19. Emi
My first sensation was tingling. It started at my fingertips and toes, spread to my limbs, reminding me of their painful existence, then gathered in my core. There, the odd sensation settled to a dim fizzy warmth.
Gradually, light trickled below my eyelids as they began to flutter, and distant sounds registered, too muffled for me to make sense of. Where was I?
My whole body ached and my head throbbed like I’d spent an entire day hefting heavy flour sacks while working out advanced mathematics. Low groaning sounded terribly close and it was an embarrassing several heartbeats later that I realized the sound was coming from me, and several more before I could figure out how to stop. My fingers brushed the fibres of a rug. Why was I on the floor? My surroundings came slowly into focus as it started to come back to me.
“You”re awake.” The voice was male and husky.
The tone reminded me of another, bringing an image of mercurial eyes beneath wild, cinnamon hair. I searched for its source and found brown eyes looking down on me. Not the same, but familiar.
I sat bolt upright, remembering all at once. “Locke! You”re alive.”
“Thanks to you,” he said with a small smile.
“Me? No. I wanted to save you, but I...I don”t know what happened.”
“Thought you weren”t magic, eh?”
“What?”
“You healed me.” He lifted the hem of his shirt, and where there had been a gaping bloody wound the last I saw, there was only a raised knot of pink scar tissue. It looked several moons old.
My eyes went wide at the sight. Whatever had happened after I fainted, no standard remedy had done that. I rose from the floor on shaky legs and gawked at the man sitting up on the settee where I’d last seen him dying.
His expression was both wondrous and accusing as he looked at me. “And you said you weren’t a witch.”
“I’m…not. I didn’t do that.”
One eyebrow cocked high on his forehead. “Oh, you definitely did, Emerald Witch.”
“Don’t call me that.” My voice squeaked.
“Which part?” He smirked, reminding me far too much of another smirk on another pair of bowed lips. Lips that had tasted of woodland berries. I was hit with a wave of longing from the clear blue skies.
I did not miss Wolf. That was absurd. Yet there was something gentle and soothing about being around Wolf, even when I wanted to kill him, like he rounded off the rough edges of my world and dulled the sharp corners that I usually bumped into. I could use some of that right now.
Everything in this room felt jagged and intrusive in my thoughts. Magic? Emerald Witch? Impossibly healed wounds? I wanted none of it so much as another night by a fire in a too-small cottage with that unbearable man who settled my soul.
But here I was, being confronted with too much at once. I almost wished Locke were in pain again so he would stop giving me that smug look. It was infuriating.
“Both. Either. I’ve never liked my name. My sister got to be Jade. Do you know what it was like to wrap your tongue around the name Emerald Brightbane as a child? And I’m still not sold on this witch nonsense.” But even I could hear the desperation in my denial. “A woman being strong and independent doesn’t make her some evil sorceress. My grandmother was not evil, she…she loved me.”
I had to believe that.
Because if she hadn’t…
Then no one ever…No.
Locke sat up. I didn’t appreciate his pacifying raised hands. “Who said anything about evil? Witches are dead useful.” He still had that quirk of a smile, and his face was far more relaxed than when it had been twisted in pain. He was close, looking me right in the eye.
There was no denying Locke was a handsome man. Dark hair fell softly above one eye, and I couldn’t avoid appreciating the tan skin and mix of browns flecked in his dark irises. At the same time, my mind couldn’t help letting those eyes melt into ones of quicksilver, and his hair faded several shades to burnished brass in my imagination.
I leaned away with a quick shake of my head, clearing all thoughts of Wolf as Locke clasped my hand. “Emi, listen to me. First of all, emeralds sparkle far brighter than jade does. I should know. I move enough of them.” He paused until I looked up at his congenial smile blooming across his face. “Second, of course women can be anything they want without labels.”
Just when I started to feel better and breathe easier, his smile faded, and his dark eyes turned serious. “But just because not every woman who lives in an isolated cottage in the middle of a cursed forest is an evil sorceress doesn’t mean some of them aren’t. Ruby had her uses, but she wasn’t beyond evil deeds, and she could hold a grudge like an absolute boss.”
