Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
EMBER
One of life’s great tragedies is that a Familiar cannot survive without her Allwitch; but an Allwitch can survive without her Familiar, tragically.
— Charley Starvos, Echelon to the
School of Creation Magic
The prison was separate from the palace, on the other side of the paved courtyard Jaxan and Leland were conducting me across. Only a few small, grated windows were cut into the gray stone blocks of the building, lending the structure a stark, bleak appearance.
“Your Echelon!” A messenger from the main palace rushed after us. “Your Echelon!” They panted, struggling to catch up to Jaxan’s long and determined strides. “There’s a new prophecy from the Oracle!”
“A prophecy?” Jaxan said, as if he had a bitter taste in his mouth. “Have I not told you I have no interest in meaningless speculations? Go inform Helen, if you must. She does amuse herself with these things.”
But the messenger was insistent, his eyes darting frantically back and forth from Jaxan to me.
Jaxan’s attention occupied, Leland stole a glance at my arms, noticing the deep, bloodied tracks I’d dug into them. At his look of disgust, I folded my arms to cover what I could, then pinched my biceps to distract myself from the pain of my blood trying to claw its way out of my skin.
When the messenger scurried off, Leland returned to being distant.
His eyes went flat, his posture reserved.
As concerning as it was to see him so vacant, it was also a relief.
Because when Leland was animated — fighting with me — nothing could stave off my intense physical need for him, which had started after my Blessing.
As we approached the oaken door of the prison, the pain in my blood had me considering whether it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to curl up in a cold, dark cell. In sensory deprivation. Away from Leland.
Jaxan knocked on the door, and my shoulders jumped back from the ferocity of the three vicious blows he landed before a glassy-eyed jailer let us in.
Spiked, iron torches cast ominous shadows on the dark-gray walls.
We wound through a series of corridors, in silence, and I occupied myself by tracking the slow movements of several listlessly roaming jailers.
There was something off about them, a mechanical aspect not too different from the way Leland was acting.
I had the impression that — mentally — they weren’t fully there and wondered if work here was a punishment.
Why else would a witch take a job like this, in a place they couldn’t spellcast?
We passed an occupied cell, and when I looked at the witch held prisoner there, I noticed the letter L had been burned into their forehead.
The L-shaped scar was bulbous, and a shiny, clear substance oozed out of an inflamed radius of infected, red skin.
Unable to stop looking at it, I forgot where I was walking.
Leland roughly yanked the back of my top, hauling me backward before I could stumble into Jaxan.
He held me there, not releasing his grip until Jaxan was out of earshot. “Libel,” he whispered. “They branded him for it.”
The grating sound of shovels scraping over hard stone made me rub my ears.
Jailers were mucking out the slop and straw from the empty cells, and it stirred up a stench so strong I caught up to Jaxan just to get away from it, then hurried up a narrow stairway of fifteen steps.
I counted them as I climbed. It was that or pull out clumps of my hair.
At the end of the upstairs corridor, we finally stopped in front of a cell with a thick, iron-grated door, the cell where they held Arissa Sivelyn.
The second I stepped forward, Leland’s arm shot out, halting me.
His chin jerked roughly from me to Jaxan, his way of telling me I needed permission.
Only Jaxan was on his transmitter, and everything about his body language was saying I should not interrupt him, so I waited.
The delay was agony. I bit down on a scream so hard that my forehead broke out in sweat. I ground my teeth as I tried to grab Leland’s attention, hoping he’d understand what was happening. The burn in my blood was becoming unmanageable.
“Permission to step forward?” Leland asked finally, his voice deep and obedient like a toneless henchman’s.
“Yes,” drawled Jaxan, “let’s get on with it. Have her see what the Allwitch wants. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
Leland didn’t answer but withdrew his arm and allowed me to proceed.
Arissa stood half in shadow, her frail hands clutching the bars weakly.
At the top of the back wall of her cell was a small, barred window, but it was too high to see out of and too small to escape through.
Though she wouldn’t have had any chance of reaching it in her starved condition.
Her clothes were in thin tatters, and she could barely stand.
“Ember?” she asked softly. She was sickly pale, and her skin was damp.
I glanced at Jaxan, who gave an agitated nod.
“Hi?” I said timidly. “Did Ash tell you to ask for me?” I had no other connection to Allwitches, no other idea why one would request me by the wrong name.
