Chapter 5
CHAPTER
FIVE
EMBER
Study lights and shadows. Study weights and forms. Study an object so well you can feel it in your hands without holding it. That is how you become an exceptional Creator.
— Charley Starvos, Echelon to the
School of Creation Magic
Iwoke up from the part of my dream where I was tossed through the air, just in time to hear the thud when I hit the ground.
My eyes lifted to an unfamiliar ceiling, high and angled, and it took me a moment to adjust to the fact that I wasn’t home in my bedroom.
I put a hand on my stomach and glanced around.
I was on the floor, in between Helen’s couch and coffee table.
Everything was as I remembered it, until my gaze trailed up from the letterbox, and I saw the open front window.
I blinked, making sure I wasn’t still half asleep, because I knew exactly what I’d done last night, and I was certain I hadn’t opened that window.
My first thought, in my disoriented state, was Leland.
The only thing that made sense was that he’d opened it to spy on me.
I’d be mad at him for it later, but, for now, it was fine.
The cool air blowing in and brushing my skin was the only thing that felt right. Everything else — fire. As was typical of the phantom flu, the symptoms that went hand-in-hand with my recurring nightmare.
It had started after Dad’s accident, and it was always the same.
If I managed to stay asleep through the tossing-me-through-the-air part, I always ended up on the ground, stuck in a never-ending loop of fear and gripped by a strong sense that something horrible was about to happen.
Then, hard, quick steps crunched toward me, and the dream ended with guilt so overwhelming I drowned in it.
Just like how I felt about the night I’d fallen asleep in Gray’s bed.
The hardwood groaned as I rolled myself up to a sitting position and rubbed my tailbone.
On the coffee table, my transmitter buzzed. Fortunately, the message that flashed on the screen was short, or I would not have been able to stand looking at it.
Leland Stray: Good morning.
I shut my eyes, not ready to deal with him. My leggings were heavy with sweat, my skin hot and claustrophobic beneath them. My empty stomach churned with nausea so violent I ached, and since there was no medicine that fixed this, my only reprieves were breathing and dissociating.
I envisioned Gray’s arm hooked around my waist until the room stopped swaying. Just a dream, I told myself, slowly inhaling. A dream, I repeated, easing out an exhale and counting out the beats.
When I was well enough, I pulled myself to the couch and buried my face in a lumpy cushion, which was where I was, like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, when I felt my transmitter vibrate again.
I poked at it, still not fully coordinated but aware enough to understand Leland was picking me up in an hour.
I didn’t want to go anywhere with him, but — Everden. I was in Everden now.
I had no money, no food, and no way home.
If I ever wanted to get back to Dad, I couldn’t sit around.
I had to keep going. I had to figure out who to trust in this world, and that meant I’d need to leave the house.
What I really wanted was to run away, but planning my escape currently meant spending the morning with Leland, which I would not be doing in yesterday’s reeking clothes.
I went to change, gritting my teeth and hating my options as I stared down the depths of Ash’s practically empty dresser.
The few clothes she’d left behind were too small, naturally, because Ash was a pastiche of Helen’s delicate features and could make literally anything she wore look elegant.
Running kept me healthy, and if I was being completely honest, my shape was decent.
But while Ash was small-boned and naturally looked good in everything, I’d stolen her clothes enough times in the past to know I didn’t.
I decided on a black tube top made of stretchy cotton, hoping it was dark enough to hide the fact that I had no clean bra to wear with it.
Ash’s light-wash jeans only fit because I hadn’t eaten, and even then I had to hike them all the way up.
I was in a full sweat by the time I managed to close the button.
I sighed, and it hurt. Today would be a fun day of not breathing.
* * *
Leland arrived in a bitter mood, hardly looking at me, stressed about needing to be somewhere, and all the while refusing to let us go.
Standing on the porch, he pressed his hand to the stone around the doorway. “Get. A jacket,” he said.
I glowered at his fingers, idly tapping the house while he waited, barring my exit.
I knew why he wanted me to wear one, why his sightline stayed carefully above my shoulders on a deliberately avoidant, upward trajectory.
My chest — the first thing people noticed about me.
