by Bree Barton
“I was going to ask about aether. That’s not something I’ve seen on any anatomical plate.”
“It’s the trickiest of the bunch. I’ll be honest, I don’t fully understand it. Some say aether is soul or spirit, the fiery life force that binds us all together. Others say it’s the mind. Magicians who work in the aether often work with Stone. They use the stones to manipulate memories, dreams, and desires.”
That explained how Angelyne was able to enthrall people with the moonstone. She could shift what their eyes saw—and what their hearts believed.
“Can you counterbalance the magic in a stone?”
“Of course. You can counterbalance almost anything.”
Mia bristled with excitement. This was the answer, the way to neutralize the lloira’s dark magic. Her mother was a gifted Dujia; she would counter the elements to sap the moonstone of its power.
And if for some reason her mother couldn’t do it, Mia would learn herself.
Hope soared inside her chest.
She could save Quin.
“Can you teach me how to balance the elements?”
“I can teach you some things, but really it just requires practice. The relationship between counter elements is complicated. I guess it’s more of an art? I’m sorry, I can tell that disappoints you.”
“It’s true. I’m always trying to quantify magic. I want there to be a system, a methodology. If something can be systematized, it can be controlled.”
A smile played at the corners of Nell’s mouth. “That isn’t how magic works, sad to say. It’s about thoughts and fears and longings and subtle shifts in a person’s mind and body. Really it’s about the messiest and most indecipherable parts of a human heart.”
She waved a hand at the scattered papers. “These memories are precious to me, but they wouldn’t work for anyone else. You have to draw on your own memories, your own internal truths. You have to be aware of your own body, your own heart, at all times. But you also must be attuned to other people. That’s the most important thing, Raven, if I can teach you anything it’s this: you cannot privilege the sensations or desires of your own body, your own heart, over that of others. You must only touch them if that is what they truly want.”
“Which is why you made Ville give you permission. Then me.”
“Yes. I do not use magic on anyone without their knowledge and consent, no matter how good my intentions.” She threw back her shoulders. “Magic is not yours to control. But it is always, always your choice how you use it.”
Nell tugged on one of her braids, thoughtful. “You should also know there are certain things you cannot counterbalance. You can’t bring a person back once they’re gone.”
Mia shifted in the chair. She wasn’t sure that was true. She caught Nelladine’s eyes, and for a moment, she felt certain Nell was inviting her to disagree.
Could she summon the courage to tell Nell the truth?
“You also can’t create life out of nothing.” Nell poked one of the runes, and the paper curled around her fingertip. “No magician has ever put a baby in someone’s belly.”
“Are we talking about babies?” Ville strode into the galley, Zai trailing a few steps behind. “Love babies.”
Nell groaned. “Don’t even start, Vi.”
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “I know better than to discuss such a delicate matter with two women. Though, Nelladine, as I’ve said on many occasions: you do have the most magnificent childbearing hips.”
It was sometimes hard to tell if Ville was paying a compliment or lobbing an insult. Mia waited to see if Nell would object, but she looked quietly resigned. Every time Nelladine began to show vulnerability, she sealed it off once Ville came around.
“Anyone thirsty? I could do with a pint right about now.” He sat beside Mia on the bench and kicked his feet up on the table. “What have you two been up to, anyway? Working your feminine wiles?”
“Nell’s been teaching me things about magic I never knew I never knew.”
“Sounds fun. Why don’t you try some out on me? I do love a good experiment.”
Mia looked hopefully at Nell. She had an insatiable urge to test out what she’d learned, to move her understanding from theory into practice.
Nell shrugged. “Fine with me.”
Zai frowned. “I don’t think we—”
“No buts!” Ville cried. He tipped an imaginary hat and winked at Mia. “A gentleman never says no to magic.”
He really should have said no.
Chapter 26
Break You
IN THE BEGINNING, EVERYTHING was fine.
“I’m going to give you hiccoughs,” Mia said.
