Chapter 37
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
EMBER
Even in the darkest, coldest hours, I am full of warmth and aglow, for I am an Elemental, and Elementals burn brightest in love.
— Hector Ambrosia, Echelon to the
School of Elemental Magic
Alight breeze fluttered as we crossed the marble bridge, lifting the clear smell of water up from the canal.
I would’ve stopped to enjoy the crisp, cool air, except I was hoping to make my way to the academy to shower before Leland walked out of the palace, and my aunts were waiting for me on the hill.
“Congratulations, dear.” Sinora embraced me in a hug, ignoring Sabrina’s childlike twirling.
When the hug ended, she lifted her Lens of Intentions to her eye and began inspecting Skye with it.
“We just waited to see that you had someone to walk you home,” she said, dropping the lens, “and now that I see you do, we’ll be getting out of your hair. ”
“Someone who you love will die,” Sabrina said distantly.
Sinora thwacked her for it, then dragged her sister up the cobblestones.
“The aunts are strange ones,” Skye remarked once they were out of earshot.
“Yeah,” I said fondly, watching them ascend the hill glowing bright green in the late morning sun. “They know.”
Their long black skirts blew in the breeze as they shuffled up the path.
A few paces ahead of them, Case casually receded into the distance, whistling with his hands in his pockets as Farrah barreled past him in her high heels.
She was heading down the hill, no doubt on her way to take my picture and demand an interview.
But she never made it.
A burst of flames blasted the air in front of her.
Farrah swung her hot-pink satchel protectively in front of her chest, and the blast incinerated it to ashes.
Case stopped, making wry hand gestures that appeared to be him pointing out the bald places where the blast had singed off her eyebrows.
Farrah angrily spun in the direction she’d come from, forgetting about him.
A genuine smile tugged at my lips, the first smile I didn’t have to plaster on since I got here.
As we walked to the portstop, I contemplated how I felt about Sinora saying she wanted to make sure I had someone to walk me home. Home, and I hadn’t even reacted. Was home Everden now?
I was still pondering this at the academy, my thoughts straying all over the place as I was in the bath, trying to relax to a view of candle flames flickering warmly against the red stone walls.
A lavender-scented bath bomb colored the water like a galaxy, and I was submerged under a thick layer of bubbly, purple foam.
Head tilted back, the warm water rose to my chin.
I swirled my hand and watched it ripple outward, smiling to myself at the sudden memory of Farrah’s satchel burning.
Nova strode in through the small dog door for Familiars and dashed across the stone. I had just enough time to check I was covered by the bubbles before she jumped, perching in a graceful stance on the edge of the claw-foot tub.
“Yes,” I groaned, well aware Skye was behind Nova’s stare. “You can come in.”
Nova’s tail flicked appreciatively, and I tilted my head in question. Skye had told me on the walk back from Odessa Hall about her gift.
“Did I even need to say that? Or did you already know?”
Skye dragged in a chair and plunked it down next to the tub, straddling it backward with her arms folded over the backrest for her chin to rest on. The way she was sitting gave me a clear view of the beautiful blue and green watercolor dragonfly soaring across her shoulders.
She said quietly, “Nova can’t read your mind, but I can hear and watch you through her. The mindreading goes quiet when I do. I guess that’s what the Goddess decided I was missing — night vision and a place to go when I don’t want to hear everyone’s thoughts.”
I was pretty sure the dragonfly on Skye’s shoulders was the same one from my sister’s letters, including the letter I’d received from Ash most recently, the one with scratchy handwriting, purple pen, and a lack of useful information.
I’d thought more about the witch in disguise at the Allwitch temple.
They’d stopped and stared at me for a long time before leaving. I wanted it to be my sister.
“You’re right,” said Skye, staring ahead at the line of sinks where plinks of water leaked from old silver faucets.
“Ash and I are together. She’s my Counterpart.
You know how she made the Dark Deal to work with Jaxan?
That’s still happening. But she’s also working with Helen — or pretending to, so she can report back to Jaxan, and it’s .
. .” She let out a heavy sigh. “Helen expects loyalty. Loyalty is not speaking to you.”
I stared up at the stone ceiling and listened to water rushing through pipes behind the walls. I wasn’t mad at Ash for doing what it took to keep herself alive, and Skye, too, if they were bonded. But I wished it didn’t have to be like this.
