Chapter 33
The lights went out; the soul wounds went untended; but still, she hoped.
The crowd went into an uproar, frantically trying to understand what to do, where to go, how to escape.
But there was no escape. Dwindle was ripe for the picking, and the Prince was coming.
They would have to go through Shadow Woods or Irk Road to even hope to evade this onslaught, which put them in even more danger.
We were all sitting ducks.
Anger shot through me at the thought. All this time, Edge had reported no sign of Thanadyn. He must have gone into hiding, gathering what smidgen of power he had left only to descend upon this town when it rose back up on its feet after a century. How dare he? I would have none of it.
My magic purred at the anger.
What do you think you’ll be able to do? I asked my magic. Grow another squash mountain to topple on top of an ancient Prince?
Perhaps, my magic said.
Impossible, I replied.
“To your cottages!” commanded Hesper, herding folk into their homes, offering words not of condolence but assurance she would do everything she could to ensure their safety.
She had fought off legions of shadows, but what about the Prince himself?
Would she even stand a chance? Helplessness took over. How could we not have known?
“Clara! With me!” A large hand grasped mine and pulled me from the cacophony. I turned to wrench myself free but saw Mabel there, running wildly through the crowd. Had she been here all along?
“I need to stay with Hesper!” I called out, but her grip remained tight.
“Safer in here,” she yelled back, ducking into a side street. She bluntly shouldered open a door, the wood splintering onto the stones below. Gruffly, she pulled me into the abandoned cottage, and I coughed as dust and cobwebs flew into my mouth.
My eyes barely adjusted to the dank room before Mabel moved the broken door into place, casting us both into darkness. Only a sliver of light made it through the broken window in the wall.
“Mabel, I have to get back to town and help. Hesper needs me. Dwindle needs me.”
All was silent. The world outside even seemed to mute.
The air felt too thick in here, the shadows too dense.
“Mabel?”
A match lit, and Mabel’s face appeared close to mine. I yelped, grabbing my chest.
“You scared me,” I said quickly. “Look, we have to go. Thank you for bringing me to safety, but there are people outside and—”
Mabel put a single finger up to her mouth, shushing me. Her grin went too wide, and my heart began to shrink in on itself.
“You’ve released the bind on your magic.”
“What?” I stumbled back, and Mabel’s arm reached out to right me, her grip harsh, her skin freezing cold to the touch.
“Hmm.” Mabel sniffed the air.
“You’re scaring me,” I said, trying to reach for anything behind me I could use to ward her off. What was going on? Mabel had always been so kind, but everything about this was wrong.
“Do you know why Thanadyn did what he did?” Mabel said slowly.
“I—I—”
“I asked, do you know why he did what he did?” Mabel’s voice lost any hint of the sweetness it usually held; only an echo of her remained. “Answer me!” she commanded, and the darkness seemed to coalesce.
“For power.” I tripped over my words. Nothing made sense.
The world outside was falling apart, and here was Mabel—the kind ogre who had comforted me when I first arrived, gave me clothes, ran the library.
Yet her presence made my skin crawl. Had the shadows already gotten to her?
Would they warp all of Dwindle just as the stories said they already had?
“Power, my dear, is never the full story,” Mabel’s voice dripped with calmness, a warped sense of charm.
Every syllable felt like it wanted to creep under my skin and rot there.
“Thanadyn was much like you. Brimming with magic, hopeful, but his heart magic showed itself in healing. Not physical wounds, but the ones that run deeper. Soul wounds. For a peaceful kingdom needed folk at peace. He spent his days healing sadness, grief, loss. But it was not enough…” Mabel’s voice seethed, echoing around the room.
Never enough, that old voice in my mind agreed.
“The fae grew hungry, and no matter how much magic Thanadyn expended, he could never root out jealousy, discontent, greed. His magic was spent fruitlessly for long ages. Finally, after too many days spent tending to the soul wounds of folk who had naught but ill will in their hearts, Thanadyn’s heart magic turned inward.
Instead of healing, he stoked. Turning a soul wound into a living, festering thing. And it felt good.
“He had been alive for too long. He’d wasted too much of his magic. He saw beings for what they were: hopeless. Why not spark them into their true natures then? On that day, withering magic was born. On that day, Thanadyn came into his true self.”
