Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
The living room is dim except for the television, the blue light washing over the couch cushions and the two of us sprawled across them.
Asher has claimed the long sofa with his usual lack of apology, one arm thrown behind his head, and his feet dangling off the end.
I've tucked myself into the corner of the loveseat with a blanket pulled up to my chin, a mug of chamomile going cold on the end table beside me.
On screen, a retired schoolteacher is crying over a collapsed tart shell. Competitive baking is apparently a heart-wrenching blood sport.
I must zone out, because I only realize that the show is paused when Asher is sitting up and looking at me. “What is tumbling around in that head of yours, P? You look stressed.”
I pull the blanket tighter around me and smooth my hand over the ultra-soft pile. "Do you think Violet and Lily are doing okay?"
He considers this with genuine thought, which is one of the things I love about Ash—he always gives your questions actual consideration.
"I think Violet is probably reading something and trying not to let on that she's a little scared. And I think Lily is probably freaking out, complaining, and making things tougher than they need to be."
Sounds about right.
“I don’t think you should worry. S’Nark is watching out for them, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, as much as S’Nark watches out for anyone.”
“So, what’s got you all tied up?”
“I keep thinking about Headmistress Briar’s request. If it were Violet out of sync, and I found out a witch had been asked to loan a tool that might help her, I’d be pissed that they weren’t willing to do it. I feel like a paranoid shit.”
Asher raises a finger. “First of all, don’t talk about my bestie like that. She’s selfless and giving to a fault. Second, you have every right to be protective of your family’s magical things. You’ve been entrusted with the Hallowind legacy, and that’s a big deal.”
“It is, right?”
“Damn straight. And yeah, the mirror might help this witch, but it’s part of your family estate stuff. What if you lend it and it gets damaged, stolen, or somehow used for nefarious purposes?”
I snort. “I love it when you use nefarious.”
His grin widens. “What did Wylder say?”
I lean back and sigh. “He’s working in the greenhouse tonight. He said he’ll come by if it’s not too late when he finishes up.”
“Well, if he’s got any sense at all, he’ll choose warming up with you over heading home to sleep alone.”
I hope so. “Do you think my sisters feel like I abandoned them?”
“Is that what this is about? No, Pops. Given the choice, you’d have them here, and they know that. The point is that you weren’t given a choice.”
I exhale. "I know.”
“And they have each other. When you were sent there, you were all alone and had nobody you could trust. And as impossible to love as you are, you still came home with Rowan and Orion won over.”
I chuckle and roll my eyes. “True. And Violet is way more sociable than I am. She was the kid who came home from the first day of school with three new best friends and a birthday party invitation. Every single year.”
"Exactly." Asher points at me like I've just proved his point. "She's probably already got a whole social circle over there, and she's less worried about being there than she is about which of the hot guys she’s going to woo in her magic class tomorrow."
A laugh comes out of me before I can stop it. "You're probably right."
"I'm definitely right. I'm frequently right and it goes unacknowledged."
"You're sometimes right."
"Fine. I'll take it." He stretches back out and holds the remote up, poised to restart our show. “And since you’re worried, I say we go to Arcana tomorrow. You can check in on your sisters, and we can see what Mica's got going on with the forge. Kill several birds, et cetera."
The tension in my chest eases a little. Not all the way, but enough.
"Yeah. That’s a good idea. Let’s do that.”
Asher winks and then hits play on our show. “It’s a date. Don’t let Wylder keep you up too late. We’ve got plans tomorrow.”
I chuckle. “I’ll be sure to tell him.”
I open my eyes to darkness, the feeling of dread and disorientation swirling in my mind.
I’m not in my bedroom. There is no familiar light bleeding through the curtains, and no hum of the furnace blowing air through the vent. I’m somewhere else and the darkness is dense, pressurized… with no temperature and no edges and smelling faintly of something burnt.
Oh no. Nonono, absolutely not.
I'm in Tharuzel's consciousness.
For approximately three seconds, I allow the full, unfiltered horror of that to overwhelm me. I’ve been sucked into the mind of a ten-foot soul-sucking nightmare… again.
After weeks of my dreams being my own, I genuinely started to believe I might be free of this. Apparently not. Apparently, the blood bond is still working despite him breaking free of Emberwood and being off who knows where, doing horrible things.
