Shadow Witch

by Isla Frost

Theus shook his own head. “We’ll get to your friends faster if you can stand on your own and walk at a decent pace.”

  I wasn’t sure that was true. Not technically, since he could carry me easily enough. But I’d been carried to my near execution like a sack of potatoes. I wanted to walk away from it.

  So I nodded, not wasting words on vocal capitulation.

  Theus laid a hand above my heart, and his magic flowed through me like the spreading warmth of sunshine on a cold winter’s day. Soothing the pain in my throat and airways, dulling the stinging, blistered rawness to something like a mild case of the flu. Quieting the pounding in my temples and making my brain feel… well, less waterlogged. And sending warmth and energy into my exhausted, aching muscles.

  “That’s all I can manage with your life force as low as it is,” he apologized as if he hadn’t just made me feel a hundred times better. Then one corner of his mouth lifted. “But I’ll stalk down some snails in the forest for you as soon as we’ve checked on Bryn and Ameline.”

  Griff—who was sitting on Theus’s shoulder, something I’d failed to notice in the prior haze of pain—flapped his wings at hearing Ameline’s name.

  I cracked a smile and took the hand Theus offered to help me to my feet.

  “Thank you.”

  Maybe I held on a moment longer than necessary, but I was too exhausted to chide myself for it.

  Bryn was okay except for a mild concussion and a nasty lump that Theus took care of. I was so relieved my knees went weak. Or maybe my knees were already weak.

  Ameline was unharmed. The first thing she did after we removed that cursed bloodjewel beetle was wrap me in a hug. Then she offered her shoulder for Griff to land on and scratched him in all his favorite places.

  There was no sign of the hole in our ceiling.

  But for all that we’d escaped without permanent injury, the mood was somber. Especially as I relayed what they’d done to me. How close I’d come to dying.

  “They’re not going to stop until you’re dead,” Bryn said, uncharacteristically grim.

  I’d known that, known it for weeks, but it hadn’t seemed real, not entirely. Hadn’t held the same weight as it did now. The weight of terror and hopelessness I’d experienced under that ice. The weight of knowing in my last moments that I’d ultimately done so little to help those I loved. Not when the world would be ending in ten short years.

  “I know,” I said simply. But my hands curled into fists at my sides.

  Perhaps I should accept that reality. Bow to the inevitable. At least that way I might be able to stop my friends from becoming collateral damage. But the fury I thought had drowned with me was back, and everything in me wanted to fight.

  I just didn’t know how.

  Tears welled in Ameline’s eyes, but she didn’t let them spill. “They can’t. This isn’t how it’s going to end. We’ll come up with a way to stop them.”

  But she trailed off, as empty of ideas as I was.

  Bryn was staring into the fireplace, the dwindling flames and her own stillness testaments of her distress. “You all saw how much use my fire was against a well-planned attack.”

  “More use than my magic,” I pointed out.

  We sat in our shared misery, mulling over the facts. We had several months of training left to complete before we would be divided into warrior units and sent to the Malus war front. Several months in which Ellbereth and her minions would continue to escalate their attacks. Growing bolder, more cunning, and perhaps more ruthless too.

  And if we failed to come up with an ingenious plan to thwart them, I would not survive till graduation.

  We sat in hopeless silence.

  Theus cleared his throat.

  “I might know of a way you could get Ellbereth to call off her attacks,” he offered hesitantly. “But it would involve breaking an awful lot of rules and may well place you in as much danger as it saves you from. Let me sleep on it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  We all tried to sleep. Some of us more successfully than others. Exhaustion from my near drowning claimed me quickly, but my rest was plagued with nightmares. Not of my own death, but that of my friends, my family, and the entire world.

  So when someone knocked lightly on our dorm room wall before sunrise, I staggered out of bed to see who it was. Millicent anticipated my need and obligingly made a peephole for me.

  Theus. The man who’d dragged me out of a frozen lake. His hair was rumpled with sleep, his clear-cut jaw sported a layer of stubble, and his handsome face was unusually drawn.

  What was he considering risking to save me?

  I opened the door that was still visible on our side of the wall.

  “I will help you,” he said, his voice pitched not to carry. “But we cannot speak on academy grounds. Will you come with me?”

  “Of course. I’ll wake the others.”

  “No. Don’t. Please. Revealing this information to you is betrayal enough to my own kind.”

  “Oh.” I hesitated, but Theus had saved me time and time again. Whatever his intentions were, I need not fear for my life with him. “Give me a minute to get ready.”

  I wrote a note on the largest sheet of paper I could find to prevent Ameline and Bryn from freaking out, and ended it with an inside joke so they’d know I hadn’t penned it under duress. Then I pulled on my boots and cloak, strapped on Gus and my hidden dagger, and joined Theus in the hallway.

  We walked in silence through Millicent’s corridors and out one of the less used side doors.

  Outside, the air was cold and damp, and I pulled my cloak tighter around me. We tramped across the frost-laden grass, our breath sending clouds of condensation before us. The sight of the lake glinting in the waning starlight elicited a shudder that had nothing to do with the temperature. Its smooth surface was unblemished by wind, deceptively tranquil.

