Shadow Heir Chapters 22, 23, 24
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Chapter 22
Kalissa didn’t say a word as she drove us home. Charlie wasn’t the chatty sort. Hatred swirled in the air, suffocating. When we got back to Mr. Whiting’s house, I shut myself in my room with the mushroom and snowflake sprites who tried to cheer me up.
Bouncing acrobatics couldn’t pierce that cloak of loathing.
Hunger drove me to the lunch table, but Kalissa wouldn’t even look at me. I took my food and retreated to my room.
A day later, Charlie pounded on my door. “Lazy freak, enough moping. Get out here!”
I just sat, curled in a ball and wrapped in blankets stripped off my bed.
Eventually, he went away.
Lazy freak.
Sure.
Fine.
Call me that. Call me a murderer, a selfish coward—all of it was true. I’d thought I was some sort of champion. Shelter the defenseless sprites, heal the wilting Unseelie plants, show mercy to the tortured messenger. What a joke.
Kalissa’s eyes showed me the truth.
These hands had grasped evil and used it. Blood spilled—not my fault, but through my action.
Murderer.
In the moment when I could have removed myself from the equation, I’d stayed silent.
My father’s wishes? My father’s sacrifice?
A spider silk dream severed by reality’s sword. He’d saved a child who would destroy life as we knew it by merely existing.
Maybe the Order was right.
And yet, the sprites gathered around me, hugging an evil thing too big for them to even wrap their minuscule arms around, said something different—lent truth to that fantasy of defending the helpless.
With Tel’garoph’s magic.
Saving things woven from evil with that same evil. Synthetic sylvans. I’d thought they came from nowhere? Nowhere but my own head, just like Raelyx had come from Tel’garoph’s.
I raised my head to look at them. “Did I make you?”
Solemn heads tilted to look at me. Nodded—all except the single snowflake sprite I’d brought home from AllMart.
My head dropped back into the dubious shelter of my knees. I hugged myself harder.
I’d thought I was providing shelter for these creatures. What a joke. I’d been spawning them out of some subconscious need for comfort.
Almost, I reached out to unravel them.
But that would be murder.
I’d already spilled enough blood.
Maybe the Order was right. Maybe all Unseelie were evil. And even if they weren’t, I could destroy the world. One wrong step, one moment of inattention and Tel’garoph would take me. I would cease to exist and that death would be so much worse than the one the Order had planned.
But try as I might, I couldn’t bring myself to go downstairs and ask Kalissa to open a portal to Castle Archdragon.
She would do it. Maybe she would do it anyway. Maybe I didn’t have a decision to make and the Mercy would just show up at my door and take the choice out of my hands.
Maybe all I had to do was wait.
But if the Mercy didn’t knock on my door, maybe it would be Tel’garoph, and I refused to let him take me.
Hopeless as it might be, I would do my best to kill him the next time we met, and sitting curled in a ball on my bed wouldn’t help me beat him.
Two ends; death by Mercy or battle with Tel’garoph. And if he came before I gathered my courage, I couldn’t lose.
That night, after Kalissa went to sleep and Charlie went home, I snuck into the workroom with my sword and worked.
Muscles burned, salt stung my eyes, and still I worked. Worked until dawn light came and I opened my eyes to find Charlie’s booted feet standing in front of where I’d passed out on the floor.
He looked down at me, folded his arms.
I stiffened, ready to give back any vitriol that came my way. Coward, murderer, liar, traitor.
“You and Kalissa need to talk.”
I blinked at him. Anger edged his voice, kept barely under wraps.
He didn’t move.
I forced my voice to work. “Kalissa doesn’t want to talk to me.” I don’t want to look in that mirror again.
“Kalissa’s a bitch.”
My throat stuck together and I coughed, trying to breathe. The nearest water tap was in the bathroom next to Kalissa’s room, so I just hadn’t drunk anything all night.
Charlie looked up, away from me. His cheeks flushed—with anger, embarrassment? “You’re a bitch, too. Fix your stupid girl problems. This place is almost as bad as home.” He turned away and started to stomp off.
