by Ella M. Lee
Had Nicolas done this? It seemed like it. Something he or Ryan had crafted. But what needed to be done? And why did it feel so wrong?
Hoping I wasn’t about to cause some sort of magical singularity, I pressed a palm against Daniel’s chest, rustling the threads.
The wind shifted, and Daniel trembled a little, but nothing bad seemed to happen.
The weave throbbed with magic, vibrating, trying to cling to me. It took active effort to keep it from working its way over my fingers and knuckles and latching on to my magic.
Why did it want me but not Dan? Loose threads rippled and shuddered, trying to weasel their way into me, but they didn’t do the same to Dan.
Like he was inert.
No, go to him, I tried to encourage, but the weave didn’t seem to care. Stick to him, his essence. Attach to him so that we can pull him out. Because I saw it now, Nicolas’s plan.
He’d built a net just like he said he might, hoping to ensnare Dan in it and drag him out. This was the thing that was supposed to be attractive to Daniel’s life force, the thing that would safely bring him to us once we’d unbound him from the sanctum.
But it wasn’t ensnaring him, and I had no idea if he’d been unbound yet.
I lifted my hand, putting both palms to my face. I’d once dragged Nicolas out of his sanctum. This wasn’t the same, but… this was my specialty. I could figure this out, couldn’t I?
I needed to attach Dan to this thing. I could go back for more instructions after that was done.
I touched the threads lightly again, trying to pick our singular ones. Maybe I could attach them all to Daniel manually. But there were so many.
I let my magic glide over him gently, trying to get it to join the threads to Daniel, but all they did was attach to me instead, forcing me to pick them apart.
Maybe Daniel needed to be awake.
I shook his shoulders and touched his cheek. “Dan! Hey, Dan!”
His eyelids fluttered.
I tugged his hands carefully, trying to avoid disturbing the fabric of the weave too much.
“Fi?” The word was a faint whisper.
“Dan!” My heart pounded and my head cleared. I could do this if Daniel was here with me. “Open your eyes!”
Dan’s eyes opened slowly. He squinted into the sky, bewildered. “What happened?” He turned his head from side to side, examining the sand, and then looked down his body, tensing when he noticed the net.
“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “At least, I think it is.”
“Uh, are you sure?” he asked. Although he was trying to keep his expression neutral, his concern leaked through into his tone.
“No,” I said. “But I don’t think it will hurt you. It’s, um, Nicolas’s creation.”
Dan rolled his eyes. “Of course it is. He didn’t tell me it would look like this. And he didn’t mention you at all.”
“I’m not supposed to be here,” I confessed, and Dan’s eyes pressed into slits. I held up a hand. “Let’s talk details later. For now, we need to get Nicolas’s plan working.”
“Can I sit up?” Dan asked.
I shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
Dan took a deep breath and sat up, pulling his legs into a cross under himself and leaning back on his hands. We both looked around, waiting. Nothing happened.
“Hold on,” I said to Dan.
Hesitantly, working inch by inch, I backed myself into my body. “Nicolas?” I asked, feeling as though the words were a million miles away and underwater.
A pause and—
“Here.” Hands brushed my shoulders, and I jumped.
“Is everything okay in there?” I asked, every movement of my tongue and mouth a concerted effort.
“Yes,” he said. “Everything is holding.”
“Good,” I said. “I’m… working… on things. I’ll see what I can do.”
Before he could respond, I let myself snap back into the sanctum, my head spinning in recoil.
“Did he say what we need to do?” Dan asked worriedly.
“No,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him that I didn’t think Nicolas even knew what to do. “But we’re going to figure this out. You know the plan, right?”
“Uh, from my end, it was mostly just ‘wait for us to come for you,’” he said apologetically.
“Well, um, sure,” I said. “But before we can do that part, we need to attach these threads to you. Get you all nice and snug in Nicolas’s net.”
Dan smiled, but he didn’t seem very confident in my false cheer. Neither was I.
I sighed. “Now that you’re awake, let’s work on this together. I need you to help me figure out where these little threads even go. They should be sticking to you, I think. They certainly want to stick to me.”
