Chapter Thirty-Five
Arthur collapsed in Maggie’s arms, pulling her down to the floor with him.
Maggie yelped as the thrumming magic of the fissure, dark and otherworldly, seemed to burn closer to them.
If it kept growing, she was afraid it would swallow them both whole.
She tried to drag Arthur back, but she wasn’t strong enough with the extra drag of the pall, so she kicked a toppled desk that was close by until it was almost shielding them.
With the barest of protection, she turned to Arthur, her heart crashing in her chest. She ran her hands over him, finding a beating pulse and feeling his chest rise and fall with too-fast breaths. She nearly cried with relief.
What the fuck had happened? One minute, Arthur was holding her shoulder, grounding her and lending her his energy and power to complete the incantation, and the next he was gone, walking toward the fissure like he had a death wish.
She had frantically tied off the incantation, pausing the magic to prevent another pall-feeding error.
As she’d held him back, she felt how weak she was compared to his strength, even in his strange, mindless state, and she knew it was only a matter of time before he broke free from her grasp.
She had been so afraid in that moment that she was going to lose him to the fissure that now she was doubled over and trembling.
She sat back on her heels, looking around at the state of the lab.
Everything was getting worse. Wraiths were gathering in the corners until they swarmed with shadows, unsettled dead pinging off walls in slow-moving crash courses, endless slime and sludge pouring from the fissure until she was worried Arthur would drown in it.
She needed to get him out of here and fast, but she had no idea how.
Her mind raced as she tried to come up with a plan.
Maggie could attempt to finish the incantation without Arthur.
If she was successful, Dahlia could call the infirmary to send up a stretcher, but the pall had been stronger than them in every instance.
She worried that without his power amplification, the spell would fizzle, doing nothing to rid Ilex Hall of this dangerous magic to clear the way for his rescue.
Alone, neither of them had been enough. They needed each other.
She sat hunched behind the desk, watching Arthur to make sure his condition didn’t deteriorate.
He looked younger somehow, even with the dark circles under his eyes.
She knew it was her fault he was so tired.
She hadn’t been able to sleep, either, as she’d replayed every terrible thing she’d said.
It didn’t matter how much she tried to remind herself why she’d made the decision she did, it felt wrong.
And now…because he was tired, because he was hungover, something horrible had happened to him.
She curled in on herself, her stomach aching with fear.
Gods below, she didn’t know what to do. “Please wake up,” she begged. “I need you.”
After a breath, Arthur stirred, groaning.
“Arthur?” she asked tentatively, but then he looked at her with unfocused, unseeing eyes and turned back toward the fissure again, pulling himself along the tiled floors.
Maggie leaped forward, putting all of her body weight onto Arthur, who strained against her.
“Arthur,” she pleaded again, and, for just a moment, she thought he knew her. But it fizzled as quickly as it came.
Maggie held Arthur’s head in her hands, bringing their faces closer together until she could feel his breath on her skin.
Above and below, she hadn’t expected calling things off with Arthur would be easy, but she’d had no idea how much it would hurt.
Her entire body ached with his loss, and now, being this close to him again, was salt in the wound.
“Arthur,” she repeated, and she saw the flash of something in his eyes.
Talk to him, she thought. Tell him. “Arthur, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you cannot disappear through that fissure.
I won’t let you.” She had thought that yelling at him would wake him up, but there was no recognition in his gaze, not even after she repeated his name.
“What about Simon and Rory?” she asked, and ah, there it was, a brief brightening of his expression that told her that Arthur was in there somewhere.
As she cradled his head in her lap, she stroked his cheeks with the pads of her fingers. “C’mon, Arthur. You can’t leave me here to do this by myself,” she whispered, her voice catching as her eyes welled up.
Arthur’s body strained toward the fissure again, but weakly, and she was able to hold him against her. “Your family needs you. Gods below, we all need you. I need you here.”
Nothing. Maggie tried to think. What had happened right before he collapsed?
Strange shadows had gathered around his shoulders.
A bright burst of light, one that Maggie had once seen before.
Whatever had initially ensnared Arthur was something else, but his collision with one of the unsettled dead was what brought him to his knees.
Was he lost in one of the unsettled’s memories?
When she had been lost, she remembered Arthur saying her name, calling her back to him.
Maybe all he needed was to be reminded of who he was.
“You’re Arthur Taliesin,” she said, so close their lips were nearly brushing.
“You’re a world-renowned alchemist and scholar.
An incredible teacher. The best brother and uncle in Atlantia.
Rory and Simon need you, Arthur.” Gods below, she couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave this room without him.
“I need you, Arthur,” she repeated, saying his name again and again so he could remember.
Tears streamed down her face now, because she realized how true the words were, and it cracked something in Maggie wide open.
She felt raw and exposed, but she’d never been so sure of something.
“You’re Arthur Taliesin,” she repeated, trying not to sob. “You’re stubborn and aloof. You’re brilliant. You’re a pain in my ass.” A flicker of something. Around them, the unsettled dead were swarming, but none of them touched her, keeping a strange distance. “Arthur,” she pleaded.
