Chapter 30
thirty
. . .
Ever
Ican’t sleep.
All I can do is hold onto Aten’s hand and replay the memory of that night, over and over again, how I pulled all that energy and took magic from the people in my way.
Took from Fenix, even the Usher, and opened myself up to everything: Novandia, Aslendrix, and let it free, let it riot through me and spill out, nothing and nobody able to contain it.
How that level of power was all-consuming and addictive and utterly terrifying.
I could have done anything I wanted, gone anywhere in the world, lost myself to the unknown. Forever.
The words the Maker said to me when I had tea with her, those cryptic words that made no sense, begin to unravel in my mind like a tightly coiled strand of truth that I haven’t found the end of.
All I have to do is tug, and it will be there, the answer, blazing at me.
But I’m not sure I want to pull at that thread and see the answer.
A first for me. Shying away from finding the truth.
The storm is building. I can feel it. Even without my magic, whatever happened in Nehandun wasn’t the end.
Maybe I’ve unlocked something that was meant to be, and maybe I’ve never had any say in any of this, and I was destined for this path, set in motion by Aslendrix and my parents.
But I reject that. I hate the idea of fate or destiny.
Surely our actions and decisions have a bigger part to play than what Aslendrix or Novandia intend for us?
My mind strays away from the philosophical and back to the facts as I know them. They might still be problematic, but they are events I can grasp and do something with—the revelations about Fenix, Kalan, my parents—all the new facts as I now see them.
Aerith and Elex: their names, now a part of me, yet still as abstract as they were the first time I heard them.
What they were fighting for, their incendiary actions are still veiled and grey to me.
Did they really go to war over power and who had it, or was it that they resented their lives being dictated to?
How long has the Usher been planning this, and was Fenix the first he succeeded with? What else was he hiding from the rest of Kirrasia by removing the books from the library?
Thinking about these questions pulls me off the course of my own personal journey and further into despair. None of this will matter, and pales into the background when I remember what I saw in the Usher’s mind.
It’s clear, even if I hate it, that I have a part to play in this, still.
But with no magic, I have no clue how I’m meant to fight.
I have nothing now, except my knowledge of what the Usher really wants to achieve and his intentions to use the army and fight The Court in Kirrasia to grant him access to the Transference stone and take all the magic and power locked in the stone over hundreds of years to become God-like and rival the Goddess and her brother.
I turn my head and look at the outline of Ten, sleeping next to me.
Stars, I love him. He’s done all of this to see me safe, to see me whole, and it’s cost him so much.
I haven’t told him half of what I’ve uncovered.
We haven’t had the space. And now, it’s as if there’s a chasm of haunted pain between us, the new barrier to replace that of touch and the physical pain that accompanied it.
The uncertainty of what we might be shown—a glimpse into a future unknown—isn’t the threat or danger now.
The memories of what we did to one another are.
When I fell from the horse, when the memories came back, I didn’t just get my memories back.
Somehow, I saw what happened with Fenix and Crimson.
Like, I was watching from my unconsciousness.
Aslendrix showed me those events, showing me how the fight played out.
Crimson was winning because Fenix didn’t have his power during Aslendrix’s reign.
I’d weakened him and absorbed some of his power. But it still wasn’t enough.
It should have been me to stop him. I should have stopped him, and because I didn’t, she’s dead. Ten’s friend, Calix’s twin, is dead.
My brother is dead.
I hate him. There was never a moment that I didn’t hate him, but there was a part of me that wished he weren’t the way he was, that we could have been something other than enemies. It might have been different, but that wasn’t meant to be.
I close my eyes. “Why did you give me all this power just to take it away again? What happened to me when I channelled my energy and turned into that pillar of light? Did I give you all your magic back? Did your brother steal it?” The questions unfold, one after the other, as if Aslendrix can answer any of them.
All I do is squeeze Ten’s hand tighter as I try to wrap my mind around all of this, but I only spiral further.
With no ability to close off my mind and find sleep, I pull away from Ten, moving inch by inch so as not to disturb him, and escape from the blanket.
