Chapter 35
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
EMBER
Notably, when a witch is busy fighting battles in her mind, she will be less available to fight in the war waged outside of it.
— Helen Blackburn, Echelon to the
School of Mental Magic
Iwas not alone. I always thought I would be in the end, that the end would be me, eternally sinking backward into an infinite dark-gray abyss, like how it felt to be alone in the vast, blank space before Leland would show up in my Lucid Dreams. But there were hands.
Quick. Large. Warm. Firm but gentle. I smelled pine, distantly. Mostly, I smelled the sea. A little iron. A lot of blood.
I stayed there in the dark, detached from life as the hands slid up from my ankles to my shins. It was the only pleasantness I had in that moment. Hands, little by little, injecting me with their warmth.
I opened my eyes and blinked in the dim, dungeon-like basement of the Allwitch temple.
I was on my back, in the same spot where I’d died on the stone floor, but I’d been rolled.
The hands moved up to my skinned knees, and Leland faintly smiled at me.
The sight of him put an ache in my heart I wasn’t sure would ever heal.
You okay? he said in my head via a Contact spell as he lightly tugged on the zipper of my jacket, waiting for permission to pull it all the way down. Diagnostic showed cuts on your arm and chest, he said. Can I look?
I didn’t respond. My eyes roamed listlessly around, catching a flurry of motion, blurry forms rising up from the well in the distance. The only thing clear was Leland.
Ember, he said, you can talk to me in here.
I wasn’t sure why it mattered.
Aren’t we dead? I asked.
Leland abandoned my zipper and moved back down to my legs.
Not dead, he said, hinging my leg at the knee to check how it was Healing.
Satisfied with the movement it made, he rolled my leggings back down to cover my shins.
You found the Aspirants. Did you know? You found the portal where Dashell and Helen were hiding them.
They’re pulling everyone out of the well now.
He returned to my side and waited for permission to inspect the cuts on my chest again.
Okay, I said.
I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to remove my clothing so gently.
Still, every centimeter the zipper rolled down felt like driving over train tracks.
Leland carefully slid the jacket from my shoulders, leaving me in my white tank, or whatever color white was after running through a waterfall and seven levels of dense mist. See-through, probably. Though he didn’t pause to notice.
His throat bobbed at the sight of the deep carvings Rye had etched into my skin, and the adhesive tape around my arm, soggy and loosening. I lightly tapped my fingertips to the cold floor as he worked on it.
There was a gravity to the room. Those who moved in the background were quiet and methodical, like first responders at the scene of a vehicle rollover. My eyes passed disinterestedly over a dark figure wearing a thick cloak and mask. And Nova.
There was more commotion. I recognized Trist reaching to pull someone from the well.
Droplets of blood stained the floor around her — and everywhere around the area of the waterfall.
A few feet closer to me was the seeping, red puddle, and I winced at the memory of Dashell’s head wound, Ven slamming into him.
Leland alternately worked on my cuts and watched me, a hand’s length away but a divide as vast as the Creatus desert stretched between us. It felt as dark now as it did when I was sinking.
I turned my head from him, not wanting to tell him about his Familiar — what I’d brought out in Ven, what had happened.
Here, said Leland. His large hands took mine, gently pulling me to his lap, not content until my legs were wrapped securely around his hips. I’m not sure what he was softly smiling at, because there was nothing in me except dark clouds raining from the inside out.
He used a Drying spell on my wet clothes, then wrapped a crinkling silver blanket around my shoulders.
Pure weakness caused me to collapse into him.
I melted into his smell, his warmth, some of it creeping into my skin.
I should have been aching to touch him, but .
. . I didn’t care. We stayed on the floor while he finished Drying what he could.
I’d lost track of how many spells he’d cast, but he was at least down to half.
“Don’t waste your spells,” I scraped out of dry, cracked lips.
You’re shivering.
“I can talk,” I said, but barely. “Stop Contacting.” Every time he switched from Drying my clothes to speaking in my head was a new focus. A new Contact. One less spell for him.
“You’re . . .” He broke off to search my eyes for a minute. “Where are you, Em? Will you tell me what happened?”
