I couldn’t have planned a better outcome.
With a sharp inhale, Marius finally comes to his senses. He swallows his words and steps back, glowering, trembling, biting his tongue, clenching and unclenching his fists. A murmur runs through the crowd, whispers that slither like vipers, whispers that are going to spread like wildfire through the Republic. But when Marius looks up, he’s not looking at the crowd. He’s looking right at me, and I look right back. This time, I’ve got the blade to his throat, and he knows it.
But then he does something I didn’t expect. He smiles. Not a frantic smile, not a crazed smile, but the vicious smile of someone who’s about to twist a knife. The smile he had before he killed Fyl. My blood runs cold, and my hand dives for my Loci. What am I missing? What does he have up his sleeve?
“You think you’re so clever,” Marius growls. “You really think you’ve won this? You think this is just going to stop here? You don’t think I’m going to make you pay for this every second of your miserable life?” He takes a step forward, and I think he might actually be making a move, but he doesn’t go toward me. Instead, he jerks hard to the side, to the crowd of onlookers.…
And grabs Marlena by the arm.
My heart freezes in my chest. My stomach plunges. I don’t make a conscious choice to grab my Loci, but they’re in my hands all the same. Marius just keeps grinning that same cruel grin as he jerks Marlena out onto the green. “That’s right,” he says, shoving her forward. “I’ve had my Vanguards watching you, and I know all about your special Humble friend. All your late-night meetings in your room. Your endless study sessions. Your constant planning in the library. The way you giggle and laugh and act like the best of friends…”
“Lord Madison, please, you’re hurting me,” Marlena pleads, and Marius just jerks her arm harder. “Tell me, Dewinter,” he says. “Are you some kind of Humble lover? Or is she just your little accomplice, helping you cheat your way to the top?”
Talyn steps forward, even though he must have no idea what’s going on. “Cheating?” he growls. “That’s mighty rich coming from you.…”
“Oh, you wait your turn, Princeling. You’ll get yours soon enough,” Marius says, but his focus is still on me. My vision flares red. My hands are shaking. I can see his grip tighten on Marlena’s arm, see her wince in pain, and it is taking everything I have to not murder him where he stands. “See, I don’t exactly know what’s going on with you two. But I don’t need to. All I know is that you’re close. Or at least, that you were.”
“What are you talking about?” I demand, and I want it to sound firm but it comes out like a shout, because I can’t keep this in, can’t keep looking at him hurting her.
“I was going to wait until the end of the term for this, but I might as well do it early,” Marius replies. “I’ve had my father buy her contract. She’ll be working for the Madisons now. We’re going to take her right off this island to my father’s mansion.” He twists her arm again, so hard she lets out a little gasp. “You’re never going to see her again. She’ll be all mine.”
“Enough!” Professor Calfex finally speaks. “This is unacceptable behavior. You need to let go of that girl and—”
“Now, wait just a moment,” Headmaster Aberdeen interrupts, and now his voice is calm, patrician. “If it’s true that Lord Madison bought out the Humble girl’s contract, then she’s his servant. It’s not our place to get involved in their private affairs.” He glances back at me with a hapless shrug and the most infuriating of smiles. “If he wants to take her, well, that’s his business.”
I know what they’re doing here. It couldn’t be clearer. They’re baiting me, trying to get under my skin, to provoke me into doing something rash and stupid, something that’ll undercut my victory, something that’ll shift the focus away from them. It’s a trap, plain and simple, but it doesn’t matter because even knowing it’s a trap, I don’t see anything I can do except barrel right into it.
Time slows down. There’s one second of choice, one moment of agency, that stretches out across an eternity. I look around and see everyone’s faces: the other students gawking in anticipation, Calfex’s brow furrowed with tension, Aberdeen’s condescending smile, and Marius’s cruel grin. For all my planning, for all my scheming, everything’s come down to what I choose here.
