Bid My Soul Farewell

by Beth Revis

  She looked up at me with warm eyes, her lips slightly parted, heat flushing her skin. She was not unaffected by this either.

  As Nedra leaned toward me, the black bead swung out from beneath her camisole.

  Her crucible.

  Nedra never took it off unless to use it. But despite the fact that it should have been warm with her body’s heat, when it brushed my arm, it was so ice-cold that it burned. I hissed and stepped back, and the moment was broken.

  Nedra gestured toward the bed, but when she crawled in after me, she didn’t lean in close, or lay her head against my chest. I faced the wall, my body pressed against the rocking wooden ship instead of the girl beside me.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Nedra

  I DREAMED.

  It wasn’t a special dream. There was no deeper meaning to it, no guiding voice to tell me what to do. Instead, I was walking with my parents and sister down the path that led to the sakoola blossom trees. Pale golden petals floated through the air, smelling sweetly pure. In the crook of one arm, I carried a basket of sandwiches. My sister toted a bottle of honey wine. My parents walked behind us, their voices low and occasionally infected with giggles.

  I looked behind me, then shared a smile with my twin. Our parents were acting like schoolchildren caught in the first blooms of love.

  We started to outpace them. “We’ll catch up!” Papa called, waving us on. And then we crested a hill, and they were out of sight.

  “I’ll wait for them,” Nessie said, stopping. And for some reason, in the dream I continued on the path.

  I paused after a moment and looked behind me.

  My family was gone.

  And then my brain reminded me that this was a dream.

  That they were really gone.

  And the sorrow was so deep that I awakened in the darkness of a silent night, alone.

  Except . . .

  I wasn’t alone. I rolled over in bed, and there was Grey. His face was illuminated by the pale moonlight streaming through the porthole window. Without waking, Grey reached for me, his arm under the blanket finding my hip, sliding around to my back, pulling me closer. Our faces were so near that I could feel his warm breath on my cheeks.

  My eyelids fluttered closed. And when I slept this time, I did not dream at all.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Grey

  WHEN I BROUGHT Nedra her breakfast, she ate voraciously and quickly, and before I’d taken a single sip of my tea, she pushed aside her plate and turned to the stacks of books she’d taken from the copper crucible.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked around a biscuit sweetened with honey.

  I had half expected her to deflect, but then she lowered the book and looked directly into my eyes.

  “Necromancy isn’t about restoring life to dead people,” she said. “It’s about holding on to souls.”

  I couldn’t hide my confusion.

  Nedra got up on her knees and crossed the short distance to me. “This,” she said, brushing her hand from my chest to my lap. “Your body. It’s just a shell to hold your soul. Your body is a house your soul lives in. So when your body dies, your soul can’t stay. It has nothing to hold on to.”

  “Souls . . . hold on to life?” I asked. “What does that say about your role in raising the dead? That the souls hold on to your life?”

  Nedra nodded gravely. “Through my crucible, yes. That’s why I’m connected to my revenants. Why I can hear them, and see their souls.”

  I tried to push away the image of slimy souls crawling over Nedra, slithering monsters that left trails of muck all over her body.

  Nedra frowned. “You don’t understand,” she said, a statement, not a question. She pulled out her iron crucible and laid it down on her open palm. “What do you see?”

  “An iron sphere.”

  Nedra’s gaze intensified. Her focus shifted; her pupils seemed to reflect more light than was natural. Energy crackled between us—no, between Nedra and her crucible.

  “There is light here,” she said, her voice eerily still. She moved her residual arm, as if there was still a hand at the end of it. “And darkness,” she said. “A black, raw sort of power.”

  When Nedra raised her eyes to me, I could almost see what she meant. There seemed to be a glow about her eyes, almost as if they were reflecting sunlight.

  “The light is the souls,” Nedra continued. “I can see them. I can touch them.” Her eyes darted around, focusing on something I couldn’t see, then her gaze shifted to me, sorrow passing over her like a shadow. “All except Nessie’s.”

  I thought of the way Nedra’s twin wasn’t like the other revenants. If the body was a container for the soul, there was nothing left of Ernesta but the shell. She was an empty house, not even haunted by invisible ghosts.

  Nedra stared down into the depths of her crucible.

  “I’m not going to pretend to understand,” I said. “I don’t think I would make the same choices you have. But I’ve also never had to make them.” I opened my hands, palms up, admitting defeat.

  Nedra didn’t speak for a long time. When she finally did, she didn’t meet my gaze. “It scares me sometimes,” she said, her voice so low I almost didn’t hear her. I didn’t speak; I barely breathed, I was so worried of breaking the moment. “The power here,” she said, gripping her crucible, “I don’t know what it is.”

  When she didn’t say anything else, I spoke. “But it comes from you. Your power is yours alone.”

  She shook her head, the barest movement. “You have no idea what went into making my crucible.” She finally raised her eyes to meet mine. They were—wrong, somehow. The color in her irises was too light, too reflective, but rimmed in black. Her voice didn’t sound like hers, either, gravelly and low.

  “Nedra?” I said, fear rising in me. “Ned?”