Ville turned to Nell, pretending to be aghast. “Good Græÿa, you wicked demoness! You’ve taught your pupil the darkest of all dark magic.”
Nelladine rolled her eyes. “Pay no attention to him, Raven, hiccoughs are an excellent choice for a first lesson.”
“I don’t approve of this.” Zai leaned against a reinsdyr pelt in the corner, arms folded across his broad chest. “Not that anyone asked.”
“Live a little!” Ville rubbed his hands together and winked at Mia. “Do your worst.”
She put one hand on the top of his abdomen and the other gingerly on his throat.
Nell coughed, then looked pointedly at Mia.
“Oh, I thought he already . . .” She looked into Ville’s eyes. “May I touch you?”
He grinned. “By all means.”
“Wind,” Nelladine instructed. “That’s the element you want to counter, Raven. To bring it out of balance, you’re conjuring Wood. Imagine chopping the breath into smaller segments, like breaking a stick into pieces, or hacking firewood with an ax. You want to fragment the Wind as it flows from his belly to his mouth. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Mia. She didn’t want to correct her new teacher, but Nell had the anatomy wrong: hiccoughs were involuntary contractions of the diaphragm, the dome of tendon and muscle attaching the thorax and abdomen, not the belly itself. When the diaphragm contracted, so, too, did the larynx. The air didn’t flow into the mouth; rather, it rushed into the lungs. That’s what caused the hic sound.
Mia felt a flush of pride. Even if she hadn’t mastered the Elemental Hex, she knew a thing or two about human anatomy. She could whip up a batch of hiccoughs in no time.
She pressed a palm to Ville’s lower ribs, visualizing the diaphragm drawing air into the lungs. Then she imagined the trees of Ilwysion where she grew up. She saw herself as a girl, peeling long strips of bark from the brown oaks and white birches, snapping them into smaller and smaller pieces, then planting them in the ground like seeds.
Even as a child, she had longed to escape Glas Ddir. She’d pretended the bark would grow into trees that would be made into ships that would carry her far, far away. An illogical fantasy, yes, but a powerful one.
Ville’s chest seized. They all looked at him, expectant.
“You’re a witchic!” he crowed, pumping his fist into the air. “Angel of the Ashhices strikes again!”
As the others laughed, Mia shimmered in silent triumph. When Nelladine leaned in to say, “Beautifully done, Raven, you’re a natural,” her chest swelled with pride. She’d missed being praised by a teacher.
Was that really all it took? A childhood memory or two? Her heart thrummed with hope. So what if she couldn’t feel anything in her body? Her mind was perfectly capable of evoking the memory of sensations, even if she could no longer feel them.
She closed her eyes and kept her hands on Ville’s chest, dredging more from the memory. She saw the tallest trees of Ilwysion being felled by large burly men. She summoned shipbuilders hacking the timber into logs, logs into planks. It was all so vivid, so real, as if the men were right beside her, laying the planks side by side, building ships, every knot and splinter tossed by the waves until the ship finally landed in a bustling port town in a distant kingdom, ale slung from the hips of strong wom
en, mud soft under the mariners’ boots as they stumbled onto—
“Raven?” Nell’s voice was sharp, urgent. “Raven!”
The ship vanished as the world snapped back into focus.
Mia’s hands were still on Ville’s stomach, his shirt blooming red beneath her fingers.
He was coughing up blood.
“Get back,” Nell said, shoving her aside. Mia couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Ville’s ribs had ruptured his skin. The bones were expanding as she watched, ripping through tissue and stomach fat. They were cracking, splintering from their own untempered growth, like a birdcage lifting from his chest.
Mia staggered back, trembling.
“It’s all right, Vi,” Nell said, even as her voice shook. The composure she’d shown healing his earlier wound was gone. “A gale, a tempest. A tempest, a gale.”
But Ville’s ribs continued to expand. He was drifting out of consciousness, blood sleeping through his shirt.
“The wind caresses the trees,” Nell whispered. An incantation. “The breath caresses the bones. Wind kisses, breath heals.”
