Chapter 8 #2
All I heard then were my own swallows and Leland, strolling across the bridge. I looked at him, curious why he thought we needed Privacy, then pinged with a glimmer of happiness when I saw his backpack was gone, hopefully sent back to his pocket realm. He ruined it by speaking.
“Nice acting back there,” he said, tipping his head to Odessa Hall. “But what about my name?” he imitated.
“Who says I was acting?” I trudged for the dandelion-flecked hills, putting the opulent palace behind me.
He gave me a long look. “Your face was completely still when I injected you with that sedative. You got hit by a tree and shrugged like you deserved it. You don’t react.
Not like that. Maybe with your eyes a little, but .
. .” His gaze dropped to my mouth. “Not with this. Not unless you’re pretending to be docile. Or aggrieved, apparently.”
Leland. Always paying attention.
“I wasn’t acting,” I said, and took another drink. “The gesturing — I might have jazzed it up a bit. But the question was real.” I twisted for a glance back at the palace and scrunched my face at it, feeling like I hated it there. There. Reacting.
“Before the prison,” I continued as we stepped off the bridge and began the trek uphill, “Jaxan said Arissa asked for Ember Rose Blackburn Stray. In case you need me to spell it out for you, that happens to be my name, plus Helen’s name, plus yours.”
Leland bit back a smile.
“It’s not funny, Leland! Why would I have your last name? Even Jaxan wanted to know. You heard him ask her!”
“Ember.” He was using his teaching voice again. “Do you know why Jaxan told me to leave you? Why he separated us? Why he said that to you when I wasn’t there?”
“No. No. And how would I know?”
Based on the critical expression overtaking his face, those questions were supposed to be rhetorical.
“The whole time you were in there, he was giving you tests, looking for your weaknesses. The mural on his ceiling was one — wasn’t there yesterday, and I guarantee it won’t be there tomorrow.
Your last name? Making us stand close together?
It was all to rile you. To see if you’d care.
The way he pretended not to care about the prophecy?
The last time the Oracle had a new prophecy, Jaxan called the Council for an emergency meeting on it.
Question everything Jaxan says. He’ll say anything to manipulate you. There’s no one better at it.”
I walked faster up the hill. “You could’ve warned me.”
“I did. A few times. You were” — Leland gazed westward to the edge of town, where storefronts with second-story apartments turned into quaint stone cottages with white-picket fences, sprinkled throughout the countryside — “not paying attention to me.”
Wrong. So wrong. I had been paying attention to him. I’d been paying too much attention to him. I broke into a jog.
Running wasn’t easy in knit flats, but I didn’t plan on jogging long. Bumps in the ground prodded at my heels, the flask sloshing as I pumped my arms, racing for a portstop.
Leland jogged to keep up with me. “You’re actually upset about this?”
“Yes.” It felt childish to make him chase me in his work clothes, so I slowed to a walk, then pulled off the cobblestone path onto the hillside and lowered the flask to my hip, feeling defeated.
Why didn’t I feel like myself around him? One second, I was picturing myself in his bed. And in the next second, I hated him. And underneath all that was me, pounding at the walls of my skin, screaming.
I covered my face with my hand and shook my head into my palm, wanting to sink into the earth and hide until every out-of-control feeling left me.
“I feel crazy,” I said. “I feel crazy. I feel crazy.” Still hiding behind my hand, I peered at Leland through the narrow slats where my fingers were spread. “Why do I feel like this?”
“You’re not crazy,” Leland began. “You’re” — he tried meeting my eyes through the gaps in my hand, making me so self-conscious, I pulled it from my face — “deteriorating. It happens to every Seven. You asked for the unofficial reason for the Blessing? It’s this.
We’re running out of magic, so the Echelons decided to do this.
Bless everyone so far ahead of Selection in the hopes that Allwitches, the witches who need the most magic to survive, will deteriorate while they wait for it.
“The only way to fully stop it is to graduate fifth year and become an Allwitch, if you can get into the program. But the Allwitches who don’t?
At the end of fourth year, they’re Siphoned.
Every drop of spellcasting magic gets removed from their blood, and it destroys them.
” He pointed behind us, back at the prison.
“The jailers in there were Aspirants who weren’t picked to be an Allwitch.