But there were no double-layered sports bras to squash it down today, and I knew, if my curves could make a simple scoop neck provocative, Ash’s doll-sized top must have looked obscene.
Too much stretching. Too much cleavage. But what was I supposed to do about it?
The chilly early-morning air raised goosebumps along my arms, which I folded indignantly over my chest, not helping the situation.
“Ember. We need to leave.”
“Leland. I know that.” I glanced over my shoulder at Ash’s room where my clothes were on her floor. “But this . . .” With a frown down at my waist, I pinched the hem of the black tube top he refused to look at. “My clothes from yesterday. That’s what I have.”
Leland nodded to an armoire in the living room. “You checked the drawers? Your mother was supposed to — ”
“Leave me turmeric?” I asked. “Because that’s what I found. I checked everywhere, okay, and there’s nothing. My mother left me nothing.”
He must have believed me because he dropped it and Summoned a large beige sweatshirt.
It wasn’t until I pulled it over my head that I realized it wasn’t something he Created but rather it belonged to him — a piece from his pocket realm, which I gathered because it fell practically to my knees, his wintery pine scent all over it.
“I don’t want this,” I said, starting to take it off.
“Please leave it,” he said impatiently.
I don’t know why, but I dropped the fabric I was in the middle of bunching up over my hips and listened.
Softer, he added, “If you want to wear what you had on yesterday, and you get me your clothes, I can Refresh them. But I don’t know your wardrobe well enough to cast it yet. Not without closely looking at your clothes. Possibly touching them.”
My face answered that one for me. The clothes I’d feverishly sweat through? Out of the question. “Why not just stab me and get this day over with?” I asked, sounding hostile.
“I hated that,” he responded, forceful and loud.
Seeing how I jumped at his volume, Leland dragged his hands down his face, tempering himself.
“Ember. I didn’t want to stab you. I had an hour.
It was in my best interest to meet that.
And it was in your best interest to arrive sedated, without the Echelons having a chance to see how badly you don’t want to be here. ”
I was used to things washing over me, not feeling them.
But for whatever reason, Leland brought out a fire in me.
I lost all ability to hold my tongue. “And abandoning me on a bench? I woke up paralyzed, Leland!” I pointed at where I’d woken up, alone on the porch, only — the bench from yesterday was gone.
I wondered if it had been a Creation of his.
And why he’d felt the need to Vanish it.
“I had to get Trist. You needed a Healer.”
I rejected this. “I saw your backpack. You had a hundred syringes in there. You have an entire pocket realm but not one potion that could’ve treated me?”
“Yes.” The impatient edge to his voice thickened. “I do. But a potion would take longer than a Healer. And you would’ve woken up — coming out of paralysis — alone with the person who stabbed you. Is that what you would’ve wanted?” He waited a beat for my answer. “That’s what I thought.”
“Just — ” I sighed. “Tell me what today is. Where are we going? Why are you here at the crack of dawn?” I rubbed my arm where he’d inserted the needle. “And how many sedatives did you bring with you?”
Leland let out a breath of frustration. “I’m not going to sedate you. Not if you cooperate. We’re going to the Circle of Seven for your Blessing. Jaxan wants it done before the rest of the Echelons wake up.”
“Fine,” I said, and gestured for him to get out of the way so we could get going.
I didn’t let on that I’d caught what he said.
What he shouldn’t have let slip. Jaxan wants it done.
Jaxan, and not the Echelon Jaxan D’Oron.
Yesterday, Leland had called the Echelons by their titles in front of Trist. I hadn’t, because I forgot.
Because I have no allegiances here, and I don’t care about their politics.
But Leland? I chewed on this piece of information as we left for the portstop, not sure what to make of it.
* * *
I braced a hand against a wispy tree stem, drawing my shoulders to my ears to hide my face from Leland.
I thought I’d been embarrassed about the roar that had growled from my stomach for a full five minutes, but that was nothing compared to my current situation, our journey to the Circle of Seven screeched to a halt as I dry-heaved over a plant.
We’d arrived by way of the portstops — there was a ten-minute walk from Helen’s to downtown Hartik’s Hollow, followed by a short port to Conventicles Crossing (Everden’s largest porting hub). Then a final portstop brought us here, to the outer fringe of the forest.