Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
Token
MAGNOLIA
Hael and I were chained in front of the Examinis, its iridescent foam casting a glow over the cave underneath the castle.
The water was loud, moving fast and swirling around the middle.
The sound roared in my ears, echoing off the rocky walls.
If it wasn’t so deadly, it would have been beautiful.
It was the kind of pretty that made you want to jump in.
I imagined the water was warm, despite everything in Moriann being freezing, it looked warm.
But maybe that was part of the illusion.
It was all a cover for the rot hidden below.
It was why so many outcasts ate the berries around the bridges.
The temptation was there, the allure of the river just as deadly as the Hell lurking beneath it.
The air smelled like stagnant, metallic mildew. It made everything feel damp down here, even though the only moisture was confined to the running currents.
We were at the widest point before it spilled out into the ocean.
No one ever swam in the southern tip of the Adrian.
The saltwater counteracted the effects of the river, but everyone was so scared of dying—so downright terrified of Dahes—that the northern beach became the only swimmable strip of shoreline.
Not that anyone ever took leisurely swims here—it was more if you became desperate enough to wash off the grime from the streets.
If it wasn’t for the chains bolting Hael and me to the ground of the underbelly of Dahes’ castle, I would have thought Dahes was going to push us in.
The sentries clamped shackles over my own wrists, and the feeling was so jarring that it brought me back to my first year of slavery, when I spent every waking second in them. I swore I still felt the permanent bruises beneath my skin from the metal rubbing against my bones.
“Your Token isn’t transparency,” Dahes said, forcing me to look up from the rushing river.
“What do you mean?”
“Think back to the night it manifested, Magnolia. What was your deepest necessity?”
I could feel Hael staring at me. Before I told Hael why I became transparent, I always felt like he knew. Even when I was standing in the Vivenian throne room and King Elion was laughing at me, he knew.
Hael’s response when I told him came crashing back to me, hitting me so hard that it hurt…
“Is he dead?” His voice had been so lethal. “The bastard that did that to you. Is. He. Dead?”
Then his voice dropped even lower. “I will walk into Moriann right now and kill him so slowly that it’ll take months. Hell, I’ll drag him out here so you can do it yourself if you want to. Just tell me his name.”
But I hadn’t. I never told him who tried to do it to me, and now I ruined everything. We could never go back to how things were.
“I didn’t want you to touch me.” I barely heard my own voice, wasn’t aware of my lips moving to form the words of what my necessity was. I wanted to crawl into my own skin and disappear until I was nothing more than the wind howling through the kingdom.
I hated what almost happened, hated that it always made me feel this way. Hated even more that Dahes used it against me to get Hael to agree to this… Maybe if I told him everything then, maybe if I hadn’t left out the important details, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
Dahes smiled. It was soft and gentle and more terrifying than his usual malicious smirks.
“That’s not true. You’re forgetting that you didn’t block me out back then.
I saw everything in that little mind of yours.
Think, Magnolia. What were you really scared of, because it wasn’t just me fucking you. ”
I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t only make myself numb to block out Dahes. I also did it for myself. My life was filled with horrific memory after horrific memory. There was so much I wanted to forget. There was barely any good, except…
Except for him—the reason I got myself into this mess in the first place.
Masin.
“I was scared you were going to kill me,” I admitted. “After you got what you wanted, I thought I was going to die.”
Dahes was full on grinning now. He started pacing the bank of the river in front of us. The foam casting a glow around him, making his eyes look even more iridescent. “Exactly. So how do you protect yourself against getting killed, Magnolia?”
I couldn’t think of an answer. All I knew was that I had to live. I had to find a way to get back to Masin.
“You die,” he said, stopping his pacing as he stood directly in front of me now. “You didn’t want me to kill you, so you killed yourself.”
I wasn’t sure how to process what he was saying.
It didn’t make sense. I wasn’t dead, was I?
Dahes’ gaze was assessing, and I knew he was in my thoughts.
I couldn’t block him out, didn’t have the energy to anymore.
My mind kept crumbling, my thoughts kept racing.
I was starting to think again, starting to let myself be something more than a ghost.
“Little ghost,” Dahes repeated the word in my mind, then spoke out loud. “I can’t harm what’s already gone. Your Token made you into a ghost, Magnolia. When you activated it that night, you gave yourself the ability to walk the thin veil between the living and the dead.”
A ghost.
No, that wasn’t true.
