Chapter 24 #2
“He started when I was twelve and he was fifteen.” Ella’s voice was flat.
“He crept into my room while I was sleeping and gave me curare so I couldn’t move, and cast a silencing spell on the room so no one would hear, and then he touched me.
‘You liked it,’ he said. ‘You came, and you’re dirty, and you want it. ’”
“Oh, God,” Peter said, eyes wide with dismay.
“Shut up!” Ella screamed. “You’re just like him!
And he kept coming back, night after night, with his paralyzing tincture and his spell he could barely manage to cast, and I couldn’t tell anyone because he’d convinced me I was to blame!
Then he got me pregnant and almost killed me with a pennyroyal brew.
And that’s when I told my parents what was happening, lying in the hospital bed I told them, and my father—my father—said we weren’t to talk about it because we didn’t want my darling brother to get into any trouble, now did we? ”
Ella broke off, putting a shaking hand to her mouth.
“My God, Ella, let me down.” Beatrix tossed the branch away. “Let me down, please—I can’t just float here looking at you while you’re telling me this.”
Ella shook her head. She resumed pacing. “No. Not yet.”
That felt ominous—if not to her, then to Peter, because her stomach twisted. She had to knit herself free somehow. And keep Ella talking.
“Did—did no one help you?” Beatrix asked, identifying the spot where Ella’s magic was holding her up, roughly between her shoulder blades. “Not even your mother?”
Ella’s face softened. “She did help. Once she knew, she sent me to my grandmother’s for summer and winter vacations to get me away from Frederick when he was home from the academy.
But the summer I turned eighteen, my father insisted I stay at home because he was campaigning and wanted the whole family at hand for appearances. ”
Listening and concentrating on freeing herself did not go well together, but she was trying. “What happened?”
“The other wizard proposed to me. I was infatuated with him, but honestly, I was so desperate to get away that I would have said yes regardless. Then I heard him and my brother talking about me …” Ella’s whole body was shaking.
“He knew. He knew what Frederick had done, or at least some of it, and they were laughing about it.”
“Oh, Ella,” Beatrix said, the words coming out as barely more than a whisper.
“He didn’t care a whit about me. He just wanted to marry the daughter of the likely next vice president.
And my father wanted me to marry the son of a rising star in the Senate.
He said he would disown me if I didn’t, and I didn’t know what to do, and—” Ella broke off with a sob, but pulled herself together.
“My mother helped me apply for a teaching grant. And I escaped.”
Before Beatrix could think of what to say to this, Ella pushed on. “And that’s why I killed Garrett.”
It was not, by this point, a major surprise. But Beatrix’s voice still cracked as she said, “Why?”
“He was trying to force you to marry him.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “That’s evil. What he was doing was evil.”
Beatrix stopped attempting to dislodge herself, feeling terrible.
Most of this had been about her—Ella’s attempt to do something for her.
If only she’d told Ella more about Peter so the differences between him and Frederick would have been apparent.
If only she hadn’t disclosed Garrett’s marriage demand, because she wasn’t going to marry him anyway.
If only she’d pressed a little harder when Ella avoided questions about her past, discovered the pain there and helped her.
“Ella,” she said, “we need to go somewhere else and talk.”
“No. I have to finish what I started.”
As Ella walked to the transmitter, Beatrix cried, “What? No! I don’t understand why you’re doing this! It’s mass murder!”
“I’m protecting Lydia. I’m stopping the wizards. It’s the only way.”
“Of course it’s not! Lydia’s work—”
“Lydia won’t be allowed to succeed, you know that. It’s the reason you came up with Plan B.” Ella had her back to her. “And we all know what happened to Plan B, don’t we, Omnimancer? It’s time for Plan C.”
“Ella! Ella, you can’t use this weapon. Your father wanted it. He’s the wizard pressing the Army to make the blast area bigger and bigger. You said you renounce everything he stands for, and—”
“And I’m going to use it against him and everyone like him.”
“But all those innocent people,” Beatrix cried, feeling the futility of this argument even as she made it. Hadn’t Peter said the very same thing? “This would be an evil even the magiocracy hasn’t stooped to!”
“It’s just a matter of time. No one makes a weapon they don’t intend to use.”
“Stop this for me, then.” Her voice broke. “For our friendship.”
“I know you may never forgive me,” Ella murmured. She shook her head and said in a firmer tone, “But I must. For Lydia. For us. What happens when the wizards are decimated? We’ll still need magic, and there will be no choice but to train women.”
