“Such a quick change of heart. I thought you didn’t want them. I thought you were never going to let me put my filthy hands on you.”
I unsheathe the knife and set it on the pew before getting to my feet. “Let’s get this over with.” He’s right, I don’t want my memories back. But I need one of them more than I’ve ever needed anything else. And if getting that one memory back means dredging up everything that made me how I am, then so be it. “How quickly can you do it?”
“My, we’re in a hurry, aren’t we? Maybe we shouldn’t rush this. Maybe you should come back tomorrow.”
“I asked you a question.”
He takes a breath, staring down at his knees, thinking it over. “It’s not like I’ve done this before, you understand. I suppose I could try to make the process quick, but it’ll cost you. In pain.”
He’s the one who hurt her, and yet I’m the one paying for it. I’m the one begging him to let me sacrifice myself. Playing right into his hands. My chest feels tight with the terror of what I’m about to do. When I said I’d sell my soul, I thought it would be to Hadrin. That was bad enough. But there won’t be any coming back from this.
“Come with me,” Endeil says, sliding past me into the aisle, hurrying toward the altar.
There’s an arch of candles behind it. He touches them, one by one, flames springing to life on each wick until the arch glows. It casts a soft halo of light around him, creating long shadows. He looms over the altar, waiting for me.
My footsteps are heavy, my whole body sick with shame. Dread squirms inside me, and I can’t shake the image of a lamb being led to the slaughter.
This is wrong. It’s a trap. He’s not going to help me.
“Kneel. And lay your head right here.”
I do what he asks. I shut my eyes. The hard stone floor digs into my knees. The wood of the altar is cold and smooth against my cheek. I half expect him to draw a knife. To butcher me right here, as if that’s what he’d intended all along.
My heart leaps in my chest, uncontrollable fear making it beat faster and faster.
High Priest Endeil presses his palm against the side of my head. “This is going to hurt.”
And I hear the smile. The one that says he knows he’s got me, that he’s won.
Flame rushes to my brain. A heat so intense it melts my thoughts and makes my skull feel like it’s going to split apart. It reaches into the darkest recesses of my mind with long, probing fingers. I thought Leora’s light would chase away my darkness, but here I am with the High Priest, and it’s his fire that invades every part of me. Searing all of me away, until my very essence—whatever makes me me—cracks open, oozing and raw.
White-hot pain spreads through my head, through my arms, my legs. It blocks out everything else, except the sound of my screaming. And the sound of Endeil laughing.
A memory flashes through my head.
Alone in a dark room. Strapped to the chair.
Hadrin, barking orders in the background. “Don’t tell me you couldn’t make him do it! Don’t come to me complaining of his screaming. You knew what this was when you signed up. If he’s not screaming, you’re not doing it right! Now get back over there and become his worst nightmare. Unless you need me to show you how it’s done?”
I shudder, knowing what’s coming. The shuddering is uncontrollable, like I could shake myself apart. My wrists itch. I could kill every one of these wizards if it wasn’t for the straps.
Hadrin appears before me. He’s holding a rag, blue like his robes. He grabs my face and forces my jaw open, shoving the rag into my mouth. “If you can’t handle the screaming . . .”
I gag. Choking. I manage to spit it out, just for a moment. A spell twitches on my lips, something that will hurt.
I only get a few words out before he slaps me, hard, across the face. My tongue stings and I taste blood.
He stuffs the gag in before I can stop him this time. “We talked about this,” he says. “You know that won’t work on me. Not while I have this.” Hadrin slides back the sleeve of his robe, revealing a spiral tattoo on his forearm.
The same tattoo I have on my wrist.
“Now,” he says, sounding exasperated, “let’s get back to work, shall we?”
The images fade, leaving me hollow. Exposed. I’m breathing heavily, sweat drenching my face, soaking the altar. Endeil takes his hand off of me. The fire stops. I feel so cold that my teeth chatter. I stand up, my legs unsteady. My eyes sting and so does my tongue, like I really did bite it.
