Chapter Twenty-Nine #3
I duck into an alcove and listen as exacting footsteps punish the uneven ground. The sound of high heels on pavement. I can taste the overpowering smell of her floral perfume floating down the tunnel. It’s Farrah Prolix.
Ember might not have told me what happened last night, but my Scrier did.
A Mind Trick spell to make her fall, a Contact spell so violent it made her sick.
If I wasn’t set on finding out what Seracia knows about the Witch’s Limit, I might consider wasting a minute of my time on Farrah, to make her pay for what she did.
But I exhale. My fingers uncurl from their fists.
I tell myself not to be stupid and resume walking down the corridor.
Farrah follows.
Throwing a glare over my shoulder, I say, “I don’t think you want to be around me right now, Farrah.”
A dangerous, giddy look gleams in her eyes. She carries a lantern, her other wrist swinging a bulky pink hefting satchel.
My back is to a dozen tunnels splintering off in a hundred different directions, any of which could be hiding at least seven witches waiting to kick in my ribs. I blow out my match and toss it.
“Actually, I do,” she says. “Which is why, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’ve chosen to follow you into the catacombs.” She has no volume control and no respect for the way things work down here. Her lashes sweep upward like maimed spider legs as she stares up at me.
My trained eyes retain the deadness Jaxan put into them fourteen years ago, my unwillingness to engage leading her to switch tactics.
“As the Council’s reporter, I have a right to investigate the important matters affecting Everden, including what you’re doing down here in these very interesting, very” — she laughs unkindly — “notorious tunnels.”
I’m not leading her toward Seracia. Which puts me in the position of waiting for her to leave. However long it takes.
“While I have you,” she prompts, “would you like to disclose what’s been going on between you and the half witch?”
My jaw ticks. I’m fifty-fifty on hitting her, a hundred that I’ll hate myself if I do. I don’t hit women. Not in combat or in my gym, not when a Healer’s on standby, not if we’re the same size, not if I’m fighting a coven. I don’t hit women.
But I also see Ember’s nose bleeding as she’s screaming in pain outside the academy.
I’ve always hated Farrah. Her lies put innocent people in danger, she thinks she’s way smarter than she is, and she claims to care about the safety of the realm, but I’ll never forget the part she played as they all stood over me, mangling my legs. How thrilled she was to witness it.
My fingers twitch.
I Summon my bag and hope Farrah isn’t staying to find out what I’m getting from it. Which is nothing. Because I can’t think today, and there’s an order of tranqs waiting to be picked up in Hartik’s Hollow, but none in my bag. None I can access.
She dives a hand in her satchel and yanks out a dark photograph, holding the lantern light in front of it so I can see it. It’s not the best picture, but it’s good enough to make me swallow. It’s one of Ember and I on the daybed outside the tavern. Her head’s to my chest. Wind not photographed.
“You see,” Farrah says, “last night, when she said you hated her, I believed her. I believed her so much I stopped asking questions.” She tucks the photograph in her satchel as I come to the realization that Ember told her first lie for me.
I cast Privacy. “I hate watching her,” I say. “That’s what she meant.”
“Really? It wasn’t what she said.” There are more photographs in her satchel, and the next one she removes, I Shred without looking at it.
“And,” says Farrah, deliberately pausing until I look at the next picture. “You don’t look like you hate watching her.” In this one, her head’s in my lap, the picture taken right after she fainted across the street from the Allwitch temple.
“Well, I do. That part was true.”
Farrah sets the lantern on a shelf of rock. “What about the part where you hate her? Or were you not planning to address that?”
I don’t answer.
Hands on her hips, her elbows jut out into the tunnel and block my exit so I can’t leave without shoving her out of the way.
“Do you want to know what I think?” she asks.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Have a feeling you’ll tell me anyway.”
“I think you look like this” — she waves at my face — “in all your public moments. But you look like this” — she takes out another picture — “in your private ones with the half witch.”
“Okay?”
“There are none, zero, no redeeming qualities about her. So what possible reason could you have for being interested in her? Everything I’ve seen points to power, specifically the kind that doubles in a sealed Counterpart bond.”
Fuuuuck.
“I hate the girl,” Farrah spits. “She’s an abomination.
So you expect me to believe I found it in the goodness of my heart to be convinced by her?
Her truths are lies, aren’t they, Truth-Teller?