My heart shrunk in on itself, cowering in the deepest corners of my soul.
“You can always ch-choose light, Ma-Mabel,” I sputtered out the words, fear shredding its way through my body.
“Light can turn into darkness, just like that.” Mabel snapped her fingers; the match went out.
Heavy darkness shrouded me, muffling my senses.
“Withering magic crept its way into Starfall bit by bit, being by being, plant by plant, for the magic had an endless fuel. Fear. Hope and happiness? They are momentary. Fear? That will always return.”
The flip side of a what if, my heart said sadly.
It isn’t true, I pleaded. Don’t listen.
“It would have been easy, you know.” The voice was right next to me.
My heart went ice cold. “With endless amounts of fear, withering magic could have taken over the whole world. But then there was Eldrene.” The voice went sharp, disjointed.
“She sacrificed her magic to the land, binding me and my magic within heart magic’s hold. But—”
The voice became singsong. “Hope cannot hold on forever. Her power is waning, and Thanadyn grows stronger.”
“How do you know any of this?” My voice shook, my heart quavered.
“Because I am Thanadyn.”
That’s when the screaming started outside.
The room turned black. Not just lightless, but a thick, suffocating darkness.
Thanadyn’s shadows.
I ran for the door, but it was jammed shut.
I made for the window, but my foot found a discarded cushion, and I flew through the air, crashing hard onto the ground.
Panting, I tried to get back up, to run, to scream, to alert anyone or anything that things had gone very, very wrong.
Before I could, a shadow—blacker than the darkness swarming me—wrapped itself over my mouth, suffocating my attempt.
There was nowhere to go. I couldn’t see nor hear anything save for the sound of my labored breathing and rapid heartbeat. I struggled against the shadow, clawing and biting at it, but nothing worked.
Thanadyn was in this room with me. He was in this town with me. And his shadow would kill me without anyone knowing.
“Enough,” a voice said. The shadow unlatched itself from me, and as it left, I could feel it sucking air from my lungs, like sipping through a straw.
I hunched over, trying and failing to gather more than a pinprick of air back into me.
No one will be hearing my screams.
Another burst of shadows came at me, throwing me back onto the ground and pinning my wrists and ankles down. My head cracked against the hard wooden floor, and a liquid puddled against my head.
Not liquid. Blood.
The tiny bits of air I managed to gulp down weren’t enough. I fought against the restraints, but the shadowy bonds held fast.
I won’t be escaping.
“Why?” I barely rasped into the void. “Why darkness?”
Deep laughter echoed all around me, filling up my senses and sounding in my head like hammers on hard metal.
Please, I begged my heart. Help me.
But I couldn’t stop worrying over the folk outside, over Hesper, and old thoughts were growing around my heart like briars.
Never enough.
It was always going to end in pain.
I have failed.
My magic fluttered feebly in my chest then died out completely.
Familiar emptiness again.
“Why, she asks,” Thanadyn drawled, his voice everywhere all at once, any sound of Mabel melted away.
Only a choked, haunted whisper remained.
“Because darkness is all that we have left at the end of the day. You know that well, Clara. No matter how bright the day may shine, night will come. Humanity is no different. Such injustice everywhere all the time. There is no use in fighting the inevitable.”
Do anything, I begged my magic. But I spoke only to the hollowness inside of me.
“Even your pitiful life is proof of that,” he said with an eerie happiness.
I stayed silent. I didn’t want to know.
“Eldrene made a fatal mistake, you see. When she bound me in heart magic, I was able to sense its movements. For countless years, the magic lay dormant, allowing me to eat away at it slowly—fear always found its way back into the soil. But then, heart magic awoke; the earth and the Fates had found a new soul to bestow that rare magic within. I had to intervene, of course. If heart magic renewed, then my task would become impossible. So I paid a visit to your mother.”
“I don’t understand.” My voice was barely a whisper.
“You will bear a child of great power. Never again will you know the taste of nothingness, for she will bring you everything. You will be everything.”
My eyes flew open at that. Those words, they were familiar but distant, like trying to recall a book from long ago, when you could only see the letters on the page but not the words.
Then buttercups flashed across my mind, and I knew.
The seer who’d come to my mother before my birth.
Those were the words that ruined my life.
And Thanadyn knew them.
Puzzle pieces began slotting into place without me even needing to try.