Chapter 33 Caelum Fifteen Years Old
Caelum: Fifteen Years Old
Yule Night
Seven Years Ago
Gorgon College Dormitory
Briarwood Wyrm Middle Academy
Control. Control. Boxes. Walls. Control. Chimaera. Thoughts in boxes. Everything in boxes. Put them all in the boxes…
Images. Pieces. Remembering.
Smash it. Snuff it out.
Anything that hurts. But he can’t smash it. He can’t make it disappear, or reverse anything, or fix anything. He can only hide it from himself.
Shielding. Chimaeras. Spells he’d memorized backwards and forwards.
He knew this. He’d been trained.
He’d had so many teachers, he’d forgotten half their names. His father himself taught him. He’d learned from Oracles, experts, praecuri, scholars, chimaeric illusionists employed by the Royal Family, the Tsars of Russia, the Emperor of Japan.
He knew this. He knew it.
More than that, he was good at it. He cared about it enough to be good.
He studied it on his own, began studying it even before his father demanded he learn it.
He hid books in his room, found things in the library he hadn’t been given.
He cared. He cared about it. He knew, somehow, he would never stop needing it to survive. But everything was going dark.
Out of that darkness, he heard the thwack of the cane.
Dripping. Dripping on the stone…
Fuck. What was happening to him?
The muttered scolding and screaming and reminders all became nonsense in his head.
None of it stopped the pain in his chest, the burning from within, the certainty that he was dying, and worse, that he’s the reason others were dead.
Saying the words over and over under his breath didn’t actually fix anything, or make the chimaeras return, the happy illusions that allowed him to cope with the pain.
Saying the words “chimaera” and “shield” and “control” didn’t actually produce any of those effects.
Still, the effort distracted him.
It was something to focus on, to keep his mind off of––
The cane, coming down, harder, in rage, over and over…
No. Not that. Not that.
Pain ripped through him, magical that time, another moment of writhing in his own blood and saliva, his head smacking against the black stone.
At some point, he just cut out––
Everything disappeared.
He blacked out.
His mind stopped working, the lights flickered and went out, only to ripple back to life, going out and coming back on like the gutter of a candle’s flame.
His mind returned faster than it should.
He protested the whole being conscious thing, but he couldn’t stop that, either.
He found himself awake, freezing cold, wet.
Did he piss himself? He probably did, but that didn’t explain the wetness of his hair, his face, or how gods-damned cold he was.
He felt outside his body still.
He could see everything again.
The pain remained, lingered, but he pushed himself away from it.
He watched as the next thing unfolded. His mind tracked every movement, every word, every breath from a great distance.
Give me your arm. Give it to me, whelp.
His body sprawled on the cold, wet stone, unable to move. His thoughts moved only sluggishly, distant from everything going on with his body, distant from that part of him watching from above. The thinking part of him turned clinical, cold as the stone.
Pretty sure my skull is cracked.
Pretty sure I’m dying.
He was surprisingly calm about those things. He was surprisingly all right with them, too. Death didn’t sound that bad, not in that quiet, cold place.
He can’t help anyone, anyway.
He can’t even help himself.
Despite that acceptance, when his father snatched at his wrist, he still fought him. He still struggled to wrench his arm away. He whimpered at the raised iron, the renewed threat, but he can’t hand over his arm. He can’t force himself to give it to his father willingly.
He would rather take the mark. He’d rather wear the obscene burn of the skull on his face, the brand that marked him his father’s slave, than this thing his father wanted.
He’d rather feel anything but his father’s bloodletting ring digging into the center of his arm, ripping through pale skin and flesh, nicking an artery enough that the blood started to flow hard, steadily, covering his chalk-white skin.
The magic began as his blood flowed on the stone.
Soon after, his father’s blood joined his.
Then the blood of the sacrifice, the wide-eyed unmagicked who lay on the stone. Three of them, a magic number, his father had said. Two adults and their child.
Each cut was worse. The child was so much worse.
He watched, paralyzed, followed his father’s hands in their intricate movements.
He stared at the circle his father drew painstakingly with green powder and flame, the circle in which he encased all of them, forever bonded in blood and horror and pain.
An unbroken circle, the one he’d never escape.
His father next began drawing hieroglyphics on his chest with the knife, followed by symbols Caelum didn’t know.
