Chapter Thirty-One #2
His coven grabbed at air, searching out my mass to no avail.
By sheer will, I flew the hundred feet to the thin trace of light at the end of the tunnel, not knowing how long I had and wasting no time propelling myself through air.
The steps to the street level came into view, and with shadows racing toward me, I thrust myself in an upward direction and landed on the rain-covered ground.
I did not turn back. I reached the portstop and left the ether.
Something about the egress’s quantum magic restored my bodily form. Corporeal again, I traveled through the storm of twisting light, wishing I could tell Leland.
I figured it out. A way to get me back which isn’t intimacy or touching.
But Leland was missing, so I could tell him nothing.
* * *
Back in Creatus, I burst through the hatch to the academy as water bursts through a dam, turbulent and indifferent to anyone in my path.
Case had sent a few messages urging me to read the letter in Leland’s desk in case it explained where he went.
I didn’t want to read what Leland never intended me to see while he lived, and my stomach revolted at the idea of invading his privacy, but the longer Leland was gone, the more I agreed I had to do it.
Vyra was in my way as I sped down the hatch passage. “Don’t you look horrendous,” she remarked.
I pushed past her, but she turned on her heel and trailed after me to the arcade.
“You couldn’t be bothered to search the desert with us. But street fighting in magicless combat? What a gorgeous night for that!”
I understood why she thought that. My chest was streaked with blood, my arm had an open wound, the knees of my pants were pure mud, and my shirt was in scraps, the neckline sliced in a jagged, revealing swoop that exposed the upper third of my bra.
Avoiding her, I focused on Leland’s room at the base of the spiral.
Fifty feet to go.
“Hello?” Vyra said. “I’m speaking to you.”
“Vyra,” I breathed. “I wasn’t street fighting in magicless combat. I was looking for Leland.”
“Well,” she huffed, dramatically pretending to search the arcade for him. “You failed.”
I swallowed my frustration, needing to clench my teeth in order not to scream. Obviously! Obviously, I failed. I fail at everything!
Biting back those feelings, I took another breath. “Have you heard anything else?” I asked. “Did you guys find any clues when you were out looking? Anything that would help?”
“Would I be wasting my time with you if we did?”
“No,” I answered on a tight exhale. “Probably not.”
“I knew this would happen,” she said as we were rounding the start of the spiral’s curve. “I knew you would make life worse for him. It’s why I wanted you gone. Why you should’ve never gone near him.”
We reached the outside of his bedroom. I put my hand on his door.
It should have been impossible to open. Except.
For the record, he’d messaged after I moved here, if you ever need in my room, for anything, it opens for you.
No wards. At the time, I thought it was something he did for everyone in his circle.
I’d thought they all had access to him. Then Vyra’s brown eyes burned with outrage when his door opened at my push, and I realized it wasn’t for his circle. It was for me.
Vyra stormed off to her room.
I gave myself a second to stare at his empty bed and breathe. One second, then I did what had to be done. I read his letter as I once crammed for tests, my eyes moving at impossible speed, galloping over the thick, water droplet-shaped splotches defiling his neat handwriting.
My throat burned with the strange feeling that, if I slowed down and reread it, I could do what had always been impossible — my eyes would water, tears would form, and I could cry about all the questions I never asked him. I could cry simply because it looked like he had been. And I hated that.
I pushed the feeling down and blinked rapidly until my eyes felt dry and numb.
I grabbed Arissa’s coin that he’d included tucked in the folds of the letter and left the sheet of paper in the drawer where I’d found it.
Leland had confirmed my suspicion about the Allwitch temple.
Jaxan certainly wanted me to go there, and whether or not it was a setup didn’t matter.
Leland had been gone eighteen hours. I would go anywhere.
* * *
I jogged up the spiral to change, grab my cuffs, and pack my hefting satchel, unfortunately at the exact same time as Skye and Rayne exited the cafeteria. Clocking the condition of my clothes, they decided to follow me up the spiral, jogging to keep up as I raced up the winding levels to our room.
I moved wildly from dresser to dresser, going from my desk to my closet to my bed, but it wasn’t easy with Skye chasing me around, slapping ointment on my cuts and scrapes and flinging various bandages.
I gathered a roll of medical adhesive tape and wound it around my arm.
Was it good enough to seal the deep cut and stop an infection?
No. But I only needed it to hold me together for a few more portstops.
“You have holes in you!” Skye said sternly.
“A sign to slow down,” said Rayne.
“Nope,” I said, banging open my dresser. I wasn’t mad at them, but I knew now wasn’t the time for sharing and honesty. They’d ask to come to the temple or tell me not to go, and neither were options I had time for.
I turned toward the closet and shed my shirt for a clean white tank and black jacket that zipped up the middle.
I dropped my dress pants, left them in a lump on the floor, and jumped into leggings, then asked Skye and Rayne to find my running shoes — a distraction as I retrieved the cuffs from the bottom of my sock drawer, put them on, and adjusted the sleeves of my jacket to cover them.
Skye threw my shoes on the bed and said plainly, “We would also like to find the tall one. Therefore, we should know what it is you are doing.”
I looked at her squarely. “No.”
One hurt person was enough, and . . . I didn’t have a plan.
I’d had a plan. Several plans . . . before I realized I’d wasted them.
Etherizing would’ve gotten me through the Allwitch temple unnoticed, but I wasn’t sure I could do it again so soon after I’d just done it in the catacombs.
The Everblade was probably intended to be useful, but now Rye Cackrin’s coven had it.
All I had was the land dragon coin in my satchel, but I had no idea how to use it because Leland didn’t tell me.
It took several lies — lies I in no way regretted — to convince Skye and Rayne to stay at the academy. But each lie was met with resistance, so I did the only thing I could. I kept doing it.
I lied.
I lied.
I lied.
Plus, I told a few more lies, then put an unreasonable amount of faith in myself I prayed I wouldn’t regret, in order to convince them to let me bring Pepper.
If I managed to get inside the temple, if indeed that’s where the missing Sevens were, and if Leland wasn’t there — if I couldn’t feel my way toward him — then a connection like Pepper had with Belinda would at least tell me if I needed to keep going.
Besides, it was Pepper’s idea. Or so it was easy to convince myself, based on the way she repeatedly jumped in my bag, and I repeatedly pulled her out, until at last I said, “Fine,” and she contorted herself into my satchel’s outer pocket.
I finished knotting my shoes as Skye stuffed my satchel with baby carrots, at the exact same time as it dawned on me that Pepper’s enhanced ability to find Belinda wasn’t the only reason I wanted to bring her to the temple.
It was their bond, their inexplicable Allwitch–Familiar link.
The idea that a piece of your heart could be shared so strongly that hardships were easier to weather, together.
And maybe because I’d always wanted that, I couldn’t stand the idea of finding Belinda without her Familiar.
I knew I probably wouldn’t find Leland. I probably wouldn’t find any of them. Farrah would be in my way the second I reached the temple’s security gate. But I jogged out of the academy anyway, not thinking about why Jaxan commanded me to find Leland, because I really didn’t have a choice.
My blood insisted.
Go find your missing piece.