“Stupid girl problems?” I shoved my way to my feet and went after him. “I’m half Unseelie—she’s never going to forgive me for that.” I betrayed her. Forced her to trust his daughter.
Charlie stopped, turned, and I danced back, away from his fist. “You think we didn’t all know you were a freak? Does it really matter what kind? You’re all freaks. Get over yourself.”
I cringed back. How dare he! A freak? Like anyone who was different was caught between two different forces trying to kill them!
I kicked out. He grabbed my leg, stepped in fast, and then I was on the ground seeing stars with his knee crushing the air out of my lungs.
His eyes blazed. “You think trying to kill yourself training is going to help her? You think she’s not in just as much pain as you are? Get over yourself, damn freak. You’re not the only one hurting.”
I squirmed, twisted to the side, but he stood up and stomped off before my battered body could react. The workroom door slammed behind him.
The ghost of his voice lingered in the air. You’re not the only one hurting.
The vision came from an eternity away—a life where everything wasn’t cracked and bleeding—but it still came. Charlie with his bar of iron fending off that Nightmare feeding on his mom.
Almost as bad as home.
There were no more tears left. All my self-pity had seeped into the floor of the workroom. I got to my feet.
Killing myself training wouldn’t solve anything.
Maybe, just maybe, talking with Kalissa would help. It certainly couldn’t make anything worse.
I went downstairs, expecting to see Kalissa in the kitchen making breakfast. Instead, Mr. Whiting sat at the table, reading the newspaper.
Relief from worry so buried I hadn’t even realized it weighed on me descended. He was alive. He was okay!
I hurried over. “Where have you been? What happened? Why did you send us home without you?”
That word again. Home.
He didn’t look up from the paper. “And here Charlie was saying I wouldn’t see you except for a glimpse here or there when you came for food.”
Guilt twisted my stomach. I remembered him frozen in ice, limbs contorted into a chair. And I remembered melting that ice, watching him crumple into a heap. It was the first time I’d seen him since the forest.
Delight buried under self loathing dared to bubble up. “You survived.” Because of me.
Kalissa hated me, but she was alive.
Dizziness left me gripping the edge of the table and dropping down into a chair next to him. Stupid to train without water. Stupid to do it all night. If Father were here, he would have read me the riot act.
But he wasn’t.
Just like that, those bubbles of delight popped. I looked down at the swirling wood grain beneath my fingers, expecting to see red.
“You disobeyed orders.”
The iron displeasure in Mr. Whiting’s voice whipped my head up. I stared at him.
He held the newspaper between us, feigning disinterest. But around him wisped currents of rage built on fear.
“I—” I don’t answer to you. I saved you. You and Kalissa.
“You nearly destroyed everything.”
Those words hit me like a bolt in the heart.
True.
I nearly destroyed everything.
“You nearly set off an eternal winter almost directly on top of the portal between our realm and the Seelie realm.”
Another bolt. I gasped from the pain.
He still didn’t look away from his newspaper. “And you dragged Charlie in with you. He could have died and everyone relying on him would have died, too.”
His mother.
I curled into myself. Leaving my room was a mistake.
“I’ve just spent the last two days cleaning up your mess, smoothing things over with the queen of the Seelie court, and stopping the cataclysm you spawned.” Mr. Whiting shook the newspaper and folded it with a snap. His eyes burned with anger. “What were you thinking?”
Nothing. I wasn’t thinking. Stupid idiot, using magic to claw some amount of good out of Tel’garoph’s mess. An eternal winter? That was only my due. Every time I let that power out, something awful happened.
Stupid, stupid!
Cold welled up at my fingertips. Frost crawled across the tabletop and Mr. Whiting stood, looking at it with disgust. “Control yourself!”
