Chapter 24
HAVE MERCY ON ME
ELLIOT
Secora comes into focus slowly. I don’t know if she left the memory sooner than I did, but she doesn’t look half as ruined as I feel.
I blink and focus all my energy on her features until they sharpen to their finest details.
The tiny freckle next to her ear. The strand of hair that’s fallen from her ponytail.
The cracks in her lips from this dry weather, or perhaps from being kissed too much in the past twelve hours.
“Secora,” I say. My voice sounds too loud and too quiet at the same time.
She doesn’t look at me. She’s focused on the memory stone, extracting the neon yellow memory with her fingers. It thrashes as it leaves the warm stone.
It should be red, I think.
For blood.
For murder.
For rage and hatred and—
“Did you know?” I ask. “Did you know, all this time, that it was me?”
She still doesn’t look at me. She drops the yellow memory into its jar, carefully screwing the lid into place. I try to be patient. I wait until she’s tucked it back into her bag, but when she grabs the next memory—the last one—I speak again, louder.
“Did you know?”
“I owe you this last memory,” she says. Her voice sounds fuzzy, far away, like she’s speaking from across a canyon.
We’re sitting in the same patch of dirt from before, separated only by this black memory stone. We haven’t moved, but we suddenly feel a thousand miles apart.
“Once you watch it, you can decide,” she says. Her words tremble, even as her hands don’t. “I can take it all back, and I’ll never make you see it again.”
“I don’t want to watch the memory,” I say. I try to sound calm, but it’s impossible. “I want to know if you knew.”
“Of course I knew,” she says. She sounds miserable and angry and desperate, and still, she won’t look at me. She’s trying to uncap the jar, but it’s stuck, and that only pisses her off more.
“You said I wasn’t a killer,” I say. “That first time I came to the manor, you said—”
“You’re not,” she says. “That wasn’t a lie. You aren’t a killer, Elliot. I made you one.”
“No, you didn’t. I made that decision all by myself. If I couldn’t handle it, if that’s why I made you take them—”
“Just watch the memory, Elliot,” she interrupts.
“Take it, and you’ll understand. This last one is when you came to see me that night.
You’ll see how upset you were. You were scared and I promised to make it better.
You opened your mind because you trusted me, Elliot, and I violated that trust. I stole your memories because I was fifteen and scared and you had just ruined your whole life for me!
I didn’t know what to do. Okay? I loved you, and I didn’t know what to do. ”
“Secora,” I say. She’s curled into herself, still clinging to the jar and avoiding my gaze. “Look at me.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Elliot,” she says. She hugs the jar against her stomach. “It was mine. Everything comes back to me and I tried to fix it, and I think I did. It was all fine until you came back, and I don’t…I never should have made that deal with you. I was just…”
“Breathe, honey,” I say. I extract the jar from her clenched fingers and place it in the dirt. Then, I take her into my lap, pressing her chest against mine, until I swear I can feel her heart beating against mine. “I am so sorry, Secora.”
“Don’t hug me,” she says. But when I loosen my grip, she surges closer, burying her head against my chest. Her hands clench the fabric of my shirt, and a wild sob wracks from deep within her soul. “I don’t deserve it.”
“You deserve every good thing in the world,” I whisper. “That’s what I thought at sixteen. That’s what I think now.”
Tears burn my eyes and I let them fall.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I am sorry for everything bad that happened to you, but especially the parts that were my fault. I’m sorry for making it worse.”
“You were the good, Elliot,” she says, words muffled against my shirt. “Then. Now.”
We don’t talk much for the remainder of the trek, but I keep Secora’s hand in mine.
Though she hasn’t explicitly said, I know she’s waiting for the fallout.
Maybe she thinks I’ll blame her for what I did to Harrison.
Or that I’ll hate myself so much for it, I’ll beg her to take the memories again.
Maybe she thinks I’ll abandon her once we get back to the Night Realm, that I’ll need distance or time or a chance to think things through.
Though I haven’t explicitly said, I couldn’t feel more at peace than I do now. Ever since I laid eyes on Secora in that vampiric hellhole, my world has felt broken. There were pieces missing from an otherwise perfect puzzle. Now, the puzzle has flipped, but all the pieces are in place.
It makes a better picture than before, since she’s part of it.
“The Cursed Grounds were first used for the gargoyles,” I say.
I’m sure Secora knows the lore already, but I’m desperate to end the quiet.
And as much as I’d like to create a to-do list of wrongs to right, I doubt Secora would welcome that conversation.
“Two hundred years ago, the council made a deal with the Flight Realm. A certain harpy tribe had become a problem, terrorizing their lands. The council offered to resolve it for them, in exchange for this little slot of land—and more importantly, the black sand that’s only ever been found here. ”
Secora nods along. She’s staring straight ahead, so I can’t tell if she’s interested or just humoring me. I continue regardless.
“The council arranged a meeting with this rebellious tribe, under the guise of an alliance. So the harpies show up, only to find no witches. Just this ashy sand and a massive black table. They wait, and wait, and wait, but no witches come. Eventually, the harpies get pissed and decide to leave…only to realize they can’t.
” I pause for dramatic effect, and Secora’s lips twitch into the tiniest smile.
“Their wings aren’t working. Too late, the harpies realize they’ve been betrayed.
The council had laced the table with magic, cursing anyone who touched it to turn to sand and stone.
