Chapter 43
Harrisford
In the half-light of the encroaching dawn, Gwendolynne’s skin glows.
She’s lying on her back, her face half-turned away from me. Our limbs are intertwined, my gaze tracing the gentle planes of her features. I can see the tiny baby hairs lining her cheeks—normally invisible but now silhouetted by the growing light.
My body stirs, reminiscing on last night.
Remembering how I’d poured myself into her, both literally and figuratively, as she arched her back and cried out my name.
How we’d taken a long shower together, and afterward—with the streetlights slanting through a gap in the curtain—she’d straddled me as I marveled at her, entirely under her thrall.
I’d worried, beforehand, that our physical chemistry would fall short of my (admittedly high) expectations. That things might just feel awkward and anticlimactic.
I’d been wrong.
Sex, it’s clear to me now, is just sex. It’s like candy floss, tasting sweet at the time but dissolving quickly, leaving only a faint trace of its presence on the tongue. But sex with someone I truly care about—now that is something else altogether.
It wasn’t just the way Gwendolynne had clawed at my back, her legs wrapped around my torso, or how her body felt beneath mine as we both edged toward our climax. It’s the way that being with her gives me the sort of deep fulfillment that I have never previously experienced.
It hits me with sudden clarity: I only slept around because I was searching for something. And that something was her. It was always her.
I was just too much of an idiot to realize.
My strap buzzes, wrenching me from my musings. Holding my breath, I ease my arm from underneath her. She looks so peaceful, her breathing deep and even, and I know she’s probably exhausted. After all, we’ve just finished a grueling week of final exams, and last night we barely slept.
She murmurs and rolls over, away from me, and I take a moment to admire the view before checking who’s messaged me at such an ungodly hour.
It’s Danny. Strange, I think. He’s usually not up this early, especially not after a party. Perhaps he went hard all night and never went to bed at all.
Unlocking my screen, I open the message. Briggs. Wanna go for a run?
I flop onto my back and groan. Not really. All I want to do is stay here, in bed, naked, next to Gwendolynne. But the longer I lie beside her, the more I want to touch her, kiss her, roll her over and take her again, from behind. And despite my wants, I don’t wish to wake her prematurely.
I tap out a reply: Can’t mate, sorry. I’m in London.
A few seconds pass before my strap buzzes again. I’m in London too.
Sitting up, I swipe my disheveled hair off my forehead. Danny’s in town? That’s odd. He never said anything about that yesterday.
I scrub at my face with both hands and blow out a slow breath, thinking.
At some point I’ll need to return to Seamere and pick up Pudding, but not just yet.
Perhaps a run is a good idea. I’m jittery, I’m anxious, and I’m still so fucking turned on.
If I head out, I can work off some of my unspent energy, then pick up some breakfast from my favorite pastry shop—I want to introduce Gwendolynne to everything, all at once—and bring something back for her.
Then, after I’ve settled my nerves, and I’ve satiated her in other ways—with fancy boxed sugary carbs—then…Then I’ve decided: I will grow some balls, harden the fuck up, and finally tell Gwendolynne how I feel.
I refuse to be coy or circumspect any longer.
There is only one day until our graduation ceremony; one day before university ends for good.
After that she’ll head back to Manchester for the summer, until she commences her first postgraduate job.
With each passing day, my opportunities to admit that I am so desperately in love with her are rapidly diminishing.
Even if she rejects me, even if she laughs in my face…Even if last night was another “onetime thing” and she never wants to see me again. If I don’t work up the fucking courage to tell her before we graduate, I know I’ll regret it forever.
Having made my decision, I roll carefully out of bed and tug on a pair of shorts.
Taking a deep breath, I cast one last look at her sleeping form before going to the desk and scribbling a note. Gone for a run. Be back soon. H xx. Then, I shrug on my discarded T-shirt, lace up my trainers, and quietly slip out the door.
As I run, I re-open the bond between Pudding and me. For obvious reasons, I’d put up shields last night, but now that I’m at a distance from Gwendolynne it seems safe to check in again.
You’re up early, Pudding says as soon as the bond snaps open.
“Just going to meet Danny,” I puff.
Danny? Pudding gives a murmur of approval. That’s good.
I’ve just turned in to my favorite running track, which loops around Green Park and St. James’s Park, when Danny joins me. We’ve run this route many a time, so he just merges onto the pathway and starts keeping pace beside me.
A good quarter of an hour passes before my chest begins to burn. I slow to a jog, then stop, bracing my hands on my knees. I’m more tired than I realized, since I—like Gwendolynne—didn’t get much rest last night.
“You good, mate?” Danny says. Usually I have more stamina.
“Yeah. Just tired.” I straighten and rub my temples, trying purposefully to slow my breathing. A faint headache is starting to brew somewhere behind my left eyeball.
He grins. “Not enough sleep?”
I shove his shoulder but say, “Something like that.” Glancing sidelong at him, I add, “What are you doing in London, anyway?”
Annoyingly, Danny doesn’t seem in the least bit out of breath. “Actually, to be honest, I was trying to find you.”
He’s giving me a funny look—full of pity and resignation—and I’m just about to ask him what’s going on when he digs into his pocket and pulls out a half-full syringe.
“Wait. What is that?” I eye the syringe. Why is he holding it? Is it some sort of drug he filched last night in order to get high for the party?
But if it’s just that, then why is he moving closer? Why is he holding it like that?
“What are you doing?” I back away. My head starts to throb in time with the alarms going off in my brain.
Danny doesn’t answer. Undeterred, he just continues advancing on me, even as I retreat. “What is that?” I say. “Danny? Danny!”