I scowled in silence. Locke spoke with strange turns of phrase from his native world, but I understood enough. I was so tired of everyone telling me things about my own family. Why did it feel like everyone knew more about Grandma Ruby than I did? I thought she favored me. Trusted me and told me things. It was dawning on me that I may not have known her at all.
I didn’t like anything about this uneasy squirming in my gut. “I did not heal you. I don’t have magic.”
“All evidence to the contrary, Emerald.”
My nose wrinkled at the use of my full name and at the part he wasn’t saying. Emerald Witch.
“Yeah, that definitely wasn”t me,” Juliet chimed in from the doorway, entering the room with an exhausted pallor that told me she hadn’t slept much in days. ”I thought for sure he was dead.”
Locke smiled. “Too bad I heard you forgive me. No take-backs.”
They were both confident. Juliet was so sure, she crossed the space and lifted a small dagger in her hand. Without a single hesitation, she swiped the tip across her forearm.
“Jules!” I grabbed her hand to stop her from doing worse.
She stood placidly watching me. I swear, the woman didn’t even flinch. Instead, she calmly told me, “Fix it.”
“I can’t!” But my body was responding. Foreign power tingled outward from that bubbling centre to the tips of my fingers. Without questioning why I was doing it, I slid my hands up her wrist to the cut. Before my eyes, the bleeding stopped. The cut sealed tight with barely a scar to show it was ever there. Heartbeats later, the only evidence it ever happened was the blood on Juliet’s wrist and a spiderweb-thin line of silver. My heart raced.
What. Was. That?
Sunbeams and shadows.
Wolf was right about me. He—
Somehow he’d known.
Right about me. Right about Grandma Ruby.
Oh no.
Holding on to my anger had been harder and harder the more I learned, and now the desire for revenge was slipping like water through my fingers. I clenched my fist to hold on to the dregs.
“Are you really all right?” I asked Locke disbelievingly.
He nodded that he was fine. I wasn’t, though. Or maybe I was? I felt different.
I sat with a thud on Juliet’s ruined, blood-stained furniture.
It was as though all the pieces of me had been shaken apart, rearranged, and put back together in a whole new way. I couldn’t decide yet if it was for better or worse.
Did I really have magic? Was that what the buzz beneath my skin was?
Locke’s smile was sympathetic. “I’m fine, Emi, thanks to you. A little weak from the blood loss, but I’ll be ready to travel soon if you want to go back to Anterra. I need to get back to my world. There”s someone there who… “ He gave his head a small shake. “Doesn’t matter, but taking you home is the least I can do after you saved my life.”
“Actually, I think we’re even. But yes, if you”re willing to take me back, I think I want that. I need to face it.” I didn’t need to say what it was. Locke knew I’d been running from the wolf when he saved me, and Juliet knew I”d been training this whole time with one thing on my mind. I was supposed to go back to kill him.
Knowing he was right about me being a witch didn’t absolve him of killing my grandmother. She might not have been the innocent woman I thought, but did that make him any less of a monster?
It took another day before Locke was strong enough to travel. I, on the other hand, felt more energized than I ever had. He offered to bring me through a different gate that was half a day’s walk from Baines and safely out of Aglonbriar Forest, but I declined. I needed to see the curse through my new eyes.
Juliet sent me off with the most precious gift anyone had ever given me. “For whatever you decide to do.” She pressed the oilcloth wrapped package into my hands. “Now I’d better get to the chateau. Those cinders won’t sweep themselves!”
I smiled at her sarcastic singsong tone, wondering what would happen to my new friend, and then wrapped her in a tight hug.
Locke led me up the hillside to the gate that was invisible to me, but apparently not to him, where he gave me a small pouch and some words of his own in parting. We stepped through, back to Anterra, to the very spot he’d rescued me. I asked him no questions about how he knew this gate existed or how often he’d used it before, and he gave me no lies or excuses. We each knew what the other was, and any reservations I might have about befriending a smuggler were a shadow against all the other ways I’d changed since leaving this spot. He and Juliet both accepted me as I was, without judgement or hostility, with more kindness than I could see fit to grant myself.
Mist grasped at our ankles the moment the world re-formed around us, closing even thicker across the path than before. All this time, I’d thought people were exaggerating the effects of the Mist, but it turned out I was simply immune. Locke wasn’t, though, so I thanked him again and he retreated quickly to Zocere. Then I was alone in the face of the ghastly gloom and all my new knowledge and doubts.