“Call on her Vow!” Peter said.
Good heavens, yes. The Vow. “Ella Ruth Knight, do not set off this weapon or you will harm Lydia and all her efforts with the League! You must stop!”
Ella paused. Then she turned, walked toward Peter and bent down. Beatrix couldn’t see what she was doing—giving him an antidote? Her heart leapt. But then Ella stood, and Beatrix saw the charcoal in her hands and the marks on Peter’s forehead and palms. The Ear rune. Death.
“Oh God,” Beatrix sobbed.
“See, this won’t harm Lydia or the League,” Ella said. “I wouldn’t be doing it if it would.”
“Or the Vow can’t kick in because you signed it as Ella Knight,” Peter said bitterly.
Beatrix called on her Vow again, this time using the name “Marbella Draden,” but that too had no effect. What was left? The Vow, arguments about morality, appeals to their friendship—none of that worked. And try as she might, she could not break through Ella’s magic.
In desperation, she begged, “Please—please don’t kill Peter.”
Ella waved this off. “You’ll be free, Beatrix. That’s what you want—freedom.”
“No.” She took a deep breath and tried to tamp down the hysteria because she had to say these next words with utter calmness. “I love him. I—”
“Honestly, Beatrix, this is the Vow talking. I’m sure it’s making you feel terrible at the moment, but just hold on for a few minutes, it will pass, and you’ll be free.”
She lost her fingertip hold on calm and screamed, “No, listen to me! Listen to me, stop making assumptions, you don’t get to say how I feel!”
Ella paused, staring up at her.
“It’s not the Vow,” Beatrix said. “I’ve fallen in love with him.”
Ella looked at her with such pity that Beatrix, wincing, glanced at Peter to see if he believed her.
She couldn’t tell. And, in fact, she didn’t know if what she was saying was true, but it could be, and she let more possibly true words rush out: “I would have fallen in love with him anyway—I can see that now—it would have taken longer, I wouldn’t have been as certain of his intentions and feelings because I wouldn’t have had access to them, but it was inevitable. ”
“Oh, Beatrix,” Ella said.
“Look at the difference between him and Garrett! Garrett saw an injustice and kept working for the perpetrator. Peter realized what he was doing was wrong—this weapon you’re trying to use is wrong—and upended his life in an effort to fix it!”
Ella glared at him. “Your life! He upended your life.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “He did. But he picked me because he knew I wanted to use magic. And he’s horrified by how it turned out. He’s never tried to shift the blame to me—”
“Because it’s demonstrably his fault,” Ella bit out.
“—and he could have argued that we were stuck, and so why not make the best of it, why not stop fighting it, but he didn’t, he understood exactly why I wanted to fight feelings I thought were not my own.
He switched when he slept so we wouldn’t have conjoined dreams, and I asked him to switch back—I did that. ”
Ella shook her head and turned back to the transmitter. “You’re under the effects of a Vow, Beatrix. Everything you think and do is influenced by it. But I’m not under a Vow to him. I’m making this call for you because he’s manipulated you from day one, and that ends now.”
“We’re all influenced by something!” Beatrix was trembling now with unalloyed panic. “You’re influenced by your horrific experience! But Peter is not Frederick!”
Ella didn’t answer. She raised her hands, and Beatrix realized from seeing Peter’s memories of weapons tests that she was starting the spellcasting sequence. The final step.
“No!” Beatrix yelled. The next instant she pulled free of Ella’s magic and tumbled to the ground at Peter’s feet.
Wheezing, the breath knocked out of her, she grabbed a fistful of leaves from his coat and cast the only spell she knew would destroy the transmitter. “Fordēst!”
The explosive spell she’d heard Peter cast over and over in his attic burst from her hands, red as blood, her aim true.
But a yard shy, it hit something—something nearly invisible that gave the air around Ella a yellowish tint.
Beatrix’s spell sizzled up and went no farther.
In its place was a scorch mark on the protective magic Ella had erected.
The protection went all the way around, like a dome—no way in.
But Ella stopped her spellwork to shore up that protection, and Peter called out, “Keep hitting it!”
She did. At first she thought she was making progress—each spell scorched the wall of magic between them, forcing Ella to focus on repair.
But each explosion left less of a mark. Finally, a spell she sent at the barrier didn’t scorch it at all, and Ella turned back to the transmitter, continuing the sequence.
What could she do? What? She dashed back to Peter and dragged him from the circle of demarcation stones, his body a dead weight.