Chapter 46 #2
Jacob nodded. “I know. It makes it tricky. But if we could stop it, if we could somehow break the link . . .” He hefted the lyre.
“In Greece, I heard a regional folktale about an ancient lyre. The story claimed it was so powerful it would break any oath. An army would turn against its leader. A husband would turn against his wife. A child against his mother. It breaks all bonds and makes a new one.”
“With you?”
“It depends on the intent. It’s why I wanted so badly to win it during the games.” He shook his head. He’d come in second. “The song you play determines the outcome. You can sing a song of binding or one of breaking. I’ll sing you a song of freedom. Don’t laugh—I’m not a Bard.”
A quick smile surprised me. “You should hear me sing. It’s like a choir of crows.”
“And still, you’ll have a better voice than me.” Jacob crossed his legs and settled the lyre in his lap.
The moment he strummed the lyre, I was ensorcelled.
The notes filled the obsidian room with a thrumming, dancing vibration that called to my soul.
Each plucked string caught on a part of my being and wrapped it around the lyre’s song.
It was enchantment. It was music. It was a siren song birthed from the depth of a Bard’s power.
There was only one family who could’ve created an instrument that so thoroughly enthralled a being with the strumming of a single note.
My being broke apart, all the pieces inside me floating in an arrow that pointed toward the lyre’s song. Jacob was singing, but I couldn’t understand his words.
I could only hear the music.
It promised love. It promised joy. It promised eternal bliss. I only had to follow. I only had to give up everything for it. If I did, I would have everything I’d ever wanted.
The notes stopped, and at the lonely, barren silence, a whimper escaped my lips. Without the music, the world was meaningless, hollow, cold. It was a world without the sun. I curled in on myself and took a jagged, pained breath. A tear leaked down my cheek.
“Please,” I whispered.
I needed to hear the notes again. I needed to hear the song. I needed the music to live. I would do anything for it.
“Break free of the leggerock,” Jacob said, his voice vibrating with the power of the lyre.
I closed my eyes. Another tear leaked free.
“Break your oath to the leggerock. Take the freedom of the lyre.”
He held the instrument out toward me. All I had to do was take it. All I had to do was reach out and pull it from his hands. I could pluck the strings and sing a song that lasted for eternity.
“Take the lyre. You’re free of the leggerock.”
I lifted my hand. A lightning bolt of pain slammed into me. It scorched my blood. It electrocuted my bones. It ravaged my insides and ripped away the song of the lyre. It tore the beauty free and unmasked the hatred of hell.
I screamed, and the black walls of my mind collapsed.
* * *
I woke to the smell of garlic and basil. I sniffed, expecting the scent to have faded, but it grew even stronger. I stretched gingerly, waiting for pain that didn’t come.
When I opened my eyes, Jacob was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the obsidian room. So we were still in my mind, but somehow, he’d brought in a pizza.
The cardboard box was on the floor next to him, along with two bottles of water. He didn’t know I was awake. He opened the lid of the pizza box, and when steam puffed out, he smiled.
“Where’d you get pizza?” I asked, and my voice came out in a raw, caw-like gasp.
He turned, hiding his surprise. “You’re awake. Are you free?”
I shook my head and pushed myself up into a sitting position. “No. Definitely no. Please don’t ever do that again.”
“That bad?”
“That thing should be burned.” I shuddered. “I would’ve killed my own mother for it.”
We looked at each other as my words sank in. It was just a phrase, but it had taken on a whole mountain of meaning. My mother was his mother. Our mother.
“We’ll try something else,” he said.
At the same time, I asked, “What’s she like?”
“Mom?”
I nodded.
He nudged the pizza box toward me, and I frowned. Grease lined the sides of the box, and it smelled amazing. “Where’d you get it? How can I eat pizza in my mind?”
“I ordered delivery,” Jacob said, and at my look, he grinned.
“To the pier. They delivered to the pier. I just hopped down. I pulled it in through the walls, but the real pizza is out there. But whatever you do here, your body does there. It . . . works. In reality, we’re both sitting on the floor of the ornithopter, the pizza between us.
If you eat this here, you eat it there.” He paused, then he said less confidently, “You looked like you could use some dinner.”
I pried open the box and looked at him in surprise. “Plain? No meat?”
He blinked at me. “Oh. That’s my favorite. I didn’t think—”
“That’s my favorite too.” I smiled at him, then I took a huge bite. The cheese was melty and stringy. The tomato sauce was sweet and garlicky. The crust was doughy and golden-crisp. There was the perfect amount of garlic and basil, and even a dusting of parmesan. It was perfect.