I can hear Whispers in my mind, clear as day. Remember the cause, she’d say. If anything comes between you and the cause, you cut it down. If she were here, if she could see this, I know she wouldn’t hesitate for a second. I’m this close, this close, to the greatest victory the Revenants have ever had, to a devastating humiliation of the powers that be, to getting my foot into the door of the most powerful place in the Republic, to bringing the whole thing down. I’m closer to victory than any Revenant has ever come, and all it’ll cost me is Marlena.
Then I look at her. Our eyes meet, just like they had earlier. There’s no joy now, but there’s also no fear. She stares at me with those amber eyes, and she looks determined, resolved, at peace even. She looks committed. It’s okay, her eyes say. Let me go.
I know what Whispers would tell me to do.
And I know what would make Sera proud.
Just like that, my choice is made. I thunder across the green, wind up, and smash the butt of my Loci as hard as I can across Marius’s face.
He goes down with a sputtering gasp. Marlena jerks away, stumbling back into the crowd. Marius hits the ground hard, and several professors rush forward to grab me, but they don’t have time to because I’m already making my next move.
“Marius Madison!” I shout, jabbing the tip of my Loci his way. “You have insulted my honor and the honor of House Dewinter. I challenge you to a krova-yan!”
A shocked murmur runs through the crowd, this one so loud it almost becomes a roar. A krova-yan. A duel to the death. Everyone stops, even the professors about to grab me. On the ground, Marius blinks, surprised, and stares at me with a mixture of distrust, uncertainty, maybe even fear. He’s smart enough to wonder if this is another trap, but there are too many eyes on him, too much hanging on this, too much at stake. “You’re serious?” he says, pulling himself back onto his elbows. “Against me? All right.” He stands up and steps back, and any attention he’d had toward Marlena is gone, utterly forgotten. She doesn’t matter to him anymore. She was just a means to an end, and now I’ve jumped the line and given him that end. That’s what matters here. “I accept your challenge, Lady Dewinter,” he says, spitting a glob of blood to the side. “Tomorrow at noon?”
“Noon it is,” I say.
And just like that, I seal my fate.
CHAPTER 46
Now
You idiot!” Marlena yells at me the second I close the door to my room. “You absolute complete and utter idiot!”
I slump against a wall, muscles aching. “That’s one way to thank me for saving your life.”
“I wanted you to let me go!” She throws up her hands. “I know you could tell!”
“I couldn’t do it,” I tell her, and finding words feels nearly impossible now. I feel scared and exhilarated and anxious and proud and tired, so, so tired. “I just couldn’t.”
She isn’t accepting it. “You were so close,” she says, pacing around the room. “You did it. You won the Third Challenge, won the Great Game. You had it! And you’re throwing it all away for what? For me?”
“You said it yourself,” I reply. “We’re in this together, or we’re not in it at all.”
“No. That’s not fair. That’s not what I meant.” She shakes her head, her voice choking up. “I don’t want you to die for me!”
“Who says I’m going to die?” I say back, maybe a little too argumentatively. “I could win.”
She glares at me. “He’s a better Wizard than you, Alka.”
“I know.”
“Much, much better.”
“I know!” I yell back. “You think I’m not scared? You think I’m not panicking? I am! But I had a second
to make a choice, and I made the choice that might keep you alive, that might keep you in my life!”
She paces toward me, breathing hard. Her gaze is like fire, like looking into the sun. The air between us is charged, electric, so tense I’d swear there was magic there. “I’m not worth it,” she pleads. “Not worth your mission. Not worth everything you’ve done, everything you’ve built!”
“You’re worth everything!” I shout back, and my voice is caught in my throat, and my eyes are burning. “Listen to me, Marlena. For the first time in I don’t even know how long, I feel like I know who I am. I know what I want. I know what I’m really fighting for. It’s us. It’s this.” I reach out and take her shoulder. “It’s you.”
It feels like everything in my life has been leading to this moment. It feels like a dam about to burst, like the well of feeling I’ve tamped down for so long thundering against me from within. “I don’t want you to die,” she whispers.
