Chapter 45 Taera
Taera
The world is shrieking—and then, silence. The darkness clouding my vision flares red; the screams are no longer my own.
Something hits the ground near me. I blink through the crimson haze. Lee’s blue-black hair spills across the floor. His eyes are glassy white.
“How dare you!” A low voice slices through the fog. Familiar.
My magician, I think, as the world tumbles into nothing.
I don’t know how much time has passed when my body demands consciousness again. Time brings me back in pieces, a deep ache drags at my insides, a whimper I hardly recognize as mine.
My legs swing.
Someone lifts me.
I cry out.
“Are you awake?” Nikolai’s breath brushes my cheek. He cradles me in his arms, every step he takes grinding my bones.
“It hurts.”
“I can’t numb the pain,” he’s saying. “I need you to keep your eyes open.”
“I can’t,” I mumble.
“You can.”
The pain sears my head, every jolt making it worse. Glass walls shimmer past us, warping in and out of focus, but keeping my eyes open hurts even more.
“The pain is a good sign,” he says.
A thin sound leaks from my throat.
“It means you still have magic.”
“Don’t… want… magic,” I breathe.
Nikolai slows. I let out a small noise of relief. He’s laying me down somewhere soft. The lights are dimmer here, more bearable. I try to curl up on my side, but Nikolai is on top of me, pinning me down. He’s holding something.
“Take this,” he commands.
I grimace. “Why?”
“Stop arguing.”
I blink hard, focusing through the blur—on him, on the pendant he’s holding out. My stomach knots at the sight of more glass. I turn away.
“Open your hand,” Nikolai says, even more firmly. “Take it.”
It takes everything left in me to lift my arm, uncurl my stiff fingers. I reach for it. My vision triples—three arms reaching. One connects with the pendant. Pain detonates through me. A violent pull. A violent push. My body is trying to give and take at the same time.
I jerk away.
“You need magic,” he mutters.
With tears muddying my eyes, I lift my hand again. Nikolai drops the pendant onto my palm, and I scream. Energy collides with my skin—too hot, too cold—ripping through me as my body accepts something that doesn’t belong.
The pain lessens, but I’m still quivering.
“What were you thinking?” Nikolai growls, his eyes crazed.
My fingers clutch the sheets as I push myself up, flinching. I’m on Nikolai’s bed, I realize, as I prop myself against the headboard. He’s glaring at me, white-faced and disheveled.
I glare back at him and toss the pendant away.
His eyes blaze. He retrieves it, creating more space between us. Not that it makes a difference. If he wants to hurt me, I can’t stop him.
“I just saved your life, Taera.” His voice is low, tight, his features shadowed with fury. “Why in the labyrinth’s name did you go to those leeches?”
“I have to get out of here.”
Just because he saved me doesn’t mean I wanted him to. The hollow ache in my core reminds me that none of this matters anymore.
Nikolai’s eyes flash. “You have no idea the danger you put yourself in.”
I’m done with his half-truths. “I have to leave the Halls.”
“They were going to drain you.”
I stare back at him. “I know.”
His eyes alight with vicious fire. “They were going to drain your magic.”
I slam my hands down on the bed. “I never wanted magic!”
He stares at me like I’m crazy. “If all your magic is taken, a part of you is extinguished. Forever.”
I shake my head, no longer willing to let him scare me. Numbness smothers everything now. “If my magic is extinguished, you can’t keep me here anymore, can you? I’ll get to go home.”
His eyes flash. “You don’t understand. A piece of you is destroyed.”
“I’d be able to go home,” I say simply.
“That’s irrelevant.” He pulls away from me, raking a hand through his golden hair.
“Why won’t you just let me?” My voice cracks. I’m exhausted.
“You can’t use this as a way out,” he says. “It will destroy you.”
“You think this place isn’t already destroying me?” I force myself upright, ignoring the gnawing pain when my core protests. “You have no idea what it’s like. You don’t explain anything. You won’t even look at me anymore.”
“If I hadn’t brought you here, the sandsmuggler would have taken you,” he practically snarls.
I won’t be intimidated. “And this is supposed to be better?”
“That monster would have strapped you down, just like Lee and the other leeches, and drained every ounce of magic out of you.”
“That’s what I want!” I shout.
His eyes flicker with emerald fury. “He would have ignored your screams until he broke you completely. Then he would have discarded you like a used rag.”
“Just like the Halls,” I choke out. “Only faster.”
The room flickers around us. “You think you could just return home after that? You don’t understand anything.”
“No,” I snap. “You don’t understand. I don’t care. I don’t care how much it hurts, or for how long. I never wanted magic. I’m not like you, Nikolai. All I’ve wanted since the day you captured me is to go home.”
We stare at each other, both panting. Something hollow and numb settles inside me.
I’m no longer afraid.
I’m no longer angry.
I’m done.
He opens his mouth, then closes it, turning furiously away. I’ve never seen him without words.
“Taera.” His voice is rough, tortured.
“What?” I mutter.
“I have a sister. She’s eleven years old.” His green eyes are haunted. “I would do anything for her.”
I eye him. “Why are you telling me this?”
“She’s a source, just like you.” He hesitates. “Well, she was.”
I have a brother; Nikolai has a sister. He’s still not going to make me care.
“Her power emerged early. She was too young to be admitted to the Halls of Glass. She was unlike anyone you’ve ever met—a ray of sunshine…” His eyes grow soft, so raw it almost hurts to look at him. Then his expression hardens. “She was discovered by a mage. Attacked. Her magic was drained.”
