Chapter 16 The Fiction of Her Own Purity #3
Elloven screamed her rage from her chest. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
She’d planned what to say down to the very word, how to lure him into the perfect moment for her to strike.
And then Jesstin... Jesstin had done it instead?
And on the same night? How could he even have known? And why?
Jesstin Skylark had taken everything from her. How dare he... How dare he take that too?
She backed away from the bloody desk—the betrayal—thrashing her arms at everything around her.
Books soared from his shelves and paper scattered, raining to the floor.
She swiveled again with another dredged scream and sent a candelabra flying and catching the curtains ablaze.
The fire spread to the mess of books and papers immediately, filling the room with heat and choking smoke.
Everything happened so fast, she could only stand there, paralyzed, as the room burned around her.
Her eyes stung, and she couldn’t see anything but her own destruction.
She buried her coughs in her sleeve, but the fumes were already filling her lungs.
“There! She’s there! Tear down the tapestry, Sesto!”
“Daire,” she said, choking, and collapsed.
She was in the hall. Weightless. Her feet dragged against the stones. Sesto’s and Daire’s frightened shouts were as mottled as the dream itself. But it wasn’t a dream. She remembered the office, Castien, the fire... “Jesstin,” she croaked.
“No, this corner!” Sesto yelled, then again a few moments later, “See, I told you!”
Fresh air walloped her.
“Get her over here, by the tree. A little further,” Daire said.
“Jesstin... in there...” Elloven moaned. She whipped her head around to get some sense back. “Sesto... Jesstin is inside.”
Sesto gasped. “Oh heavens, there’ll be no saving this place, will there?”
“They went back in for more,” Daire said, “but I fear all we can do is pray for their souls, Ses.”
“Jesstin is in there!” Could they not hear her? Was she speaking at all?
She wailed in frustration until she blacked out again.
Elloven snapped alert, but her mind took longer to catch up. She was outside, on a patch of moss, propped against a tree, but she’d been inside before. She’d been inside when—
“Jesstin!” she cried and struggled to her feet, half running, coughing, and gagging as she zigzagged toward the burning manor. No one had heard her. No one was listening, and Jesstin was inside, and no amount of hatred could anchor her soul back to her body if he died in there.
Arms yanked her back. She screamed and wrenched away, but others joined the restraint. “Jesstin is inside, you whoresons!”
“El. Elloven. Shh, listen to me,” Sesto was saying, so calmly and reasonably, like he didn’t care Jesstin was inside and would die. “They’ve done everything they can to get everyone out. It’s not safe.”
“Let go of me!” The scalding in her throat turned her last word into a screech. Dozens of people were huddled together with their sooted cheeks and blankets, and not one of them was him.
“Listen. Hear me when I say this. Jesstin is stronger than you think.”
“No, you’re the one who needs to listen—”
“And if he is in there—”
“LISTEN TO ME!”
“Love. If he’s in there, he’s already gone.”
Those were the words, the exact perfect organization of letters and sounds to send the chaos tearing through her limbs until every inch of her was rattling.
Sesto and Daire released her, or she shook them off.
She didn’t know, didn’t care. She spread her fingers so far apart, she nearly tore the flesh between them, and from the edges of her vision, she witnessed the incandescent halo wrapping each one.
Elloven ran toward the house, and with all the force she could gather, she thrust her hands at the sky.
Magic coursed through her like a hurricane and departed in a flash, following her command.
The clouds above swelled and swelled until they crowded out the smoke, engulfed the blooming haze, and erupted in a downpour that drenched the earth in seconds.
Elloven crashed to her knees in the mud.
She bowled forward, her palms sliding through the mud as she fought to remain upright.
No one touched her. They’d stopped talking to her like she was a petulant child because now they’d seen who she was and what she could do, and they’d never talk to her like that ever again.
She watched, wheezing and winking in and out of awareness, as the rain eroded the flames until there was nothing except the choking haze of charred ruin.
A scream came from somewhere ahead. More joined it. They’d lock her away, the witch who had called down the skies, and she no longer cared. There were few truths that mattered as much as the unthinkable one she’d never accept, a loss deeper than the sea.
Through the smog, she made out the outline of a man and a woman. A child ran ahead of them, and a smaller one held the man’s hand.