“I know. But I don’t want to live without you,” I say, and I hadn’t realized how true it was until the words are out there. “I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved, Marlena. I don’t want to lose you, too!”
Neither of us says anything for a moment. The weight of my words hangs in the air between us, hangs over us, a truth I hadn’t dared to acknowledge even to myself.
I don’t know if I kiss her or she kisses me. But one minute we’re apart and the next we’re together, tumbling back across the room, her lips against mine, our bodies pressed close. We collapse onto the bed, and neither of us is talking anymore, we’re just kissing, caressing, tumbling together. There’s a desperation now, a relentlessness, passion that can’t be stopped, like rivers rushing, like fire consuming. My body burns as I kiss her lips, her neck, her collarbone, as her firm arms envelop me, as her hands pull off my shirt, caress my side, push me down. She lets out a little gasp as she presses her cheek against mine, as I gently nip at her ear, as the tips of her fingers run along my thigh.
Panting, we pause and stare at each other, our faces barely apart, our breath intertwined. There are no masks here, no lies, no layers of deception. She gazes down into my eyes and I gaze up into hers. All I want is her.
“Are you sure about this?” I whisper. “Is this what you want?”
“I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything,” she replies. “And if this might be our last night together… then I want all of you.”
Then I kiss her again, and she kisses me, and I lose myself in the sensation, lose myself in her. As a gentle spring rain rattles against the window, as the sun slowly sets, our bodies come together, burning hotter than flame, scorching brighter than lightning. She feels so good, so good I can barely stop myself, so good that I forget all about tomorrow, about the duel, about the incredible danger I’m in. There’s just her lips, her skin, her touch, her gasping breath. There’s just her.
And as we lay together afterward, our bodies pressed together, staring into each other’s eyes, she leans close and whispers, “I love you.”
They’re three words I haven’t said in years, three words I never imagined myself saying again. But they flow out now as easily as water, effortlessly because they’re my deepest truth. “I love you, too.”
This is what I’d been so afraid of, why I built up so many walls, why I pushed her away for so long. But now the dam’s burst, the walls demolished. There’s no going back, and I wouldn’t if I could. Marlena’s more important to me than Whispers, more important than vengeance, more important than it all. There’s only one thing that matters to me now, and that’s living to have another day with her, another chance to kiss her, another chance to see her smile. She’s my cause now, my fire, my fuel. And I’ll burn the whole world down before I let it tear us apart.
CHAPTER 47
Then
I am seventeen the last time I see Pavel.
It’s the night before I leave for my mission, my last night in the Revenant camp. A week from now, I’ll be recruiting bandits in a New Finley tavern. Two weeks from now, I’ll be on the ferry to Blackwater. But right now, I sit alone on the rocky shore of a lake a couple miles from our camp, gazing out at the darkening water as the setting sun turns the sky a vivid purple. Crickets hum in the woods around us, and a distant bird lets out a mourning caw.
“Hey, kid,” a gruff voice says from behind me. It’s Pavel. The years have changed him: he’s about twenty pounds lighter, his hair’s gone gray, and he walks with a pronounced limp, courtesy of a spear from an Enforcer. But when he sees me, his ruddy face crinkles into a smile. “Figured I’d find you out here.”
“I just wanted to be away from everyone,” I reply. “But it’s okay. Not from you.”
“I figured.” He hunkers down next to me, wincing as he bends his knees. “So. Tomorrow’s the big day.” He scratches idly at his beard, which reaches halfway down his chest. “How’re you feeling?”
“I don’t know,” I reply, because I’m feeling too many things, scared and excited all at once. “It’s just hard to take in. I’ve been training for this for three years. And now it’s finally happening.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll miss you,” he says, then shoots me a sly look. “But don’t tell anyone I said that.”
“I won’t.” I grin back. “What are you going to do when I’m gone? Are you going to stay with the Revenants?”
“Oh, I doubt Whispers would let me leave if I wanted to. I know too much and all that.” Pavel lets out a cynical chuckle, the kind that means he’s not really joking. “No, I figure I’m stuck with you lot till the bitter end. You’ll always need someone to heal you up, right?”
