25. Asha
Asha
For three blissful seconds, I don’t know where I am. Then the library ceiling comes into focus, green lamps, looming shelves, ancient dust, doom in hardback.
The library is quiet around me, pressing down on the back of my neck like a hand. The lamps burn low overhead. Rain taps against the high windows. I sit up slowly and blink at the book I’ve been sleeping on, which is rude of me and probably rude of it for being so flat and comfortable.
Tobin is still at the table across from me, his silver eyes scanning something in a ledger so old the spine is held together by spite alone. He doesn’t look up. He knows I’m awake. He always knows.
Leith sits on the floor with his back against the shelving, three open books arranged around him in a pattern that looks deliberate. His eyes are closed. Whether he’s sleeping or communing with the dead, I can’t tell, and I’m not going to poke him to find out.
Hale is absent.
I note that immediately, because the bond tugs in the direction of the dining hall with a low, warm insistence that tells me he’s fine and eating everything that isn’t nailed down. I pull the book out from under my elbow and push it aside with an apology I don’t mean.
“Find anything?” I ask Tobin.
“Several things.” He turns a page without looking up. “Most of them annoying.”
“Care to share with the class?”
“Not yet.”
I stand and stretch, my spine cracking in three places that remind me this body is a temporary inconvenience, not something I should treat like a permanent residence.
SilverGate’s constant low-grade hostility has dulled to a background hum, which either means it’s given up or it’s saving something. Neither option comforts me.
I move to the window and look out at the rain-soaked courtyard. The Bell Tower is a black spike against the permanent night sky. The grass where we exploded out of the ground has repaired itself completely. No trace. No apology.
“Leith,” I say quietly.
“Awake,” he says, without opening his eyes.
“Did you find anything before you started your death nap?”
“It isn’t a death nap.”
“Priorities, please.”
I sense rather than see Tobin’s shocked expression at my serious tone.
But my power nap has given me a sense of purpose, and all this arguing, back and forth, and talking, has exhausted me to the point where now I get truly serious.
I am impatient to make it back home and reclaim my throne from whichever impersonator is sitting on it.
I hold my hand out and see the weak flicker of blue power.
“That sounded almost serious,” Leith says.
“It is. We are done fucking about, and I mean that on every level. No more banter and making light of this situation. We are done with that. Everything now is about opening that gate. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Everything?” Hale asks, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around me.
“Everything,” I state.
“In that case, I may have an idea,” he says.
I don’t turn. I hold my hand up and make a ‘keep going’ gesture.
“If all the realms are connected, we go to Hell and open the gate from there.”
I consider it. It’s a fucking good idea. But we don’t have time to waste. “We already know where the gate is here,” I say. “We aren’t leaving to waste more time finding it in another dimension. Besides. My body is here.”
“Accepted. So have we considered asking the gate nicely to open?”
I hiss and spin, pulling myself out of his arms. “I said, no more taking this lightly.”
“It was a joke,” he says warily.
“No. More.” My voice has gone deeper, more mine. He hears it, he pays attention to it. His eyes darken, and he nods once, stepping back and giving me space.
I turn back to Tobin. He remains motionless, his silver eyes fixed on the crumbling pages. If anyone can find the specific frequency of that ground anchor, it is him. I don’t care how many centuries of academic drivel he must dig through.
“The gate is above the courtyard,” I remind them. “But the connection to the Shadow Well complicates the transfer. We must bridge the descent and the ascent simultaneously.”
“We need to recreate the exact scenario of when you were exiled,” he states, standing up, all business.
I appreciate that more than anything right now, even if his words are not what I want to hear.
He studies me for a second. “Yes,” he says when he sees the question in my eyes. “We need the spell that exiled you.”
“Are you planning to exile her backwards?” Hale asks.
“I am planning to exile her from SilverGate.”
“And how do you know StormGate will catch her?”
“Because StormGate is mine,” I say. My voice fills the room with an authority that makes the lamps flicker.
I don’t wait for them to argue the physics of realm travel.
I look at Tobin. “The spell that brought me here was a violent subtraction. Zether and his cronies used a specific ritual to strip my divinity, and then Yseld shoved me into this witch shell. If we find the ritual, we can invert the intent.”