Which I still feel responsible for.
I force the panic flat and give myself an inward shake. I'm here, I’m aware, and screaming into the void of Tharuzel's subconscious won’t glean me anything useful. I've done this before and know how it works.
Might as well try to make it count.
I let my awareness settle and my senses expand.
He's in a cave.
The details assemble themselves around me the way they always do in here.
It’s not quite seeing… more like knowing, the information pressing itself into me.
There are stone walls slick with moisture.
A low ceiling. And the damp air is filled with the smell of minerals and something older… maybe animals…
It’s like the cave itself has been breathing for centuries and has never once exhaled.
Tharuzel crouches in the center of the space, the long geometry of his limbs folding wrong in all the ways like the stuff of nightmares.
The runic script pulses under the skin of his arms, red and restless, shifting between shapes I can't hold in my mind long enough to read. This is him. The real him.
Behind him, carved deep into the far wall of the cave, is a circle. It’s enormous, floor-to-ceiling, and packed so densely with symbols and interlocking designs that it looks less like stonework and more like a language folded in on itself a hundred times.
But he isn't looking at the circle… his attention is on the floor.
He's drawing on it in careful, deliberate strokes, and it takes me a moment to register what he's drawing with. The lines are dark and wet. They catch the faint bioluminescent pulse of his own runic glow and gleam.
Blood.
He's drawing in blood, and the copper smell hits me. I’m suddenly very glad my dream-self doesn’t have a stomach to turn. Still, I focus on what he’s doing and ignore the grossness of it.
The lines he’s painting spread outward in a precise geometry, symbols connecting into a larger pattern that I've never seen in any text, on any database, or within any of the Order's records.
I try to commit it to memory, studying the shape of each mark and the way they build on each other. But it's like trying to memorize a song being played too fast.
Every time I think I recognize something, another detail changes it and demands my attention.
Then he pauses.
His head tilts slightly, and he stills. Does he sense me? My entire non-corporeal existence holds very, very still. I am not here. I am a draft in the cave. I am nothing worth investigating.
Tharuzel holds for a beat. Then a second.
The chorus of voices that lives inside him whisper and I make myself as small and innocuous as possible.
After another long moment, he turns back to the floor and the work he’s doing.
Is it a ward? An offensive spell? A summoning?
I reach for his intentions but get nothing.
When he finishes the last symbol, he rises to his full height, which, even hunched under the cave ceiling, is massive in scale, and steps into the center of what he's drawn.
He stands there for a moment, his weight settling into the pattern like a key entering a lock, and then he reaches into the folds of whatever serves as his garments and draws out a dagger.
The weapon is ornately jeweled, every inch of it etched with runes. The blade is curved and dark, and the handle is something I don't want to look at for too long.
He turns it in his monstrous, clawed hands and draws it across his own palm without ceremony.
What comes out is not blood.
It’s an ooze of black that moves wrong… too slow, too deliberate. It ebbs out and downward as though it's making decisions about where to go. He presses a finger from his uncut hand into it and turns to the wall.
He draws over the circle of intricate designs carved into the wall of the cave, not tracing the existing symbols, but overwriting them. The black ichor of his blood goes over the ancient stonework in heavy, deliberate strokes.
His symbols. His language. His intentions.
Then he begins to chant.
The sound of it is layered and dreadful, every voice he's ever stolen speaking in unison, and I feel the pull as though the air itself is being emptied. The power he possesses wells inside me as he pours his intention into those marks.
I recognize something vast and pressurized within the words.
Souls. He's feeding souls directly into the symbols.
No! That’s horrible.
The runes on the wall blaze to life and the power crests. The spell takes hold and—
I gasp myself awake, sitting bolt upright in bed.
My heart hammers in my chest, and I twist to glance at my phone sitting in its dock on my nightstand.
11:47
I stare at it for a moment, blinking the blur from my eyes, then press both palms flat against my sternum and wait for my heartbeat to slow.
The dream still clings to me. The damp, coppery smell of the cave. The bone-chilling eeriness of all those stolen voices speaking in chorus.
I close my eyes and focus on breathing through it.
In. Out. In.
By the time I've reined myself in, stretched the last of the stiffness from my shoulders, and dragged myself to the bathroom, I feel something approaching human.