56. Chapter 56 #2
Another rasping laugh. “I would have taken you sooner. I tried to do this the civil way. You were so alone in the library. So vulnerable.”
Kaed roared and was on top of him, gripping him by his lapels until he was dangling limply above the cot.
“You will speak plainly. Now. Stop toying with words, or I will break every pathetic bone in your body and leave you here to rot in the dark.” His voice was like the depths as he bellowed over Huxley.
Celeste didn’t flinch.
But Huxley cowered and no part of me could feel pity for him as he did.
How had he ever gotten the better of me? This snivelling sack of bones. I felt a little ashamed that I hadn’t been more prepared. Denora would be irked to find out my lessons had gone unused.
“Eryk … H-he convinced me to wait. Said he would provide an opportunity for me. For us.” Huxley’s bloody smile fell to me. “But he never said you were different.”
Different.
I had always been different. I knew that.
“Their hearts are thundering. They know something and have been keeping it from you.”
I looked between Celeste and Kaed. “What?” My voice was so small.
Kaed grasped his neck before I’d even finished. Huxley was as pale as a corpse as Kaed’s grip on him tightened.
Celeste didn’t move at all. She didn’t turn to him. Her eyes were on me as her son tried to speak. Kaed loosened his grip but didn’t release him.
“You have fae witch magic in you,” he forced through choking gurgles. “It’s old. Locked away. Hidden and powerful.” His lips curled around the last word as he looked past Kaed to me.
Words and sounds came together until their edges blurred.
Huxley had spoken, but I didn’t really hear it.
My ears were pounding as my blood thrummed in them, a waterfall of thoughts swimming through me in utter chaos.
What did he mean I had witch magic? I’d never had magic.
There was nothing there. Not even a trickle. Not even a weak fae light amount.
“How …?” My voice was as dry as paper.
“How should I know how you’ve witch magic in you?” Huxley shrugged, entirely uncaring as to the deluge of information he’d just heaped upon me.
No matter how many times he said it, it still didn’t make sense. Even if I could feel the veracity of it in the air.
Magic. Fae witch magic.
I looked between Kaed and Celeste. “Somebody tell me what’s going on.” I didn’t mean it to, but my voice came out rattled.
Kaed dumped Huxley’s body back down and came to take my face in his hands.
There was blood on his fingers, but I didn’t care. Something in me was vibrating and prying at the cage it was held within, and I needed Kaed’s touch.
“What does he mean, Kaed?” My whole body tried to pull apart, the fabric of my being was being razed like a catastrophic starburst wiping across my known horizon.
Something I had wanted all my life and it was there …
out of reach and—it couldn’t be there. I shook my head against the stabbing pain of all of this crashing into me.
Kaed’s jaw set as he looked at me, but it was Celeste who spoke.
“We knew—we thought we knew,” she corrected.
“You said you had no magic.” I had told Kaed that when I’d met him.
Celeste too. It had been my truth and they’d accepted it.
“We think that you might have some sort of lock. We just don’t know how that is possible.
” Her eyes fell to the faint scar on my wrist. “It’s not something we’ve ever come across.
W-we weren’t sure. We couldn’t have been sure …
” Seeing Celeste fumble for words unnerved me.
Her lips were pinched, and her eyes looked like stained glass; beautiful but fragmented and held together with dark lines.
Kaed’s fingers moved to caress the pale semi-circular mark on my wrist.
“Why … why wouldn’t—How?” I wasn’t sure any questions or answers would help me understand how my insides felt like they were rearranging, like I didn’t recognise all the parts of me.
“Huxley’s magic works by syphoning the power around him,” Celeste said. “He takes from others. He has his own source, but he absorbs other magic. And can sense a well of power.”
I didn’t know where Celeste was going with this, but I knew what she meant. I could sense Kaed’s power when he was about to use it.
“But I have none for him to syphon.” The habit of a lifetime clung to me. “Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice rose and it sank into Kaed as I snared his eyes with mine. “You knew … How could you not have said something—anything?”
“We didn’t know,” Celeste said again.
“There’s no way we could have known it was this.
” Kaed said. “Magic being locked away is unheard of. Fae witch magic … To have two things, one inconceivable and one so rare the Corners don’t even speak of it anymore …
Imogen. I should have told you.” His jaw tightened as he hung his head.
“I just didn’t want to dangle hope in front of you … ”
He was so still beside me, but I felt something in him ripple. His magic, it was reaching for me.
“But I … I don’t have anything like your—” I stopped myself. Was Celeste aware of his marks? My own scar was so small. So contained.
