26. Chapter 26
I didn’t think.
Just moved.
I weaved through traffic recklessly. The sooner I completed the better. There wasn’t time for second thoughts.
Tears poured from my eyes, but I ignored the way my vision blurred. If I crashed, that was even better. At least it would be over.
My phone rang back to back from Willow. No doubt she felt the storm inside me, the empath that she was. She’d talk me down.
Not today.
She overrode my phone, answering it herself and putting it on speaker. She must have hacked my phone after my suicide attempt. “Sasha! Get a hold of yourself.”
Horns blared as I cut the umpteenth person off.
“Are you driving!? You know you can’t drive when you get like this.” Fear radiated her voice. “Pull over.”
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t tell her I already did. That the time when she could have talked me down had passed.
“You are going to hurt innocent people. Have you burned any lemon balm before going on whatever suicide mission you’re on?” She reminded me, but the sign on the side of the road said I was only two miles away.
Two miles away from relief.
“What are you going to do?” Willow's voice hardened. “Burn it all down in typical Sasha Rinah fashion? Does that ever work out for you?”
No. It didn’t.
But this time it would work.
I grabbed my phone, rolled down the passenger side window, and tossed it. The car beside me swerved and drove into the ditch.
I should’ve cared, instead I was numb to it.
“You’re worrying me,” Abiel told me. “You aren’t acting like yourself.”
“You don’t know me.” The words came out cruel and harsh. This was exactly who I was.
“Yes, I do.” The calm in his voice threatened to crack the walls around me.
But then it went quiet again, and I found myself in front of the Dark Entry Forest. I kicked the door open, grabbed my bag, and cleared some of the overgrown grass out front.
“What are you doing?” The first trickle of suspicion filled his voice.
I didn’t respond. Instead I grabbed the gasoline can out of the back of the car. No doubt I received a bunch of complaints about my reckless driving. At least one of them probably grabbed the plates to this stolen car.
Once the car was soaked, I tossed a lit matchbook and focused back on building my altar of elderwood with dandelions as an offering. I hoped the offering was sufficient, because it was the only sure thing I could offer.
He hovered close, watching me, and while he didn’t interfere, suspicion rolled over me in waves. That made me pause, and almost reconsider the consequences.
No. This would work.
I slit my hand.
“What kind of spell is this?” The grass around us died, but my altar held firm.
After all, I made it from things he couldn’t destroy.
I kneeled in the dead grass, drawing a line of my blood from my chin to my chest. “Sun god fill me with your light.”
I started the chant. His shadow wrapped around me lovingly, “Don’t do this. I can fix it.”
I couldn’t be fixed. That twisted the knife deeper in my chest. People like us didn’t fix things, we broke them.
His tendrils wrapped around my throat threateningly. “You think you can get rid of me?”
It grew tight enough to make my chant turn into raspy whispers.
“I’ll turn everything ash. Is that what you want?” he whispered in my ear. His cool touch pressed to my back, and everything inside me wanted to lean into him.
He was the best at making me forget. Traitorous tears filled my eyes. The flaming car exploded a few feet away from us.
I was the oil, and he was the fire.
That was why he was perfect. No one understood oil like fire did.
“That’s it,” he murmured.
I realized too late that I’d stopped chanting. The last word sat right on my tongue. One more word and I’d be free of him.
It would hurt. He was the only one who made me feel seen and heard.
But everything else would hurt more.
Tears trekked down my cheeks and my fingers shook.
Do it.
The word got stuck on the tip of my tongue and refused to leave.
Don’t. Think this through.
I had to. It was the only way to make things right.
I’m sorry.
“Lu–” His shadows poured into my mouth to silence me, and one of his tendrils wrapped around my bloody palm when I went to press it to the altar.
“I don’t know what you think you are doing,” he snarled in my ear. “But it’s not happening.”
Did he really think silencing me would make this spell stop? Hadn’t he learned anything? Intention was what mattered. Words were just focus.
My wrist screamed, as I fought him to get my hand down onto the symbols I’d drawn on the altar. Just a little further.
Was he even really trying? How much effort was it really taking for him? I was giving my all.
His shadows went deeper down my throat, not like last time. This time it triggered my gag reflex, like he was trying to get me to purge pills or something. I retched and heaved, but there wasn’t anything in my stomach to expel. He released me.
“You are going to calm down and talk to me.” He wasn’t even panting, like knocking me on my ass had been nothing.
I held in the ‘fuck you’ knowing that he was baiting me. Because if I said that, the entire spell would be ruined, and I had no reason to think he’d let me start it again.
Instead, I coughed and focused on breathing. A few minutes later, I slumped forward.
“Are you done with your fit?” Irritation made his voice rumble in a way that made me quiver. He tried to kick the altar over, but his foot went through it like he was nothing more than the shadow he was.
My eyes grew wide and anger boiled my insides. Was I done with my fit? Mine?
This asshole.
He turned away, taking a breath as if to calm down, and I took my chance.
“Lux,” my voice came out in a raspy whisper. I slammed my bloody palm to the elderwood.
He turned toward me, but it was too late. With my free hand, I lifted a stiff middle finger. “Go fuck yourself.”
White light burned my retinas.
I closed my eyes and covered my face with my hands, but it didn’t help. My skin was on fire. I screamed, unprepared for the pain.
For a long moment of agony, everything seared until I was convinced that I was in a cooking pot, as the blood in my very veins boiled.
It seeped deeper until I could swear Abiel was being ripped out of my bones. It made everything inside throb like an infected tooth.
When it finally stopped, I found myself pressing my chest to the ground as if I’d been trying to retreat into Mother Earth.
I hadn’t realized how used to the chill, which hadn’t left me since I’d stepped into Dudleytown, I’d become. Now it was painfully absent.
I guess it worked.
Why did that make me want to sob?
You know why.
I slowly opened one eye at a time, half expecting to be blinded again. The sun shone harder than it ever had before. It was still too hot, but at least I didn’t think I’d been put on the grill.
I groaned, trying to get up. Every muscle resisted each movement and simply getting to my knees was exhausting.
My skin was covered in burns, and blisters confirming that it hadn’t all been in my head. I grabbed my chest, expecting to find a giant hole had been punched through me, only to find that somehow I was still intact.
My eyes jerked to check my shadow to make sure Abiel was okay. My heart skipped a beat for a moment when I found my shadow completely gone. Panic welled in me, before I remembered that was my intention.
Right?
I scanned the Dark Entry Forest expecting him to be watching from the treeline, only to realize it was lit up like a damn stadium.
There weren’t any shadows at all.
How was that possible?
My stomach sank. The canopy was too thick. The sun wouldn’t be able to penetrate the forest that much.
My hands and lips shook uncontrollably as my brain tried to process what that meant. Every ragged breath brought me the scent of charred wood and meat, instead of the field of flowers from the other times I’d been here.
It took three steadying breaths before I could bring myself to look up.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The sun wasn’t where I expected it to be either. Confusion filled me as my eyes jerked around, trying to see past the beaming rays of light blinding me.
Surely it was a trick of the light.
I squinted and put my hand up to block some of the radiating glow.
My stomach roiled, and fear that seeped deep in my bones made breathing too heavy.
I blinked and covered one eye, trying to get my vision to properly focus. Had I hit my head?
No. I was seeing it right.
Three suns sat at different points in the sky.