“I fight fire with fire. An eye for an eye, the book says. Thou shalt not set anyone above me, the book says. We will not worship an idol. A pretender to the throne. An abomination!”
She didn’t completely understand the words or what specific book they came from, but guessed they were from one of the religions that had reigned before the Rising. She did, however, understand his control over the crowd; that they’d sought answers and he’d supplied them.
“You take my power, bits of my spirit, and you make things. For that is your gift. This is a power I have never even heard of, but even you, their maker, don’t completely understand the items you transform: a tracking device, a shield, and a blood sword. You strive to kill me, to kill my friends and family, with the power you so despise.”
The crowd shifted their focus, as this new thought, this new question of the Preacher, rippled back through the gathered.
“My gift, you call it! It’s my curse!” the Preacher fiercely countered. “But if this is the trial and tribulation I must bear to remake the world as it was intended, for our children, then I gladly take the burden.”
“I think it doesn’t need to be this way: us against you. I think you fit into my understanding of Spirit and the very beauty of life. Even if you do not hold my beliefs, it doesn’t mean we cannot stand and live side by side.”
“You and your evil magic are consuming us! Eroding our lives. We deserve … we deserve …” The Preacher looked around. He was losing the crowd, not by much, but just enough that they seemed to be willing to listen to Theo at least. It helped that they were hungry and tired, and that they missed their families and lives. It was this general softening of the crowd that forced the Preacher to bring the sword into play. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” he cried.
It was in this moment that Theo knew she’d won. She’d found a way for the people to have a voice, but without the insanity of the Preacher to cloud the message. No one would have to die. So, she let the Preacher make his final play.
The Preacher had been holding the blood sword at his side all this time, twisting it a bit at the wrist, maybe subconsciously, but he really didn’t know how to wield it. He even held it wrong. He was a crafter, a transmuter perhaps, but not a warrior. So when he brought it up, when he tried to thrust it into her chest, his lunge was wild and his thrust angled wide and weak.
Except Ren and Hugh didn’t see it as she did. They simply saw the blood red sword arc up and toward her heart.
And the sword itself wasn’t weak. The sword understood its purpose and power; such a thing should never have been created. Anyone who could feel magic would know this … but Ren couldn’t feel magic.
So he stepped forward. Stepped right into the path of the sword. He didn’t even try to parry it, his own sword still sheathed.
Hugh wrapped his arm around Theo’s waist and spun her away from the thrust, and Ren stepped in to block the sword, because no magical item should ever be able to harm him.
Except her blood, which already marked his forearm, marked him as belonging only to her … belonging to her blood.
The sword, which wouldn’t have made it anywhere near Theo with the Preacher’s first lunge had the men not intervened, thrust through Ren’s chest and straight into his heart.
The world stopped.
Utter pain ripped through the mark on Theo’s arm, up through her heart and into her head.
The Preacher yanked the sword out of Ren’s chest.
Ren’s hand came up to his chest, as he fell to his knees.
Theo broke through Hugh’s arms and stepped forward to catch Ren as he toppled over.The Preacher raised the sword over her head, preparing to deliver a killing blow.
Behind her, she could hear Hugh scrambling to his feet; she must have knocked him over, and he was already lunging for her before he’d even straightened. Dougal unsheathed his sword, but so had the row of soldiers behind the Preacher.
Ren’s blood was everywhere. She cradled him in her arms, desperately trying to feel his spirit, to heal him, even though that wasn’t her gift.
The sword swung down toward the exposed back of her neck.
She saw Ren’s spirit, a little light spot hovering between his eyes that were already glassy, as glassy as Davin’s had been.
He was dying.
She screamed. The wave of her pain brought the entire army to its knees.
Inexplicably, the Preacher was still on his feet, perhaps because he held the blood sword, so she reached up with her mind and, even though she’d always promised herself she’d never use her power this way, even though it frightened her terribly that she was even capable of doing so, she turned him off. She knew it was completely wrong, but she did it anyway.
Ren was dying. It was her fault. And that was all that mattered.
The Preacher’s body crumpled to the ground, and his spirit was freed.
She screamed again, this time with more purpose. ”Peony!”
Hugh was behind her now, as if he was trying to pull her off Ren. “He’s dead, Theo. He’s dead. We have to go. We have to get back to the castle. Theo! He’s dead!”
He couldn’t move her. Ultimately she was just stronger than him.
“He’s not dead!” She could still see his spirit, so tiny now, but she could see it.
“Theo! Theo, look at your mark! He’s dead.”
She looked at her forearm. Though it was covered in Ren’s blood, it held no mark. Ren’s mark had also disappeared.
“He’s not dead,” she screamed, and anyone who’d made it to their feet was knocked backward again.
Ren’s blood coated her arms and chest and legs, like she was bathing in his death. All this spirit was around her, but she couldn’t stop Ren’s from slowly dissipating.
Then Peony was there, kneeling before her and Ren. She too, was covered in blood, and she was sobbing something, so maybe she’d been there for longer than Theo had recognized.
