Chapter 24 #2
I closed my eyes. My mind was already pulling away, folding into itself again, the pain fading. I didn’t even have to recite medical textbooks to keep myself anchored. I sank like a stone.
“Ember?”
A hand wrapped around my wrist, and for a moment—a single desperate second—I thought maybe I would open my eyes and see Trey.
Instead, I met Mac’s dark gaze.
We weren’t in the loft. Darkness surrounded us, but it wasn’t empty.
Golden light twisted around us, flowing from our bodies.
It reminded me of when light would emanate from my skin, but this was different.
Instead of beams or a glow, it was thin and sparkling like a thread made of flecks of pure gold.
The threads flowed from our skin and around the two of us, moving gracefully in a way that reminded me of the Northern Lights.
I’d never seen this before, but I instinctively knew it was my magic—it was our magic.
Mac was gripping my wrist, holding me in place, keeping me from falling farther into the deep darkness below.
His eyes flashed fiercely, reflecting the golden threads that danced around us.
“Come back,” he said in my head.
I stared at him, tears still leaking from my eyes, but they drifted around my face instead of falling.
“Ember, come back,” he repeated.
I couldn’t muster the energy to explain that I wasn’t strong enough. I couldn’t face that pain anymore. It was too much. I was too much, slowly drowning on dry land while everyone around me continued to breathe.
“Then lean on me; let me carry you for a while,” he said, and the emotion in his words colored the darkness a deep midnight blue. “I know it hurts, but if you lock everything away, you’ll lose all the beauty, too. So lean on me—I can take it.”
As though he commanded them, the golden threads began to weave together, forming a cord twining around his arm, moving down toward his wrist and my hand.
I watched numbly as my golden threads did the same.
The thicker the cord, the brighter the light became, and when the two cords of woven magic met where Mac’s hand still tightly gripped my wrist, the light flared, blindingly bright.
When it faded, there was no sign of where the cords had joined.
It was like they had fused into one, binding the two of us together with one long, continuous flow of magic.
Somehow, I knew if I wanted to pull away, I could; the magic would release me.
The magic between us seemed to pulse like a heartbeat; whatever this binding was, it lived.
Pulling away would hurt us both; severing our connection would be like sawing off a limb.
I stared into Mac’s grey eyes and knew he was aware of it, too.
He knew I had the power to hurt him, but he still waited.
“Em,” his voice was rough, “please let me in.”
His pain flowed through our magic and crashed into me, stealing the air from my lungs. The weight of his grief, fear, regret, and guilt would have been enough to bring me to my knees, but it was his crushing loneliness, like an echo of my own, that broke me.
I instinctively reached for him with my free hand, wrapping my fingers around his wrist. I wasn’t so much trying to reach for help as I was trying to ease that pain in him, but the relief that filled his eyes was impossible to miss.
He pulled, and I moved toward him like we were floating in water.
The golden magic between us grew brighter again as I neared him, and just before I reached him, everything went white.
I opened my eyes with a gasp. I was still kneeling on the loft floor, folded in half, but Mac was beside me with one arm around my back and the other gripping my hand.
The letter lay on the floor in front of us.
Awareness and pain poured back into my body, and my muscles tensed at the onslaught.
Mac shifted to pull me upright, and I winced at the pain in my back, but then he was crushing me against his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around me, anchoring me with his entire body.
“I’m here,” he murmured in my head. “Let it out.”
Another crack in the dam. Pain and grief poured from my body in sobs, but the weight of his arms soothed the sharpness. I wanted to be done. I wanted to pack this grief into a neat little box and tuck it away, never to be seen again, but it was everywhere, in my blood and bones.
“I know.” I could hear the pain in his voice. “I know. I loved him, too.”
Eventually, the flood eased, and I returned to the quiet loft and Mac.
He sat on the floor, leaning back against the wall, and I was sitting between his legs, curled into him.
His arms were solid around me, and my face was pressed into the crook of his neck.
My senses flooded with the smell of mint from Mist’s soap, and his chest rose and fell beneath me as he breathed.
My arms had wrapped around his neck at some point, and my entire body felt like liquid.
“What happened?” I mumbled.
“I felt you,” he answered, emotion roughening his voice. “I dunno how. I was talkin’ to Nemo, and suddenly I felt your pain and then… nothin’.” His arms tightened around me. “You were just gone. Scared the hell outta me. I thought you fuckin’ died. ”
We didn’t speak for a while, just breathing together. My eyes found the discarded letter on the floor.
“Did you read it?” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he answered, the single word heavy with guilt. “I’m sorry, I was tryin’ to figure out what happened.”
“It’s okay,” I mumbled, mostly relieved I didn’t have to explain what the letter had said. “You were in my head?”
“I came to find you,” he explained quietly.
“You weren’t responding to me, and I… or maybe these powers knew what to do.
I can’t really explain it. Felt more like instinct than anything else.
I had to search for a while, though.” I felt a tiny hint of amusement.
“Figures that you’d be good at hidin’ in your head, too. ”
“Where’s Wolf?”
“They’re out on the porch. I told ’em I needed to talk to you privately.”
Relief flowed through me that they weren’t downstairs waiting to come up and demand what was wrong with me now .
“I can hear his and Kai’s thoughts, now,” he added.
I sat up, reluctantly pulling away. “You can hear both at once? Without even seeing them?”
“Yeah, it’s loud.”
I frowned, but he spoke out loud.
“Do you want to talk about this?” he asked, tapping the letter on the floor with his fingertips.