I stood, turned to go—what had I been thinking, coming out here?—and then stopped. The solution was so close. Kalissa didn’t have to open the portal to Castle Archdragon, Mr. Whiting could do it with barely a thought. And if I went there, I wouldn’t set off an ice age, I wouldn’t let my body get stolen and used to destroy the world, I wouldn’t hurt anyone or scare anyone ever again. Tears froze in my eyes and fell to the carpeted floor, where they sat like crystallize demon tears, mocking me.
I opened my mouth. To apologize. To give up. To ask—
“Eira, you can’t use this power. It’s too much for any mortal. Shut it away—you know how. I watched you grow up, watched you control it. You have to do that again, don’t you see? Control it and we can protect you.”
Charlie’s voice from memory. You think we didn’t all know you were a freak?
Seal my power away? Like evil? And why not? As long as it existed, it was one more handle Tel’garoph could use to find me.
It was one more handle I could use to survive. One more handle I could use to protect those around me. One more handle I could use to destroy the world.
Does it really matter what kind? Charlie, at least, didn’t care.
Funny, a world where Charlie was my biggest supporter.
“Where’s Kalissa?” Not the words I meant to say.
“Out.”
I turned back around, met his fiery eyes. “I didn’t mean to set off an eternal winter. I just wanted to distract him long enough to rescue you and Kalissa.” Wasn’t rescuing you good, even if you hate me for it?
“I told you to stay put.”
“You told me to let you die.” More crystal tears fell silently to the floor.
Mr. Whiting snorted and looked away, muttering, “Isn’t it just like Caylen to raise such a contrary kid?” He looked back to me. His voice firmed. “I’ve asked Kalissa not to say anything. I don’t know if she’ll do what I asked. But I can only hide you if you stop putting us all in danger. Focus on your swordsmanship, seal that evil back up where it won’t hurt anyone. We’ve got time to train you up properly now. Next time, if there is a next time, you won’t need to resort to magic.”
The ultimatum crackled in the air between us. Use magic and lose his protection.
He picked up the newspaper again and leaned back in his chair. “Get hydrated and get some sleep, kid. You were thumping around up there all night.”
#
I focused on swordsmanship like Mr. Whiting asked—shoved that whirlwind of emotion to the back of my mind, sealed it up in a tiny prison where all its raging couldn’t touch me. I needed him to teach me no matter what happened. Each night, I dropped into my bed like a stone. Tel’garoph haunted my dreams. The sprites stayed out of my way.
Murderer. Liar. Traitor. Coward.
The only thing that drove those words out of my head was sword work, so I worked myself harder.
A week later, Kalissa arrived during breakfast time. She was covered with dots of silver ichor. Anger and frustration swirled around her like a telepathic storm.
Mr. Whiting looked up as she stomped over to the breakfast table and jerked her chair out.
Charlie, who’d showed up the day before and stayed the night, pushed the cereal and milk in her direction.
“Hard hunt?” Mr. Whiting’s voice held a note of careful neutrality.
Kalissa dumped the rest of the Charm Palz into her bowl and slopped milk on top. Didn’t answer.
My belly tightened. She didn’t look at me—hadn’t looked at me once.
Out hunting by herself—as an apprentice? Could apprentices even go hunting sylvans by themselves? Or was she with someone else?
How many moments before whoever she’d told about me showed up? How many moments did I have left to live?
I’d thought it would be a relief, but this knife-edge uncertainty cut deep.
Kalissa’s eyes flicked to me—hatred, shame, guilt—emotions slammed into my mind, twisting my belly. The cereal that had gone down so recently wanted to come back up. Stomach acid and milk.
“Shouldn’t have been.” She shoved another spoonful of cereal in her mouth.
A snap in my mind. Her emotions vanished from my awareness.
Shame for turning me in? For keeping my secret?
Almost, I shoved away from the table and went upstairs to await my fate. If the Mercy came, would he kill me in the living room in front of everyone else? It seemed like the kind of thing he would do. Better to be elsewhere so they didn’t have to see.
“Oh?” The caution in Mr. Whiting’s voice grew.
Kalissa didn’t elaborate. Silence pinned me to my chair. Which was it? Had she reported me?