Skye twisted a silver ring around her knuckle. “She doesn’t tell me,” she said, “what they make her do — it’s why I couldn’t go in the temple with you. She doesn’t want me to know how she’s involved. But Ashy wanted you in Everden. I know that for sure.”
“Is she safe?” I asked.
Skye snorted. “Safer than anyone who messes with her.”
My throat was tight, so I just said, “That sounds like her.”
* * *
I had plenty of time alone to get ready for the party while everyone was decorating the cafeteria.
A lot of that time, I stood at my mirror, reveling in the smoothness of my unbranded forehead.
My arms were bare — the last time I saw my cuffs was at the temple — but I felt fine, still basking in the relief of etherizing not two days ago.
Because I could, I dressed in a short-sleeved, summery dress made of thin cotton material.
It had a corset-style closure in the back, eyelet detailing sculpting the curves of my waist, and a lemon-yellow bow at the sweetheart neckline.
I dabbed my wrist and spritzed my neck with Rainy Day Café, a perfume I’d found in Ash’s bedroom and wore to remind me of her, though now it was my signature, almond croissant.
At six, I headed down for the party, pausing in the arcade to admire the beautiful decorations in the common area.
The tables were covered in giant, cascading bouquets of peach-cream, dusty-pink, and violet roses, carefully arranged in crackle-coated golden glass vases.
I almost didn’t see Vyra standing at the cafeteria doors with her arms crossed, her short, flouncy skirt the same shade of burgundy as her lipstick.
I checked for Sutter but didn’t see her.
“Hi, Vyra,” I said in acknowledgment as I tried to slip past her.
“I want to keep this short,” she said.
I stopped, surprised to hear the falter in her voice. She uncrossed her arms, and I waited, looking up at the skylight where the evening sky was turning a cool shade of periwinkle.
“It was out of concern for Leland,” she said, her voice ramping up with emotion.
“I treated you poorly because I wanted you to stay away from him. It had nothing to do with you. Leland’s had a hard life.
I knew a half witch, in this world, wouldn’t make it better.
That’s why I treated you the way I did.”
“I understand,” I said, meaning maybe not the rudeness, but the desire to protect him — I knew how that felt.
“Just don’t hurt him and we won’t have a problem.”
I gave her a nod, some feeling preventing me from saying I wouldn’t. Which she noticed. She strutted into the flowering oasis of the cafeteria without another word.
Belinda, Rayne, Skye, Aila, and Pepper all sat at the first-year table, and Vyra folded herself in a seat next to Aila, which happened to be the seat farthest away from the one Skye had reserved for me.
Antique brass table lanterns flickered, casting warm light on our faces as servers in white gloves stood by attentively.
“Since when does the cafeteria have servers?” I asked out of the corner of my mouth. I couldn’t take a single sip of water without one leaning over my shoulder to refill my glass.
“Belinda hired them,” said Rayne, holding her chin in her hand and smiling slyly. She looked beautiful, her red-beaded bracelets matching the embroidered ladybug motif on her fitted white dress. “Leland’s paying for it.”
“Of course he is,” I said. But where is he?
Belinda clapped her hands in a decisive manner. “This is going to be extremely complicated,” she warned a server. “Have you ever made a Sunset Moonale? Right, understandably — it is my own concoction, heh.”
She proceeded to feed the server a long list of instructions, which included two shots of moonale, orange, vanilla, and multiple ingredients I’d never heard of, like bubblin’ and giggleflower.
“Muddle it,” she continued, and made a churning motion into an imaginary mortar and pestle. “And voilà! Perfection.” With a serious hand on the table, she finished, “It’s also important you understand we need rounds. Many, many rounds.”
Pepper hopped on the table, stood up on her hind legs, and snarled at the server. He took the hint and nodded enthusiastically at Belinda before shuffling hastily away to the bar.
Rayne fed Pepper a baby carrot. “A literal demon,” she tutted appreciatively.
“Ferocious beast,” Skye agreed.
None of the Sevens who had been taken recalled what had happened to them while they were gone, no memory even of the Shadowrealm taking them.
I wondered if that made it worse for them.
Some of them had been gone nearly a month.
A month of time where no one knew what happened to them, except maybe Ash, who Skye suspected had something to do with their memory loss.