Chapter 29 #2
“I didn’t want you to have to bleed for it,” he said. “In fact, I—”
“You what?” I snarled. “What could you possibly have to say to me that you haven’t already? For all your self-proclaimed knowledge, you can’t even teach me yourself. Neither you nor Ivor can even give me a good reason as to why I have to do this. Why do I—”
“Because you will die!” he shouted, coming to his feet. The white-hot fury that radiated off of him nearly scorched me from across the table.
I inhaled sharply. In the dwindling candlelight, his green eyes were nearly black. He had never reminded me more of Mordric. “What?”
His lip quivered as he spoke. “If you do not learn to control the Ealdorfyre, you will die. It will consume you from the inside.”
As if in response to his words, the heat beneath my skin surged. The back of my neck grew slick with sweat. “How could you possibly know that?” I whispered.
“Don’t tell me you can’t see it,” he said sharply. “It’s burning you alive.”
I faltered.
“And I refuse to go through that again.”
“Go through what?”
He turned away from me and toward the hearth, his shoulders hunched. “Please,” I begged, closing the distance between us until I stood at his back. “Help me understand.”
The fire crackled, spitting ash up the chimney as the beleaguered logs smoldered and collapsed.
The breeze wafted in through the open window, rustling the scarlet roses that adorned the table.
When he finally spoke, his tone was laced with bitterness.
“You remember my memory? The one you saw by accident?”
The woman. It was impossible for me to forget her face. “Yes,” I said.
“Her name was Ophelia. Her father was a duke from the south who Mordric met at one of his feasts. When Mordric learned that his daughter was a witch, he convinced himself that she would make the perfect addition to his council. There was trouble brewing among his allies, you see, like always, and he had grown paranoid. Ophelia was intelligent, but she lacked experience. He knew that I had studied magic at Hollybrook, so he engaged me to train her. It was a learning experience for both of us. We got along well enough, though, and worked together for nearly a year. I considered her a friend.”
A friend? I couldn’t smother the envy that sparked to life in my chest. At best, he’d kept me at arm’s length for as long as I’d known him. At worst, well, as much as I had tried to forget it, what I had overheard in Genevieve’s memories still stung.
“When was this?” I asked, putting the thought from my mind.
“Nearly a decade ago.”
“The night we met, Mordric said that you hadn’t seen each other for seven years,” I said. “Is that why?”
“Partly,” he replied. “I can’t say what happened to her for sure, but I invested a good deal of time and energy into Ophelia’s training only for her to disappear on me.”
“Oh,” I said, taken aback. “Despite my complaints, I have no intention of abandoning our efforts here. You know that, right?”
He shook his head. “I don’t have any reason to believe that she ran away.”
“You think something happened to her?” I asked.
“She had a wife and son who’d accompanied her to Valnar, both of whom she loved dearly. She would never have abandoned them,” he explained. “Ophelia had a gift for shadow magic. Before she disappeared, we began working on it intensely … at Mordric’s request.”
“Is that what I saw in your memory?” I asked, my skin crawling at the very thought of the elusive, sinister magic that had floated around his old pupil.
He nodded. “It has many uses, but Mordric was most intrigued to learn that it could allow the wielder to walk in the shadow realm. They would be able to see and hear everything around them while physically staying in one place. He was convinced that it was integral to maintaining control over his kingdom, even though I told him it was dangerous.”
“The shadow realm?”
“A cursed place that sits outside the mortal plane. It’s extraordinarily dangerous to navigate.”
A chill went down my spine. “Why did you pursue it if you thought it might go wrong?”
He sighed. “Do you remember when I told you that the Ealdorfyre could be your gift?”
“Yes.” I hated him for it.
“A witch’s gift is not some benevolent party trick that she is particularly talented at. It’s more of a compulsion. There’s a reason that the Ealdorfyre plagues your nightmares. When you’re not sedating yourself with valerian, that is. It wants to be used.”
“I think I know what you mean,” I admitted. “Even though I wish I didn’t.”
He nodded solemnly. “Such was the case for Ophelia, which is why we pursued it. Well, that and Mordric was insistent, and I trusted him too much to challenge him.”
“Why did you agree to train me, then?” I asked.
“I didn’t know what your gift would be or if you would even have one. When Mordric wrote to me about you before the solstice, I only agreed to return to Valnar on the condition that he would be entirely uninvolved in your training.”
A beat passed between us. “Ophelia was paranoid,” he whispered.
“Toward the end, I mean. She used to describe to me the nightmares that she was having every night, convinced that she was performing shadow magic in her dreams and had no control over it. She would see herself being consumed by the darkness along with her wife and son. She was terrified. Witches’ instincts are powerful, but I chalked it up to the stress we were under.
I sometimes think that if I had pushed her harder, or taken her more seriously, she might have been able to stop whatever came for her in the end. ”
I knew from his memory that something had been wrong with Ophelia.
I had felt it in my bones when she conjured that demonic shadow.
I recalled the anguished expression on her face, the purple splotches as dark as bruises beneath her eyes.
She couldn’t have been sleeping much if her dreams were that harrowing.
“I might never know what happened to her,” Enhart said. “And even though you might not believe me, I’m hoping you don’t end up the same way.”
I wanted to reach out to him. I wanted to take away his pain if only for a moment, but I faltered. “It wasn’t your fault,” I said finally, my voice coming out in a whisper.
He heaved a sigh. “It happened on my watch, and I can’t let it happen again. That’s why you have to do this.”
“I understand,” I said. “The Ealdorfyre has plagued my nightmares for years. I know in my bones that what you’ve said is true. And I’ll do it. But I need you, Enhart.”
He turned to me, a curious expression written across his face. “Ivor’s the expert,” he said flatly.
“You’ve been there for me from the beginning, in your own way,” I insisted. “I trust you more than anyone.”
“What about Mordric?”
My cheeks warmed. “Of course, I just meant …” I hesitated. “I just meant that somehow, even though you’ve spent the majority of the last four months trying to make me hate you—”
I swallowed as I caught sight of the look in his eyes. His stare was so intense my knees almost buckled. “I don’t,” I concluded, my heart beating against my ribcage. “Hate you, I mean.”
A wicked grin danced across his lips. “Alright, alright. Stop groveling.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not.”
He closed the distance between us, my protest snagging in my throat. The shadows cast by the dwindling fire danced across his features. “I will be here for you,” he whispered. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
“And you will not let this magic consume you. Understood?”
I nodded once. “Understood.”