“It is,” he said. “You know it’s true.”
I thought back to whenever I used my power. I was translucent just like them, varying shades of gray. I could walk through things—through walls and doors and even people if I wanted to. No one could touch me.
Then I thought of all the hunts, all the times I almost died, all the times I should have died. Dahes was never worried about me, even climbing the Senith Cliffs or crossing the Sands, he never thought I’d die.
“Yes,” he breathed, reading my thoughts. “Because you couldn’t, not in that form. Whenever you use your Token, your life pauses, you exist but don’t. It’s truly marvelous. You’re marvelous.”
I could become a ghost.
My Token made me dead. It made sense why Dahes had an obsession with me. I became the very thing he ruled over, yet I was the only dead thing he couldn’t control.
“It’s a shame though,” he drawled, still right in front of me.
My lips parted, terrified for where this was going.
My breath left me in a puff of air, hitting Dahes’ face as he leaned forward, and I swore the walls were closing in on me.
“The very thing your Token made you—the necessity you needed to get back to Masin—will ensure you never see him again.”
My heart was pounding. My stomach was in my throat. My lips still parted like I couldn’t snap my jaw back into place. “Wh-what do you mean?” I stuttered, refusing to take in the meaning of his words.
But my mind already came up with the answer, even though Dahes didn’t confirm it yet.
No.
No. No. No.
He couldn’t be.
“Everything you went through was to someday be reunited with him,” he said slowly, drawing this out. “All you ever wanted was to see him again.”
Hael’s chains rattled next to me, and I briefly saw his fists clenched before my eyes blurred.
I didn’t have a voice anymore. Couldn’t think properly to form words.
“You can make yourself dead,” Dahes continued, staring right at me, watching me, “yet you’ll never be able to see the person you love again.”
He paused for entirely too long. I wasn’t moving, wasn’t blinking. My lungs were the only thing still working as I took ragged breath after ragged breath…
“Everything you went through to save him was for nothing,” Dahes drawled. “Masin is dead.”
No. No. NO—
This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t real, wasn’t true…
I took a step back, my legs stumbling over the chains. “No, you’re lying,” I choked, sobs already wracking through me. My head was shaking so much it hurt.
My ears were ringing, my eyes burned. Those three words kept hitting me over and over again, but I refused to process it.
Masin is dead.
Masin is dead.
Masin is dead…
“No—” I shook my head again, I might have been screaming the word out loud. “No, you’re lying!”
NO. NO. NO!
But Dahes wasn’t taking it back, wasn’t telling me this was one, big horrible mistake.
If I knew anything about him, it was that he only spoke in facts, even if they were twisted and manipulated.
If he made a threat, it wasn’t idle. If he told me something, there was always some truth. But this, this couldn’t be true…
“He’s not dead,” I whispered, my voice barely audible, but I knew he heard every syllable.
“You think I wouldn’t know who is dead, little ghost?” Dahes’ voice crooned inside my head. “I own them.”
I was barely aware of Hael watching. He was standing so still, his fists balled at his sides…
“You promised,” my voice stuttered. I couldn’t hold back the tears now. “Our deal was Masin lives…”
“No.” His voice was chilling, cutting right through me. “Our deal was that I’d bring him back to life. I can’t help it if he dies of his own accord later.”
I was shaking my head, tears soaking my dress. “No. No. No.” My voice rose an octave as I screamed. “He’s alive. You’re fucking lying!”
Alive. Alive. Alive.
He couldn’t be dead. This couldn’t be for nothing. I tried to save him, tried to protect him—
I couldn’t breathe.
My vision blurred as my eyes glossed over and all I could see was the purple and blue glow from the Examinis.
The river…
My eyes snapped to the river. It was why he brought me here. To taunt me. To show me…
I tried to take a step back, but I couldn’t, my chains were pulled taut.
“NO, NO, NO,” I was screaming, shrieking, sobbing, slowly dying over and over again as my heart was ripped out.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I couldn’t look—
“Do not close your eyes, Magnolia,” Dahes ordered. “I promised you incentive for completing the hunt, so here it is. You get to see him again.”
My eyes snapped open, and with it, more tears fell, clearing my vision, allowing me to see perfectly as Dahes flicked his fingers and a figure started moving toward the surface.
It only lasted a second—but it was long enough to see the head of curls beneath the water, the cheekbones, the same dimples I had if I ever smiled—
My brother.
My little brother was in the Examinis River.