I look up at Endeil, who’s staring at his hands like he’s never seen them before.
“It didn’t work,” I tell him. I don’t remember anything. Nothing useful anyway. No spells, nothing that will save Leora. Only darkness, and . . . Hadrin.
“I saw everything,” Endeil breathes. And he’s still staring at his hands, as if they hold the key to the universe.
It kills me, but I have to ask. Because if there’s even a chance . . . “Did you see anything that could save her? Any . . . spells?”
“Filthy wizard spells, you mean. Your head is full of that rot. I saw something much better than spells. A source of pure power. And the source itself reached out to me, so dark and raw, so divine.” He tilts his head back and shuts his eyes for a moment, a single tear spilling down his cheek. “I was touched by greatness once, when the Fire bestowed its gift on me, and now I’ve been touched by greatness again. You say it didn’t work?” He holds out his hands. A golden-green fire flares in his palms, rising higher and higher. Turning blue, pink, purple.
Black.
“Oh, but it did.”
I crumple on the cold chapel floor. It was for nothing. Nothing.
I let Endeil do what I said I wouldn’t. I let him touch the darkest parts of my mind. Now his hands blaze black, and I don’t know what that means, only that it can’t be good. It came from whatever he saw inside me, and that makes it worse. So much worse.
I hate him for doing this to me. And I hate Hadrin for everything he’s done, and for not helping me. For making me come back here.
And even after all this, I still can’t save her. Leora’s going to die because of me, and somewhere in my head there’s the magic that could stop her from leaving, the one bright spot in all my shadows, and I can’t touch it.
My stomach cramps. I feel sick and disgusted, but also empty and starving, and I can’t remember the last time I ate.
It dawns on me that I was never going to be able to save her. Tears fill my eyes and suddenly I’m crying for her and for me, for all the lost things that will never be all right again.
I’d ask what I ever did to deserve this, but it’s not exactly a secret.
“Azeril.” Endeil’s voice echoes softly through the chapel.
I’d almost forgotten he was here.
He crouches down beside me. “I told you I didn’t want to hurt her, and I meant it. It was a necessary evil, to make you listen to me. Like I need you to listen to me now.”
He sounds so calm, so rational, even as he spews out more of his insanity. “Chasm take you, leave me alone.”
“I can save her.” He holds out his hands, the flames in his palms so dark that they seem to suck in all the light from the room. “I can do what you couldn’t.”
I blink back tears, trying to see him clearly, to see if he’s telling the truth. Because I haven’t been betrayed enough times today. “You can’t, so just—”
“I can. I can feel it. And I’ll do it, but you have to do something for me first.”
He already has everything. I don’t know what else he could possibly want from me. And yet I know that whatever he asks me to do, no matter how twisted it is, I’ll give in. If there’s even the slightest chance that he can save her. “Anything,” I whisper.
Endeil closes his eyes as he savors the word. I see him mouthing it silently to himself. Anything. “You have to beg me. Kneel before my altar and pray to me to save her.”
“What?”
All the candles in the room flicker and go dim. Endeil gets to his feet and looms over me, his robes swishing against the floor. “Pray for your miracle, and I will deliver it to you.”
“Please.”
“Is that how you beg? Is that all she means to you? One measly ‘please’?”
“She means everything to me. Everything. I’m begging you, if you can save her—”
“If?” He scowls and raises an eyebrow.
“You can save her. You . . . you alone can deliver her from darkness.”
He holds out a hand, beckoning me toward him. “Closer.”
I move to stand, but he motions for me to stay on the ground. I crawl to him, on my hands and knees, the stone floor cold and unforgiving beneath me. “She’s dying. Every second that we spend here, she’s slipping away, because of what you—”
Anger flashes in his eyes. He opens his mouth to correct me, but I beat him to it.
“—because of what I did. Because of me.”
“Again.”
“It happened because of me!”