Still not speaking, he closes the distance, his expression one of dogged determination.
My heart is thumping, my back so clammy that my T-shirt is clinging, slicked against my sweat-soaked skin. Raising both hands, I shove him, hard, in the chest. “Get the fuck away from me!”
“Briggs.” He shakes his head. “I’m really sorry, mate.”
Then he lunges at me, slamming the syringe into my shoulder.
When I wake I’m in…my own dorm room? I’m groggy; it’s like I’m hungover. Pudding is here, on her custom-made perch, basking beneath the UV light I’d mounted over the top.
“Wong,” I spit, unamused. “You sedated me? Is this some sort of joke?” I’ve heard the stories, of course—final-years pulling last-minute pranks on each other before the year is out.
“Not a joke, Briggs.” He takes out some sort of device—a black box, identical to the type that I’d seen Gwendolynne with—and switches it on.
I gape at him, lost for words. At first, nothing happens. But then the still air inside my bedroom starts to waver like a mirage. It’s like the shimmering mirages you see rising from the roads during a heat wave.
“What the fuck is going on?” I say, stumbling backward. I jiggle the door handle, but it’s futile. It won’t move. I grind my teeth; Danny has locked us in. Inside my own goddamned room.
Twiddling a dial on his device, Danny gives a most nonchalant-looking shrug. “I’m opening a Void portal.”
“Opening a portal?” I splutter. How the hell does Danny know how to open a portal? When actual geniuses like Gwendolynne and Conall Peters couldn’t?
Since I can’t leave the room, I instead march over to Danny, trying to grab the box. “Seriously, Wong, stop this fucking farce this instant, or I’ll—”
With lightning-fast reflexes, Danny jerks it away. “You don’t understand, Briggs,” he snaps. “Surely you know what that scar is? The one on the back of your head?”
“The what on the back of my head?”
“Your scar.” Moving behind me, he shoves my head forward, pushing up the hair at the nape of my neck. “You were implanted. With the Source. Don’t you see?”
He lets me go, and I recoil, my mouth sagging open in horror. “I—what?” Shaking my head, I continue. “No. No. You’ve got it all wrong, you…” I trail off. My gut starts to churn, and I heave a breath, willing myself not to vomit.
“Nope. It’s true. You’re a tether.” He goes back to twiddling the dials on the box. “Your father, and Magecorp, have been cultivating you as one for decades.” His eyes flick to me, then back to the box.
My mind immediately jumps back to the fancy dinner in London, when Gwendolynne told me what tethers were. I sink onto my bed, everything inside me crumbling. “I’m…I’m a tether?” I can’t believe this, I don’t want to believe this.
And yet…
“Yeah, mate.” Danny pulls a sympathetic face. “Sorry.”
I finger the scar at the base of my skull. My limbs are numb, my hands shaking. I don’t—I can’t remember any of this, at all. The scar has been there for as long as I can remember. I’d never taken much notice…
“Fuck.” I clutch at my head, staring blankly at Danny. “Wait. Are you a tether?”
“No. I’m a caster.” He holds up the black box and shakes it a little. “I’m meant to tear open a hole to the Void with this thing. Tethers like you are designed to keep the Void open while Magecorp and Linksphere harvest magic.”
Trying to breathe, I scrunch my eyes shut, panic tearing through my veins. “But…that still doesn’t explain why you’re opening a portal. In my fucking bedroom.”
“I can explain,” Danny says, his voice rough around the edges. “It’s actually—”
He gets cut off, because at that moment, the very fabric of the world ruptures, a split appearing in midair. The center of it is so black, it seems to be absorbing all the light. A deluge of raw, unrefined magic floods from it, and I cough. It smells like ash.
It feels…wrong. I’m used to the magic that companies like Magecorp and Linksphere sell in neat packages—not this wild, unbridled energy that comes pouring from the Void.
“Danny,” I scream, doubling over, my hair blowing about in the Void’s maleficent wind.
As I crumple to my knees, the back of my skull prickles, expanding into a pounding pain, and all of a sudden a deluge of memories drenches me, like a tsunami.
Just before it pulls me under, the logical part of my brain clicks: Apparently crude, unprocessed Void magic can trigger deeply buried memories.
I’m three years old. I’m on a table, thrashing. But I can’t move because there are adults around me. They’re holding me down.
I’m three years old. A man in a white coat carries a syringe. The needle is pointy, and I am scared. He slams it into my arm. I scream. Everything goes black.
I’m three years old. I wake, groggy, a mask fitted over my face. The air I breathe is cold. I cry for my mama, but she doesn’t come. She isn’t allowed to come.
I’m three years old. My hair is shaved. My head feels spiky. The back of my neck hurts, and when I try to turn my head, stitches tug at my skin.
I’m four years old. It’s bedtime. My mother is hugging me. “I wish I didn’t have to do this, Harry,” she says. I squeeze her back. I don’t really understand. But by the time I wake in the morning, she’s no longer there to hug me.
The memories slam out of me again, and I’m weakened by their effects. Danny is hauling me through the cleft that’s splitting reality in two. And as I’m dragged through the rippling opening, all I can think about is Gwendolynne, back at that hotel room, reading the note that I scribbled…
Promising that I would come back.
Pudding stares at me from where she’s sitting, stone-still upon her perch.
“Pudding.” My voice is choked. “Help me.” I don’t know how she could even save me, but I’m rapidly running out of options.
She just tilts her head slightly, a look of despair clouding her beetle-black eyes.
I’m sorry, son, she says, as I’m pulled right into the Void.