But no matter what we tried, they wouldn’t stick to Daniel. He activated magic, playing with it, trying to draw them in. He meditated, digging deep into a centered state, emptying himself out and becoming an inviting container. He grasped them tightly, but they wiggled out of his grip.
I tried handling them one by one, guiding a single strand by single strand to Daniel. I could get them to attach for a few moments, but they always fell off. They seemed to lose interest.
I tried more desperately, tugging at them sharply. My hands were shaking. After one particularly rough handling of the weave, I felt a pull from the temple.
Nicolas’s hands shook me. “You have to stop, Fiona,” he said, a million miles away.
“No,” I said, unsure if the word made it back to my body.
“Fiona,” I heard again. Nicolas’s voice was more urgent this time. “It’s not working. You’re destroying the weave. You have to come back now.”
“No!” I said, louder this time.
Daniel frowned. His dark eyes were glassy, his fingers idly playing with the threads now, hardly doing anything.
“No, no, no, no, no…” I said, braiding some of the weave together and trying to work with it that way.
Daniel took my hands and grasped them tightly. “Fi. Don’t.”
I ripped my hands away, staring at them as though they had betrayed me. My panic must have been visible on my face, because Dan said, “It’s not working, right? Even Nicolas said it, didn’t he? You should stop.”
Tears slipped down my cheeks to gather on my trembling jaw. “I can’t! I can’t just leave you here.” I looked away. “Not again. I can’t…”
“Fi, it’s okay.” Daniel pulled at my hands again, drawing my attention. “You tried.” But the choked sound of his voice told me he had been as hopeful as me that this would work.
Anger stirred in me, drenching me with heat. I tightened my grip on Dan’s hands and pressed my magic into him, attempting to dig out his soul from whatever bound him to the sanctum, hoping that if I could reach that, I could attach the weave directly. But Daniel was a dark and murky pit of magic. I could spend a lifetime digging, and I still wouldn’t find the bottom.
I pressed my hands over my mouth, silently sobbing, my chest heaving. The grief I’d felt a year ago overwhelmed me, sending creeping blackness into the edges of my vision, threatening to tear me apart so viciously that I would never be put back together. Somewhere, an animal howled in pain, and it took me several seconds to realize that animal was me.
Even Daniel didn’t seem to know what to do, watching me with sad eyes and a slight frown, at a loss for words.
I dug into him again, allowing my magic to rip through the weave and sink into him viciously.
“Fi, stop,” he said, flinching.
“No,” I growled. By the handful, I grabbed at his magic, bit by bit, trying to separate it from that darkness.
“You’ll kill me this way,” Daniel said, but the words hardly registered.
His magic burst out of him, forming a hard wall, but I threw myself against that, too. I beat my magic against it, cracking it over and over again while gripping Daniel so hard that my nails dug into his skin. The weave flutt
ered around him, half destroyed.
The stillness in the sanctum was no more. The ocean churned beside us, the sky grew dark, the air chilled.
A howling of wind pierced the air as my magic charged around me.
“Fi,” Daniel said, almost in a shout.
He heaved against me, breaking my grip with more effort than I’d ever seen him need before, wrapping his hands around my wrists like iron. I pulled back, trying to tear away from him, but he held me tightly. Choked sobs escaped my throat.
I’d failed. Nicolas had failed. We’d all failed. Again. I didn’t think I could keep failing at things.
My blurry gaze found the ocean, now a tumult of dark and foamy waves. Dan’s gaze followed mine as I tore out of his grasp and hurled myself toward the water.
“No!” he yelled, his voice barely there, carried off by the wind.
Dan slammed into me from behind, knocking me over. All the breath was forced from me as I landed on the wet sand. Dan turned me over, sitting on top of me and holding my wrists as I struggled against him.
Somewhere, far away in a temple I hardly remembered existed, hands shook me. I blocked out all the urgent, muted words.
Daniel’s eyes blazed. “You’re not killing yourself, and you’re not killing me. Calm the fuck down.”