“Celeste is the one who healed me—after the witches—she knows.”
My heart clenched as I thought of the pain Kaed must have suffered. And how Celeste had healed every cut, scrape and wound I had and left no trace. How terrible must the damage the fae witches did to Kaed have been for the marks to linger like living anger, inked in black.
My hand cupped his face, and he leaned into it.
“How sentimental. Touching really.” Huxley broke the moment that flowed between Kaed and me.
“How do you know it’s fae witch magic?” I tried to sound confident when I looked at Huxley.
The hum of Kaed’s magic was searching for something inside me I couldn’t feel, even if it couldn’t let loose in the barren air.
Magic. In me. Mine.
“Now would be a good time for you to speak before I have to—”
“Yes, yes. I know. Before you threaten and torture me.” Huxley tried to wave a hand in dismissal, but the bones hung uselessly beside him.
“Speak.” Kaed’s command filled the room.
Huxley somehow managed to sit up in a ragged mess of blood and torn clothes. “I want safe passage out of here. And assurance that this one won’t kill me once I leave.” Huxley darted his eyes to Kaed.
“Or I could cleave the information we need straight from your mind. Cut out your tongue if we don’t need it and the middleman, so to speak.”
Huxley went bone white at Kaed’s words.
Simmering rage heated my skin at having Huxley invade the moment I felt should be mine. My magic. Pressure built behind my eyes as I focused the point of my rage into a blade.
“Fine,” I answered before Kaed did something permanent to him. I didn’t know what cleaving was, but judging by Huxley’s face, it wasn’t pleasant. “Fine. Done. Just tell me what you mean. How do you know it’s witch magic?” I asked again to ensure there was no wilful ignorance on Huxley’s part.
“Imogen, don’t. He’s a liar.” Kaed barely suppressed a snarl. I shook away from the hand he reached for me with.
There was no helping the scoff that tumbled from me.
“A little hypocritical coming from you right now.” I jabbed my eyes between Kaed and Celeste.
I wasn’t sure the anger that was tearing through me was really for them but I didn’t know how to contain it.
“Tell me.” I turned to Huxley, ignoring Kaed in front of me. “All of it. Tell me now.”
Huxley gave another sickly laugh and coughed up a gob of blood.
“That will leave a stain,” he said, ignoring my fury and looking at the crimson mark on his tunic, amongst far larger swathes of blood.
“Fae witch magic is so much more powerful than fae magic.” He wiped the red from his lips with a gruesome, bloody tongue before letting his eyes fall to Kaed for just a moment.
Could he sense his magic too? “It draws from the earth. Not the being. And I could taste it. Like honied wine, in your blood. It was agony to hear it sing to me, to call to me, and not be able to touch it. Who hid your power?” His eyes moved from rabid, frenzied hunger to wistful curiosity.
Back and forth. Like I was a puzzle he wanted to play with.
I looked to Kaed, to Celeste, for answers.
“We don’t know who locked your magic, dear.” Celeste’s voice was so gentle, sorrowful with apologies she didn’t owe me. “It’s not something anyone has ever … Until Huxley confirmed you actually had magic we weren’t even sure it was a lock. This is the first I’ve ever seen of something like this.”
My fingers traced the cool, moon-pale scar of my skin and a fever of panic ran through me. If this was the first anyone knew of a lock on magic … would anyone know how to unlock it?
When I looked back at the room, tears had begun to blur my vision.
“I can’t,” I breathed in a rush. This was too much. There was no air in here. I wasn’t really fae. I wasn’t magical. I never had been.
I shoved past the stone door and ran blindly into the darkness beyond.
Wet, gurgling laughs from Huxley echoed around me as I ran.
I don’t know how long I sat amongst the swaying trees, their roots beneath me more solid than any part of my world felt right now. The sun had slipped lower in the sky, and everything was painted in gold around me.
I felt Kaed’s magic before I saw him.
He stood a few paces from me, as though he was afraid to come too close. Like I might run off again.
Magic. My magic. Fae witch magic.
None of it made sense.
“What does this mean?” I looked up to Kaed as I wiped away the last of the tears I had finally let loose. I wanted to stand, but I wasn’t sure what parts of me were mine to command.
Kaed didn’t have the answers. I knew that.
“It changes nothing. You are the same person I met. This changes nothing.” But it did. It changed everything. “I should have told you. I should have said something. But I know what it feels like to hope for something and never get it. To miss a part of yourself and wish it could be different.”