“I can’t.”
Nova darted over and wedged herself underneath the blanket to lend some extra warmth.
“Can I look?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, not sure what he meant.
I figured it out when his hands cupped the sides of my face, and he leaned in.
Our foreheads touched, the tactile requirement to cast Memory Share.
Leland searched my mind, revisiting everything that had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours.
Running from my room to find his empty bed.
My conversation with Jaxan. Rye. He watched me lie to Rayne and Skye.
He watched me lie to my aunts. He saw me use Pepper to get around the temple.
He saw Ven. Dashell. But he stopped at the end, before Helen started turning the Ring of Greatest Fear. He didn’t make me relive it.
His head pulled back, and I lifted my gaze to meet his.
I could tell he was tired. His face was rough and unshaven, red like he’d been scratching it.
His appearance was always neat, but for once, his clothes were moderately creased, his hair was ruffled, and the pine smell I loved so much was something I had to seek through a layer of salt and sea.
A brighter me might’ve asked where he’d been, but I found it hard to care in the hollowness.
Even Nova, the tiny ball of heat purring in my lap, couldn’t soften the deep pain in my chest that leeched every morsel of my motivation and interest.
“This isn’t you,” Leland concluded. “It’s the ring.
You know what it did to your dad? It made his fear of the outside real to him.
But you aren’t afraid of the outside. You’re afraid of butterflies.
The problems you cause, as you put it. You feel low right now because the ring did what it does.
It turned your head against you. Everything you heard it say — none of it is true.
One person can’t destroy Everden. Especially not you. ”
“I hurt you in my dream,” I said.
“No,” said Leland. “I was going to talk to you about that. You didn’t hurt me. What you saw in the dream was my memory. My subconscious showing you something I’ve never shared. And it scared me.”
I didn’t have the strength to ask what it was. Even if I did, I didn’t think he wanted to tell me. That was evident in his voice, his eyes, his posture.
Nova, attempting to knead heat into my legs with her wet paws, continued purring loudly, the rumble drowning out the echo of the waterfall. I didn’t think Leland knew about her. They’d been side-by-side a hundred times without him noticing.
Then he scooped the small cat up from under the reflective foil blanket and set her gently on the floor. Nova’s tail flicked passive-aggressively in response.
“Tell Skye,” Leland said to the cat, “it’s not her turn.” My eyes must’ve mustered some emotion or curiosity because he added, “We met on the way over.”
“I lost it,” I said, vacant and a bit random as I suddenly remembered that Skye was going to be mad.
“You lost what?” he asked, checking the temperature of my forehead with the back of his hand.
“Skye’s pen.”
“That doesn’t matter,” he said.
“It will to her.” It was why I took them. Borrowed. But . . .
“Ember,” Leland said. “It’s just a pen. Dropping it down the stairs to test the Illusion, and everything you did after, was incredible. Skye will be proud, not mad.”
Nova wasn’t fond of being relocated outside our cocoon, but she got over it quickly, leaving us to follow the cloaked figure who was Vanishing all the blood and water tracked across the room.
I didn’t know who it was. Maybe Rayne had come to help, in disguise in case she was caught in the temple, but I lost interest thinking about it.
“What else?” said Leland. “What else do I need to tell you you’re wrong about?”
“Pepper is . . .” I craned my neck, looking but not really looking at the well that had changed her into something darker than what burned inside me. “I corrupted her. I made her into a monster.”
“You didn’t corrupt her,” Leland said, laughing a little. “You did the right thing. Belinda was so happy she got to watch you coming to rescue her. She didn’t have to wait one second to hold her Familiar. Because of Pepper, we knew where to look.”
“It happened after she slipped. If I hadn’t brought her here — ”
“Pepper didn’t change.” The way he said it was direct, each word spoken like its own individual sentence.
“Familiars fill in the gaps an Allwitch is missing. Pepper is what happens when an Allwitch is sweet and sensitive. Pepper is an animal, because Belinda won’t be.
You just didn’t see it because . . .” He looked fondly down at my chest, shaking his head like he was battling disbelief.
“Your Familiar is going to be proud and cynical. You did nothing wrong. Nothing.”