The half witch is your Counterpart, and the only reason I believed her is because she used her gift on me. ”
I shake my head. “She’s never lied to anyone.” Ember doesn’t lie. She doesn’t. Except for this. Except for me.
In the distance, a growing kernel of light brightens. With Privacy up, Farrah can’t hear the rhythmic, echoey splash of footsteps of a witch closing in. I casually peer around her to try to make out who it is without Farrah noticing. From the Levitating Flame, I gather it’s an Elemental.
Farrah prowls in pacing half circles in front of me, her chunky silver bracelets jangling as she gesticulates.
“Do you not see how pathetic she is? She refused to fight me yesterday, did you know that? All she had to do was ask me to leave her head, but she couldn’t even do that!
She only cried and cried and waited to be rescued.
That’s the kind of witch who captures your interest? ”
“Yes,” I can’t stop myself from answering. “She didn’t fight you because she’s good. Hurting people’s what we do, Farrah. Ember’s not like us. She doesn’t help herself at someone’s expense. She didn’t fight you because she was thinking about what problems it would cause if she did.”
“Pathetic!” Farrah spits.
But she isn’t. Ember has her code. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone, even if she’s the one who has to suffer for it.
It’s not my code, but it might be braver than what I’ve been doing, who I am — weak or winning, surviving or dead.
Which is how I know how my end of the bond will seal.
I thought it might have been physical intimacy.
Someone to hold and be idle with. Now I realize my deepest desire is something else.
Being seen.
If Ember knows all the bad and still sees good, if she believes I can do better than my past, then she’ll give me all I’ve ever wanted.
I have to do what will set us back.
Violence.
Farrah can’t know Ember’s gift. It’s too powerful, and the Echelons would kill her if they knew about it.
There’s a possibility they could be forced to believe anything she tells them? They’d never let that possibility exist.
Farrah needs a Memory Extraction to forget, which means I need her to lay still, in order to access her head.
I move in to take her to the ground, but she easily blocks me, because my footing is weak and I’m half-assing it.
I go in again, and this time, when Farrah shoves, I react.
Next thing I know, she hits the ground hard.
Harder than I meant. Her head bounces on the stone, shock reverberating through the ground.
I get on top of her and contemplate a choke to knock her unconscious or a hit to leave an impression. Case’s voice rings in my head: Lee, are you trying to kill him?
A thought flashes through me that I don’t always know how far I’m taking it; I can’t always contain how much stronger I am.
She squirms beneath me, batting at me, trying to escape, but I press down on her harder. My arms vibrate with restless energy. Do it, I think, hit her as hard as her Mind Trick.
That inner voice ends up being louder than Case’s.
I was trained not to think, not to hesitate, but in the seconds my fist itches for contact, Farrah’s eyes roll back. She stops resisting. My fist is raised, but I never swung.
Someone else knocked her out with what could only have been a Mind Trick.
The floating orb of flame dies out as a cloaked figure crouches by Farrah’s head.
Their robe is black, a thick rubbery material that flares out ominously in coordination with a heavy-duty, squared mask and long rubber gloves.
The outfit is issued to all the Echelons.
It’s what they wear to the more gruesome punishments, ones that result in them catching blood spatter.
But no Echelon can cast Levitating Flame and Mind Trick. No Echelon is an Allwitch.
When she lifts her mask and reveals herself to me, I realize what she’s wearing doesn’t have as much to do with blood spatter as it does with impersonating someone. Someone Farrah would be more than willing to take orders from.
I haven’t seen Ash since May, but I get regular updates from her jailbroken transmitter. I know she’s been on the mainland. She’s my Scrier.
Her fingertips probe Farrah’s scalp. “You need to go,” Ash says in a hurry. “Cackrin’s coven is looking for you, and I don’t know how else to describe what I just saw except you were a total disaster. You need to leave before you get yourself killed.”
Her bluntness stings, but I deserve it. My chest hurts.
My legs are weak. Would I have gone through with the punch if Ash didn’t intervene?
I don’t know. Right now, I don’t even know why I raised my fist. If it’s the place I’m in, what Farrah did to Ember, the excuse I told myself about why I had to get violent, Jaxan’s voice telling me I’m an embarrassment, laughing at my weakness, or if it’s me. Brutal. Selfish.
“She knows,” I say, stepping away from Farrah. “Farrah knows we’re Counterparts. I can’t leave yet.”