Charlie’s laugh, too loud, rebounded against the tension. “Ah, you wimp. It was probably a handful of Kobolds.”
A joke? Teasing? Or did he really think so little of her?
Kalissa turned her glare on him. The air between them heated but it didn’t seem to faze him. “Not. Kobolds.”
He laughed again, an edge of customary meanness in the sound. “Lighten up, wimp.”
“Shut up!” She dropped her spoon and stood. Milk splashed everywhere. Her eyes grew distant but held no less fury. “Sadistic bastard.”
She turned, and I saw the tears in the shoulder of her gray coat. Tears like claws, flesh exposed beneath. I knew that shape.
Drakon claws?
She’d been hunting Drakon? Her? After what she’d just been through?
She stomped off and I stared after her.
“Who?” Charlie asked quietly.
You, I almost said. Mr. Whiting spoke before I got the chance.
“Our dearest Mercy wanted her assistance. Some hands-on mentorship, I think he said. He didn’t mention what kind of creature he was hunting.”
Drakon. The Mercy had taken her to hunt Drakon. Another ploy to get the Mind Crown? Sheer cruelty?
Charlie slammed his chair back. Stood. The force of it sloshed milk over the rim of my bowl. “And you let her go?” He turned to go after her. Shame, guilt, pity slammed against my mind. Not the sinister kind I’d gotten from Kalissa, something gentler.
And I teased her.
Mr. Whiting held up a hand—not that Charlie could see it. “She won’t want your—”
“—Nobody asked you!” He left. The front door slammed with force that shook the whole house.
I sat in the sudden silence staring down at the splatters of milk on the table like drops of emotional blood spilled one too many times.
Mr. Whiting didn’t look at me. It didn’t help.
If she told the Mercy—
His thought? Mine? Did it matter?
Being more careful of the furniture, I stood and gathered up my bowl. Rinsed it, put it in the dishwasher alongside my wooden spoon. My fingers ached where the rubber coating on the metal appliance was too thin. But Kalissa wasn’t going to do it.
I donned my gloves and cleared the rest of the table while Mr. Whiting just sat there, staring at the wood grain of the table as if it would give him answers.
Kalissa kept the microfiber cloth hanging on the handle of one of the kitchen drawers. I picked it up, wet it down, and wiped the table. Sopping up emotional stains—if only it were that easy.
The cloth went back on the handle so it could be used for the rest of the day before being washed. The same way it worked at my home, with Father.
Father who I killed.
I turned to go back to my room and await my fate.
A whisper scalded the edge of my mind as I passed the entryway and put one foot on the stairs.
Help!
Pain in my side—no, not my side. Tentacles, midnight black, red eyes drawing me in. No, not me.
I was in the house, climbing the stairs. But these surroundings weren’t Mr. Whiting’s house. No, I was caught in the dark. Wind kissed my cheek. A woman stood before me, veins threaded with black, tentacles reaching—
I’d seen that creature before.
Iron in the hand that wasn’t mine, trying to drive the creature back.
Not today. You won’t beat me, damn it! Someone—
And then my foot was back on the stair and my head ached. Golden spore dust littered the carpet and a mob of mushroom sprites surged down the stairs toward me, carrying something so translucent it was visible only as a distortion as it moved.
My sword.
Charlie.
Chapter 23
Tracing Charlie’s steps wasn’t difficult. A thread of terror and pain spooled out before me, desperation shifting to despair as I ran. I held that thread to me.
Somehow, my sprites had connected me to him because he was in trouble. How did they have that much power?
Because I have that much power.
Uncontrolled, subsumed, strangled, but undoubtedly there.
I’d promised not to use it, promised to rely on other skills. And if Kalissa hadn’t said anything to the Mercy, then using my power would just show Tel’garoph exactly where I was.
And if my power was the only thing that could save Charlie?
Then I’d use it.
There wasn’t even a question anymore. I’d use it and then I’d find the Mercy myself.
The camper Charlie lived in was closer to Mr. Whiting’s house than I’d realized. In fact, I’d probably run right past it during that desperate flight from Raelyx in what seemed like another lifetime.
