33. Asha
Asha
Breakfast after agreeing to die is surreal.
I sit in the dining hall with a plate Hale loaded for me, the midnight spears are propped against the table within reach. All the students stare. None of them approach. We don’t give a fuck right now.
No one speaks for a while.
That is how I know we are fucked.
Tobin sits opposite me with a notebook open beside his plate, drawing ritual geometry that fades into the paper after a few seconds. Leith sits to my left, quiet, but that’s usual. Hale takes the chair on my right, also quiet, but that does worry me.
“This had better work,” he says grimly.
“It will,” Leith states. “Have faith.”
“In your ability to draw her ghost out of her dead body?”
“Not quite like that, but close,” Leith responds.
“Look,” I say. “I’m more worried that I won’t end up back in my real body and I’m floating around the academy for eternity. What if I can’t get into the Well?”
Leith looks at me steadily. “You will. The Well doesn’t hold things that belong somewhere else. It holds things that belong nowhere. You have a realm. You have a throne. You have an essence that wants its body back. The Well will recognise that.”
“And if Yseld has reconstituted enough to fight me for it on the way down?”
Leith grimaces. “Then she’ll have to go through me, us, first.”
“Right,” I mutter. “So we all die together.”
“Only you die,” Tobin says, still writing. “We stand guard while you do it. This will work. Like Leith said. Have faith.”
“I do,” I say carefully. “But we need to talk about a plan B in case, for whatever reason, I can’t get back into my body.”
“Then I will resurrect you back in that witch body,” Leith says.
“That’s an option?” I ask with a frown.
He frowns back. “Of course.”
“Even if I’ve been killed?”
“That body is irrelevant. I will pull your essence out of it, and that body will effectively die. We aren’t about to stab you to death—at least not to get you out of that body.”
“Only when she’s in her goddess body,” Hale mutters.
I blink. “Well, okay. That doesn’t sound so bad.”
Tobin’s pen stills against the notebook. He looks up at me with that carefully neutral expression he uses when he’s decided something is worth saying and is choosing the precise moment. “You sound almost relieved.”
“I am, a bit. I’ve been operating on the assumption that this was a one-way door. Die in the witch shell, float around the academy as a confused goddess ghost, get eaten by Yseld on the way to my own body. The fact that there’s a catch-and-release option is genuinely comforting.”
“Don’t get comfortable,” Leith says. “Plan B exists. It isn’t the goal.”
“I know. Having a fallback isn’t the same as planning to use it.”
He holds my gaze for a second, then nods once and goes back to his food.
Hale has been quiet in the wrong way since the courtyard.
“What?” I say, turning my gaze on him. “What is it you want to say?”
“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m just trying to process that in a few hours, you will be a goddess.”
“I’m not going to placate you with something lame like ‘I’ll still be me’. I won’t be. I’ll be a completely different creature with more power than any of you can comprehend.”
The words sit between us, and I watch his face absorb them.
Hale doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t argue. He picks up his fork and twirls it around for a bit, staring at his plate with the focused intensity of someone trying to solve a problem. “I know,” he says finally.
“And?”
“And nothing. I know who you are. I’ve always known. The body you’re in right now doesn’t change what I feel. What comes after doesn’t change it either.”
I stare at him. “Even if I’m terrifying?”
“I like terrifying. Terrifying is my type.”
Tobin makes a quiet sound. I have no idea whether that means he agrees.
I eat because Hale put the food in front of me and because the witch body needs fuel even if I’m planning to vacate it in approximately twenty-two hours.
“Does this mean we have to go to lectures today?” I ask.
“Probably not a good idea. We need to keep our eyes on these spears, and we can’t exactly carry them around with us,” Tobin says.
“So what then?”
“Sleep,” Hale says immediately.
“Sleep,” I repeat. I’ve heard worse suggestions. I’m suddenly exhausted but not in an ordinary sleep way. In a bone-deep fatigue way that suddenly doesn’t feel altogether normal. I lift my hand up and stare at it. My vision swims and I grip the table with my other hand.
“What is it?” Hale asks.
“Woozy,” I say with a frown. “Something isn’t right.”
“You’re fading,” Tobin says. “Well, flickering is probably more accurate.”
“Flickering?”
“Your essence is burning up that body,” Leith murmurs, leaning forward and gripping my fingers. “We have less time than we thought.”
“Why?”
“Because if you burn through that body and your essence busts out and we aren’t ready, you will either be floating around or walking around in your goddess body agitating SilverGate and Blackridge while we scramble to get ready.”
“Okay, so we get ready,” I say calmly, standing up. The room spins, and I swallow. “Do you need me to prepare?”
“No, go and lie down,” Tobin states. “You will be better off out of the way.”
I nod and stagger away from the table towards the dining hall door.
I grip the doorframe to steady myself as I stumble and then move down the stairs, my hand on the wall.
The guys don’t follow me, and for that I’m grateful.
I don’t need or want them to see me like this, but I also need them to get that ritual prepared.
Stares and whispers follow me as I move across the grounds to the residence tower, bursting in with hands on the door that fade in and out. I ignore everyone as I head up the stairs and push open my bedroom door.
The room tilts.
I slam the door behind me and stagger to the bed, but the floor seems to move farther away with every step. My fingers flicker again. They glitch, the lines of my hand phasing between witch flesh and something brighter beneath.
“Oh, fuck this.”
I make it two more steps before my knees hit the floor.
Pain lances through my ribs, sharp and spreading. The body isn’t dying exactly. It’s failing to contain me. Every breath pulls too much power through organs never built to house it.
I press my palm against my chest and feel the pulse under my skin stutter.
The witch shell panics.
I do not.
“Get up,” I grit out.
My voice doesn’t sound right. It layers, one voice over another, one small and witchy, one older and deeper and full of command. The lamps in the room flare blue. The mirror over the dresser cracks from corner to corner.
I crawl my way to the bed when this body fails to cooperate with my commands. Hauling myself up, I collapse on my side against the pillows and close my eyes to stop the swimming.
“Hurry, guys,” I mutter and curl up, hoping they keep their cool to get this done.