In a panic, Mia began shuffling through the scrolls. If she could just find the right one, some powerful Wind memory to counterbalance Wood, she could hand it to Nell.
But as she touched the papers, they curled and smoldered.
“No, no, no,” Mia cried, trying to save the scrolls. Every time her fingers grazed a piece of parchment, it ignited.
“Please,” Nell begged, her voice breaking. “Please stop.” She couldn’t save her papers, because she couldn’t leave Ville. She cradled him in her arms, blowing cool air onto his broken chest.
It was working. Mia watched as Ville’s solar plexus began to deflate. Nelladine mended his ribs, shrinking them back beneath his skin, then patching up the puncture wounds. Sweat beaded on her forehead, her shoulders bowed from exhaustion. She was clearly so focused on saving Ville she wasn’t balancing the elements inside herself.
Mia couldn’t look at them. If she did, her guilt would devour her. Instead she looked at the table where Nell had lovingly unfurled her scrolls.
Every note, every paper, every memory had burned to ash.
Minutes later, Ville stood on deck in his bloodstained shirt, inches away from Zai. All his playfulness had evaporated the minute he saw the red holes where his ribs had pierced the linen.
“She has to leave,” he said. “Immediately.”
“She didn’t mean to hurt you,” Zai said quietly. “She doesn’t know the extent of her own magic.”
Nell’s eyes were bright with tears. “It doesn’t matter whether she means to or not, Zai, don’t you see?”
“She won’t do it again.” Zai turned to her. “Will you, Raven?”
Mia was speechless. She couldn’t find the words.
Ville grunted. “Very reassuring. Maybe we should push you overboard so you can murder the fish instead?”
“You are a guest on my boat,” Zai said tersely, “as is Raven. My guests will respect each other.”
“Are you that dense, Zai? Did you not see what she just did?” Ville flourished his arm toward the galley. “She didn’t just make the ribs pop out of my chest. She set fire to paper! Paper is wood, my friend. She’s a ‘guest’ on your very wooden, very flammable boat. Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“It was an accident,” Mia said, her voice a whisper.
“I’d rather cut off my own hand,” Ville growled, “than stay within spitting distance of you.”
Zai’s face hardened. “Then leave. Get off my boat.”
How had everything changed so quickly? Half an hour ago, they were all enjoying each other’s company. Now the tension in the air was so thick Mia could slice it into wedges and serve them on a plate.
“I’m not the problem here,” Ville said. “I’m only trying to help. But you never accept help, do you? The Great Zai needs help from no man.”
“I said get out.”
Hurt shone in Ville’s eyes. “I was already leaving.” He beckoned to Nell. “Come on, Nelladine. I can tell when we’re not wanted.”
He stomped off down the deck, pitching himself over the side and landing with a hard smack in the canoe.
Nell hesitated. She stared into Mia’s eyes, searching, perhaps for some kind of explanation. Mia wanted to tell her, to apologize for everything. But where would she even begin?
“I don’t understand why you couldn’t feel it,” Nell said softly. “Why couldn’t you feel that you were hurting him?”
The truth singed Mia’s tongue. The problem with feeling nothing was that you didn’t feel anything. She couldn’t feel Ville’s pain because she couldn’t feel her own.
“What is it you’re not telling me?” Nell pleaded. “I am trying to help you, Raven. I want so much to help you. But you almost killed my friend.”
Mia should have felt something. But she only felt exhaustion.
She was too tired to lie.
“I can’t feel anything,” she said.
“What do you mean, you . . .” Nell stopped. “Is that what happened in the disrobing chamber? Why you couldn’t feel your hands in the ice tub? Or do you mean here?” Nell thumped her own heart. “You can’t feel anything inside?”
The numbness enveloped Mia like a shroud. She struggled to pluck a single word out of the haze.
“Everywhere,” she said.