Small creatures scurried through the branches above, and a slither of leaves alerted me to a snake fleeing my sudden appearance. Nothing roared or growled or even huffed nearby as I hurried the short distance to the clearing to see what answers I could find at Grandma Ruby’s cottage. I expected to find it empty, filled only with lingering memories and buried secrets—ones I was now determined to uncover. I wanted the truth.
It was a relief to find the clearing still free from Mist, though it looked smaller than I remembered. Or maybe I took up more space now.
But the relief was short lived as the cottage came into view and I discovered the front door hanging open. My back went rigid. Wolf wouldn’t still be here, would he? I might be ready for the truth but I wasn’t ready to face him. I hadn’t decided how I felt now that I knew why he’d done what he’d done. Juliet might be trying to forgive Locke, and I might be able to see how that one act didn’t make Locke a bad person, just someone who’d done a horrible thing. But Wolf was different. It was personal.
I wasn’t ready yet.
Not when I could still picture his face when I’d discovered Grandma’s grave, the haughty defiance in those stormy grey eyes as he owned what he’d done. The twist in his lips whenever he dared me to kill him and then stopped me like a bothersome fly. The gleam of teeth as he’d faced me on the path in the body of a wolf.
I needed more time. But Wolf wasn’t stupid. He’d had plenty of time to escape.
So then who, or what, was inside my cottage?
I strode past the rock wall around the front garden and approached the door from an angle. Blood smeared the handle. The new feeling of power inside me didn’t prevent me from being wary when I didn’t know what I’d find inside.
It was pure chaos.
The cottage had been torn to shreds. I gasped at the missing panels of wall, the upended coat rack, and blankets and pillows strewn across the floor. The fire grate was pulled from its place and charcoal littered the floor. I was about to wonder who’d done this when the answer snatched my held breath from my lips.
Blood soaked the form on the couch. He looked smaller than I’d ever seen him, pale and buried under a blanket with another pressed to his neck and shoulder, both dark with blood.
“Wolf!”
It was like Locke all over again. But this time, it was Wolf bleeding on my couch.
Before I knew I was moving, I rushed over. Blue skies, was he dead?
But no, his eyes fluttered at the sound of my voice. They rolled up toward the door, and I rushed across the space to his side. “Wolf, what happened?”
“Emi?”
My name was a jolt to the heart. He called me Emi.
Not Emerald.
Not witchling or kitten or any other annoying thing.
And why did it have to sound oddly hopeful? Given his condition, it was amazing he knew me at all. “Who did this to you?”
He moaned. “Fen…he didn”t mean…”
Fenrir. The half-mad fenriswulf. “But why are you here?”
He was gravely injured, so why didn’t he return to the enclave he’d told me about? Why didn”t he go to his family for help?
“Couldn”t die there.” His eyes pinched tight. I could barely hear his whisper. “Too much death…already.”
I couldn’t help it. My heart broke for the people he clearly cared for deeply, but why would he choose this place? As far as he knew, I wanted to kill him. I might still. I really hadn’t decided yet. The fenriswulf seemed to have done most of the job for me already.
“So you came here?”
“I had nowhere else to go.” He huffed, then winced in pain. “I wanted to die as a man, not a monster, but I…couldn’t…do that to them. They”ve lost…too many.” His face drew tight from the effort of so many words.
“Sorry, witchling,” he whispered on a moan. “I know you wanted to be the one. At least you can still…finish me off. But you”ll…be doing me a favor.” I swear, he tried to grin. His eyes closed and didn”t look like they’d be opening again. His skin was grey and ashen, his heartbeat ever so slow when I felt for it at the exposed side of his neck. The hand resting on his chest fell to his side with a gentle thud, and I didn”t think. I just acted.
“Sunbeams, this is stupid.” Nevertheless, I reached for him and felt for my magic. I had no idea how to do this, but I had to try. Really, I should take his permission to end his life. It”s what I wanted, right? He said it would be a mercy. I”d be helping.
But it didn”t seem right to kill a man who was already dying. I trained all that time with Juliet so I could fight him. I prepared myself for the difficulty of it, physically and emotionally. He was supposed to fight back, just as fiercely and with just as much conviction as me. “You are not robbing me of my revenge, you furry menace!” I gritted my teeth.