The aura of terror grew thinner, eclipsed by bitter malice that sucked all the moisture from my mouth. I stepped around the final stand of pine trees expecting to see Charlie.
The camper glittered white in the morning sunlight. Dings, dents, jagged metal ripped nearly off the frame—it had been through a lot.
A stooped figure sat in front of it, fingers grasping wooden sticks that clicked in the steady rhythm of knitting.
Father had knitted when I was a child—before he had to travel so often. Maybe that’s why I didn’t immediately see the darkness in the figure’s eyes.
Coarse, white hair fell over her shoulders. The scraggly strands of grass beneath the curved base of her rocking chair had blackened and started to spawn thorns.
“Are you Charlie’s mother?” I asked around the dryness in my throat.
She opened her mouth to grin but shadow spilled out in place of white teeth. “No.” The hiss slid along my skin, drawing goosebumps.
The atmosphere was different than Tel’garoph but no less evil. I sucked in a breath. More bitterness on my tongue, like belladonna scattered through the air.
“Anything of this creature which once remained is now mine.”
I recoiled, hating myself. This is what Charlie had been living with? And I’d complained about my own birth? About my father? I’d thought he wouldn’t understand?
Shadow surged out of her mouth like inky vomit, crawled over the ground toward me.
I wanted to run, needed to run from this nightmare made flesh. All the terror of having my body stolen felt like the fear of a child. Tel’garoph was the monster in the closet, but this thing was real, tangible, terror given form.
My knees turned to jelly. I couldn’t run, those legs wouldn’t hold me. “Let her go.” Not the confident demand of the powerful, but the trembling whisper of a coward.
Coward.
Traitor.
Liar.
Murderer.
The wrinkles around her mouth deepened, drew her lips taut in a grisly grin. “Yes… Now that a more suitable host has come.”
We were separated by a thirty feet stretch of dead land. She crossed that distance in a flash, fingers outstretched in a pose of desperation.
I flung up my sword, slipped sideways as Mr. Whiting had taught.
The blade passed right through it. Her flesh darkened, wisped into Nightmare flesh. The tips of fingernails like claws reached toward me. “Mine!”
A desperate fling of the hand. Ice answered my call, spun a sapphire shield.
The creature screamed and bounced back.
I looked past it to the camper. Where was Charlie? “Hey!” I yelled. “Are you okay?”
The nightmare hissed and that black boiling from Charlie’s mother’s mouth coalesced into an octopus from hell, eyes glowing red, tentacles as substantial as shadow. “He won’t hear you.”
“What did you do?”
It laughed and jerked its very tail from the mouth of Charlie’s mother. She collapsed to the ground like a puppet with strings cut. Something like magic bled from her, dissipating into the surrounding earth.
Shit.
Nightmares punctured the very lifeforce of their victims. If I couldn’t find a way to patch her bleeding, she would die.
But first, the nightmare.
It surged toward me, tentacles spread. Could I fend off that much evil?
I didn’t have to. Cold burned inside and I reached out to that oily blackness with every bit of command I could feel.
Surely if I could banish Tel’garoph, I could banish this creature.
“Leave!”
It recoiled, faded, but remained. “You powerless pretender. When my master hears that there is another with the power of creation and judgment, he will—”
I pulled the power in again. “Tel’garoph has tried. He failed. Now leave. This is not your world, it’s mine!”
It screamed, a sound that scraped against my ears. “You can’t make me! Pretender, pretender!”
I met those devilish red eyes, gathered ice and will, lashed him again. “Yes. I can.”
It clawed the ground around it, digging great gashes in the earth. “No, no, no!” But it was fading.
I lashed it again, again, again, until even the echo if its scream was gone. Sweat dripped off my skin. My knees trembled. The world tried to spin.
Was that the cost of a mortal using magic? This exhaustion?
Thumping on the camper door jerked that thought away. I stumbled over to it and grasped the handle.