By nightfall, they were all completely calcified, their bodies carved from the same material that cursed them.
The harpy tribe had fallen, and the Flight Realm was safe once more. ”
“Is this your round-about way of warning me not to touch the table?” Secora asks. Now, she’s smiling for real.
“They deactivated that magic ages ago.”
“That’s what they told the harpies,” she quips.
“Exactly,” I say. I glance down at her, enjoying the tinge of pink on her cheeks.
Up ahead, I can just see the glimpse of black stone through the trees. It feels like we’ve been walking toward this destination for hours, days, weeks. Yet now that we’re here, it feels entirely too soon.
Secora’s steps falter. She stops and squeezes my hand hard enough she might break a bone.
“Secora?”
“You don’t have to do this,” she says. She looks up at me and swallows. “Those memories were yours, Elliot. I’d kept them because I thought it was best for you. I never should have bartered them. It wasn’t fair.”
“This was never just about the memories,” I say.
“We can go back down,” she presses. “I’ll tell Sebastian it was a dead end. I’ll pretend I never heard about the Cursed Grounds or this missing ingredient. You don’t owe me anything, Elliot.”
“I know,” I say. When her eyes widen, I smile. I keep one hand around hers, but I use the other to cup her face, trailing my thumb along her lower lip. “My mama’s punishment has gone on long enough. She has her reasons for despising the vampires, but I have mine for admiring them.”
“Is it that right?” she asks skeptically. “That’s news to me.”
“They welcomed you, Secora.” I let my words hang in the air for a moment before continuing. “After the witches failed you for too long, it was the vampires who gave you a chance. For that, I will always admire them.”
“Elliot,” she whispers, eyes filling with tears. “If anyone discovers what you’ve done—and they probably will—your life will be ruined. Do you understand that?”
“Secora,” I say. I press firmly against her lip, curling until my thumb meets her teeth. “You’ve spent enough time worrying about me.”
Her eyes flutter shut and her breath falls into a steady rhythm.
“Have mercy on me,” I whisper. “Let me take care of you, just this once.”
When she opens her eyes, something has shifted. I don’t know how to describe it, exactly, but it feels a bit like trust, and a lot like love.
“Okay, Elliot,” she says. “Okay.”
The Cursed Grounds are as bleak as the one other time I was here.
Mama showed it to me shortly after she became Madam Lyrie.
Looking back, I realize she was trying to sway my future, to pull me into her shadow without forcing me there.
She showed me all the exciting and fascinating secrets of the council.
The location of the Cursed Grounds. The intricacies of the neutral territory spell.
The many, many ways in which we held more power than anyone knew to fear.
Back then, I wasn’t particularly interested. I suppose I’m still not all that interested, save for the information that’s useful to the woman in front of me. Secora wanders the desolate land of the Cursed Grounds, scuffing her boot through the black sand.
Where the past few miles have been packed with lush trees and bushes and flowers and weeds…
the Cursing Grounds are stripped. It’s a half-mile stretch of land, covered not by dirt but by ashy sand.
Trees line the far edges of the circular space, bowed, leaning as from this wretched place as their roots will allow.
In the center, the massive stone table reflects the setting sun. We only have a couple hours of daylight left. We’ll get one more night in our shared tent, but then, we’ll be forced to return to reality. A reality I’m not sure I understand anymore.
Secora kneels a few feet from the table, using magic to move ashen sand into three containers.
It’s excessive. We won’t need one container for the ritual I’m thinking, let alone three, but it’s better to be safe.
If we need more—for the sunwalker spells or something else entirely—it might not be simple to get it.
Once Mama realizes my loyalties are closer to this woman than to her, she will likely hide this place.
I run my tongue over the back of my teeth as I step forward to collect the first jar from Secora.
As she continues filling the next container, I do a quick protection spell over this one before putting it in my pack.
Even if I take an epic tumble down this mountain, the glass container won’t break.
I don’t think the sand, on its own, is particularly dangerous, but I’m not interested in risking it.
When Secora hands me the next container, she doesn’t turn back to the final jar. She watches me, brown eyes trailing from my face to my feet to my hands. Back to my face. I wait for her to say something or ask something, but she doesn’t. She only looks and looks and looks.
Even without uttering a word, I somehow know what she’s thinking: everything is about to change.
I can’t have Secora and keep my life in the Day Realm.
At least, not as it’s been. I’ll have to confess to Harrison’s murder.
I’ll have to convince Mama to lift Secora’s death sentence.
Worse, Mama will have to accept I’m a killer.
That I’m in love with her enemy’s greatest weapon.
I don’t want to believe Mama would let the council kill me, but maybe she would. Maybe I’ll have to go into hiding, right alongside Secora and her vampire clan.
Secora finally opens her mouth, but whatever she’s going to say, I’m not ready to hear it. For once, I’m the one leaning away.
“We have another night,” I say. I busy myself with the second jar, readying it for the protection spell. “We don’t need to figure everything out right now.”
“Elliot…”
“One more night,” I say. I clutch the container in my hands. “One more night to be together and not have to think about the rest of the world. I know we’ll have to, but just…not yet, all right?”
I feel like a coward. Maybe I am. But when Secora sighs, it’s a happy sound, and I can’t bring myself to feel sorry at all.
“One more night,” she agrees.
She turns back to the final container. The steady sound of sand against glass fills the silence, until finally, we’re ready to leave.