Chapter Thirty
CHAPTER
THIRTY
EMBER
The loss of a Counterpart will either kill you or drive you mad.
— Helen Blackburn, Echelon to the
School of Mental Magic
Except for a thin glimmer of moonlight filtering down from the skylight, the arcade was dark.
I tiptoed back from the library, careful to be quiet as I began the long ascent up the spiral.
Leland’s door opened, and I sprang back, almost falling through the arched opening to the arcade below.
I put a hand to the wall to steady myself.
“Going to sleep?” Leland asked. He was drained, staring off and avoiding eye contact.
We hadn’t talked since he asked me to leave his room a few hours ago. I should have been more upset with him for hitting Farrah, but it was clear he regretted it, and the thought of making him feel worse about it physically hurt.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“That’s like asking me not to breathe,” he mumbled, then cleared his throat, still looking away. “You okay with another Lucid Dream?”
Reluctantly, I nodded. “If that’s what you want.”
“All right. See you in a minute.” He shut his door.
I lagged all the way up the spiral, turning a few times to look over my shoulder in case I might catch his door opening.
The way he’d slid down to his floor earlier, hurting, was so far from what I knew of him.
Every passing second, I expected a resurgence, like he was some kind of fallen god, and any minute now, he’d find some hidden strength that revived him.
But that didn’t happen. His door remained closed.
After I fell asleep, Leland initiated the Lucid Dream, but he was just as distant in our dream space as he had been at his door, averting his eyes the entire time I built his room.
I replicated his light-oak bed, copying the modern lines of it.
I was proud of it, but his mouth was flat, his eyes were vacant, and — probably because he was accustomed to Creating brilliant pieces of furniture in his sleep — he didn’t notice what I did.
He asked me to stay away from him, then retreated.
The room I built for myself was the same as the night before, only I located it closer to his.
Our walls were adjoined, so I could enter his room through a shared door.
I stared it down, unable to sleep, wondering what he would do if I walked through it.
If there was anything I could say or do to comfort him.
All I wanted was to talk to him. Really talk to him.
Halfway through the night, he let out the first scream. Deep, prolonged, like agony twisted out of him on a rope of intestines. My chest went tight with shock, almost as if the pain he was experiencing was simultaneously happening to me.
I put my hand on the thin door between us and his screaming ceased.
Then picked back up again.
Louder, longer, helpless, even worse than the screams that used to wake me from my dreams. But it wasn’t fear I heard in his strangled voice. What poured out of him was sheer physical pain.
When his scream choked off, I held my breath, my shoulders moderately relaxing as I listened to him pant for breath.
Then came the small sounds. Choking on sobs.
Biting down screams. Grunting. Stuttering.
Deep, choked-off whimpers. It had been easier to hear his screams than it was listening to him try to stifle them.
It was like he thought he had to endure it, that it would be better for someone if he silenced his suffering.
I crashed into his room and slid toward him, rapidly registering the full extent of the blood.
It welled around his bed and flowed outward. The deep, red pool swelling like a flood. I slipped through it in my bare feet.
The blood was coming from below his knees. Dark-red stains drenched his clean white sheets. His dark-gray throw was a bloodied rag. There was no color in his face. His shirt, soaked in his sweat, clung to his pallid skin. His handsome body was horribly, involuntarily shuddering.
I splashed through what felt like inches of the warm, red liquid, not even a little disturbed as it dried between my toes, congealing in the small niches. I was more concerned with how long it took to grapple toward his headboard. Toward him.
Gently, I said, “Leland, wake up. Wake up. Wake up, Leland.”
He screamed gutturally. His neck, twisting into his sweat-damp pillowcase, bulged with dilated veins.
Still two layers asleep, he hadn’t heard.
Suppressing a wave of panic, I tried to rouse him by running a hand through his hair.
I tenderly stroked down to where his neck was taut, reddened, and straining. His sweat was cold. Freezing.
He bellowed through another bloodcurdling scream.
“Leland,” I said. “Wake up. You’re dreaming.”
I brushed my thumb over his collarbone, like maybe that would soothe him and stop the screaming, but the blood only poured harder from his legs.
His sheets looked like they were soaked in red dye.
Blood gushed from them like water flowing out of a gutter in a downpour.