His steady voice only broke me further. How could he be okay with all of this? How could he possibly be understanding about our failures? My shoulders sagged, and I sobbed, my magic still writhing within me, unhinged by my grief.
“Fi…” Dan said, slowly releasing his tight hold on me, but I couldn’t stop the tears and tightness that squeezed all the air from my lungs and closed my throat. “Fi, I love you. I love you, but you have to let—”
“STOP.”
Dan fell off me, landing on the sand with a thud, his hands clamped over his ears. I grimaced, squeezing my eyes shut, my head ringing in pain, my eardrums throbbing.
That voice reverberated in me, clanging through my body like a bell, as unbearable as nails on a chalkboard. There was no gender to it, no tone; it was simply a grating discord of a million voices in one, a barely distinguishable roar, so loud and deep that it shook my bones, so high that it pierced me.
My ears still rang as I met Daniel’s alarmed gaze. We both looked around, but there was no one here with us. Daniel stumbled to his feet, spinning around. I copied him, barely holding myself up.
What the fuck?
Chapter 22
“Hello?” I called into the wind.
“I AM. HERE.”
Dan and I both flinched, tensing, exchanging bewildered looks. I half covered my ears with my palms. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once, and when it wasn’t speaking, all that was left was the roar of the waves and the wind.
“Who… are you?” I asked. Dan didn’t appear to want to speak.
“I AM. EVERYTHING. I AM. NOTHING.”
Great. Very useful.
I wished Nicolas were here. He would know what to do about some disembodied voice from the ether. But wait… Nicolas was here. Desperately, I reached back to my body, but I was met with nothing. Blackness. Hardness. A wall. I couldn’t sense the temple, or Nicolas, or anything about the real world.
I swallowed. Shit.
Daniel cleared his throat noisily. “Uh, could you be more specific?”
“I. AM. THE. SOURCE.”
Dan and I were now up to at least a dozen shared wary and confused looks.
“Does that mean anything to you?” I asked in an undertone, although I had no idea why I’d decided to whisper.
He shook his head.
I’d heard a lot of magical theory in the past couple of years with Water and Lightning, but no one had ever mentioned a “source” of any kind. A source of power? A source of life? Was I speaking to God right now? A better question—why was this thing yelling at me? And how did I make it stop?
“WHAT YOU. ARE DOING. WILL NOT. WORK.”
I knew without being told that it meant resurrecting Daniel. Daniel knew, too, given the way his lips pressed into a white line and his shoulders slumped.
And instinct told me that this voice knew what it was talking about.
Tears threatened again, held at bay only by the part of me that was pumped full of adrenaline at this new turn of events.
All our work for nothing. All our hope for nothing. My destroyed relationship with Nicolas… for nothing.
“CHILD. STEP INTO. THE WATER.”
I looked at Dan. Between the two of us, he was definitely the child. Although—who knew how old the voice was? I made a small shooing gesture at him, but his wide eyes betrayed how skeptical he was.
Regardless, he took a few swift steps until the ocean lapped at his ankles. It had calmed, now giving only tiny, quiet bursts of foam. My jaw trembled, watching him. He looked so young. It was hard to believe that Nicolas had laid an entire clan’s creation at Dan’s feet, and that I’d helped send him to this fate. It felt so silly and insignificant now.
Whenever I stood near Dan, most things felt insignificant except for him.
“A. GOOD. CONDUIT.”
It could only be talking about Dan, who was good at everything, magic included.
The ocean churned harder, almost as though the voice was considering something.
“Please…” I said. “Please don’t keep him here.”
I had no idea if the voice had any control over Dan’s situation or the ability to bind or unbind life, but I had to try. I would try anything for Dan. Hadn’t I already proven that? I couldn’t come so far without getting something out of it.
“WHAT ARE. YOU. ASKING?”
“I came here to get him,” I said. “To bring him back home with me. Please… let me do that.”
Dan lifted his eyes to mine and shook his head sadly. Don’t make this worse, he seemed to be saying. The ocean churned a little again, flattening for a moment as though it were shaking itself out and then continuing to lap and spit salt water.
