Chapter 28
twenty-eight
. . .
Ever
Movement. Voices. Familiar voices. A voice that stirs a memory of comfort and safety, so I give in to my body and let myself drift back out to oblivion.
It’s quiet here. Peaceful. There’s an ease, a lightness, but something is pulling me back. Going around and around, pulling me in, bringing me closer to something before I lose the ability to grasp it again.
It’s all a haze. In and out.
Over and over again.
But the next time I open my eyes, I want to keep them open. I remember Ten. I remember his warm, rich eyes, and I don’t want to close mine to them.
“Hi.” My lips stick together as I try the words, words that scrape my throat as I speak. My tongue is dry, and a thirst suddenly hits, followed by a dizzy spell that makes me want to fall back under all over again.
As I watch him, the movement and the gentle roll of the floor beneath us sparks fear in my gut. I know that feeling. We’re on a ship.
Fenix.
Pain. Blood. Fighting.
Images that I wish weren’t memories invade and tinge any sense of comfort I’ve just found as I replay them in my mind.
“Where are we?” My hands cradle my head as I try to breathe through the nausea. My eyes crack open again, and I search the room, only to find Kalan on a stool at the other end of the tight room.
“Heading home. You’re safe. We’re all safe.” Ten’s voice is placating, calming, but there’s something in his eyes. He takes my hand in his, but the usual hum and energy between us isn’t there. Just… nothing.
“What?” I look down to where we’re connected, and wrap my fingers around his, waiting for the usual flashes or pain to start, but they don’t come. My heart begins to thunder before he lets go. “Ten?”
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head and slides his eyes away from me.
I look to Kalan, and then back to Ten, and check around the room one more time. “Where’s Crimson?”
Numb.
Cold.
Confused.
I’ve been out of it for days, apparently, only regaining full consciousness now, the day we’re due to make it to Estereah.
It feels wrong. Everything feels wrong. And the tension in the small cabin only serves to keep my frayed nerves scattered.
Ten’s grief is written over his body, the drop of his head, and the smile that he’s trying to show for me, but I know him better than that.
“We’ll be arriving soon. Come on.” Kalan leads us from the boat into a quiet village port, where a few people are working, hauling catches and loading supplies.
It’s no market town. “Where are we?” I’ve barely conquered my dizziness, so I’m pleased to be leaving the ship, and hopefully never returning to where we’ve run from.
“South of Estertor. Not so many questions here. Nestergarth is busy—too many people watching.” Kalan nods to Ten, before he strides off, disappearing behind the building running alongside the small harbour.
I can sense Ten’s anxiety vibrating around him like a shimmer in the sun.
But as I raise my eyes to his, blood, blades, and dirt all race to cloud my vision, and flashes, heat, and light invade as the memories assault me.
I turn away before more take over, and my eyes find quiet on the crystal blue waters.
These visions remind me of what it was like before—before Kirrasia.
When I thought I was going mad.
My fingers curl my hand into a fist, keeping my mother’s ring firmly in place. It’s warm now, like whatever happened at that camp—whatever I did—awakened a part of it.
There’s no pendant at my throat.
No more Fenix.
And Crimson lost her life.
Guilt and sorrow kick me in the gut as I try to wrap my mind around it all. Crimson, the girl I was envious of, who I never really liked, and who certainly didn’t like me. Yet, she cared for Ten enough to help him, go to battle with him, and she gave her life for us all.
“Don’t. Don’t pull away from me.” Ten’s voice sounds loudly in my head, ringing around as I try to find something to give me direction.
“I’m not. I’m confused. I can’t…” My head pounds, each thud threatening to split my skull, each hammer blow beating in time with my heart. I draw a deep breath as if that might ease the throbbing.
Tired.
Drained.
Empty.
Being out of it for days hasn’t helped. I feel like a shell, an empty vessel compared to that night.
There’s been no real time to talk, other than explaining the obvious.
Kalan’s barely spoken to me, and, really, Ten hasn’t said anything beyond answering the direct questions I’ve asked.
The burden of their time in Nehandun at the hands of Fenix is still so fresh and heavy that it’s drowned everyone’s spirits.