  I couldn’t imagine choosing to swim anytime soon. Maybe ever again.

  Maintaining our silence, we stepped past the sentinel hedge cats into the forest, and I was grateful for Gus at my hip.

  Fog drifted through the trees and swirled around our feet, softening and obscuring our surroundings, dampening sound, and making the sentient forest feel even more otherworldly.

  Once we were out of sight of the academy, Theus halted.

  “I would like to translocate us somewhere. Partly to ensure we’re away from prying ears. And partly because… well, you’ll see.”

  He seemed to be asking my permission, so I nodded. “All right.”

  In moments, the haze of a temporary gateway that was the hallmark of the world walkers’ power sprang to life. It wasn’t one you could see the destination through, which made sense if Theus was worried about being observed.

  We stepped through the skin-crawling static together, and suddenly it was daylight and a barren landscape stretched before us.

  No. Not barren.

  Desolate.

  I’d read that even deserts were abundant with their own forms of life. Not so here.

  Nothing grew. Nothing moved. And nothing but dust shifted over the vast plain surrounding us. Not so much as a bug. Or a snail for that matter.

  In the distance I could see a sagging cottage with no roof, a listing wire fence, and a few dead trees still standing. Beyond that, there was nothing. Even the earth itself was a sickly gray, as if the soil too had been leeched of life. Erosion drew cracks in the land, and the wind picked up that soil as if it weighed nothing, held nothing…

  I opened my second sight and confirmed I was not mistaken. Nowhere had I experienced such an utter lack of light. Of life. Of energy. I closed my eyes to be certain I wasn’t missing any faint traces, but only sunlight shone through my eyelids.

  Wherever we were, the sun had already risen in this part of the world. I estimated it was a few hours from setting, in fact.

  “Where are we?” I whispered.

  “It was farmland in what used to be known as northern France.”

 
“Used to? What happened?”

  But I knew the answer before I’d finished asking.

  The Malus.

  The air stole from my lungs at the stark reality of that. This was just a tiny speck on the map of the land, the nations, the entire civilizations that the Malus had devoured.

  Theus’s voice was quiet too. The way people get in the presence of death. Which I supposed was appropriate, because we were standing in a graveyard, in a way. A graveyard the size of a country. A continent.

  “This area was devoured by the Malus about forty years ago. It has moved on now that there’s nothing left for it to take. In some ways, we are safer here than anywhere else on this planet.”

  I’d seen pictures of France in an old travel book. Paris, the city of love. Quaint villages nestled within rolling green pastureland or pretty, historic vineyards. Seaside towns clinging to cliffs and hectare upon hectare of sprawling fields planted with lavender or wheat or other food crops or dotted with cattle and wildflowers.

  All of it gone now.

  “Will it ever grow back?” I asked.

  “Yes. In a few hundred years or so, it will. Or significantly less with walker magic and hard work.” He hesitated. “My mother brought me here the day she told me I was to become a hollow.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to the revelation about his mother. I placed a hand on his arm and squeezed it. “I’m sorry.”

  And I was. But the majority of my mind was stuck on a few hundred years. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. The extent of the devastation.

  I’d grown up knowing that at least two-thirds of the old world had been decimated, that it no longer existed, that I’d never see or experience it. But it had never felt more real to me than in that moment.

  No wonder the walkers hated the Malus.

  This must be all that was left of their entire world. Their larger world. How much must they have lost?

  I took a deep, shuddery breath.

  “Why did you bring me here? What does this have to do with Ellbereth?”

  Theus drew in a deep, shuddery breath of his own. For different reasons, I suspected. He’d been here before. Had already known just how devastating the wake of the Malus was.

  But from what he’d said, his plan to protect me meant going against the dictates of his own people. At what cost to himself?

  He did not answer my questions. Not directly.

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this. It’s forbidden to so much as mention it to an outsider or talk about it among ourselves where someone might overhear.” He swallowed, then cracked a half smile. “In fact, I cannot think of a single act I could commit that would make my people more furious.”

  I didn’t smile back. Fear for him gripped my heart. Revealing just how much I’d come to care about this walker. I’d been determined to avoid attachment, and yet… there was something about him that went far deeper than his fathomless green gaze and achingly beautiful face. His steadfastness and unacknowledged strength, his vulnerability, the quiet flashes of humor, his friendship—undeserved.

  Despite my best efforts, I knew where every faint freckle lay across the bridge of his nose. Worse, I didn’t know whether I could still choose to hurt him if it became necessary to succeed in the goals I’d set myself. Because somewhere along the line, he’d become one of the people I wanted to protect.

  “Furious enough to kill you?” I asked.

  Theus failed to answer that question too.

  “Have you ever thought about where life force from the hollows is anchored? It is in a place far away from here, far away from anything really, in a location we believe the Malus will go last of all. We call it something that translates roughly to the Cache of the Last Stand, and it is considered sacred to our people.”

  I listened in silence, not yet grasping why this topic was so forbidden or what it had to do with me.