“I can’t heal him. I can’t feel his magic. He … I …”
Theo reached up and wrapped her bloody hands around the sides of Peony’s face; crushing her blonde curls and streaking her creamy cheeks with blood as she did so. “You will heal him.”
“I can’t. I need his magic. I have to touch it, to anchor my magic. I can’t. He has no magic.”
“Theo, let him go,” she heard Dougal say. “Healers never worked on Ren. If his magic isn’t healing him, then he’s … he’s dead.”
“I can see his Spirit, Peony. It’s right there. Grab that! Use that!”
“I can’t see it. Please, my lady.”
She had to make Peony see. She had to show Peony. She reached out and pulled, just grabbed all the spirit around her and channeled it toward Peony.
If she just pulled enough. If she just took all the spirit she could find, she could show Peony that she could heal Ren.
Someone was screaming.
It wasn’t her.
It was Peony. Peony, whose eyes were webbed with blood-filled veins, was screaming.
So it was working —
Cool hands wrapped around her, over her arms, and reached up to cover the bloody hands she still clamped on either side of Peony’s face.
Hugh.
Hugh was trying to stop her from healing Ren.
She wanted to push him away, but she just couldn’t let go of Peony. She tried to thrust him away with her mind. He didn’t budge.
Theo. Theo. Hugh was in her head.
He’s not dead.
Look at what you are doing. You’re destroying everything and everyone.
She looked. She opened her eyes and looked away from Ren; just for a moment.
The grass that surrounded them was blackened to a crisp, like someone had set fire to it.
Bodies, thousands of them, were writhing on the ground.
Trees nearby were cracked as if lightening struck.
She was doing this. She w
as pulling all the spirit from all these vessels … no one was capable of doing such things … she shouldn’t be capable of doing such … she faltered, but then …
Ren.
“He died for me. Because of me. I can do this. He’s right there. I can still see him. He isn’t gone yet.”
“Then use me. Use my spirit. I give it freely. Don’t destroy —”
“Spirit cannot be created or destroyed,” she murmured, but doubt had settled into her mind. Was she killing everyone? Did Ren’s life outweigh a thousand lives?
“Take me,” Hugh whispered.
Then another hand settled on her shoulder — her mother’s — who’d left the safety of the castle to be with her. “And me, my darling.”
“And me,” Dougal’s hand fell on her other shoulder. She hadn’t unwittingly gotten by their mental shields before, and now they were offering themselves, and their power.
“Spirit cannot be created or destroyed,” she whispered to herself, closed her eyes and opened her mind.
And Hugh was there, his spirit wrapped around her, like he was cocooning her, and she wondered how long his spirit had been doing that and why she hadn’t noticed before. Her mother and Dougal dropped their mental barriers and the combination of the power of the three caused her to gasp. Peony echoed her.
Ren’s spirit was just a speckle. She reached for it, and, this time, she was able to cup it and hold it. This was Hugh’s power, she suddenly understood, and she used that knowledge to coax Ren’s spirit back into his body. It settled between his eyes, but it was weak, so weak. His heart had to heal, his blood had to flow through his limbs.
She thought about the spirit surrounding her … her mother, Dougal, Peony and Hugh … she thought about moving that spirit through all of them, like blood pumps through a body.
She thought about the Troll, Eld, and how he was just spirit through and through. How he shared his spirit with all the other spirit around him. It flowed through him from the ground, from the grass, and he shared it back in kind.
So … she didn’t need to take. She needed to share.
So she did.
It was that simple.
Though the magical backlash lasted for, and affected, generations.
Peony cried out, “I see it!” and she took all the spirit they were freely offering her and channeled it into Ren.
It kept flowing through them all. Ren’s spirit absorbed it and grew and grew even as his body healed. Then his spirit gave back and became part of the flow.
At some point, the energy had built up so much that Theo couldn’t contain it within the five of them, and she flung out her arms and sent spirit into the land and trees and people.
The surrounding area soaked in the spirit like water and breathed it out like air. And so it did forever after.
Once settled and dispersed among them all, it flowed back into Theo. She’d released the others. It healed the scarred pathways of her mind. It brought magic in its wake. Even the least talented among them felt its presence.
And then Ren woke.
∞
Everything changed. Again.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It took three months for the residual magic to work itself out of their systems, and for almost everyone present in the field or the castle that day, there were lasting effects. Natural gifts were expanded and more accessible, and magic flowed easier for many, but only after they worked to disperse the extra energy.
Peony had the most difficult time of it, and had to constantly seek out people to heal while she stockpiled a lifetime supply of teas, tisanes, and poultices.
Dougal kept breaking anything even remotely delicate that he tried to hold, and ended up having to eat his meals by hand, standing up; chairs wouldn’t bear his weight.
Her mother spent the first month locked away from human contact. Her sensing range had expanded so that she could pick up random thoughts from a farmer a hundred miles away. Needlessly to say, it was overwhelming and disconcerting.
