was the warmth of sunlight on a chilly day, of a lover’s embrace, of a beautiful smile.
That warmth spread through me, smothering the fire ignited by the Aetheric practitioner—the friction of things he’d broken now gone.
My eyes were closed, but I stared through that doorway. I could see nothing, but I could hear it, and I could feel it. It pulsed like the heartbeat of the world. It was the next step. The corridor. The hallway. It was change and adaptation. It was what came next.
It wasn’t the realm into which I’d been born, but it was a realm my body understood. I wanted to stay there, to settle myself inside that place and let it pulse around me, where I’d be safe and quiet. I would never be alone. Not here, where souls gathered.
“Come back,” I heard Luna say. Her hand lifted and the drumbeat slowed, my body cooled, and the connection closed.
I opened my eyes. She smiled at me, her eyes soft and full of emotion, and her body no longer transparent, but bright and clear. I was drenched in sweat, and I felt both better than I had since arriving at the palace and completely exhausted.
“It worked,” I said. “Glad.” Now I was the one who couldn’t spare the words. Very slowly, very carefully, I sat up. “I heard a rhythm. I didn’t want to leave it.”
“It is the pulse of a million souls, and it can be a place of peace. But it is not your realm, so you must always be careful how long the connection lasts.”
“How was I able to open the doorway?”
“You were right that the Aetheric practitioner…broke something inside you. I have repaired it…for now, and that repair…allowed you to do this.” Her signs were slow and halting, as if she wasn’t entirely certain of the truth—or was holding something back.
“Why do you keep saying you’re sorry, and why do you look guilty?”
“Because it was my job to protect you. Not the other way.”
“You have to tell me all of it, Luna. I know you’re hiding things.” I knew I had no grounds to make demands on her—not after all she’d done for me—but maybe saving her life this one time evened the score a bit. But I was too tired to fight that battle now.
A pause, then a nod. “Soon. But I can say no more of this today.” Her gaze flicked to my chest. “Is there pain?”
I shook my head, put my hand on the flat of my chest. I could feel my heart beating, still quick and hard. And beside it, a new kind of warmth, like a small, fragile ember had lodged there. “It’s warm. But it doesn’t hurt.”
“You may still feel pain as you did before, but hopefully less.” That didn’t seem to comfort her. “The practitioner will surely have felt this. He will try to find you.”
I nodded. “I know, unless we stop him first. Who imprisoned the Aetheric god?”
“A Guardian.”
“Did you free him?”
She shook her head. “The battle continues.”
“How long has he been imprisoned, Luna?”
She paused, as if weighing the price of the truth, then nodded. “For a decade.”
A decade of imprisonment. What hope did the rest of us have when even a god was powerless against his enemies?
“Time is different for gods; a decade is short as a heartbeat. We will see him freed.” There was determination in her eyes now. “I must go and see to things. Make preparations.”
“For his return?”
“For everything that comes next.”
With that, she disappeared.
I sat on the floor, clothing soaked through, until I was sure my legs would hold me.
I scooted over to the bed and used the wooden stair to help myself rise.
I walked slowly to the window, pushed back the heavy curtain to open it, and closed my eyes in the cooling breeze.
And when I opened them again, I saw them: a dozen Anima on the palace grounds, their glow soft and pale in the darkness.
I hadn’t seen Anima other than Luna anywhere near the palace.
But now they hovered like fireflies, undoubtedly drawn by the abundance of Aether.
“All is well,” I said quietly. “You can go home.”
I waited until the last glow faded away, then closed the window again.