The raw hurt rose again so swiftly I was unprepared. “I tried to tell him so many times… what would happen if I lost him. I t-told him it would d-destroy me, but he still… he still didn’t?—”
I pressed my lips together, inhaling shakily through my nose. Mac offered a hand, palm up, and I took it gratefully.
“Trey always had so much hope in the goodness of people,” he murmured, his eyes on our entwined hands.
“And Ana and I… I think we instinctively tried to shield him to keep that hope alive. After Madame carved up my back the second time, he marched to her office and told her to stop. He was fuckin’ nine years old.
” He huffed a weary laugh. “He thought it worked, but really, I just stopped tellin’ him stuff ’cause I was scared Madame would hurt him.
He had such a big heart and was determined to make a change, but he viewed a world where things were different—simpler and easier.
Maybe we shouldn’t have shielded him as much as we did. But he was always just… just…”
“A dreamer,” I whispered, the ache in my chest growing sharper.
He glanced up and met my eyes. “Yeah. A dreamer.”
We sat in silence for a long time before he spoke again.
“Maybe we need the dreamers to inspire us. Maybe the rest of us need to see somebody reach for the stars before we realize how much we want ’em, too.”
Silence fell again, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. As the adrenaline from the grief faded, exhaustion swept in.
“I think you’re a dreamer, too.”
I shot Mac a skeptical look. I was still sitting between his long legs, and something about his knees creating a makeshift wall around me made me feel safe.
His lips twitched up, but his eyes were serious. “I do. You were just trapped in nightmares for so long you forgot what other dreams were possible.”
I stared at him, emotion welling up in my throat again.
“Then Trey, with his big dreams, swept in and reminded you.” My eyes overflowed, and he winced. “I feel like I’m always making you cry.”
“No,” my voice wobbled as I realized out loud, “you’re always letting me cry.”
A strong emotion swept across his face, and when he spoke, his voice was rough again. “I can take it, Em.”
“I know,” I said because it was true. I thought about what I’d realized out in the woods. “You’re my rock.”
He went still, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I’m your rock?”
“Every time I feel like I’m comin’ apart, you’re there,” I fumbled to explain, tears still dripping down my face.
“You let me hold onto you when I need it, but you never hold me down.” I sniffled, using my free hand to swipe my face with one of Sam’s handkerchiefs.
“It was harder to… to talk to Trey about this kinda shit.”
Mac squeezed my hand gently. “I can’t speak for you, but I know I struggled to tell Trey about the hard shit ’cause he always took my burdens on like they were his.
I don’t think he even realized he was doin’ it.
I know it came from his heart. He wanted to fix things.
He just… didn’t understand that sometimes things weren’t as simple as he wanted ’em to be. ”
Guilt swept through me, and he frowned.
“I’m not sayin’ he was a bad person, Em. He was a good person, a damn good person, but he was still a person. He wasn’t perfect. Nobody is.”
My conversation with Tuck and Lee about good and evil and scales swept through my head. Trey was at least a better person than I was. Maybe if I just lived like Trey was holding the scales?—
“I don’t think Trey was a better person than you,” Mac interrupted.
I raised my eyebrows, a humorless laugh escaping my lips.
“Why would he be a better person?” Mac pushed.
I stared at him with so many reasons running through my head that I couldn’t even pick one. He sighed, his eyes narrowing into a familiar, exasperated expression.
“The only person who’s lived your life is you. So why the hell would you try to make decisions based on someone else?”
“Because he was a good person,” I whispered.
“You’re a good person, too.”
I started shaking my head, but he caught my face and held it still.
“Ember, you are a good person.” His voice was firm, eyes flashing.
“I’m not?—”
“Stop,” he interrupted and pulled my face toward him.
For the briefest moment, I thought he was about to kiss me, and my stomach launched into the stars with, what? Fear? Anxiety? Something else? But he just pressed his forehead against mine. His eyes were so close I could see the shades of gold surrounding his pupil.
“You are good, Em,” Mac murmured, and I could feel the warmth of his words against my skin. “You’re not a perfect person, but you’re a good person. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my whole damn life.”
I bit my bottom lip to keep it from trembling. I could feel his sincerity, but not from his expression or his words; I could feel it the way I could smell the woodsmoke in the air, the way I could feel the worn wooden floor under my fingers.
“I can feel you, too,” he murmured in my head. “I can feel your confusion and pain like it’s my own.”
My heart tripped over itself. What exactly had our magic done inside my head?
He released my face and sat back against the wall, running a hand through his dark hair so it fell to one side.
“It’s gettin’ late. Let’s try not to worry about it too much right now, alright? You should get some sleep.”
I took a deep breath and nodded, trying to push all my worries back down. I met his eyes and managed a slight smile. “Thank you… for bein’ my rock.”
When his sharp eyes grew soft, the difference was so noticeable, and it made me feel unsteady again. He stood and offered a hand to help me up. “I meant it when I said I’ll always come for you, Em.”
I let him pull me up, and a tangible shiver raced across my skin.
It felt like a promise—like an oath—and the emotion accompanying it almost overwhelmed me again.
He stooped, picked up the discarded letter lying on the floor, and held it out to me.
I took it to my dresser and placed it inside the top drawer.
“You want me to send anybody in?” Mac asked.
I shook my head, leaning against my dresser. The last thing I wanted was to answer questions from my brother or his crew.
“You know where to find me if you need anything.” He seemed to be hesitating by the ladder, cool tendrils of his worry drifting around me.
“I know.” I took a deep breath, trying to exude calm confidence. “I’ll be alright. Night, Mac.”
He stood for a moment longer, then smiled. “Night, Em.”