  “I can show you, Grey,” she said. Her residual arm still moved over her crucible, as if invisible fingers were stroking the iron.

  “No, I—” I scooted back, swallowing hard. Nedra drew closer to me, and she seemed to be reaching for me with her residual arm, even though she had no hand with which to restrain me.

  Something inside me moved. I gasped in shock, but I couldn’t breathe. My heartbeat slowed to nothing. My mind faded, black around my thoughts.

  Nedra’s smile was feral. Hungry.

  I looked down at her residual arm, and I could see then, just barely, a ghostlike arm extending from the flesh limb, twining a golden thread between shadow fingers.

  “Souls are such little things,” Nedra muttered, cocking her head and studying the golden thread of light.

  With dawning horror, I realized what was in her hand.

  A soul.

  My soul.

  And I understood—

  Ernesta was a shell, separated from her own soul. That’s what I was. My body was still, motionless, but my mind screamed with desire to move, to shout, to snatch my soul back from Nedra’s grasp. How horrific it must be for Ernesta, for her soul trapped in Nedra’s crucible. Ned dipped her ghostly hand down to the crucible, holding it up, my soul dangling near the lip of the iron. And I could see more. I could see the darkness Nedra spoke of. With her shadowy arm touching my soul, I was connected to her and her power. I could see as she did. And I saw the black bubbling over the edge of the iron, the simmering power that almost seemed sentient.

  I could feel its hunger.

  A longing ache filled me, an echo of the starvation engulfing the black within Nedra’s crucible. This was not just a simple matter of light and dark. This darkness—it was alive. It was voracious. It wanted to devour. The darkness licked at my soul, and I felt the life withering in me.

  But it was not I the darkness wanted.

  It was her.

  My soul was a golden thread of light, connecting my body to hers, an
d she was connected to her crucible, a linked chain of power. I could feel the darkness in the iron aching to break free from the crucible. Its desire pumped into me as my soul flickered. It wanted to consume Nedra. Her body? I thought, but I could tell that wasn’t it. There was a glowing essence about her—her soul, I realized. The source of her necromantic abilities. It wanted to devour her soul and, therefore, her power.

  No, I thought. Not Nedra. She doesn’t belong to the dark.

  She doesn’t belong to anything or anyone.

  Protectiveness rose inside me, like a swelling wave. It felt strong, but all it resulted in was one weak word emerging from my lips, barely audible: “No.”

  Nedra’s head jerked to me, her eyes wide. I watched as the silver and black left her gaze, replaced with her own eyes, brown and warm and—

  Scared.

  “Grey,” she gasped, and it was her voice, her real voice, no power within it, no dark force possessing her. Nedra dropped the crucible, and my soul snapped back into my body, so violently that I fell over, my head cracking on the bedframe I’d been leaning against. Nedra scrambled over to me. “Grey, Grey,” she said, emotion making her voice crack. “Are you okay? I don’t know what—I didn’t mean to, I, I . . .” Her stuttered, frantic voice faded to nothing as I raised my eyes to hers.

  “I’m fine,” I said. And I was, except for the fact that I couldn’t remember the last few minutes of my life. I felt dimly aware that I hadn’t been fine before, but it was . . . almost like a dream, already fading now that I was awake.

  Nedra helped me up.

  “What did you mean?” she asked urgently.

  I put a hand to my head. “What did I mean by what?” I asked.

  “You said, ‘No.’” Nedra spoke clearly and slowly. “What did you mean by that?” When I didn’t answer, her voice pitched up an octave. “Grey, that’s what Nessie told me, before. When I tried to pull her soul from the darkness. She said ‘no’ as well—just that. Just . . . no. What did you mean? What did you see?”

  My heart hammered against my rib cage. I stared at the crucible, resting atop Nedra’s tunic. She had held it, hadn’t she? But not—not with her hand? I shook my head, and tried to focus on the iron bead. I thought I saw a flicker of light, but . . .

  “I don’t remember,” I said, turning my eyes to Nedra’s desperate ones. “I know . . . something happened.” I paused. “What happened?”

  Nedra’s eyes were glassy with tears. I felt an overpowering urge to hold her, to protect her.

  “I tried to show you the darkness in my crucible,” Nedra said. Her gaze focused on me. “There—you flinched. Why?”

  I shook my head again. “I flinched?”

  “I saw you. When I said ‘darkness,’ you flinched. Like I was about to strike you.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Nedra moved closer to me, moving her hand to my cheek. “You don’t . . .” Her face showed her bitter disappointment. “You don’t remember anything?”

  “Nedra, what happened?” I asked again.

  “I reached for the darkness,” she said. “And it reached back for me.”

  THIRTY

  Nedra

  I NEVER WANTED power, except to save my sister. But the only time I felt power that seemed strong enough was when I neared the black in my crucible, the echoes of Bennum Wellebourne’s own corrupt necromancy. Feeding the light of souls to the dark power made me feel drunk on my own strength.

  But what if, I thought, the only way to save my sister is to sacrifice the lives and souls of others? I raised my eyes to meet Grey’s. What if saving her means taking him? I dropped my gaze.

  What if, to save her, I have to give up myself, too?