Tobin’s hands move over the ledger. “It’s more than intent. It involves the destination coordinates. We don’t just want you gone; we want you arriving in the state required to reclaim the Eclipse Throne.”
Leith stands up, his movements liquid and silent. “And the ground anchor?”
“The spot where she hit the courtyard floor,” Tobin says. “It carries the resonance of her arrival. It’s a scar on the academy’s psyche. We use the ritual to reopen that wound and jump through it.”
Hale’s green-gold eyes remain hard. “The Shadow Well. Your body is still miles underground.”
“We pull it up,” I state. I feel the chaos in my blood pulsing with every word. I don’t care if we have to rip the foundations out of the earth. We’re getting my body, and then I’m leaving this prison behind.
“How?” Hale asks and holds his hands up as my gaze shoots to his. “That’s not making light of this. It’s a genuine question. If it were that easy, Yseld probably would’ve already tried it, and your body would’ve told us.”
“We will find a way,” I say and turn on my heel to stride to the stairs, taking them quickly.
The guys follow slower now. The power shift has changed, and they know it. I’m no longer the feisty, sassy bitch that dropped onto the courtyard. I am a currently nameless goddess, desperate to return home now that I can taste it.
When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I see Verne.
She disappears into the wall behind her desk.
“Who are you?” I whisper, getting a really irritated feeling that I can’t quite place my finger on.
It’s making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I storm toward the desk and slam my palms against the wood.
The surface remains cold. Verne is a phantom in a cardigan, a puppet dancing for a master I plan to eviscerate.
Hale reaches me first and places a hand on the stone where she vanished.
“She went through,” I growl. “I’m done with the fucking games.”
Tobin stands behind us. His magic probes the boundary. “She’s a tether.”
I look at the wall and want to rip the masonry apart. My blue magic flickers. It remains a pathetic spark compared to the chaos I remember. “Open it,” I command Tobin.
“I’m trying. It’s a magic I haven’t encountered before…”
Leith stares at the shadows in the corners. His magic creates a cold perimeter.
I turn from the desk and glare at the high, dark shelves. The lamps flicker and die. Then absolute darkness swallows the library.
“What kind of magic?” I ask, blinking to try to adjust my eyesight to the stifling darkness before Hale’s hellfire flickers to life.
“It’s powerful, cold, not part of this realm.”
“Yseld?” I ask, but I’m not so sure of the answer.
“Could be,” he murmurs. “It depends on how much power she currently has.”
“Enough to catch me as I fell through space and to give me this ridiculous body. Enough to appear to us outside when she was trapped inside a portrait. Enough to show herself in the restricted section.”
“That was probably more a manifestation of a vision rather than her,” Tobin mutters. “But it doesn’t sound like she is rocking a power strong enough to create this.”
“Portal?” I move closer.
The stone under my palms feels wrong. It’s too smooth, too expectant. Tobin’s silver threads start to stitch into the masonry, tracing the outline of a doorway that shouldn’t exist. I don’t wait for his permission. I shove my magic into the gap he’s creating.
“It’s not a portal,” Tobin says, his voice tight with the effort of holding the wards apart. “It’s a syphon. It’s pulling from the Shadow Well.”
My blood runs cold. If Verne is using the Well’s power to move through the academy, she’s more than a spy. She’s a conduit. Hale steps up, his fire throwing long, flickering shadows across the books.
I focus on the resistance behind the stone. I feel a tugging sensation, a demand for authority. I give it as much of what it wants as I can. Which, under the circumstances, is not a lot.
The desk shudders.
But nothing else happens.
“Nothing?” I say to Tobin.
“I can’t break it. Not like this.” He is pissed off and not afraid to show it as he lashes out at the stone.
“Then how?”
“It’s irrelevant,” Leith says. “Or rather, a distraction. We need to be in the courtyard, not here.”
I step back with a grim nod. He’s right. We are being sidetracked by disappearing librarians when our priority is the gate. “Let’s go,” I say and turn from the wall, heading out of the library into the rain towards the courtyard.