It pooled in the red river at my feet, crawling higher and higher up my ankles.
Leland’s large hand slid sleepily across his sheets, slowly moving toward me.
I froze, not sure if he was awake or waking, if he’d heard me, sensed me, if he knew I was here in the same way I could feel his presence anywhere.
Lightly, he cupped the back of my thigh.
His thumb stroked, tickling the sensitive space behind my knee, his hand slowly climbing higher under my shorts.
I let it go on a few seconds as I struggled to hear him.
“Come back to bed, Em.” His voice was low and raspy. His hand slid higher, not stopping until he reached the bottom curve of my ass cheek. Idly, he traced tender, thin lines over my prickling skin. “Too early for running.”
Definitely not awake. Definitely dreaming.
I pushed his hand away. “Leland, no. It’s me. It’s Ember. Wake up. You’re dreaming.” I cupped his face, smoothing pearls of sweat away from his skin, so cold and clammy under my fingertips. “Come on, Leland,” I begged. “Please wake up for me.”
As blood rained from his legs, I had the terrifying thought that this was both of our Lucid Dreams. He should be able to snap out of it.
I felt my way down to the foot of his bed to be closer to his leg wounds.
Not knowing what else to do, I lifted the heavy, blood-drenched sheet, and had to bite back my cry.
He was in sweatpants, but below the knee, the light-gray fabric was a bloodied, blackened mess.
Blood seemed to leak through deep gashes that ran the lengths of his shins.
My only thought was to wrap his legs tight to try to stop it, so I quickly imagined a towel, conjuring it, then threw it over his leg and bent to tuck it tight under him.
Leland kicked.
More than a reaction of surprise, he kicked as though I’d done this to him, as if all his years fighting in magicless combat amounted to fending me off, his life dependent upon getting rid of me.
It was so violent, so unexpected, I stumbled back, slipping repeatedly.
I yelped as I lost my footing and felt myself falling backward.
I landed on my ass, catching myself with my hands, grunting as my wrists took the impact.
That woke him.
He abruptly sat up on his knees, his face pained and pale as he peered down at me, and the surrounding trail of hand and footprints smeared in his blood from my scramble.
“What are you doing?” he yelled. “I said leave me alone! I said stay in your room!”
“I — ” I choked, still on the ground, floundering in his blood. “You were screaming! I came to check you were okay.” I lifted a hand from the wetness, and a film of blood rolled down. “Why is this happening in a Lucid Dream? What is this?”
“Get out, Ember.”
“No.” His blood rose higher around me. “How do I fix it? Tell me how to fix it.”
“You can’t fix it,” Leland said. “You caused it. You need to leave. Right. Now.”
“What?” I shook my head. “How did I — ”
“I said, GET OUT — ”
There was a jolt.
I awoke in my room and slapped a hand between my eyes, hissing at the pain of a quarter bit drill twisting through my sinuses. Leland had ended the Lucid Dream; he’d forced me out.
Unseeing, my eyes clenched tight against the head pain, I raced down the spiral, swiping my side against the rough stone wall as I turned too fast to stop myself from colliding with it.
I reached Leland’s door and pounded. “Leland? Leland?”
No answer.
I pushed it open. I didn’t want to invade his privacy, but if the blood was real, if the dream was an extension of his reality —
His bed was neatly made, and he wasn’t in it.
* * *
I never returned to my room. I sat in the arcade, staring at his door, waiting under the skylight as the sunrise brightened from orange-gray to dull blue.
Everything reminded me of him. Checking the passage to the hatch reminded me of when he offered to come with me to meet with Starvos.
Looking up at the skylight reminded me of the scrying orb that he denied and denied and denied.
My chair, made in Leland’s style. Most of the furniture in the arcade.
Lightweight, minimal lines, a protest to history and heirlooms. His touch was all over the academy.
Four hours after I started waiting for him, Vyra, Rayne, and Skye meandered out of their rooms and found me in the same chair, refusing to move.
“Sometimes he sleeps somewhere else,” Rayne said, lightly touching my arm.
I shrugged her off. Everything I touched I drained and depleted.
“Why don’t you come with us to breakfast?” she asked.
But I couldn’t leave. I stayed, scrolling through my transmitter and reading every past message from him, the last one I sent Waiting To Be Delivered as of 4:35 a.m.