Time. That’s what we all need to recover and heal, and it’s nothing more permanent. At least that’s what I hope.
Because there’s a huge part of my memory that I can’t fill in, and every time I replay the moments I do remember over in my mind, it feels like I’m about to set off an avalanche inside of me, strong enough to bury everything I am.
A deep sense of foreboding uncoils around that space in time. I know it. But the answers as to why are still as blank as ever.
“What happened to me?” I ask him again, even though we’ve already been over this.
“We don’t know. That isn’t a lie. I’ll never lie to you,” Ten reminds me.
On one level, I know that. He’s shown me time and time again that he’s here for me. Despite the short time we’ve known each other, what we have been through and endured together equates to more than the simple passage of time.
But with no power and no magic, my very foundation feels cracked—wedged open and vulnerable. And that includes where Ten and I go from here.
I can’t feel him. I can’t sense him. I can’t talk to him through our connection because that no longer exists. When I touch him, everything that was between us has now vanished, and it strikes a new fear in me.
“I spoke to Kalan, gave him the message to get you out—” I start to recount my own memories of the night.
“Went to bed but didn’t sleep. I escaped the tent using magic.
And I found Fenix. And that’s it.” I repeat the events as if they are breadcrumbs in my mind showing me the way to something.
Only it’s just out of my reach and turns to smoke and shadow in my mind as I grasp for it.
I know there’s something there. Something big. But it’s terrifying. Do I want to understand the gaps in my memory, the gaps in this chain of events that knocked me out for days, and burned my pendant into my flesh?
“What do we do now?” I ask him. There are too many big questions in my mind, so a small question like that is all I can bear.
“We need to go back to Kirrasia. I have to tell Crimson’s parents…” Ten’s jaw tenses, and he looks away.
It’s his turn to pull away, and I instinctively reach for our connection, but there’s nothing. Not even a flicker of recognition.
Does he blame me? I didn’t save her—his oldest friend.
We fall into silence, the questions forming their own wall between us.
“Come.” We both start at Kalan’s voice, but we’re quick to follow.
“Where are we going?” I ask as he walks us away from the harbour area.
“Do you remember what you told me, what you saw?” he asks, the first real, direct question to me.
His face is drawn and as serious as usual.
That memory is fuzzy, but I do remember the look on his face when he told me my parents were dead, that I’d been lied to my whole life, and that he betrayed me.
And yet, I trusted that he’d get Ten out.
“I know I needed Ten and Crimson safe. Out. And it had to be that night.”
“You spoke to me. Through the trees, somehow, telling me what you needed me to do as we ate with the Usher and Fenix.”
How did I do that?
Ten picks up my hand, a simple gesture that would have come with painful consequences just a few weeks ago.
Now, I cling to it. Squeezing it as if the touch we can share now is the only lifeline I can see, and I tether myself to it.
“I want to go home.”
“We will. We will get back to The Court, Ever, I promise—”
“No. Not The Court. My home.” I look at Ten and see the hurt streaked across his face.
Everything is a jumble and mess, and I’ve not even addressed the pain of what Ten and I were forced to do to one another.
The only place I can think of where I could possibly battle those wounds is home. Safe. Although I’m beginning to question if I’ll ever be able to feel that again.
Fenix is dead.
My brother is dead.
He gave me so little reason to consider him family, but he was my brother.
My brother is dead.
My parents are dead. They have been, for all this time.
But Lyle isn’t.
“Kyra is with Lyle. Calix, too,” Kalan offers. “We’ll set out for them.”
“Seriously?” I check, because this is a ray of hope, the first one I’ve felt since opening my eyes.
“We’ll take the long path, but we can stop there before heading to The Court.” He nods at me, as if he’s encouraging me to agree.
“I don’t have magic, Kalan. It’s gone. I don’t see—” My mind trips over a handful of visions, flickering together.
Just like they did before the Transference, but I shake them off.
“Whatever happened, it broke something inside of me. My power, it isn’t there.
” I reach for the place at my throat where the pendant sat, the pad of my forefinger now tracing the raised and bumpy skin that bears the mark of its destruction.
He grunts a sort of response before walking off.
I don’t follow for a moment, letting the words weigh on me before starting after him.