Elloven watched them come into focus. As details stitched into form, her throat locked. She tried to shove herself from the mud but only slid forward.
Jesstin. He was smothered in black soot and favoring his left foot, but he never let go of the little boy.
The woman broke free and ran toward the waiting crowd.
Daire arrived next, and he ushered the older child toward him, but the younger one was shaking her head and clinging to Jesstin.
He knelt before the girl, who kept shaking her head until Jesstin clasped her face and said something that convinced her to go with Daire.
He waved once at the girl. The girl waved back.
And then Jesstin was gone. She blinked, and he was gone. Where he’d just been standing was only a blank space.
“Come, come,” Sesto said. He looped both arms under one of hers and pulled her to her feet. “We need to leave. Daire’s waiting in the carriage.”
“He was there... He was just there.” She tried so hard, but the words came out jumbled and wrong, not half of what she needed to say.
“He’ll be fine, but we have to get you and the children out of here before the lawmen show up.”
“Why?” Elloven gaped over her shoulder as Sesto led her to the carriage. She was relieved to see Gertrude safe with the rest of the staff. They were alive but homeless. She’d come back and help her, help them all.
“I’ll explain in the carriage.”
“What about Jesstin? He’s not coming?”
“No, not with us.”
“Sesto!”
He spoke sternly. “Have you ever seen the skeletal remains of a man? If enough of it is still intact, sometimes they can determine if he died by violence. The evidence persists. If we leave now, it was just a terrible fire. We stay, we give them a reason to investigate further. And if they do, do you want to wager the odds they find Castien died by blade and not flame? That it was no accident at all but a carefully orchestrated execution?”
Castien’s lifeless body came back to her, details she had not comprehended in her shock.
His throat had been cut from ear to ear, and his head was no longer in alignment with his body.
It might not even have been attached at all.
She didn’t know much about warfare, but she knew it took a great deal of force to relieve a man of his head.
Elloven surveyed the brutal scene as Sesto helped her into the carriage. “We have to come back for the others. They have nowhere to go.”
“I’m sending word to Asterin straightaway. They’ll have somewhere to go, I promise you.”
“My horse, Frankie...”
“We’ve already seen to him, Elloven. Just relax now.”
She pressed her cheek to the glass as they rolled away.
Once the horrors faded into the horizon, she finally closed her eyes.
It was morning before she opened them again.
She climbed out of a bed she’d never been in, in a room she didn’t recognize, and padded into a hall just as foreign.
She followed the scent of jasmine tea until she reached a small sitting area with a table and two benches.
Sesto sat upon one, nursing his tea, and another had been placed directly across from him.
“For me?” Elloven asked.
“No one else,” he answered with a tired smile. “Are you feeling well?”
“Well enough,” she answered.
“Good. Then go on, drink. We need to talk.”
She frowned and climbed over her bench, settling in. “No one ever says that when it’s good news. Is it Jesstin?” She looked around. “Where are we?”
“At the Hermitage. Asterin took us in last night. He’s already seen to the refugees at the Edevane manor. You’ll be pleased to know everyone made it out.”
“Except Sestinn and Castien.”
Sesto sipped his tea. “Except them.”
Elloven drank her own as she continued to wake up. Sesto seemed to be waiting for the right moment to speak, so she went first.
“Are you going to explain to me why Jesstin was there and why he killed Castien?”
Sesto dabbed his lips with a napkin. “I may have told him you were overheard saying you intended to visit the manor.”
Elloven balked, but maybe she had said it out loud. The night she’d stayed in Oldcastle wasn’t entirely clear to her. “And he wanted to deny me my revenge?”
“He wanted to spare you the inhumanity of it.”
“Why?”
“Are you truly asking?”
She retreated. It was a lot to think through, and she wasn’t even fully awake yet. “Is this what you wanted to talk about?”
Sesto nudged his tea aside and folded his hands over the table.
“I’m risking a friendship that means as much to me as my love for Daire, so I hope you’ll understand everything I say to you now is absolutely and completely true, because I would never risk something irreplaceable for a lie. Will you hear me out?”
She turned her hands up in tired affirmation.
“I’m aware of what tore the two of you apart. I’d never belittle your pain or the shock you must have felt, must still feel, at what he’s done, but it would be an offense against the Guardians themselves for you to live with a half-truth.”