Chapter 34 #2
“I tried,” Helen said with bitter regret.
“I did everything I could to try. I didn’t want to have you.
Jaxan kidnapped your sister and made sure that I did.
I didn’t want you interested in Everden, so I told you nothing about it.
Then, the night you turned eighteen, I made a Deal with him.
I traded Jaxan my votes on the Council so you could stay home for eight more months.
I told the Council you were dangerous. I sickened your father, so you wouldn’t want to leave him.
I put nightmares in your dreams and made you weak.
I ignored you and cut you off from your sister.
I wanted you to have nothing to stay here for.
But none of it worked. The only hope I have left is to make them fear you. ”
“I can’t leave yet,” I said, shuffling backward into a cold stone pillar for support. “I have to stay for Leland.”
“Leland?” Helen laughed pitifully. “Do you really not see it? The Truth-Teller is a weapon. Jaxan designed him to destroy you, and if you don’t leave, you’ll destroy Everden for him.”
“No,” I breathed, “I have to stay to save him from being murdered by a Death Bond.” A Death Bond he consented to when he was five. “A Death Bond he didn’t want.”
“You can’t save him,” Helen said, shaking her head. “What the Truth-Teller wants most in life is redemption. How do you think he gets it? He wants to be dead. That future is already written.”
Now I was mad, furious. Because Leland was not dying; I would not allow it.
Because Helen had always been perfectly clear that I was a humongous problem but never took the time to tell me why.
Because she could have apologized. Because she could have told me where the Aspirants were.
Because Dashell should be alive. And because they shouldn’t have harmed Leland’s Familiar.
“What are you talking about?” The nervous convulsions in my stomach forced me to yell. “What exactly do you think I’m going to do here? Who, if not your own family, are you trying to protect?”
“Everyone,” she declared, panting. “Everyone. From a cursed half witch.”
I was so used to her silence, her tight composure, that I barely recognized her as the speaker of the words shuddering out of her throat.
“It’s been tit for tat with Jaxan for twenty-three years. The Curse upon you is atrocious, Ember, and I will die before I allow you to stay here and destroy us.”
Atrocious, she said. Yet not so atrocious she felt the need to tell me what it was . . . Helen was worried about me being dangerous in the future, yet she was the one actively hurting people now. Me. Everden. Every Aspirant she took into her Shadowrealm.
“You hurt people!” I yelled, releasing some anger to remind myself I had a right to be mad. “You made me sick with your mental magic! You hurt Dad! You separated Sevens from their Familiars. You have them in captivity. Who knows how you’ve been treating them — ”
“And I would do it again,” she said soullessly, once again pulling the long silver chain from her blouse and freeing the ancient necklace with a sapphire ring pendant.
Her thumb turned clockwise around the center of it.
“I apologize for the pain of what is about to happen, but I need you to understand. You need to leave Everden. You are a danger to everyone. And I need you to confess it.”
I slid to the floor, my back against a pillar. The room spun, fading as the sickest parts of my brain slowly swallowed me, and for as long as Helen continued to turn her finger around the ring, my worst nightmares were real.
I don’t enjoy horror. I turn away from saws and chains and hooks and cleavers.
Real or pretend, there is no lens, no framing or poetic imagery I can appreciate when the crux of a story is pain and suffering.
A year ago, though, I neglected to mention this, and for an hour and thirty-nine minutes, I’d sat in a dark movie theater, pretending I wasn’t miserable, quietly wishing I’d brought a bigger hoodie to hide in as Gray and I watched “the darkest film of the year.” After collecting myself in the bathroom, I’d left the theater drained and shaking and afraid of the floating spots I saw in the mirror.
The terror the Ring of Greatest Fear induced was worse than that.
My eyes had been cinched shut since her ring began its turns, but I could neither stop seeing nor plug my ears. There was no way to avoid watching or listening to it. I couldn’t even talk myself through it. Not even with logic, assurances of that could never happen, you would never be involved.
Because everything the Ring of Greatest Fear showed me had happened, and I was the cause.
Dashell’s death. Every Aspirant who disappeared. Dad’s car accident and anxiety disorder. Leland’s life, hanging in the balance with mine. It played on a loop. It played in the background as Helen’s boots clicked in an even rhythm in my direction.
“Everything is your fault, Ember,” she said, the magnification of her voice like fast-spinning blades.
I was too removed from the reality of my surroundings to know what this was. If it was really Helen saying that, or if it was the ring — I didn’t know. All I knew was it felt real.
My head drooped. A new heaviness was injected in the air.
“You,” Helen seethed. “You are the cursed one. Cruelty was necessary to make you understand. In Everden, you will not find happiness. Our world is not meant for second children, and I have been bending over backwards to stop you from detonating and destroying us.”
My nose bled in a heavy flow. My head was shaken to the point of irrevocable damage. Thoughts I wished to speak died on conception. I tried to lift my arm to swipe the blood but couldn’t; my arm was too heavy. I heard my cuff clang as my wrist struck the ground and prayed Helen didn’t.
“You cause so many problems,” she said factually. “Every time you speak, the world gets worse from it.”
I violently shook and could no longer sit up against the pillar.
I fell forward, reaching for the cracks in the cold floor, if only to have something to touch, to feel less alone.
Then my grip slipped, my limbs malfunctioning as my lungs choked.
The palms of my hands shriveled inward like fallen leaves dying.
Exhausted, I left to the place I went to forget, my internal world.
There, my thoughts shifted rapidly. Dad.
Skye. Leland. Leland taking my hand. Leland telling me his secrets in his room.
Leland depleting himself on my cuffs. Gold cuffs.
Iron clang. There’s no one worth burning for. The last thought landed.
There’s no one worth burning for.
No one worth burning for, yet that’s what I was doing. I hadn’t done anything — Helen only wanted me to think that, to hate myself so much I no longer cared how I was perceived. But I was a half witch, and I belonged here as much as I belonged in the human realm.
And for as long as Leland lived, for as long as I wanted to be here, I wasn’t leaving.
Somehow, I grasped my wrists through the tremors and shaking. Metal clanged, my cuffs bashing. I tore them off and flung them across the room, the room echoing with a dense clink as they collided with whatever wall I’d thrown them into.
Free of them, I was free to become ether. I drew on the feelings that made me disappear. I was going to get out. The Echelons were going to know what Helen did. She, not me, was responsible for the disappearances.
I pictured Leland in romantic tangles. Case. Vyra. Brothel after brothel.
But the ring was too strong. Fear sapped me.
It was over. It was too hard and painful to think, and whether I was responsible for the Shadowrealm or not no longer mattered, nor did it matter if I was punished for the things I did or for the things I didn’t.
I was already responsible for too much. The butterflies I’d caused were too terrible.
I’m sorry, Leland, I thought, then stopped convulsing.
My body gave up its fight and disconnected from reality, and the emptiness I sank into was black and cold.