“You…” she began, but she couldn’t quite get the words out. “You’re the kindest man I’ve ever known,” she said. And she wondered how she could have ever thought he was like Evan. No matter what mistakes he had made, he was nothing like the man who had broken her.
The flashes of recognition faded as quickly as they came, and Maggie looked into Arthur’s eyes with despair.
“Please,” she begged. “Please, Arthur. Don’t you get it?
” Her grip on his cheeks was tight, leaving red marks where her knuckles were digging into his stubble.
She didn’t know what else to do, so she told him the truth, the hard kernel that she had been keeping close to her because she was afraid of it.
“I love you, Arthur Taliesin.” She pressed her forehead into his and said it again. “I love you, Arthur.”
At first, Maggie didn’t think it would be enough.
She had left him, after all. Maybe he didn’t care that her affection for him had turned into something she couldn’t ignore, no matter how much she thought she should.
But then, Arthur was gasping, and he sat up straight, nearly knocking Maggie to the side.
His hands reached for her as he asked, “What happened?”
But all she could do in response was sob, collapsing onto his chest and wrapping her arms around his neck.
She knew they didn’t have time, but he was alive.
Above and below, he was alive. “Maggie?” he asked again, the confusion so plain in his voice that she realized he must not remember any of it. Not a single word she’d said.
She pulled back, brushing away her tears, and said over the din of the fissure’s roar, “We need to finish the incantation.” He scrambled to his feet, bringing her with him, and they were back at the rune, back at the position they were in before everything went to hell.
This time, Maggie finished every Diadhan word.
This time, when the pall began to recede toward the fissure, they were ready for it.
They gripped the edges of a table and let it move around them like they were river stones.
As the pall seeped away, everything that was supported by it—pieces of equipment and pencils and paper—began to fall. The equipment all shattered, glass and pieces of metal skittering across the floor.
When the unsettled dead drew nearer to the fissure, each one burned bright, tiny supernovas returning to the world they’d abandoned for one last glimpse of this one.
Maggie hoped the woman who had lent her her memories and the little boy who had found Arthur returned to safety and comfort again in their final rest, wherever that was.
She hoped it was peaceful. She hoped it was beautiful.
As the last of the pall returned to the underworld it came from and the last of the unsettled dead crossed the thresholds between, the fissure began to close, like it was being sewn by an invisible hand, one looping stitch after another.
When the last stitch was done, the fissure was gone and there wasn’t even a seam to mark where it had been. The world was whole again.
Maggie sagged with relief. She turned to Arthur to ask him what happened and saw a wispy shadow flutter away from his shoulder, slipping out one of the windows and returning to the forest. “Was that a wraith?” she asked, incredulous.
He rubbed the back of his head, watching the wraith vanish between the trees.
“I didn’t know what was happening. One minute I was focused on you and the incantation, and the next I was walking toward the fissure, convinced I needed to see what was on the other side.
” Maggie shivered, but there was an edge of excitement in Arthur’s voice. “A wraith possession! That’s so rare.”
“It almost killed you,” she said, though she couldn’t help her grin. She wanted to throw her arms around Arthur again, but she held back. As she looked at the wild mess the pall had left behind in the lab, she whispered, “We did it.”
“You did it,” he said. “I would have walked straight through that fissure if it wasn’t for you.
” She tugged down the mask she’d worn over her mouth and nose.
The smell of the sulfur was still strong in the air and clinging to their skin, but the swirling miasma that made up the pall was gone.
It should have been so much easier to breathe, but she still felt like she couldn’t get enough air.
“Do you remember anything?”
“I remember walking toward the fissure,” he began slowly. “I remember…so many jumbled memories. They…” He paused, looking around the lab as if it would give him some answer about what had happened. “They weren’t mine. Did another unsettled touch me, too?”
Maggie nodded. “I think it was trying to stop you from getting any closer to the fissure.”
His eyebrows furrowed, as if he was trying to sort through all the tangled memories. “It’s confusing,” he said. “I can’t make sense of most of it. All I know for sure is I saw your face when I woke up.”
Maggie should have been relieved that Arthur did not hear her confession, but all she felt was a burning regret.
The damage was done. She had broken his heart, and it almost killed him in the pall.
Admitting she loved him would do nothing but break him again, because it didn’t change the fact that their relationship was over. It just made it hurt all the more.
Outside, the clouds were finally thinning.
The hazy sunlight coming through the windows became the bright, blinding sun of summer, shining on the wreck of the classroom.
Shards of broken glass and metal from the shattered equipment were everywhere.
Remnants of the pall slime, sticky and oozing and that same unnatural purple, were piled in corners and on desks and in the inner workings of the electronics in the room, which would most likely never work again.
Maggie walked over to the window, moving her hand through the late-afternoon sunbeam that was now streaking through the glass. Despite everything, Maggie felt a giddiness take over. She reeked of sulfur, and she was covered in pall slime, but they had done it. The pall was gone.
When she turned to Arthur to say as much, he looked pale and spent, and his expression was something she could only describe as empty. “What’s wrong?” she asked, suddenly worried the wraith possession had taken more out of him than she had thought. “Is it melancholia?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine. I’m just relieved.” Then he said, “I’m just glad we did this one last thing together.”
She hesitated and then whispered, “Me, too.”