I move as softly as possible towards the still-glowing embers and place one of the logs onto the coals, watching as sparks dance into the air like orange fireflies.
“Can’t sleep?” Kalan’s gruff voice is soft through the dark.
“Apparently not.”
I can only make out the shadowed shape of him, sitting across the small camp area, over the flames that are reluctantly climbing over the log I added to the smoky fire.
The flames give off no heat yet, and outside of the warmth of the blanket and the constant of Ten’s warmth, a chill settles over me, urging me to move closer to the fire.
Kalan doesn’t say anything, just sits in the darkness of the night.
I try to remember what he told me the day he brought Ten and Crimson to camp.
I was so angry at him when I realised the lies had ventured much further than I’d ever imagined.
And then he delivered the news about my parents being dead.
But he had said that he wanted us both safe.
Protected. Yet Fenix is dead. For twenty years, Kalan has kept his word to my parents, for his own reasons, perhaps, but within weeks of us meeting for the first time, one of us is dead.
Maybe Kalan was right to keep us apart—secret from one another. This is the consequence, isn’t it?
“I’m sorry about Fenix.” I don’t want to say the words.
He doesn’t deserve my sadness, but Kalan had a different relationship with him.
And I can only imagine that he would have watched over him and cared for him in the same manner he did for me.
He passed on my father’s pendant to him.
He might have given him more information than he did me, but if he was charged with looking after us both, keeping us both safe, then he can’t be content right now.
“Hmm,” he grunts, not particularly talkative.
“Did you know I’d be able to bring a Jarkoreth back from the dead? Is that part of a Fifth’s power? Death?”
I’ve come back to this thought time and time again.
Death.
It was one I hadn’t explored with Kalan.
But it’s getting harder to stay mad at the man sitting across the fire from me, especially after what he said about the brooch being sacred to Shepherds.
Maybe he has much more to tell me if I can open myself up to that possibility.
A staggeringly large part of me hopes I can, and a stranglehold on my heart clenches my chest as I chide myself for wanting to grasp hold of that.
Instead, I let silence descend, as if the trees themselves have hushed themselves, ready for this conversation, wanting the answers to whisper through their branches alone. But as hard as I listen, I can’t hear their magic on the wind.
“The Jarkoreth are creatures of protection. They are often… misconstrued as monsters.” I can’t imagine how anyone might see them as anything other than a monster, given their design.
Although I’ve only seen one in a partial state of decay and death, surely in life, they would be just as fierce and instil fear even at the mention of them.
“The power of a Fifth is still a rare gift. And part of that is that their power is not confined. Every Fifth is different and your ability to raise the Jarkoreth from the dead could never have been predicted. Nor has anything similar been recorded.”
“Recorded?”
“Yes. All Kirrian training trials are recorded. It is the Elementals’ duty to keep these archives.”
“But there is so little about a Fifth.”
“The Usher, with help, has been liberating texts. Helping to find, Stars knows what, in the records. Something or someone to help his plan.”
His words fill in the gaps I’ve struggled with. And I wonder if there are more answers in the text kept in Fenix’s cabin.
“Were you connected to others as you raised the Jarkoreth, Ever?”
“Sorry, umm, yes. Yes, I was.”
“The Jarkoreth protect. They protect the forest. There are plenty of people who have nefarious intent towards the woods or Aslendrix. Jarkoreth have a way of reading, of sensing, a person’s intent.
It may have recognised me, but you didn’t raise it because you are a bringer of death. I don’t believe death is your power.”
I let that sink in. All of it.
There has been so much death around me, hearing someone older and perhaps wiser, confirm that death isn’t my calling card, lets a part of me rest.
“What could my parents do? What were their gifts?” I venture the question, brave enough to hear it, and wish I could read records of their training.
“Ever, I wasn’t close with your parents. They chose me for the task they entrusted me with, not because we were close, or sworn to one another, but because of who I was.”
“So you don’t know their power?”