Nelladine’s face was a patchwork of shock and compassion, sympathy and fear. For a moment Mia thought Nell might pull her close, stroke her hair, and tell her things would be all right. Mia had just confessed her biggest secret, and if it was true that secrets made a person real, then she was more real than ever.
“People say I feel too much,” Nell said slowly. “But I can’t imagine living any other way. Who’s to tell me my lows are too low or my highs are too high? Isn’t that what it is to be alive?” She took a breath. “The one thing that truly scares me is being numb to it all. I think I’d rather be dead than feel nothing.”
Nelladine’s face was changing. A new emotion burned in her deep brown eyes, so fierce and pure it blotted out all the rest.
Horror.
In an instant, Mia’s worst fears were confirmed. She was broken. Defective. Dangerous. When she crawled out of the wooden box in the forest, she’d left some vital part of herself behind. Not just her magic or her senses. The part that made her human.
“That’s why you’re looking for your mother, isn’t it?” Nell took a step back. “You’re not trying to help someone back in Glas Ddir. You’re trying to help yourself.”
“No.” Mia shook her head vehemently. “This has nothing to do with me. You told me stones can manipulate the aether, and you’re right. I’ve seen it. There’s one stone that’s being used to kill and hurt thousands of Glasddirans. But in the past the same stone was used to heal people, and I think if my mother can bring the magic back into balance—”
“I don’t buy it, Raven.” Nell’s voice was deadly sharp. “I don’t think you do, either. It’s time you start being honest with yourself. You think your mother can unbreak you, and you’ve dragged us along for the ride.”
Nelladinellakin stood tall.
“I know I said secrets make us real. But you should have told us the truth. This whole trip has been one grand experiment, a way for you to feel something again, and you don’t care who gets hurt along the way.”
The words landed like an arrow in Mia’s chest. She was too stunned to argue. She watched, helpless, as Nelladine turned to Zai. Gently Nell pressed a hand to his cheek.
“Zai K’aliloa. Come home with us. It’s not too late.”
A part of Mia felt terrified Zai would turn the boat around.
But another part of her hoped he would listen. She was murderous, unpredictable. She’d become the worst kind of scientific variable: uncontained.
Zai peeled Nell’s hand off his face.
“No more magic, Nelladine. Not tonight.”
It took M
ia a moment to understand what had just happened. Nell wanted Zai to come back home—for his own protection, no doubt. But she’d used magic . . . and she hadn’t asked permission.
“Wait,” Mia stammered, “I thought you said—”
“What I said,” Nell snapped, “was that you have to adapt. We break our own rules all the time, especially when we’re trying to survive, trying to protect the people we love. That’s what makes us human.”
She tossed her long braids over her shoulder, the moonlight drenching her ebony skin in a soft, silvery glow.
“But if you can’t control your own gifts, you’ll only hurt other people. You have to learn the rules before you can break them. Because I promise you, Raven: if you don’t learn how to break the rules of magic the good way, the right way, it’s only a matter of time before they break you.”
Chapter 27
Not a Normal Girl
MIA COULDN’T SLEEP. SHE tossed on the thin cot, heavy with regret. Every time she shut her eyes, she saw bones growing where they shouldn’t, ribs ripping through flesh.
Ville’s face blurred into Karri’s, then Karri’s into Quin’s. Mia wanted so desperately to earn high marks in magic, but she was failing every test. At least when she’d first bloomed, she’d had the power to heal. Now she only knew how to wound and destroy.
As the boat carved a path through the waves, it was not lost on her that she was traveling farther and farther from the boy she’d sworn to save.
It’s time you start being honest with yourself. You think your mother can unbreak you.
The words echoed in Mia’s mind. Was it such a crime to want to feel something? Nell herself had said she’d rather be dead than numb. Mia hated that she’d opened herself up completely, only to be rejected.
Who needed friends, anyway?
Nell was wrong. Mia had charted a course for Valavïk so she could go back and save Quin. But along the way . . . if her mother could show her how to coax the sensations back . . . what was the harm in asking?