Agony in my fingers, burning. I pulled the door open. Charlie spilled out in a mass of limbs. Pain exploded in my head, and then he was on top of me outlined by the blue morning sky.
“Eira?” He met my eyes and scrambled up. “Dammit, Mom!”
It took me far longer to get to my feet. When I got turned around, Charlie was kneeling in the grass at his mother’s side, sobbing. “I don’t have enough—I can’t—” He clenched a dull, magicless crystal in his hand. “Dammit, Mom. Don’t go!”
The flow of her energy into the ground was slowing, stilling. I tried to gather it up, but it slipped away.
Not mine.
I’d been able to heal Raelyx, but he was Unseelie. She wasn’t. The energies were a peculiar mix of summer and winter energies. I couldn’t grab it, couldn’t shove it back into her. My pure, unfiltered winter energies would kill her.
Charlie craned his head at me. “Help me, you useless freak.”
The plan floated around his head, screaming at me. He didn’t have enough magic, but I was overflowing with it. He could channel it, transmute it. That’s what mortals were good at, right? Bridging the gap between Seelie and Unseelie?
I stepped toward him, hand outstretched, and then stopped.
What if I lost control? What if I killed Charlie? This wasn’t like the time I’d frozen the punch and turned into a Popsicle, I had all the power of the Unseelie King. I could kill him.
Murderer.
“Eira, please.”
I couldn’t tell those desperate eyes no. I’d jumped into the abyss to save Kalissa and Mr. Whiting. How could I do any less for Charlie?
“I’ll try.” I crossed the ground and knelt by him.
He grabbed my hand in a bone-crushing grip. The first prolonged contact I’d had with anyone but Father. When he drew the runes in the air, they glowed with blue fire. Tel’garoph’s blue fire.
My blue fire.
I cringed away, trying to limit the force of magic pouring into him.
“More,” he muttered. The runes flickered.
No. “It’ll kill you.”
“More!”
I gave him more.
The runes brightened, flared until the blue was nearly white. Charlie’s grip on me tightened. Ice crawled up his fingers, up his arm.
I had to stop. It would kill him. I’d freeze him solid.
I couldn’t kill anyone else. Not again. Not with this power.
“Charlie—”
He was grinning, a feral expression equal parts hope and despair. “Almost there. Don’t you dare wimp out on me, freak.”
The ice reached his elbow. Cracked. Rivulets of red streamed down his forearm. Ice steamed.
“No, I can’t—”
“—keep it up!” His emotions pounded me. “I can lose the arm. That’s fine. Stop fueling this spell and I’ll kill you.”
I grit my teeth. If it reached his shoulder, I would break contact. If it froze his neck or his heart, he’d be done for and I might not be able to heal him.
The ice crawled, bit by bit. Charlie’s sweat froze. “Almost there!”
The blazing runes vanished. I yanked my hand away. The ice on his arm shattered, leaving a crossing pattern of gashes on his arm from fingers to halfway between his elbow and shoulder.
He knelt there, panting. On the ground in front of us, his mother no longer looked like an old crone. Her hair was irrefutably white, but it had regained a silky texture. The wrinkles carved into her face had smoothed.
Charlie turned and threw his arms around me. Gasps for air turned to sobs.
I shoved my magic down where it couldn’t do any more harm and wrapped my arms around him. If I had warm magic, maybe I could have been comforting. Maybe I could have helped him without damaging his arm.
“Shit, that hurts,” he finally said, and pulled back. But he was grinning through the tears. “Thanks, freak. I always knew you’d be good for something.”
But my eyes were stuck on his arm, dripping blood into the ground. “Let’s get you and your mom to Mr. Whiting’s house. He’ll be able to help.”
Hopefully.
I stood. The once chill spring air beat down on me with its chill. It was hard to breathe. My limbs shivered with cold. I looked down at the skin of my arms. Sapphire swirls danced in crystalline pattens over the surface.
My stomach twisted. I’d just lit my position up for Tel’garoph. Would he be on his way, or would he need more time to recover? Had he already known that I would go back to Mr. Whiting’s house or had he assumed I would go elsewhere?