Then why did I feel like I couldn’t breathe? Like I shouldn’t be.
“Ven,” Leland went on, his expression turning serious, “did what I would have done. He fought violence with more violence. He was protective. That’s me, Ember. That’s not you.”
My mind drifted to the first time Leland told me about him. I was in the ether, and Leland had looked so sad as he described to me how Jaxan had Severed them. He told me Ven had died, and he meant it. Which meant — Leland’s first time seeing Ven in fourteen years . . . was this.
Under the blanket, Leland’s hands were on my back. I felt the exact placement of the V on his left ring finger below my ribs.
“I’m not upset,” he said. “Helen was wrong. Lying. You don’t control Ven. I don’t control Ven. He’s a predator. I’ve always known that. What I didn’t know was that he lived. I only know that now because he thought you were worth finding, and I’m thankful for that.”
I let out a small breath. Clarity. Light.
Hope. They slowly entered back into my soul.
My shoulders loosened somewhat, and breathing was getting easier.
The Ring of Greatest Fear had warped my brain, but it wasn’t stronger than the gift of Leland’s truth, the undeniable belief I had in him because of how our gifts worked together.
Leland, my Counterpart, my Truth-Teller, perhaps the only one who could’ve brought me back from the artifact of mental magic’s spell.
Because when he said these things . . . I believed him.
The cloaked figure strode by us on their way out of the chamber, Nova dutifully following at their heels.
It occurred to me they didn’t walk like Rayne, nor were they as tall.
They paused before us, looking at me for a few minutes too long before some kind of nod of understanding passed between them and Leland.
I didn’t ask how they knew one another. Their outfit was dark and unpleasant, like something for digging deep graves and burying chopped up body parts in Gnarlton.
But Nova liked them. And Leland picked good friends. So they probably weren’t terrible.
After they left, I still didn’t move. I still whimpered in Leland’s lap, still too shaken to stand.
“Do you believe now,” Leland said seriously, “that you’re not a problem? You never have been.”
On the ground next to Leland’s knee, I spied a close-by sedative. One of the tranquilizer darts that missed. I considered taking it. Rest always helped Dad.
Leland said, “I never talked about this with you because I don’t think being sad makes you any less whole, but I have been there, Ember.
I know how you feel right now, and I know what I needed was a friend to pull me out.
How you grew up — it changed how you see yourself.
I don’t say this because I think you need to be fixed, but because I see how incredible you are.
And on the other side of this is you doing good things.
Your heart making a difference in the world. ”
“Look where we are,” I said. “Look at this mess. You’re involved. Skye’s involved. I pulled you into this. I think I’m cursed. I feel it in my blood. Cursed half witch — Helen meant that. There’s something wrong with me, something to be afraid of. I know there is.”
“No.” Leland met my eyes with a stern look in his. “What your mother said about everything being your fault isn’t true. You don’t cause problems. Okay? Helen was lying. None of this is because of anything you did.”
I didn’t have the energy to ask what happened after an Echelon’s death. I looked toward the stairs, the room a cold, wet prison. So what if we’d found the Aspirants? None of us were allowed to be here. What was going to happen to everyone who helped?
It didn’t matter that I didn’t ask the question out loud. Leland and I, we understood sometimes. He saw my face and knew.
“Things are under control. Helen’s mind was emptied by my Mentalist. Dashell’s body was relocated to a part of the desert where mountain lion attacks occur.
Jaxan still wants you in Everden. He’ll protect your reputation and control the narrative.
Whatever else, we’ll handle it. Time will pass.
You’ll get better. Right now, that’s all I care about. ”
Logically, I knew I couldn’t single-handedly destroy Everden.
I knew the majority of the hopelessness I was feeling was the ring.
I knew if Leland said things were under control, they were, because that’s what he did.
He took care of things. But as it was, I was in his lap and hardly moving, another thing for him to Heal, protect, deal with.
“Water,” I said, and Leland cast me a cup and filled it to the brim.
And as he quietly battled elemental magic’s side effects, my hand shot out for the loose sedative, and I stabbed myself in the thigh with it.