“Because you didn’t believe in me. Your faith faltered, and she paid the price. It was your fault.”
“It was my fault,” I repeat, squeezing my eyes shut, not wanting to think about the truth of that statement. He’s the one who put the knife in her. It wasn’t me, but I could have stopped it. There were so many things I could have done differently.
“You were faithless. You were nothing. I had to make you see that.”
I nod. I press my forehead to the ground in supplication, dirt from the floor sticking to the tears on my face. “I . . . I believe in you.”
“One word from me and you’d be out on the streets. Or arrested for murder. With one finger I could reach inside your head and show you your nightmares. I could make you feel them so vividly, you’d believe you never left that dark room. Oh yes, I know all about that dark room and your time at the wizards’ guild. And with that same touch I could save the girl you love. Or I could send her to her death.”
“No!”
“Then you believe in me?”
“Didn’t you hear me?!” I scream.
“I said, do you believe in me?!”
“Yes! Yes, I believe in you!”
“Tell me, Azeril, do you deserve mercy? After all your sins?”
“I—” The lie sticks in my throat. I shake my head. “No. I don’t. But Leora does.”
Endeil smiles. The light in the room seems brighter. Or maybe I only imagined that it ever went dim. His eyes glint with mischief, not madness, so that I’m left wondering if this was just a game. I can’t tell if he’s really that insane, or if he was only toying with me.
He offers me a hand, pulling me to my feet. “See?” he says. “That was all you had to say.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Leora sits next to me in the first row of pews late the next evening. Flames crackle in the fireplace, but other than that, we’re alone, almost mimicking when I was here last night with Endeil. Before she was healed and before I landed on that altar. Only she doesn’t know about that part.
She turns toward me and sighs. “Will you stop that already?”
“Stop what?”
“Staring at me. And you can sit closer. I’m not going to break.”
It’s not that I think she’s going to break. More like that if I touch her, she might turn out to not be real. I watched Endeil heal her—I watched him put his hands on her and do what I couldn’t—and I saw as the color returned to her face and her breathing strengthened. And still it feels like it was all a dream. Like I’m going to wake up any moment to find her gone and have my heart broken all over again.
I slide a few inches closer to her.
She closes the gap between us, grabbing my hand and squeezing it tight. “I’m fine. You could have gone to class today. You didn’t have to miss your duties this morning, either. I know you’re on probation. You could have—”
“No, I couldn’t.”
Leora watches my face for a minute. Her eyes have a sort of haunted look to them. “You could have at least got some rest. I hate to break this to you, but you look terrible. Like you haven’t slept in days.”
I laugh. “How do you expect me to look? The girl I love was dy—”
She puts her hand to my mouth, not letting me finish. “Don’t say it. They put all those black drapes up, but I don’t know what for. It’s not like . . . it’s not like I was really going to die.” But the way a tremor of fear hangs in her voice, I know she doesn’t believe that.
“I wouldn’t have let you,” I whisper, sliding my hand over hers. “Trust me, Leora, I would have done anything to keep you here.”
She bites her lip, suddenly pulling away and studying my face again, like she knows there’s something I haven’t told her. “Az, what did you—”
“I shouldn’t have left. That night . . . I shouldn’t have run off like that.”
“Are you saying that because I got hurt?”
“You didn’t just get hurt, you got attacked.”
“The wizards make up that stuff about the Church, and then look what happens. A wizard’s daughter gets—” She chokes up. “I don’t know who to trust anymore. It could have been anyone. At first I thought it was you, coming back to tell me what an idiot you’d been for leaving. And then . . .” She winces at the memory. “His face was covered. I couldn’t see who he was.”
She doesn’t know that the High Priest who healed her is the same man who put a knife in her chest. She doesn’t know this wasn’t a hate crime but cold, calculated blackmail. And I should tell her the truth, except . . . except then I’d have to explain why I’m now the apprentice of the man who tried to kill her. How he hurt her because I defied him, and how I let him look into the darkest parts of me, the parts I could never let her see.