  “Ellbereth feels free to target you because as a hollow she is protected from your magic. But there is a way to change that. A way that would bind Ellbereth’s life force to your own. To irreversibly tie your life with hers.”

  That sounded like something I distinctly didn’t want to do. I wanted Ellbereth out of my life, not bound to me forever.

  “It is not without risk, and it would require you to travel to the life force cache to do the binding, but it is possible. And it would mean Ellbereth could not kill you without sacrificing herself.

  “More than that, by making her well-being dependent on yours, you would effectively tie the hands of her allies too. Including her politically powerful mother who holds sway over half the council. Their relationship is a close one, and I do not believe she would sacrifice her daughter to kill you. Even those who don’t feel the same way would at least be given pause by the political ramifications of being responsible for Lady Neryndrith’s daughter’s death.”

  “What if Ellbereth is prepared to sacrifice herself?”

  “She won’t. The way she’s tried to conceal the attempts on your life is telling. She’s not even prepared to lose political face, let alone everything.”

  Theus’s eyes met mine then. “It is the only way I can think of to keep you safe.”

  I gulped.

  “Would it work in reverse? If Ellbereth died in battle or of natural causes or swallowed her own poisonous tongue, would I die with her?”

  Theus’s shoulders tightened. “Yes.” He raked his fingers through his hair and released a breath. “The binding is an ancient but rare ritual. Usually it is performed by lovers who would prefer to die than live without the other, and even then only in the direst of need. Essentially, the binding allows you to draw on one another’s life force. So if one half of the pair was afflicted with star sickness—”

  “Star sickness?”

  “Yes, it’s a slow but deadly disease that sometimes afflicts a walker who has traveled too much. We were born to walk across worlds, but traversing through the fabric of the universe is still hard on our bodies. Or so I’ve heard.”

  He said the last part under his breath, more to himself than me. But it was a reminder that he would never have the chance to experience world walking for himself. This thing he believed he was born to do. Not even once.

  He cleared his throat. “Anyway, if one walker is sick, the binding will allow them both to live relatively normal lives. The healthy partner will be weaker than they would be otherwise of course, but the disease does not cross the bond to their body, and so the lovers can live until old age claims them. If, on the other hand, one of the partners is decapitated for example, they will both die instantly.”

  Wow. Trying to grasp the repercussions of Ellbereth and I being connected in that way was making me light-headed.

  “Given life force and magic are interlinked,” I mused, “can the bound pair use each other’s magic?”

  Theus’s lips compressed. “Not usually. But, Nova, this has never been tried with two hollows. Never been tried with a walker and a human. And certainly never tried with someone with your wildcard gift. I don’t know what will happen.”

  I mulled that over, watching Theus’s hands clench and unclench in unconscious tension. It seemed unlikely that Ellbereth would gain access to my magic. And if she did? Her fanatical conviction that it was evil would probably ensure she didn’t use it.

  This path was fraught with danger and a host of ramifications I could barely begin to comprehend. But it was still the best option I had. The only one besides give up and die.

  So I would take it.

  “All right. How do I get to the cache?”

  “You can’t. It’s thousands of miles away and impossible to reach without a gateway.”

  “Then—”

  “I will take you.”

  I stared at Theus in horror. This walker who had already risked so much, given so much… for me.

  Up until this moment, I’d imagined performing the ritual alone. Of keeping Theus entirely separate from the process so any fury would be directed at me.
It was for my protection after all.

  I could claim I’d overheard other kids talking about it and figured it out on my own. Or claim my magic guided me to do it. Anything that would put the onus squarely on my shoulders.

  But if the only way for me to get there was with Theus committing an outright act of treason—rather than whispering about it far away from any eavesdroppers—then all chance of him avoiding the fallout was gone.

  Even without witnesses, someone was sure to figure out which walker was responsible for transporting me to the life force cache eventually. Our association had not gone unobserved.

  Theus, who had only ever been kind to me. Who had been treated so poorly his whole life for something he’d had no control over. Who had overcome all such things to be exceptionally noble and good. Who had already given up half his lifespan and the greatest desire of his heart to become a hollow and fight in the war against the Malus.

  “No,” I said. My voice was firm, but my stomach sank as my last chance to live slipped through my fingers. “You can’t throw away your remaining years for mine. I won’t let you.”

  Theus gazed back, his usually calm demeanor holding an intensity I’d never seen.

  “I thought you might say that,” he said.

  Then he gripped my shoulders and shoved me through another gateway.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Stinging, icy wind blasted my face, my body, my hands, making me hyperaware of every inch of exposed skin.

  This new landscape was glaringly white as far as the eye could see in every direction. Everything was made of ice. The ground. The distant mountain range. The sluggishly flowing river. Everything but the frozen gray stones jutting up before us.

  The frigid temperature and that damned icy wind was threatening to turn me into one more frozen thing to add to this land’s collection.

  I had never experienced lethal cold in my home settlement in what remained of Los Angeles. I’d grown dangerously chilled after my near drowning, but this? This was worse. The air snatched at my warmth and strength. My face already ached with it, my exposed extremities were turning numb, and I’d been here all of thirty seconds.