Chapter 32 #2
The flames begin to flicker around his lower legs, and the very bottom of his coat has begun to blacken and curl from the heat.
His head has fallen forward, his breathing shallow enough that I can barely see it through the smoke.
The fire reflects in his dark eyes when he forces them open again, and for one horrible second, I see acceptance there.
Not fear. Not regret.
Peace.
He has decided this is a fair price.
My life for his.
“Be happy, Jacqueline. You won,” he says, his eyes holding mine as the flames rise higher. “Bring Josh home.”
The words should feel like salvation.
He’s giving me permission to let him die. Telling me this is what he wants, that I don’t have to feel guilty for accepting the sacrifice he chose to make. He wants me to take what he’s giving me and save Josh.
The realization comes with horrible, merciless clarity.
Without Silas standing in my way, I could actually win The Rites. He and I are the only competitors to have won two trials. If he dies here, there will be no tie. The strongest competitor in The Rites will be gone.
My gaze drops to the flames beneath him. I’m so close to winning, I can taste it. I could get the boon. I could bring Josh home.
For months, every decision I have made has led me here.
Every lie I have swallowed, every threat I have ignored, every trial I have survived.
I came to Salem’s Fall for my brother. I entered The Rites for my brother.
I have endured all of this for the smallest chance that somewhere at the end of it, I could undo what happened to him.
And now the biggest obstacle standing between me and that impossible wish is just moments away from certain death.
I always feared The Rites would force me to do something terrible to win, but I don’t have to kill Silas. I don’t even have to hurt him. All I have to do is… nothing.
The realization makes me sick.
Silas chose me over his own life. He could have won this trial, won The Rites, become everything he was raised to be. Instead, he used all his power to save me and is burning alive in front of me while telling me to be happy about it.
I cannot purchase my brother’s life with Silas’s. I won’t stand here and just watch him die. Not if there’s anything I can do to stop it.
But… what can I do?
Silas’s eyes lift weakly toward mine as I step closer still to the flames. And Lucien…
Lucien is watching me, something in his eyes pushing me to find the answer.
I force myself to think. There has to be a way to stop this. Josh always said I was the best puzzle solver he knew. All of his most difficult games, I always cracked the code first. I can figure this out too. I have to. I must be missing something—but what?
There are four elements. Four Houses. Fire, Water, Air, Earth.
Every trial has been structured around their strengths and weaknesses.
As impossible as it may be, I’ve seen my competitors draw power from the elements at some point during The Rites.
If Silas is right, and the Fourth House never wielded an element, then what did it wield?
Nothing?
That makes no sense.
The Hawthornes wouldn’t have murdered my father if our House was powerless. They wouldn’t have erased us from Salem’s Fall history or tried to kill me the moment they realized I had returned.
And what about the bridge? I hadn’t understood what was happening then. I only knew the wind had wrapped around me, holding me when I should have fallen. I’d felt the air respond to me. Had someone else controlled it—or had I wielded it myself?
Silas would not lie to me now. If he said the Fourth House had no element, I believe that’s what he was taught. But what if everyone has been thinking about it the wrong way? What if the Fourth House never had a single element because its power was something else entirely?
Everyone else seems to reach inward to access the elements. Lucien creates fire with a motion of his hand. Silas calls water to himself. Rowan and Georgina command the air. Lena pulls earth upward. I keep waiting for something to awaken inside me, but what if that was never the Fourth House?
I look around the clearing.
The elements are all here.
Water still clings to the air around Silas, faint remnants of what he used to save me. Wind circles Rowan and Georgina in agitated currents. The earth remains raised around Lena’s stake. Fire pours from Lucien’s spell through the two stakes still in flames.
What if I don’t need to summon my own element? What if all I need to do is take hold of what already exists?
The thought catches somewhere inside me.
I have spent my entire life believing that love was dangerous because loving someone meant needing them, and needing someone meant trusting they would still be there when you reached for them.
Losing my father nearly destroyed my mother, and somewhere along the way, I decided strength meant never depending on anyone but myself.
If I didn’t truly need anyone, no one could leave me with something missing when they were gone.
But what if I had it all wrong?
I think of my mother. Not the version of her I carried through childhood—the tired woman behind a locked bedroom door, the woman who forgot school meetings and fell asleep at the kitchen table with unopened bills spread beneath her arms. But the woman who loved someone with all her heart, lost him, and still got out of bed every morning because two children needed a parent.
She kept loving us after life had already taken almost everything from her.
Love didn’t make my mother weak. It gave her something to keep living for.
And relying on Silas didn’t make me weak either.
It saved me.
My gaze moves across the clearing again. Water. Air. Earth. Fire. Everyone else has something I don’t.
Maybe that’s the point.
Maybe the Fourth House was never meant to stand alone. Maybe its power only exists in connection to others.
I close my eyes and reach around me. At first, there is only heat and smoke and the frantic hammering of my heart. Then something shifts beneath the noise. A current brushes against my awareness, cool and fluid.
Water.
Another presses against my skin like a restless breath.
Air.
Then the ground hums beneath my boots, deep and patient.
Earth.
And finally, heat burns bright enough to feel almost alive.
Fire.
A rush of hope nearly knocks the breath from me.
I can do this. I can save Silas.
For one agonizing second, I think of Josh. Of the boon. Of everything I came here hoping to undo. Tears blur my vision.
I’m sorry, Josh.
“I’m not letting you die, Blackhollow,” I say to Silas, my voice hoarse but firm. Then I reach for him—not with my hands, but with whatever part of me has been asleep my entire life and is just starting to awaken.
Water answers first, surging out of the air in a violent wave, crashing over Silas’s stake and extinguishing the flames in an explosion of steam. His chains spring open.
“Jack?”
Dark eyes snap toward mine, shock moving across his face as he collapses forward. I catch him before he hits the ground, his weight nearly driving us both into the snow.
I feel the other elements pulling at me now, not resisting but converging. Air feeds water. Earth redirects fire. One force balancing another, each incomplete without the rest.
The Fourth House does not wield one element. It draws from and controls them all.
I reach for the flames still burning around Wren and force them back. Then I lift one hand, pulling the air away until the remaining fire gutters, and drive a wall of earth through the last of it. Her chains release, and Lena reaches her before she falls.
Every element is still vibrating through my body like a second pulse as I kneel in the wet snow with Silas pressed against me. The others stare at me in shock, all except for Lucien. He looks awed—almost proud—and maybe just a tiny bit afraid.
Silas takes in a shaky breath against me, his face burned, exhausted… and impossibly alive.