Chapter 33 #2
“You? That was you.” My voice came out like a weak croak, and I almost wanted him to say no. I knew he was evil, but I did not know he had been a part of my story all along.
Chills ran up my spine, the only warmth coming from the blood leaking out of my head.
“Yes, indeed.”
I began shaking.
Where are you? I asked my magic. I searched through me as if looking for a lost seed packet. Under the books? No. Inside the cupboard? No. Where are you? I pleaded again.
Nothing.
“I simply had to follow that magical thread to a hovel on the side of a desolate road in a putrid town. When I saw the haggard woman and her swollen belly, I knew my job would be easy. Just like it was so simple to infiltrate Mabel’s sad heart.
No one there to read her books and all alone in this world.
So when I felt your magic take hold, I knew I had to act quickly—lest the magic begin seeping into the soil and uprooting my hard work.
Once hope springs up, it’s tedious to burn away. ”
Fennings Forest. Patti’s family. Hesper’s life. My own childhood.
All because of Thanadyn.
Every part of my body trembled now. My entire life had led up to this moment. This death. This withering of myself. And poor Mabel, I had failed her. I should have checked on her when I had the chance, maybe I could have stopped this.
I tried once more to reach for my magic, to reach for anything inside of me. But all I could feel was an aching nothing, a carved-out trunk of my heart.
“I didn’t even have to become a body—just a whisper in your mother’s ear. A few words and…”
A sound of snapping fingers resonated through the room.
“Your life was set to be ruined from the day you were born, because that, my dear Clara, is the only way to eliminate heart magic. A slow chipping away: death after death, disappointment after disappointment, neglect, persistent indifference. They all add up, you know. It even worked on the earth itself, the heart magic sequestering itself away in pockets impossible to find. One being a place you know well.”
Moss.
Moss’s magic was heart magic all along.
Home, my heart sang weakly.
“And so, I’ve spent these long years sucking heart magic from the land like honey from a hive. I tracked you the whole time, sensing your magic trying to take root before wilting away each day. But then, you disappeared.”
The shadows around me tightened their grip, my wrists gave a soft pop, and I soundlessly screamed into the nothing.
“I couldn’t find you for fifteen years. For a time, I thought you dead.
But then the earth rumbled its song, and I found you this year.
In Moss. Eldrene’s haunts. A place I could not access nor feel because of the collective power of her Train.
Do you know how I managed to find you, Clara?
It’s my favorite part of the story.” Thanadyn sounded almost gleeful.
As gleeful as the voice of the dead could be.
It sent my body into full terror, blinding me to any hope that there would be an after this moment. There would be now, then nothing.
“You grew flowers one day, yes? A whole field of those silly yellow blooms.”
The day Rosie and I laughed all the way to her house. The day of the Goddess Celebration. The day my magic erupted without even trying.
“Not even Eldrene’s power could squelch the song of heart magic, newly sung through the land.
My hounds tracked you easily after that.
And you just kept making it simpler. Every time your magic took root outside of Eldrene’s hold, a bright flare sang out to me.
Fields of lupines in Moss, a bloom in Lore Isles, your garden in Dwindle.
They were like breadcrumbs leading right to you.
You see, the darkness always comes, Clara.
You thought you found happiness. You thought you completed this quest, grew a garden, secured a life worth loving.
But look where you are now.” He tutted. “It wasn’t enough. ”
Never enough, my heart whimpered.
Thanadyn was right. I had found a life worth loving, and while it may have been brief, it was worth everything.
Always enough, I said firmly, drumming up the deepest dregs of light I had left.
“Goodbye, Clara Thorne.”
The air in the room went still; breathing became impossible.
Thanadyn’s magic tried to wind its way into my fractured soul, tearing open wounds I’d stitched up on this quest. I could feel it now, the pulsing darkness withering magic offered.
A blissful abyss where I did not have to fight every day to look for the light.
I could dive in and never know pain again.
There would never be a day where I reached for someone only for them to back away from me.
There would never be a day with love.
His magic beat at my very soul, ripping down anything bright in its path.
He could tear all he wanted, he could rip the heart beating in my chest, but it would not change the fact that my heart was not the one he knew before.
Dwindle survived withering magic because of hope. I would go down fighting Thanadyn with the same.
Night would come, but the day was worth any darkness that would fall.
He may end me, but he would not take away the one thing sacred to me, to everyone. It was not fear.
It was hope.
Enough, I told my heart.
Enough, I said again, willing it back to me.
I did not need a town or a Hesper to light the spark inside of me now.
I had myself. I had the little girl who reached for the hug.
I had knees aching from a day spent digging in the garden.
I had pricks on my finger from Warty’s quills.
I had quiet mornings sipping coffee across from the woman I loved.
And that was enough to set the very moon on fire.
A shadow readied itself against my lips. The final kiss of death.
So I let it come inside, willingly opening myself for the darkness.
Distantly, I felt my body arch off the ground, pain coursing through me, etching new lines in my bones. But my fear evaporated. I would not let it wither me; it could not rewrite my story. Where darkness nestled, light could always burn it away.
It is its own kind of magic. A kind for creating, giving, weaving, beginning.
Hesper’s words rang out in my mind.
Then let us begin again, I told my heart. For after the night, there is the morning.
My magic burned in my chest, coursing through me, eradicating each shadow.
Thanadyn doubled down, more of his withering magic pouring into me.
My heart shuddered for a moment, but I did not lose hope.
I sewed my own magic into his and drank up the death, reforming it back into its truest self.
I kept weaving my magic with Thanadyn’s, drawing more of it into me—making a new story, a new start.
I heard his screaming, his rage. The thread between his magic and mine pulled tight as he fought with all the darkness stored in his desolate soul, but it would not break.
My magic grew into his, piercing through the shadows with bright, bursting blooms. Sunlight broke through the darkness; my wildfire soul—ever burning—blazed brighter, his magic fanning the flame.
The light inside of me was all-consuming, the magic in my heart never-ending.
And then, all at once, it was finished.