“Be safe,” I tell him, struck by a sudden pang. I don’t know quite what Pavel is to me… a teacher, a father figure, a friend? But I know he’s the one person left in the Revenants that I care about. I know I don’t want him to get hurt.
“You just worry about yourself,” Pavel replies. “You’re the one going deep undercover behind enemy lines.” He scoops up a rock in one stocky hand and hurls it into the lake, where it sinks with a resounding splash. “Blackwater Academy. I ever tell you that I wanted to go there?”
I blink. “No.”
“Well, I did,” he says. “My parents were lesser Wizards. My father was a foreman, my mother a nurse. Both of them went to Highmorrow, which is a third-tier Wizard school in the west, the kind that just teaches you the Glyphs you’ll need to do your job. But I had bigger dreams. I wanted to go to Blackwater, to study with the finest scholars, to become a professor myself.”
“What happened?”
“They didn’t accept me, of course,” he replies, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “So I went to Highmorrow instead. And that’s where it all went wrong.” He gazes out at the water, still rippling from where he tossed the stone. “When I was in the prison camp, I’d think about that all the time. I’d wonder how different my life would’ve been if I’d gotten into Blackwater, how much better things would’ve turned out.” For once, there’s nothing gruff about him, just a melancholy vulnerability that makes my heart ache. “Blackwater was always my lost fantasy, the promise of the life I could’ve had. And now you get to go there and live my dream.”
“I’m not going there to become a professor,” I say, maybe a little bluntly. “I’m going to burn the place down.”
Pavel stares at me, one bushy gray eyebrow cocked, like he’s impressed and alarmed all at once. “Can I give you one last piece of advice before you go?”
“All right.”
“Whispers has filled your head with all kind of things. Her whole belief system, her whole worldview. And I’m not saying she’s wrong. She’s tough and she’s strong and she gets shit done that no one else could.” He reaches into his pocket, takes out a silver flask, then reconsiders and puts it back. “But there’s more to life than what she sees.”
“What are you talking about?”
Pavel sighs wearily, turning back to the lake. “Whispers is a creature of hate. She�
�s got a core of fury inside her like a smoldering sun, red hot and forever burning. Anger’s powerful, don’t get me wrong. It gets you back up when you’ve been knocked down, keeps you fighting when everyone says you oughta give up, lets you push through the pain to do the impossible. When it comes to burning down the world, anger’s all you need. But if you want to build something better, if you want to make a new world, you need more than anger. You need something to love, to guide you, to protect you. You need more than something to fight against.” A gentle breeze passes over us, and Pavel closes his eyes. “You need something to fight for.”
I’ll think about his words many times in the months to come. But it’s not until the night before the krova-yan, when I lie awake, staring at Marlena sleeping in the moonlight, that I’ll really understand what he meant.
CHAPTER 48
Now
I nod off at some point, and when I wake up the first thing I see is Marlena’s eyes. It’s early morning, the bright light of dawn shining in through the blinds, sparkling bright against her dark hair. Her arms are wrapped around me, our legs entwined, and I linger in the feeling of her body, of her skin, of her warmth.
“Gods, you’re beautiful,” she whispers, and I somehow feel my cheeks burn. “I wish I could wake up to this every morning.”
“Maybe you will,” I reply. “Don’t go counting me out yet.”
She breathes deeply, and I can feel her heart beating through her chest, beating against mine. “I’ve dreamed about you for so long,” she says. “And now we’re together finally and… and I’m so afraid I’ll lose you.” She pulls me in tight, face buried in my shoulder. “Please don’t die. I want so much more time with you.”
“I won’t,” I reply, and I think I actually believe it. “I’ve never been one for the temple, but… if the Gods granted us this, if they let us be reunited after all this time, if they let us find each other, of all the people in the world, and let us be together… I can’t believe they’d have it in their hearts to tear us apart.”
It Ends in Fire Page 32