“I don’t remember much after that,” she says, “but I knew instantly it wasn’t you. I would know you anywhere, even in the dark. The sound of your footsteps, your breathing . . . I would know.”
“And if I had been there—” I swallow and get to my feet, pacing in front of the fireplace, clenching and unclenching my fists. I stop pacing and face her, my eyes meeting hers and my voice dead serious. “I would have killed him, Leora.” And I would have enjoyed it. “He would have been the one with a knife to the heart. I would never let anyone hurt you.”
She gets up, storming over to me, putting a hand to her chest where her wound was. “But you hurt me, Az. You left. You tell me you love me, and then what? You walk out?!”
One of the logs in the fireplace pops. A spark lands on the hearthstones, just missing my foot. The heat from the flames makes sweat prickle on my forehead. That and Leora demanding to know why I betrayed her.
“I shouldn’t have left—I know that—and not just because of what happened after. But I’m here now.” I take her hand, pressing it between both of mine. “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I love you, Leora. I’ve always loved you, since the first day we met.”
“Then why did you leave? You’re the one person who’s supposed to stay.”
“I hurt people,” I tell her, looking away. Another crackle in the fireplace sends the logs shifting, as if in agreement. “It’s what I do.”
“Don’t be dramatic, just tell me the truth.”
She doesn’t know I mean it literally. “I wanted to stay. But I . . .” I remember the darkness. The dark room and the chair. Broken, shaking, screaming. Hadrin hitting me across the face to shut me up.
I push the memory away, fighting the urge to kick the wall.
“I panicked.” I thought she’d get hurt if I stayed. I thought I’d get hurt. Instead she almost died because I left. “I made a mistake, but this time I won’t leave. I promise I won’t.” Even if being close to her means someday she’ll find out the truth about me. Even if it means someday she’ll hate me.
I pull her close to me, wrapping my arms around her. If we could just stay like this forever, m
aybe everything would be okay. Maybe it really wouldn’t matter that I’m a monster. No one would ever hurt her again. We wouldn’t have to worry about people like Endeil and Hadrin. And I would be here, with her, not out killing wizards.
Just a normal person.
She presses the side of her face against mine. “Do you mean it this time?”
“I always meant it.”
The heat from the hearth adds to the fever already burning my skin from being so close to her. I’m not going anywhere. This is real.
I kiss her, slow and deep. Fire surges through me. She could be made of obsidian. We both could be. Her breathing becomes my breathing. We fade into each other, my darkness and her light, and for a moment I feel whole. Like there was always a piece of me that was missing. Like when our lips meet I’m no longer broken.
“Ow!” Leora jerks back, breaking away from me. She holds up her finger, watching blood well up on its surface. She plucks out a sewing pin from her school vest, where she had to repair the pocket the other day, and tosses it into the fire.
I try to put my arm around her, but right then a log explodes with a startling CRACK that makes me jump. It’s so loud, so jarring, that for a moment I can’t tell if it happened in the fireplace, or if something inside me just split open.
The flames rage, blindingly bright, getting higher and higher until they lick the flue. A cloud of sparks leaps out toward me, a couple of them landing on my arm, lighting my nerves on fire before I can bat them away. I feel restless, like all I want to do is get out of here. Like if I don’t, something terrible is going to happen.
Just as suddenly as they leaped up, the flames die down to ash and ember. To coals that burn an angry red that pulses into orange, then red again. I can feel my own pulse in my ears, matching the shift in color. Red. Orange. Red. Orange. Like the fire has a heartbeat of its own. Like it matches mine.
Leora sucks the blood from her finger. I can’t shake the feeling that someone’s watching us. Judging. And that’s when I realize my finger’s bleeding, too. It doesn’t hurt, and there’s no wound, but a few drops of blood have welled up in the same place they did on Leora. I wipe them off on the sleeve of my robe before she sees.
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