4. Darkness #2
But when I’d turned around on the snow, panting, half-blind with pain, magic crackling up both arms and smoking off the ends of my fingers, I’d found three members of the Praecuri standing over me.
My back had been wrenched and bruised against the trunk of a tree, but it didn’t take long for my mind to click through to what was happening.
They’d surrounded me, making it clear they hadn’t hit me on accident.
They knew exactly who I was; it hadn’t been any kind of mistake.
Even though I understood all of that quickly, it took a few seconds longer before I could hear their words past my beating heart, gasping breaths, and the intense pain running up my spine. For those same few seconds, I wondered if I’d broken my back.
They’d been yelling at me to stand down.
They’d been threatening to kill me if I didn’t.
Once that much sank in, I’d lowered my arms, and willed my magic to subside. I don’t know if they would have actually killed me, but in that moment, I’d believed it.
Since then, I hadn’t been able to shake the chill, even when I sweated.
Pushing the memories and images from my mind, I exhaled, and tried to breathe evenly so I could focus on my breath.
I adjusted my bum in the center of the circle and exhaled again.
I tried not to think about Bones specifically. I tried not to think about where he was, who he might be with, what might be happening to him. But every time I struggled to shove those thoughts away, it acted as a magnet to bring them back even more vividly.
I closed my eyes, and my anxiety worsened.
After a few more tries to clear my mind, to even fake feeling calm, I gave up.
I wasn’t going to be calm right now.
And I could no longer wait.
I began to murmur the incantations I’d memorized in a low voice, using a mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil.
My hands moved fluidly through the mudras I’d practiced dozens of times while testing to make sure my enchantment worked.
It all came back seamlessly, without hesitation, and I might’ve felt relieved if I hadn’t been shaking, the sick feeling in my stomach growing as I got closer to the end of the second set of spells.
If I freaked out for real, the spell would likely break.
The knowledge of that was enough to keep my voice steady, and my posture straight.
I could fake the physical side of being calm, even if my mind was all over the place.
I had to find him. That one thought was enough to keep me focused.
Every second I wasted re-doing a spell because I couldn’t fucking control my mind was a second he was alone, and a second I could have been looking for a way to bring him back.
I owed him that much. I owed him a clean spell.
I had to be prepared for finding anything.
I had to be prepared to find nothing, too.
My voice deepened and darkened around those thoughts, turning nearly guttural as it echoed up the high-ceiling.
By the time the final words of the spell rang out, I found myself thinking I’d broken after all, that it wouldn’t work. I’d infused too much emotion into those passages, and likely twisted their meaning, or pushed them too far in the wrong direction.
I’d have to start all over again––
––and then everything around me and inside my mind went utterly dark.
The light didn’t return.
Unlike the times I’d cast this spell before, there wasn’t merely a dark blip between one place and the next. It never grew suddenly brighter, like it had the times I’d practiced with the ring and the spell before I’d given it to Bones.
Even in the times I’d broken before, the light returned. Those times, the room blurred then sharpened back into view.
Not this time. This time, the tower didn’t reappear around me, either.
I couldn’t see.
I couldn’t fucking see.
The reality of that frustrated and bewildered me.
Then it agonized me.
Was he dead? Was this what happened when an object sat on the body of a dead person?
But that didn’t make sense. The ring wasn’t dead.
Wouldn’t it still show me wherever the ring was, regardless of the condition of its wearer?
Another, horrifying thought hit me. Would Malefic have buried him already?
The thought made me sick, and brought that agonizing grief back so intensely I nearly passed out.
Could the ring itself have been destroyed?
Wait. That made the most sense.
Despite the bad news it represented, the thought of the ring and not Bones being destroyed caused the knot in my chest to loosen marginally.
That had to be it. They must have found the ring, destroyed it, or––
A grating, metallic sound broke the silence in my mind.
Slow, laborious, like iron scraping lingeringly over stone.
I froze.