My brittle heart cracks open—damn him. Air stutters in and out of my lungs, too fast. The world becomes real and vividly painful all over again. I still refuse to speak, but I don’t look away. I just watch him—watch his brows pinch together over vacant eyes.
“I woke up to her screams every night for a month.” He looks at me again, his expression shattered. “Losing her magic… it did something to her.”
He swallows hard.
“What?” I whisper.
“She’s… she’s a shadow of who she used to be. No laughter. No light. Everything was stolen along with her magic.”
A face flashes through my mind: a face with my warm brown skin and dark eyes.
Suddenly, I understand.
It’s the answer I’ve been seeking for three years. The answer I couldn’t find in the hundreds of jars of the apothecary.
Something inside me breaks.
“My mom.” My voice cracks. “They took her soul.”
The memory slams into me, brutal and merciless. My mother’s will to live died that day, the day the mage attacked her. Her body was untouched, but they stole her joy. Her warmth. Her easy smile.
They stole Mom’s magic.
My voice doesn’t feel tethered to my body. “She thought it was Gramps knocking on the door that night. It sounded like him. It looked like him.”
Nikolai pales.
“But it was a mage wearing his face. He attacked her. Dragged her out onto the sand. I tried to cover Ezran’s ears, but I still heard her screams. He—he took her magic.”
The magician in front of me looks as stunned as I feel, but I hardly see him.
“She was never the same,” I whisper. “She tried, but she couldn’t, until—until…”
“She couldn’t live without her magic,” he finishes.
Grief erupts, tearing open with the bright pain from years ago. But the wreckage is tempered by bittersweet relief: I finally understand.
My mother was a source, just like me.
I drop my head between my knees and gasp out a sob, the floodgates opening.
Nikolai sits with me for several minutes while the grief crashes over me, until my heart is scraped raw and I’m silent.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.
I swallow. Nikolai—he saved me from the same fate. Not once, but twice.
“I’m sorry as well,” I say.
“I won’t let anyone take your magic,” he says, lowering his voice. “That’s… how blood glass destroys you. It drains your magic.”
I nod slowly. What he told me was true, then, in a way. If you touch it, you die.
My mind flits to something else he told me. “There has to be some way to help her.”
His brow furrows. “Your mother, she’s…”
“Your sister.” I clear my throat around the lump that forms. It’s too late for my mom—for her hollow, empty eyes.
Nikolai presses his lips together, his face suddenly tight. “I’ve told you too much.”
Hurt prickles up my throat. “You don’t have to hide everything from me, from everyone.”
“If you mention my sister to anyone—”
I glare at him. “I’m not going to do anything to endanger your sister.”
His shoulders relax a shade. “Thank you.”
Nikolai shifts off the bed, standing. I get to my feet as well.
“You should sleep,” he says, his face already wiped clean of emotion.
I hate it. I hate how he hides behind his secrets and illusions, how he rations the truth he gives me like water, and cloaks himself in magic.
I blink. Magic—that must be it.
“Amulets,” I say.
His eyes narrow. “What about them?”
“You gave me an amulet when I was almost drained.” I remember the drawers of his desk overflowing with handfuls and handfuls of etched glass. “They help your sister, don’t they?”
The way he inhales—sharp, unprepared—confirms it. And suddenly everything aligns.
All the nights that he was out late and returned smelling like other girls. It all fits—why he needs so many amulets. What he gets from the sources that he whores himself to. His charm, his cruelty, his power. He even knows how to leave and return to the Halls of Glass.
It’s all for his sister.
I stare at him, my eyes wide with something between horror and awe. Is this why he’s obsessed with those books? With the labyrinth? Why he flaunts so much desert-damned power?
“You use them,” I whisper. “All those sources.”
“Or do they use me?”
Disgust flickers through me, tangled with sadness for him. “You really are an illusionist, telling yourself that.”
“So are you, it seems,” he says darkly. “You just used up half my stores on another of your terrible schemes. Tonight is going to be a long night.”
It occurs to me what he’s saying, and I flinch at the idea of him needing to go to sources. An idea occurs to me that has my face tingling with sudden self-consciousness. But it would be fair.
“Can I give you some of my magic, as a trade?” I ask.
Nikolai gives a small smile, shaking his head. “You’re powerful, but you still have limits. You were almost drained. The exhaustion will last at least a few days, until your power replenishes.”
I grimace, rubbing the growing ache at my temples.
“The more you use, the longer it takes to recover.” Nikolai crosses to his desk, and I hear the tinkling of glass. “Go to sleep, Taera. Rest your magic.”
The question presses hard against my ribs—the crack in the dam of everything I’ve been running from. “There’s really no other way out of here, except to learn magic? You’re not lying again?”
“No,” he says. “Learning to control your magic is the only way you’ll be safe.”
I exhale slowly. Years. An eternity trapped in this place.
“How could it ever be safe if there are sandsmugglers out there?” I ask.
Nikolai meets my eyes and strides toward me, three deliberate steps, and he’s standing close enough I can feel the heat of him. He takes my arm, tugs up my sleeve, revealing the blackened circular welt.
“Once you learn control, no magician will be able to find you,” he says. “Or do this to you again.”
Something glints in his palm.
He holds up the same glass cylinder that Lee hurt me with. Nikolai must have taken it. I start to hyperventilate.
Nikolai hurls it at the floor, and it shatters.
“Don’t let anyone hurt you, Taera,” he says, each word fierce with something that feels too sharp to be protection and too raw to be indifference. “Don’t let anyone take your magic.”