“CONDUIT.” Although the voice’s grating nature had softened the tiniest bit, Dan and I still flinched at every word. “I CAN. OFFER YOU. A CHOICE.”
My heart leaped into my throat. I put a hand to my mouth, nervous and shocked.
“YOU CANNOT. STAY. HERE. I CAN. MOVE YOU ON. YOU WOULD. BE AT PEACE. NOT TRAPPED. FULFILLED. YOUR JOB HERE. DONE. A NEW JOB. STARTED. OR. I CAN. SEND YOU. WITH HER. HOME.”
I tightened my hand over my mouth, trembling, every fiber in me electrified with hope.
“BUT.”
My heart sank.
“YOU WILL. NOT BE. ALIVE. NOT TRUE LIFE. I CANNOT. RAISE THE DEAD. YOU ARE MAGIC NOW. AND MAGIC. YOU WILL STAY. THERE WILL BE. LIMITS. RESTRICTIONS. CONCESSIONS. YOU WILL. NEVER BE. WHAT YOU WERE BEFORE. YOU WERE. MEANT TO. MOVE ON. YOU WILL BE AT EASE IF YOU GO. YOU WILL HAVE A NEW ROLE IF YOU STAY. YOU WILL. FACE DIFFICULTIES.”
For a moment, there was complete silence. Even the waves had halted their tumult. Almost apologetically, the voice added, “AND SO. WILL. SHE.”
Of course there were catches. Of course whatever this voice was wouldn’t let us go home with our happily ever after. I brushed away the tears that had pooled in my left eye.
“Dan…” I said.
He held up a palm and closed his eyes. After a moment, they reopened and focused on the ocean. He studied it as though drawn to it, in rapture, seeing something I couldn’t. Without seeming to realize it, he took another step into the water. His dark eyes spoke volumes as they reflected the blue sky—desire, hesitation, curiosity, and wariness all wrapped in one.
No one alive knew what came after death. Certainly no one knew what came after sacrificing your life to a sanctum. But the voice had offered Dan a hint of something perhaps even greater than life.
And Dan was considering taking it.
I went to him, taking his hands in mine. His eyes snapped to me, pulled from a daze. I wrapped my arms around him, and he trembled against me.
I leaned in close to sp
eak in his ear. “I’ve faced plenty of difficulties in my life. I’ll keep facing them, especially for you. This is your choice.” I choked on the words, wiping more tears from my eyes. “No one would blame you either way, especially not me. I love you always, no matter what. You made your last choice for Nicolas. Now make a choice for yourself.”
The wind rustled sharply, like an impatient sigh, and I pulled away.
Dan’s dark gaze met mine. “I love you,” he said.
“Of course I know that,” I said. “We all know you love us. How could we not?” My jaw trembled so badly that the words came out like a stutter.
“Would it be okay?” Dan asked. “If I went?”
I managed a smile. “Yeah. It would be okay.”
He tilted his head, his eyes narrowing. “Would you be okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, though I didn’t know if that was true. “I win either way. I will be happy knowing you did what you wanted. I will be happy knowing you are happy.”
He looked out toward the ocean again, his expression serious and grave. I had no idea what he was seeing or hearing in this solemn commune. After another few seconds, he nodded.
He took a slight step back toward me and put an arm around my shoulders. He lifted his chin. “I want to go home with Fi.”
I leaned my head into his shoulder, clinging to him so that I wouldn’t faint.
“I don’t care if it’s hard,” Dan said. “Lightning is where I belong.”
Something deep within me shattered and broke at his words, like a weight sliding off my shoulders and hitting the ground with a satisfying thud. I had just learned two things in that split second, both solidifying in my mind at once.
Daniel was returning to Lightning.
And I would be leaving.
The thought had crept through my mind more than once in these past couple of weeks, but now it was a tangible thing. I’d done what I could. I’d come in here and gotten Dan—a better leader and magician than I would ever be. The clan would have him now.
They didn’t need me.
And that was a good thing, because I couldn’t stay. It had clicked in me just now. I couldn’t handle magic inducing so much anxiety in me, and Nicolas refusing to speak to me. I’d poured myself out these past years.