I turned, scanning my surroundings for any hint of Tel’garoph, Raelyx, or any of his other lackeys.
Someone leaned against a truck with nothing but rims to roll on and a cannibalized metal chassis.
I stopped. Terror warred with relief. At least I wouldn’t have to keep running.
It wasn’t Tel’garoph. I would have felt him. No, the figure leaning against metal was clothed all in white. He leered at me and gripped his white iron sword in one hand.
The Mercy.
So Kalissa had told him. And he’d come to see the truth for himself just in time for me to display my power.
He bowed shallowly and a bunch of sunflowers appeared in his hand. He tossed them toward me. Numbly, I reached out a hand to catch them.
They crumbled to dust.
The Mercy grinned. “There you are.”
Before I could contemplate wielding ice in my defense, the air sizzled and agony exploded the cold in my belly. I fell to my knees, gasping for air. Every breath sucked in fire.
Atomized metal.
A voice called out of setting darkness. Charlie’s voice. “No, wait!”
Something knocked across the back of my head. Blackness.
Chapter 24
The dungeon was hotter than the white fires of hell. Sweat poured off my naked body in rivers as I pressed myself against the stone corner. Stone absorbed heat, right? It didn’t help.
No water.
No food.
Unseelie lived on the breath of air alone, or so the iron-clad jailer had said. He’d left before I could insist that I was half human.
In those moments when I’d imagined the Mercy barging through the door to my room, I’d always thought that would be it. A little pain, then death. Not this drawn out agony shuttered in the dark.
I couldn’t see past the bars of my cell. They couldn’t be spelled. Iron resisted magic. But the Order had fine-tuned what iron could and couldn’t do. Maybe they’d exploited a loophole. Maybe the darkness came from the crown welded to my head.
Would the mushroom sprites be alright?
My calculations hadn’t involved them—hadn’t involved a lot of things. What would happen to Mr. Whiting for sheltering me? Or to Charlie, for requesting my help?
I’d considered what Tel’garoph would do. Maybe the Order was just as bad. Or maybe they were only cruel to things like me—half evil by accident of birth.
The what ifs burned a hole in my belly where the cold had once lived. Imaginings of Charlie’s blood spilt, of him laying dead on top of his mother because he had dared oppose the Mercy. Images of Mr. Whiting’s face—disappointment, pain, fear. What would they do to him?
Kalissa, at least, wouldn’t be harmed. She’d turned me in. Betraying a traitor.
Do two wrongs make a right?
Please let her be okay.
I tried to corral those images, tried to breathe through the fear as Father had taught me.
Don’t think, don’t feel.
Well, at least I couldn’t set off an eternal winter here. They’d put enough of a check on my power to render me harmless.
Good. Because the mantra wasn’t working. All I could see in the blackness of my cell was crimson blood staining that white iron sword.
My fault.
My fault.
Mine.
A hacking cough came from beyond the bars of my cell. It might’ve been a laugh. “A few months, and you’ve forgotten all your control?” The voice cracked on some words, was barely a whisper on others.
That voice. Familiar.
I didn’t lift my head. It wasn’t Mr. Whiting or Charlie, and everyone else I cared for was either dead or a traitor.
What was the point of control, now? I slumped back down into my ball of sweating misery and tried to fight the images of the world I’d left behind.
Why can’t they just get this over with?
“Eira!” The voice cracked.
So familiar.
The images shifted. Father hanging in front of me, his blood dribbling from the wound. Ice in my hand. Stickiness between my fingers.
Father had faced death without any of this drama. He’d been brave to the last, and here I was curled in a corner and trying not to lose more fluids by crying. He would have been so embarrassed by me.
I crawled out of my ball and eased away from the wall. Sat cross-legged, spine straight, eyes closed. Let death come to me here. I was doing the world a favor, wasn’t I? Rest in peace, the half-human girl who gave her life to save the world. I would not meet my end while sniveling.