“Ash?” Arissa paused for a wheezing cough. “I’ve never met your sister. Ash was never one to . . .” Her forehead drooped against the iron bars and she never finished the thought. “May I touch your hand?”
I looked to Jaxan.
“That’s fine,” he said, “but lest Arissa’s gift be body-transferring,” he said to Leland, “secure the girl. Make sure she can’t leave.”
Both of us hesitated.
Me? Leland secure me?
“Yes, that one,” Jaxan confirmed. “Hold her tightly.”
Leland put a hand on my shoulder like I was contagious. But while his fingers curled reluctantly into my clavicle, I pulsed, wanting more, my skin lighting up with hunger and heat.
“Closer,” Jaxan pushed, flicking his hand until satisfied that Leland was half curled around me.
And in the wake of Leland’s scent, I forgot the sickly smells polluting the air.
I forgot we were in a prison entirely. My head fell back, making desperate contact with the hard plane of Leland’s chest. I closed my eyes, a winter’s gale swept me through a pine forest, and without meaning to, I was suddenly envisioning myself in bed with him.
As I was about to cry out with need, he drove his shoulder forward and shoved me off him, the force of it sending my forehead slamming into an iron bar.
I wanted to whimper with discomfort. Not at the bruise forming on my forehead, but because I needed him.
I needed his closeness. The contact. He was mine, and —
What was happening?
A whimpering sound built in the back of my throat, but Leland tightened his grip on my hip, his fingers digging in painfully. Pain, roughness. It might have been the only thing preventing me from exposing that some part of me did not hate him.
I squeaked when his low voice rumbled against the back of my neck, giving me a gentle reminder that Arissa was waiting.
“Why is this taking so long?” asked Jaxan.
I cleared my throat, and through a small, square opening between the bars, I extended my hand to Arissa.
Hers closed around mine, and as it did, I felt something pass covertly through our grip.
A smooth, round object like a heavy coin was pressed into my palm.
I didn’t dare turn to see if Leland or Jaxan suspected, if they saw.
Arissa’s eyes wandered over my face, revealing nothing about the exchange. We stood there like that for a while, our hands locked, Arissa still and calm. It was why I was so caught off guard when a frantic look raided her eyes and her entire appearance changed.
Her mouth twisted, turning wide and unpleasant as she spat out a frenzy of words. “There’s a prophecy about you. A prophecy the Echelons are trying to hide.”
“That will do, Arissa,” said Jaxan. His dark eyes — always scanning, always subtly and distantly calculating — stilled. “Leland, take Ember home,” Jaxan said. “I’ve seen what I needed.”
It was clear Arissa was going to die soon, so maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, but I knew she’d used her gift to pass the coin to me, and I would not get her in trouble for it. The coin had to be hidden, and to do that, I needed a distraction.
“But what about my last name?” I demanded of Jaxan, contorting my mouth, my face, and my shoulders into big, passionate shapes, so he wouldn’t focus on my fist closing around the coin, my arm sliding down my side, and the coin slipping into my pants pocket.
Leland gave me a strange look, but I ignored it. Jaxan hadn’t noticed, at least.
“That’s right.” Jaxan turned to Arissa. “Tell the girl what you saw in your Vision.”
“In my Vision,” Arissa said, still in a fever-like daze, “I saw fire and smoke and rage. Death and betrayal and waters drained. The sky shook with thunder. And the Circle of Seven cracked into eight — ”
“We’re done here,” Jaxan said.
In the distance, someone banged on their cell bars and let out a piercing shriek.
I might not have had Leland’s gift, but Jaxan had been evasive, Arissa seemed scared for me, and maybe it was only because of what the messenger had said in the courtyard, but I did not think Arissa was lying about a prophecy.
* * *
As soon as we left Odessa Hall, Leland Summoned the enchanted flask and thrust it into my hand without a word. I stopped for a long drink on the bridge while he looked over the side of it, watching lazily moving canal boats skim the surface of the shallow green water.
It was dusk, and horses clopped down cobblestone paths through the hills, the preferred mode of travel for witches who didn’t live near a portstop, I assumed.
Squirrels rustled the leaves of manicured maple trees, thirty feet in the air.
I even heard the distant chatter of witches dining on outdoor patios in the town square. Then my ears popped.