Malefic’s voice never stopped murmuring in the dark.
You are linked to me now, Caelum, he muttered angrily at one point, still casting sealing incantations under his breath.
Does that settle this question for you finally?
Will we stop with these pointless power struggles now?
He spat words at him between spells. Do you finally see whose will is stronger, whelp? It is mine. Always mine.
Caelum choked.
He stared down at their mingled blood where it sparks, then ignites.
Blue flames surrounded them in seconds, fueled by Bones blood, by the blood of the unmagicked whose screams still echo behind his eyes.
This bond can never be broken, his father hissed coldly.
If anything happens to me, it happens to you.
If I die, you die. If you try to kill me with your magic, if you dare to attack me ever again, you insolent, ungrateful, disrespectful, uncivilized animal, to protect your mother or anyone else, it will be visited upon you tenfold.
I will take this wretched body for myself, and I will own it forever.
I will take this magic, magic you do not deserve, did not earn, and I will use it in your stead.
I will use this body to kill everyone you ever cared about.
Including that disloyal cunt who spawned you, if you ever put her above me again––
Caelum choked, but couldn’t make any other sound.
He couldn’t move.
He breathed in the cold stone, stared into the darkness.
He lied there for so long, time lost all meaning.
Days. Weeks. Months. He still didn’t know how long it had been, how close to death he’d been.
His mother surely thought him dead. He didn’t remember being fed.
He didn’t remember water. He remembered rats, insects, pain beyond anything he’d thought he could stand.
He fought to control his mind. He could do nothing else. He fought to keep some small portion of it his own. He needed it. He needed to know there was something, anything, that still belonged to him. He couldn’t be certain, even now.
Gods, he just wanted it to be over.
He wanted all of it to be over, to be––
“Cal!” A face hung over his.
He could still hear it. The drip, drip, drip of blood on the stone.
He smelled the burning flesh of his chest.
“Caelum!” the voice snapped. Someone shook him. He felt numb, like boneless meat. The face turned to look at someone else. “What should we do? Should we call someone?”
“Who?” another voice asked. “It’s four o’clock in the morning. Do you think we should carry him to the hospital wing? Wake one of the teachers?”
A third voice asked, “What were you doing, when he passed out?”
Caelum blinked, tried to focus his eyes, to stare upward.
He didn’t immediately know the face that hung closest to his. His hand shot out without thought. His magic uncoiled, boiling hot in his chest. He didn’t remember moving, or making the decision. He blinked, and then he had him.
He gripped the dark-haired boy by the throat.
“Bones! Eye of Ra! Get him off!” The words choked off.
Panic. Sheer panic. Another voice, another set of hands.
They tried to pry his fingers off the other boy’s throat. Those hands were paler, more delicate in shape, but surprisingly strong.
“Let him go, you absolute nutter! He was trying to help you!”
Caelum released him, all at once.
He sat up just as fast, gasping.
His heart slammed violently against his ribs.
He was in a bed. Three faces stared at him now, a witch and two mages.
The boy with the dark skin and tight, black curls sat on the mattress next to him.
He was breathing hard, too, gasping, gripping his own throat in disbelieving panic.
His hazel eyes had opened shockingly wide, their color visible in the flickering candlelight, and the fireplace on the other side of the room.
He stared at Caelum like he really believed him to be a crazed lunatic––a dangerous, feral animal who might tear his throat out with his teeth at any second.
Caelum recognized him now.
He recognized all three of them.
He shared a dormitory with two of them. Six beds.
His, Caelum’s, was one. Voltaire, Panzen, and Maskey were three more. These two were the others in their year and shared the same sleeping space.
That said, in two years’ time, Caelum had never really talked to them.
The witch was his girlfriend, although he wasn’t sure what he thought of her, either.
Elysia Warrington’s eyes were wide, panicked, as she looked at his face.
It didn’t occur to him until a few beats later that she was speaking in a quiet, panicked voice, her words bordering on hysterical the entire time.
“We were just kissing,” she babbled now. “We were just snogging and then something happened. He did something, and it hurt, and I…” She hesitated, staring at Caelum’s face. “I don’t know what happened. I think I passed out. When I woke up, he was like this… I think he thought he’d killed me…”