The voice coughed again. No, it was undoubtedly a laugh. What kind of damage would a throat have to take to make a laugh like that? “Better. Much better.”
I peeled my eyes open and tried to look beyond the curtain of blackness. “Who are you?”
A heartbeat of silence—still and dead. No invisible emotions flitting around at the edge of my mind, no physical cues to tell me anything about this person who sounded impossibly familiar. How could anyone stand it?
When the voice came again, it was stronger. “It’s only been a few months, snowflake. I thought I raised you better than that.”
Impossible.
I lunged toward the bars, ignored the fire as they branded the palms of my hands. The crown welded to my head exploded into flame, drilled agony into my forehead and still I strained.
A snap inside my mind. Magic unraveled. The cell flashed into color. I stumbled back, away from the force of the released spell.
Impossible.
Caylen sat cross-legged in the center of the cell opposite me, secure behind his own set of bars.
“You’re alive.” The words came out as a tortured whisper.
Murderer.
No, not a murderer. He was alive. Father was alive! That blade hadn’t killed him. He hadn’t died on the floor of our house.
Father gave me a toothless grin. Dried blood trailed from the corner of his mouth. He, at least, wasn’t naked. The place where the Order’s scales had once rested on his jacket was melted to his skin in distorted, glossy horror, but he still wore his coat. His trousers were in tatters.
Humans, it seemed, were allowed some measure of dignity.
Father met my eyes. “You didn’t really think a little thing like that was enough to kill me, did you?”
Him, who’d been the Mercy before Philippe had risen to power. Before he’d thrown it all away to protect me.
Tears—stupid tears—bubbled under my eyes and steamed off my cheeks. “No.” A gasp of a word. “But—how?”
Father’s face softened. New scars criss-crossed his flesh. “Quiet. The guard will come if he hears you.”
So what? Father was alive. Surely the world couldn’t turn upside down again.
“Phillipe wanted me alive, so he sent me to the medical wing of the castle. They had herbwitches standing by.” He grimaced. “He had questions about your mother and about you.”
Is that why the Mercy had been so smug during the tour he’d given of Castle Archdragon? Because I’d been so close and hadn’t even known it?
Hatred, raw and pure shushed through my veins. I’d kill him too. Fighting evil was no excuse for succumbing to it.
Father took a breath, tried to conceal a wince but I knew him too well. “Your sight is supposed to be veiled and there used to be a sound damping spell on my cell—one way. Phillipe was very proud of it. He didn’t know about this.” He pulled the cuff of his coat back and held up the swirling tattoo of white wrapped around his wrist. “Your mother is still taking care of you from beyond the grave.”
I wanted to ask how, but it didn’t really matter. “My mother’s magic?” She was pure human, though. How could she have magic?
He shook his head. “The portion of magic Tel’garoph allotted her every lunar cycle. Using it before now would have alerted Tel’garoph, but not even he can access Castle Archdragon. No Unseelie can—not without a summoning spell from this side of the realmic barrier.”
Safe from destroying the world. One last sacrifice. The thought should have made me feel better. Tel’garoph couldn’t get me here. Instead, I felt sick.
I’d finally found Father, but there wasn’t enough time. He wasn’t dead, but the Order still considered him a traitor. He was alive, but I wouldn’t be able to spend time with him. We wouldn’t be able to talk, to drink tea, to go down to Manny-and-Moore’s. We wouldn’t be able to work side by side in the garden. There would be no more school books, no more lectures. He wasn’t dead, but that life was.
And soon, I would be too.
I hissed in a breath, trying to stave off tears. “I’m sorry, Dad.”
The skin around Caylen’s eyes and mouth tightened. “Listen to me. We don’t have much time. During your hearing, they will offer you a deal. Take it. At the very least, it will give us time to figure out what to do next.”
I scrubbed tears away. “Deal? What deal?”
His eyes stayed locked on mine, steady. Comforting. “Remember Eira, I love you. No matter your blood, no matter your magic, no matter your choices. I love you.”
And then the sound of clanking filled the halls. A guard approached.