The sound continued weakly, distinctly organic in nature. A machine couldn’t make that sound. It moved like something alive. It moved like an animal.
I stared into the darkness, unmoving, mostly in shock.
I wasn’t alone. It took a few more seconds for my mind to pull that apart, and put it back together in the only way that made sense.
I fought the understanding for some reason, even if it meant neither of the more catastrophic scenarios were true.
Was it him?
Whatever it was, it sounded only a few feet away. I couldn’t see anything moving, or anything at all, not even a darker or lighter silhouette.
The utter completeness of that darkness made it feel cloying, nearly alive, but I realized something else. I no longer felt only myself there.
And whatever I was feeling, it didn’t come from Bones’s tower apartment.
I couldn’t see the light of the tower room through my closed eyelids.
I couldn’t smell its unique blends of old stone, smoke, the lingering scent of Bones’s cologne, his fruit teas and coffees, the confusing mix of smells that came from his potion and ritual ingredients.
I could no longer hear the fire crackle and pop, or the wind rattle the glass panes.
Another presence lived here, with me, and it was somewhere else.
Bones? I ventured cautiously.
I heard a rustle, a movement of skin and cloth to mix with that more grating sound of metal.
Something about all those sounds felt shockingly visceral, like I experienced my own skin dragged over a cold, hard surface.
Hearing it was the same as feeling it. That touch of metal and skin made me grit my teeth even as some part of me tried to reach for my throat.
I didn’t think he’d answer.
I’d already decided that he probably couldn’t answer.
He was hurt.
Gods, he was hurt as badly as I’d feared, worse maybe.
I could feel it. I could feel it as if––
Go away, Leda.
His words hurt as they hit into my mind. At the same time, they wrenched out of him; I could feel the effort it took to speak them. When they left him, a cold, dense, throbbing exploded behind my eyes. It felt like I’d been hit in the temple with a mallet.
Go away. Get the fuck out of here.
Those words took just as much effort.
I think his presence shocked me more than the voice.
The presence hung around me, as tangible as that rubbing of bare skin over stone.
I could feel it as skin, nearly smell it as skin and hair and breath.
I could feel the effort in his lungs and muscles as he forced his mind to work, as he struggled to stay awake.
He fought his way through consciousness for the sole purpose of forcing his words into me.
Forming them caused him actual pain… physical pain.
It was different than the pain I felt experiencing them, and different from what he already suffered on the other side. I couldn’t make sense of the source of it. I could feel it choking him, trying to choke him out, to knock him out cold.
Anger grew hotter and more suffocating around him. I felt his rage at the effort it took to stay there, to talk to me, but the anger wasn’t what scared me.
He almost didn’t feel like himself at all.
Go away, he gasped from the dark. Pain exploded through him, but his rage burned hotter and also colder, and he didn’t stop. Leave me alone, you halfbreed bitch whore, and don’t ever fucking come back or I’ll kill you.
He lied there, gasping in the dark.
Come looking for me again, and I swear to the gods I’ll fucking kill you.
I didn’t move.
I’ll kill you, Leda. I’ll kill you… worthless, conniving cunt… worst thing that ever happened to me… I’ll laugh over your corpse… I’ll enjoy it…
The darkness briefly turned to a greenish-gold light.
His magic slammed into me, knocking out my breath. His fire, which never hit me that hard even in any of our practice sessions, short-circuited something in my magic. It also triggered a fight or flight response I couldn’t control, mostly because it hurt.
I threw myself backwards instinctively.
The spell broke.
I felt the instant the connection snapped.
I gasped in shock, then cried out in despair.
I was still falling backwards as some part of me reached for him.
I opened my eyes to find myself lying on my back, gasping stuck breaths, groaning in pain. I’d broken the circle with my head when I fell back, smearing the line of gold, blood, powdered crystals and bone, all the way into the thinner line of salt.
For the second time that day, I was in so much pain I couldn’t see.