Chapter 18
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
EMBER
Fear the Counterpart who does not love you.
— Helen Blackburn, Echelon to the
School of Mental Magic
The morning of my trial, Leland messaged to remind me I couldn’t take the flask or magic-suppressing cuffs into Odessa Hall, which meant I needed to start drinking moonale now, and burn off whatever I could with a run.
Skye ran the hills with me, and afterward, I changed into the top and pants Leland acquired for my first visit to the palace.
Then I sat on Helen’s couch, nauseous, trembling, picking at the white rice Skye cooked, and trying to forget where I was.
I withdrew into my head, latching on to a memory from the time I donated blood, shortly after Dad’s accident.
Blood had flowed out of my arm and into what looked like a photocopy machine.
I watched the square tile ceiling, breathing calmly.
Then time passed, blood kept flowing, and I was sure the machine was never going to stop, and whoever had the code to stop it had forgotten.
I counted. Fifty dead bugs were trapped in the fluorescent ceiling light buzzing overhead, and the only thing I could think to do to take my mind off the lightheadedness was to start the count over again.
It happened suddenly. My head was heavy, my sweat was cold. I said to the nurse, “I’m going to faint.” And then I did.
The blood bank didn’t let me leave for thirty minutes, after I’d chewed a stick of Juicy Fruit gum. Even then, I wasn’t sure I should’ve been driving. But I got in my car, driving slowly, carefully, and made it home.
I’d just pulled into the driveway when my phone rang. It was Gray, asking if I wanted to meet him at The Cheesecake Factory, so I turned my car around.
“Reflexes!” Skye yelled, just before something ball-shaped struck me in the back of the head. A partially peeled clementine bounced off my skull and hit the couch. “Additionally. An adult witch claiming to be an ant is here.”
“An ant?” I glanced at the door and found Sabrina standing there. “Oh,” I said. “My aunt.”
Skye pinched her fingers together, demonstrating something small. Like an insect. “Ant.”
I’d explain it to her later.
“Child!” Sabrina said, her flushed face scribbled with worry as I met her on the porch. Skye tried following me to the door, like she followed me most places, but I curved my lips in a wry smile and shut the door on her.
Outside, my eyes darted back and forth, scouring the yard and the trail into town for Aunt Sinora, but Sabrina had come alone, wild-eyed and leading me to assume the worst.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Run.” She pointed at the rolling green hills with a long, crooked finger, her long, loose curls blowing wildly in the breeze. “Run for the hills or burn them down. Run. You have to run now.”
“You want me to run?” I shook my head in confusion. “From the trial?” An hour remained before I was supposed to be at Odessa Hall.
In a sudden shift of emotion, Sabrina looked up at the cedar ceiling and clasped her hands behind her back, innocently whistling as the top of Sinora’s head crested the hill behind her.
Sinora held her long skirt in her hands, lifting it an inch to keep it from dusting the damp ground as her broad shoulders swung her forward.
“Sabrina!” she scolded. “Stop scaring her!”
Sabrina ducked, trying to hide, but Sinora only strode forward with more vigor. She grasped Sabrina by her delicate wrist and tugged her down the four porch stairs.
“You will get a choice!” Sabrina yelled over her shoulder as she was being dragged away.
“A choice?” I asked. “What choice? Please just tell me what’s happening!”
Sabrina said, “There is a wrong one.”
Maintaining a tight grip on her sister, Sinora spun to look at me, then swiveled and lifted her lens up to Sabrina. The longer she peered at her through it, the more her shoulders sagged and her eyes dulled. “Sabrina thinks you need to see Hel,” she said after putting the lens down.
Hel. My ears prickled at the sound of her name, my body tensing with the sudden sensation of reaching my hand into a slimy sink to unclog the garbage disposal. I wanted to see Helen about as much as I wanted to get punched in the stomach.
I took a drink from my flask and frowned. “I can’t.”
“Don’t be silly, now. We only have a short window to catch her at the Allwitch temple before she heads to Odessa Hall for the trial.” Sinora let go of Sabrina to drag me down the last porch step, and she was so determined about it that when she let go, I stumbled.
“The forbidden Allwitch temple?” I protested. Dewy grass swiped at my ankles, and my flats got a coat of mud from the mushy ground. I wiped them off on the path. “Nope. Can’t do it. It’s not worth the risk.”
The Allwitch temple was the last place I needed to be seen before my trial. And why, of all places, would I see Helen there?