I’d heal him first, if I could, then decide what to do. A defeat in fair combat was the honourable thing, not just letting him die like this. Besides, I had these new powers resting in my hands. This was a perfect opportunity to learn to use them. If I failed, I would be getting what I’d wanted anyway.
Except the thought of failing brought a sharp stab to my heart. I shouldn”t, but I wanted those quicksilver eyes to open and look at me one more time. Challenge me again. Flash with mirth while he called me something annoying and shot me that roguish grin that showed just a little too much teeth.
He was the enemy, except I wanted him to stand tall before me and face me as he was meant to.
He’d probably say something arrogant and annoying. Maybe he’d use that aggravating smirk on me.
Moving the bloody blanket from his neck drew a weak moan from the helpless man. My own gasp joined it when I saw the devastation.
The wound was huge. Torn flesh, stained red and crusted with dried blood was all that was left of the side of his neck. Gashes split the skin so close to his jugular it bore disbelief that he hadn’t died instantly. But the wreckage below was even worse. It looked like the fenriswulf had tried to rip out his throat but Wolf had turned just enough that teeth had torn open his neck where it met his shoulder instead. Thick blood pooled there, hiding the depth of the trauma from my sight. If I did nothing, what little time Wolf had left would be spent in sickening agony. Panic sent my heart wheeling hard into my ribs.
Watery blood seeped around the edges of the gashes that had torn through muscle and sinew. The flesh beside it was red and hot, telling me this had happened a while ago. How hard must it have been to choose dying alone to spare his family? No one should die alone.
“I’m here, Wolf. Hold on.”
Hesitantly, I laid my hands on his chest, uncomfortably aware of the other time I’d felt the firm muscles there beneath my palms. Shoving the errant thought aside, I tried to sense the extent of his injuries so I could direct my magic where it was needed most. There was blood on the far side of his shirt, away from the neck wound, and I found another injury to his ribs. Four deep lacerations looked like giant claws had gouged him. A little lower, and he would have been eviscerated on the spot.
Hot fear prickled through me, heating my skin. He could have been dead already. If I’d returned any later, it would have been to find a dead man on Grandma’s couch. How often had I pictured that very thing? And why did it fill me with so much dread now? Wolf had been lying here in pain, waiting for death all alone, while I’d dilly-dallied about secrets my family had kept and whether I still wanted to kill him. A band tightened around my chest and wool clogged my throat.
I didn’t want to be that person anymore. I was tired of hurting and overthinking and questioning my every move. I wanted to be more than Emi from Baines who cooks and cleans and makes herself small so other people aren’t inconvenienced. I wanted truth. I wanted to be inconvenient, take up space, reveal secrets, and stand on my own. I wanted to feel like I belonged and be proud of the person I was. No more waiting. No more second guessing every thought.
“I’ve got you,” I murmured, hoping I could deliver on that promise. I was not going to think too carefully about why the hope burned so fervently in my pounding heart.
With one hand over his ribs and one close to his shredded shoulder, I closed my eyes and reached down into myself. Power bubbled and boiled to the surface. I tugged, feeling the tingling stretch of my skin as my body warmed. Focusing on the man beneath my hands, I forced the healing magic in me to move toward him. “Work, please, work.”
With Locke, I hadn’t known what I was doing. The magic had awakened in me and acted on its own while I’d floundered in my pain. This time I was in charge, and I willed it to do my bidding. I swallowed against the echoing pain in my own neck and ribs. It was a shadow of what Wolf must have felt, and I would be strong like him.
I didn’t dare open my eyes until my hands felt like infernos and I heard a catch of Wolf”s breath. Then they flew to the jagged opening at his neck. Before my eyes, arteries and veins closed and filled with dark red. Spiderweb-thin nerves reconnected. Muscle knitted together over tendons and bone. Skin bloomed and spread to cover the wound, leaving jagged scars where complete destruction had been only a few heartbeats ago.
My body sagged from the energy drain of it, but a quick check of Wolf’s side showed the claw marks healed into four shiny, smooth slashes.
It was enthralling. It felt...miraculous.
I did that. The Emerald Witch.
I truly had magic.
Now what was I going to do with it?