Hugh. Hugh spent a lot of time in the woods, often with Bryan and the Beast as his only companions. She gathered his changes became necessary, rather than voluntary, and he was never certain those first few weeks what form he would take. The presence of the boy calmed him and his magic, and he in turn made sure Bryan was surrounded by beasts who loved him, rather than those who would tear the boy apart, for the child’s magic had also been affected.
And Ren. Well, Ren had died, and wasn’t too sure about being alive again. Once he was up and walking, it took some time for him to reclaim his own body, he spent a lot of time with Peony. She was worried he’d relapse, and he felt she needed someone who was, once again, impervious to her magic if things got out of control. There was actually some concern about healing too much, going too far.
Not that Theo knew any of these things at the time.
Everyone was fairly certain she was never going to wake up.
∞
When she hadn’t woken by summer solstice — her birthday — they’d placed Theo in the highest tower at Hollyburn and covered her in a light gauzy silk to keep the dust off. Her body didn’t seem to require food or water. Her heartbeat was well-measured and strong. She just wouldn’t wake.
There was talk of a glass coffin and allowing worshipers access for viewings, an idea of the Chancellor’s that her mother and Hugh venomously opposed, but that Dougal — a rather rabid convert — supported.
Theo didn’t think she was simply sleeping, but rather that she was everywhere all at once. Enough of her was in the vessel that was her body to sustain life, but not enough to get up and walk and talk.
She felt like she rode the minds of all the creatures nearby, but that she was also not anywhere at all.
She floated, unaware and wholly aware at the same time, locked away between visits from her mother, Dougal, who’d taken to praying to her, Peony and Bryan.
She dreamt of all the things that had happened in the past and all the things that would happen in the future.
She was air, water, earth and fire.
But something was missing.
She was missing.
Though she was everywhere, she was alone, and she found she was incomplete.
Still incomplete, though she had full access to her memories and powers.
So she decided to reclaim the vessel that was her body, even if it meant living a mortal life.
∞
Theo sat up, and was momentarily confused that she seemed to be wrapped in gauze.
Even odder, she held a sword in either hand, the blood sword in her right and Rowen’s sword in her left.
She thought her legs might not hold her, but they did. She left the swords on the bed, which looked suspiciously like an altar.
She looked around. She wasn’t certain where she was. The room was round and built from stone. She was clothed in a green silk dress with her hair loose down her back. The stone was cold underneath her feet, but the air coming from the window was warm.
The room was empty except for the elaborate bed and the rings of unlit candles.
She had a feeling this was some sort of above-ground tomb, and she wondered if she’d lost another ten years. There were no mirrors to judge by.
She crossed to the window and looked out to the fields and mountains and ocean beyond. The view informed her she was at her mother’s summer castle … Hollyburn, though it looked to be early fall.
She thought about leaving the tower, for that was surely where she was, but the door was locked.
Was she a prisoner?
She wandered back to the window and wondered about her carpet, and, in doing so, she remembered who she was and what she was capable of doing. This knowledge made her smile, but it wasn’t the reason she returned to this vessel, to this life.
She closed her eyes and opened her mind.
She brushed by all the spirit inhabiting the castle; many people she knew were here, but not ex
actly what she was looking for … what was she looking for?
Something nudged her thigh, and she opened her eyes to see the carpet had come to her.
She laughed, and then delighted at the feeling of laughing. The pleasure of the emotion rippled through her body. She laughed again.
She could shred the door, crumble the very stone beneath her feet, or crush the lock in her bare hand. She could take and break and have whatever her will desired, but instead she climbed on the carpet and it rose up through the window and across the keep.
The clash of steel on steel drew her attention, but though the spirits twisting and turning in the sand below were delightful to watch, they were not the reason she’d woken.
“I’m not finished,” she informed the carpet, as it slipped silently down and around the castle.
She closed her eyes and cast out with her mind. She willed the carpet to follow her thoughts and it did; it took her beyond the castle wall and fields, through the protection of the wards, and to the cliffs she’d often visited as a child.
Here, at the cliff that seemed to overlook the entire ocean, she stepped off the carpet and delighted in the feel of the granite beneath her feet.
She wasn’t certain why she’d chosen to come here, and was aware that her departure from the protection of the castle had set off a ripple of panicked reactions behind her, but then she felt the spirit she’d been seeking …
She turned around and there he was, stepping from the woods.
He stared at her as if she was a mirage or perhaps a ghost, and, for a moment, she wondered if she still was asleep in the tower, if this was all a dream. Then she remembered laughing and the stone underneath her feet and she thought she was actually here, in this actual moment and space.
So, she smiled to invite him closer. She didn’t want him to be scared of her … but there was something else … something from the life before that still worried her, but then the boy was there, stepping around the man, who still just stared. The boy shrieked when he saw her.
She opened her arms for the boy, who wore her mark like a kiss on his left cheek, and he ran to her.
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