Sinora made a dismissive, dry, spitting sound, and yanked me toward the bridge. “There’s something you need to know about her. You’ll be safe. We’ll be hidden by my Shadowcover, better than Invisibility if you ask me. Hel won’t know.”
“She really won’t see me?” I followed, reluctantly at first, only picking up my pace after I started to feel bad for continuously making Sinora and Sabrina turn backward.
“She can’t. Hurry, now. That’s it, pick up your feet.”
We arrived downtown, hidden in Sinora’s Shadowcover, showing up as dark silhouettes on cobblestone.
We were humble shadows, not like Jaxan’s Shadowcurrent, but like small shadows formed in the path of the sun.
Sabrina hummed giddily, until we reached Varanus Street, when Sinora pinched her arm and told her to shush.
We slinked along brick-front buildings, our shadows overlooked.
Everyone knew about Shadowcover, but maybe they didn’t see enough Dark Witches in Hartik’s Hollow for it to occur to them that Sinora was using it.
Or maybe it was another slight. Shadows glide by.
Light witches refuse to look. Whatever the reason, I was happy to go unnoticed, particularly when I’d walk by a cluster of witches and catch an earful about the half witch trial.
Some called it the eradication. And they sounded so eager.
Farrah had reported that I was the Shadowrealm. Casting Shadowcurrents. Taking Aspirants. As if I’d had the capacity to do anything besides drink moonale.
We slipped through the gate, our shadows passing right through it. Then we climbed the crumbling steps that cut through the hill, all the way up to the towering stone pillars adorning the terrace, where Sabrina hissed at a land dragon statue.
We ducked behind a gigantic, fluted pillar to eavesdrop, hushed voices filtering through my ears. Helen was with the Echelon Dashell Eldridge, whispering passionately. I recognized his straw hair, tied low on his neck in a long ponytail, a few strands tucked neatly behind his ears.
“She will destroy Everden,” said Helen. “I’ve seen it.”
“She is just a girl!” replied Dashell.
Helen paced. “Vote. Against her.”
There was a small deliberation, but eventually, Dashell agreed.
My head jerked back in surprise when he kissed her tenderly.
I turned to my aunts for answers, almost missing his fingertips sparking with the blue light of quantum magic to vanish them in a Teleportation spell. Mid-embrace, they disappeared.
I needed to sit. All this time I’d been under the impression Helen was with Jaxan.
Their personalities were compatible. She lived with him.
She was on his ceiling. I’d assumed they were bonded, that Helen was the reason Jaxan could access Blackburn wards.
But then, Sabrina was the one who got upset whenever she heard Jaxan’s name, so perhaps not.
“Helen’s not with” — my voice cracked — “Helen’s with Dashell?”
Sabrina nodded profusely, her wide, brown eyes bulging.
“Is Helen with” — I was trying not to upset her — “two people?”
Sabrina shook her head.
“Why the temple?” I asked. “And why does she live — not where I’m staying — if she’s with Dashell?”
“They always meet here,” Sinora explained. “Private. They Teleport directly to the terrace so no one sees their approach. Virtually undetectable unless you’ve got two nosy sisters, which she does. The living arrangement with you-know-who is . . .” She choked. “I can’t tell you.”
There was an enchantment spell, Tongue Binding, which kept certain words from coming out of a witch’s mouth, and judging by the way they had to show me Helen and Dashell, Sabrina and Sinora were definitely Tongue Bound.
My forehead broke out in cold sweat. Skye had been wrong. Helen wasn’t with Jaxan, and she was going to vote against me. That meant Unfit. Banning me from spellcasting magic for good. Permanently Unselected. Leland’s Death Bond. Losing a hand.
“Are you all right, dear?” Sinora asked.
“No?” The terrace swayed. “I think I’m going to pass out.”
“Well,” sighed Sinora. “You’ve got a few minutes. Why don’t you sit for some?”
I slumped against a pillar and dropped to the ground, squeezing my eyes tight and shutting out the stark gray sky.
“We’re right here with you,” she said. “When it’s time, we’ll walk you to the palace. I can’t go in, and Sabrina won’t, but we’ll wait on the marble bridge with your flask and see you home. It’s going to be all right, child. I told you they need you here. It’s going to be all right.”
I wanted to believe her — I almost did, but the second I opened my eyes, Sabrina looked at me, terrified, and said, “Run.”