That’s what’s happening to you. Most likely faster because you’re an Eight. ”
I closed my eyes and breathed out. It was illogical, but somehow, I felt less crazy after hearing him say that’s what I was.
“I’m going to take care of it,” he promised. “Just get through the next couple of days while I work something out. You won’t feel like this forever.”
A few more breaths, and I was ready to return to our previous conversation.
“What if Jaxan didn’t say the Ember Stray thing to rile me?
What if the prophecy Arissa mentioned is real?
And what if that’s where she heard it? It’s not personal.
It’s just . . . I want to go back to the human realm. Not stay here and marry you.”
“I think,” Leland said lightly, “you’re interpreting this the wrong way.”
“Please, enlighten me then. With the correct interpretation.”
“I’m not the only Stray in Everden.”
Not the only Stray in Everden. I rolled my eyes. Who was the other? His father?
“Well, I don’t want to marry your dad either, Leland.”
“All right,” he agreed, and counted out another reason. “How about . . . I’m not available to you?”
“I’m not available to you,” I clarified, though I didn’t even know what we were arguing about at that point.
He shrugged, still so playful about this. “If we get married, you won’t be Ember Stray. I’ll be Leland Blackburn.”
“Not if we get married in the human realm,” I countered, which made no sense, because why would I ever marry Leland in the human realm?
“Right, well. When we get married in the human realm, I think I’ll let you keep your name.”
I scowled because he was right. I wouldn’t have to change my name in the human realm, and I’d made a stupid point to begin with.
Spying a gold portstop in the grass, I veered off in its direction.
I was about to step on it when his hand closed around my wrist. I slapped his hand away and barreled on ahead, determined to get away from him.
Then his other hand took my hip, firm enough that I felt the warm press of his fingers through my shirt, and he succeeded in dragging me back to him.
There was a brief moment where my ears popped with an influx of noise, but then Leland must have regained control of his Privacy, because my ears popped a second time, and all fell silent again. All I heard was our clothes rustling together as he maneuvered me backward.
“Don’t. Touch me,” I breathed as burning pain exploded through my veins.
Leland let go. “That one’s an ingress for witches teleporting in. You could’ve gotten hurt.”
“I can’t,” I panted. “When you touch me. It makes it worse. It makes it a thousand times worse.” In desperate need of moonale, I plunked down in the grass and flicked open the flask.
“I thought it helped,” he said, crouching next to me, trying to understand. “When we were in the prison — I thought it was helping.”
I hung my head over my knees, not wanting to admit it to him.
I’d been looking for signs since the moment he’d said he was the Truth-Teller, because of what Charley Starvos had written in The Allwitch Affliction.
Since the Blessing, I burned. I burned for a touch that was never enough, and I burned the most for Leland.
It was always uncomfortable — my blood’s new normal a simmer beneath my skin. But when Leland let go . . .
The only thing worse than him touching me was when it didn’t last, and the pain that followed when I realized it might never happen again.
I suspected I knew why my blood wanted him, though I didn’t think he did. I probably needed to tell him what I suspected, but I didn’t know the protocol. Ash had always been clear that witches’ gifts were supposed to be secrets.
“If it wasn’t helpful,” Leland said, “when I was like that with you in the prison — if it wasn’t helpful, I want to know. I don’t want to do that to you again if . . .”
I’d meant it when I said it had made things worse. After that one small taste of what it was like to be close to him, my blood was hungrier for more. But in the moment? It helped. I’d been on the verge of crying out, and he’d quieted that in me.
“Ember, did it help?”
I ran my fingers through the soft grass, weighing my options.
I could be honest with him, or I could .
. . try to test something out? In the book, the Counterparts discovered their relationship when their gifts hadn’t worked, because Counterparts’ gifts canceled each other’s out.
What would his reaction be if I lied to him?
Would he know? I stopped moving my hand through the grass and looked up.
“It helped,” I sighed, deciding to tell the truth. Even if sharing your gift was unwise, figuring out if we were Counterparts right now wasn’t worth the lie. If I had to play games to be certain, then I didn’t want to know.
We fell silent, sitting side-by-side on the hill for a minute. I stared out at the large, tiered fountain that delineated the lawn we rested on from the hollow’s busy shopping area.
Leland looked at me first, his eyes thoughtful. “Would you like to know the real reason I’m not worried about what Jaxan said?”
I nodded, drinking.