  That blackness in my crucible was starving. It would have consumed Grey’s soul . . . but it had wanted mine.

  Books. I had to read more. Every line, every word. There had to be something. I would read every day until we got to Miraband, and then . . . I swallowed down the hopelessness welling inside me. I will find the answers I need, I swore to myself.

  Beams of sunlight poured through the porthole window as the day grew long, dust motes like stars hanging in the air. We read in silence until they faded, the light so dim we could no longer see the printed text. I stretched, the skin on my residual arm pulling almost painfully, my shoulder popping. The events of this morning felt far away. The entire world felt far away.

  “This is like being back at Yūgen,” I said. “Studying all the time. Remember?”

  Grey’s eyes warmed, matching my smile. “I remember wanting to do more than study,” he said.

  “I wish I had another book to throw at you.”

  “There’s a whole pile of them over there,” he said, pointing.

  “They’re too precious to risk damaging on your thick skull.”

  Grey laughed. He let the book he’d been reading drop to the floor, although he was careful to make sure the spine wasn’t damaged. “It feels like forever ago,” he said. “It’s amazing how important I thought all that was.”

  “All that?”

  “Taking the robes, graduating top of the class, getting a high appointment at the Governor’s Hospital. Even the people. Trying to impress Master Ostrum.” He cut his eyes at me. “Tomus.”

  I rolled my eyes. I had never understood why Grey liked the childish brute.

  “I cared so much about what he thought,” Grey mused. “But once I left school, in merely a few days, he just became someone I used to know. There are people in our lives who fill up our whole attention, but they’re still only temporary. And there are others who settle into our hearts and minds comfortably and never leave.”

  Despite the events of this morning, I couldn’t help but smile at Grey’s words.

  “Oh, did you think I meant you?” Grey asked smarmily. “I was absolutely talking about this dog I had when I was a kid, she was a great dog—”

  I kissed him to shut him up, tasting his laugh on my tongue.

  And then he kissed me back, and there wasn’t laughter there anymore. His body shifted, pressing into mine, and everything else fled from my mind past this moment, now, the two of us alone on the sea. In another life, this could be my everything. Not fighting a battle for my sister’s soul, but this—just being in love, and laughing, and happy.

  But that was not this life.

  I pushed Grey away. But rather than step back, he grabbed my hand and held on. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice husky. “Are we forever going to leave this”—he indicated the small space between us—“unspoken?”

  “What this do you mean?” I said, wrenching free. “There is no this.”

  If he had tried to hold me down, I would have pulled away. If he had tried to force me into a corner, I would have fought. If he had raised his voice, I would have shouted him down.

  But he stood in the center of the room, surrounded by books, and he quietly spoke words that I knew were the truth: “I love you. And you love me. You just won’t let yourself admit it.”

  “You said—”

  “We both said a lot of things,” Grey countered in that same even tone. “Because neither of us understood the other. But I’m trying, Nedra. Why aren’t you?”

  My fist clenched, my fingernails digging into the palm of my hand. All the fears I had from before rose to the surface, bubbling up, filling the space between us.

  “What if I lose control?” I whispered. Grey was wise enough to let me speak without interruption. “This morning, I hadn’t meant to . . .” The dark power had possessed me, it had been in control as I took Grey’s soul, not me.

  Power was passion. That hunger—it was desire. A voracious need and longing to consume, to become one. I felt it when the black in my crucible reached for me.

  And I felt it when Grey reached for me.

  I squeezed my eyes shut,
trying to separate my emotions. My crucible’s lust for power felt too close to my body’s lust for Grey. But when I pushed all that aside, there was another feeling that bloomed, something pure, something I didn’t dare give a name.

  “I’m so scared,” I whispered, my voice cracking. That emotion, at least, I knew was real.

  Grey crossed over to me in two strides, wrapping his strong arms around me. “I haven’t stopped being scared for you since that night in Master Ostrum’s office, when you walked away from me,” he said. “I didn’t know it then, but you’d already taken my heart. You may as well have my soul, too.”

  I sob-laughed against his chest. “The worst moments of my life were watching my family die, leaving me behind,” I said, too timid to look up at him. It was easier to whisper these words in the shadow between his skin and mine. “But after that, it was the way you let me walk away from you.”

  His arms tightened around me, as if he couldn’t think of letting me go now, but it was too late. The wound was a scar now, marring our love.

  “I don’t want to be alone,” I whispered.

  Somehow, Grey heard my muffled words. “You don’t have to be.”

  I pushed away from him, my hand pressing against his chest to ensure that I kept the distance between us. “I think I do,” I said. “I’m worried . . .” He waited for me to finish. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”

  “You will,” Grey said simply. I was too surprised to answer. “That’s what you’ve taught me, Ned.” Grey pushed my hand aside, drawing closer to me. “If you love someone—deeply, in as true a way as you can—you will get hurt. People leave us and love falls apart, and when it does, it hurts. It should hurt. How can you not hurt when what you love is gone?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I started.

  “I know,” Grey said. He sighed heavily. “The deeper we go, the more dangerous it becomes.” He searched my eyes. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. For everything.”