He was staring at me with a strange, indecipherable expression. “She’s forgetful.”
I swallowed another bite. “What?”
“Mom. She’s forgetful. She’ll put cookies in the dishwasher or her shoes in the refrigerator.
” He smiled and shook his head. “She likes routine. Tea in the afternoon. Dinner at six. In bed by eight o’ clock.
She’s not very affectionate, but sometimes, she’ll come out and say something so surprising that you know .
. . well, you know. Everyone says she lost her mind when I destroyed my mirror, but she’s always been like that.
It’s just no one outside our family noticed it until after.
I think she has a room of her own in her head, and I imagine it’s very comfortable, because I think she stays there more than she stays in the physical world.
I don’t blame her. A lot of the time, the worlds in our minds are better than . . .”
He trailed off when he realized I’d stopped eating. The pizza slice hung in the air, forgotten in my hand.
“Is that why your body was more of a mom to you?”
Even though I hadn’t wanted to overhear Jacob and his body during the Clark game, I’d been there for their last conversation. She’d been the mother of his heart.
He looked away, and I saw a flinch of pain and a tightening of his mouth.
“I’m sorry. Rou—Roumelade—she’s a water spirit. She’s like a mom to me. So I know what it’s like to have a hole where a mom should be and someone who almost, but not quite, fits there.”
“Droona didn’t fill a hole. She had her own space.”
“I’m sorry.”
He tilted his head so I couldn’t see his expression and pulled a slice of pizza from the box. He carefully peeled off the basil.
“Does she know who I am?”
“Mom?”
I nodded.
“Yeah. Just don’t be hurt if she doesn’t hug, kiss, cry. She’s not like that. She might not speak to you for weeks or months, even if you’re in the same house. Don’t be hurt. It doesn’t mean anything.”
I took another bite of the pizza. It was cooling, and the melted cheese was pulling off in long strings. After I swallowed, I took a long drink of water.
“I won’t be hurt,” I said finally. And I shrugged when Jacob gave me a surprised look. “I won’t. Rou always tells me, ‘See people as they are. Don’t try to make someone something they’re not.’ It wouldn’t be right to expect her to be anyone but who she is. What about you?”
He tilted his head, so I gestured to him. “You. Who are you besides the Ward—assassin, boogeyman, sister-killer, mind-melter, most powerful heir to ever live?”
He was smiling by the end of my recitation.
“When I was little, I used to pretend you were still with us. I’d stay up late talking to you.
Tell you about the books I was reading. The frogs I’d caught in the Harlem Meer.
The illusions I’d made. I stopped when I was .
. .” His eyes narrowed, counting back. “When I turned nine. But even after, whenever Dad sent me out to remove a threat to you, or to make sure you were safe on the leggerock’s errands, I always .
. . I always thought of you as family. My sister. Not just blood but . . .”
“It must’ve been lonely.”
He didn’t say anything.
Then I looked at him more closely. “You assassinated threats? To me?”
His green eyes went dark. “A truth seer must not be suffered to live. Isn’t that what they say? Anytime there was a rumor, Dad sent me to clean it up.”
“And you followed me on jobs?”
He smiled. “Only until you stopped dying. You were sloppy when you were young. The jackaltooth? The Clark incident when you knocked over their shelf full of glass ornaments? Primus almost caught you then—I had to make him trip over a rug and bloody his nose. That Bard job when you stole into their entryway and nabbed a button? It took days of mental coercion before the Bard believed the dry cleaner had lost it during a washing. What’s so funny? ”
I was smiling so wide my cheeks hurt. Then my smile dropped. “And Finn? Luvic?”
He shook his head. “Luvic isn’t going to be around long.”
My shoulders dropped.
“And Finn?”
“I don’t know. I think he made the wrong choice and it’s come back to haunt him. He’s dangerous. It’s . . . Just like Dad, I’ve played out every move. There’s a million ways we all die, and only one where we live.”
I sighed. Those were not good odds. “What’s the move where we all live?”
The right edge of Jacob’s lips lifted. “I didn’t say all of us live.”
That’s right, he’d said we all die, or we—meaning he and I?—live.
“And?”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you. If the leggerock breaks these walls . . .” He nodded to the obsidian walls surrounding us. “I have another idea.”
I raised my eyebrows.