Unraveling

by Sara Ella

  I wiggle my toes, release a spontaneous sigh. How did he know this is exactly what I need?

  Kneeling, he rolls up his sleeves. Right. Left. The sight of the Void—the blackened veins—winding up his arm steals my breath despite the fact it’s not a surprise. My own arm throbs. Could it be connected to his pain? He’s like this because of me. He could’ve been free of the Void. Instead he took it on. Again.

  This is his secret. Our secret. Does he know he once held the Verity? Is he aware he shared it with Joshua?

  “I am. But only because of you.”

  Seriously, stop. I don’t know whether it’s good or bad you can hear my thoughts.

  “It’s good, Em.” His crooked smile makes a candid appearance. “It’s very, very good.”

  I drop my spoon into the bowl, and broth splashes onto the tray. Crud. I’ll have to watch what I think from now on.

  “Don’t be embarrassed.” His cupped hands dip into the water. “I’m a part of you now. And you’re a part of me. It took me a bit to get the hang of reading your mind, and then soon after, speaking to you through thought. It seems you hear me when I think a thought toward you, and I’m betting with focus you can block me, as well as learn to hear me whenever you please. It’s just a theory, though. I need to do more research.” Excitement fills his tone. He almost sounds like a little kid. He strokes my feet. My ankles. My toes.

  I look down and for the first time I realize what he’s doing. My throat constricts and my lip quivers. I clamp my teeth to restrain the brewing emotion. Then I watch as he tenderly, selflessly washes and massages my dirty, aching feet.

  My heart twists. My throat constricts once more.

  This is why the Void entered him. The reason it inhabited Ky instead of Joshua. I still don’t understand it.

  His hands stop moving. He looks up. Brows draw a V. “David didn’t tell you?”

  Tell me what?

  The expression on his face turns from smooth to sour. “The—” His hands fist beneath the water. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell you.” Then he shakes his head. “Typical.”

  I touch his arm.

  “David and I share the Void, just as we shared the Verity.”

  Ky rises.

  “It split.”

  Water drip, drip, drips from his knuckles to the floor.

  He inhales and says, “The Void—it entered us both.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  She Who Holds Her Tongue

  His words are a dagger, hitting its mark at the bull’s-eye on my chest. I don’t know what to feel first. Betrayal? Anger? Relief? If the Void enters the one the Verity’s vessel cares for most, that means—

  “You love us both.” His words are simple. Monotone.

  No. How can I know who I truly love when the Verity and Void decide everything for me?

  Ky’s eyes form two dark slits, making their color indistinguishable.

  I lift my feet from the water and stand before him. What do I say? What do I do?

  He reaches for my neck, withdraws Joshua’s treble clef–heart charm from its resting place beneath my T-shirt.

  We stay that way for one long, unblinking moment. I almost, almost, think he might kiss me. But then he takes my left hand in his, touches the diamond band Joshua gave me.

  My heart is an anchor at the bottom of the sea.

  Ky steps away, popping the bubble. “You may use my quarters to change and freshen up this evening. I’ll inform the crew you’ll be joining us, not as a prisoner, but as an asset. You’ll move belowdeck with everyone else tomorrow.” He motions to a door on the opposite side of the room. “Washroom’s in there. When you’re done the chair folds out into a cot. Get some sleep. I’ll return in the morning.”

  Blink. Nod. Swallow.

  He walks away. Once he’s across the cabin, one foot out the door, he says, “Eventually you’ll have to give one up.”

  Instinctively I close my fingers around my necklaces, as if to shield my two most treasured possessions from his next words.

  “You can’t have it both ways. At some point you have to choose.”

  The door slams.

  I slump into the chair, open my palm, and gaze toward my chest. At the rose-engraved button, at the diamonds studding the treble clef heart.

  They clash.

  But they’re mine.

  Both of them.

  As I move to the washroom and draw a bath, Ky’s words replay in my mind, raising one final question.

  The Void may have split, but it’s Ky with whom I shared a Kiss of Infinity, Ky to whom my soul is fully bound.

  Why?

  I shed my clothes and dip a toe into the tub.

  Something tells me it won’t be long before I find out.

  Sleep eludes me.

  So does Ky.

  I toss and turn on the pull-out bed. The mattress is too stiff, the sheets itchy. I fold and unfold my arms. Lie on my right side. My left. I wad the pillow beneath my neck, flatten it, and then chuck it to the floor.

  “At some point you have to choose.”

  I flip onto my stomach, press my face into the sheets, and loose a silent scream.

  Why is everything such a mess?

  “The Callings are losing power. The Thresholds are draining.”

  Ugh.

  When at last I accept my sleepless fate, I cocoon myself in the fleece blanket Ky left for me and waddle to the window. The sea beyond lies eerily still—a reflective plane that seems solid on the surface but if tested would fail to support me. An illusion. A façade.

  I hate—hate—that it reminds me of my relationship with Joshua.

  I question it still. If his love for me is real or merely a product of our childhood bond. Does he love me because he loves me, or because he always knew he was supposed to? Would he love me if he could see my mirrormark?

  I guess I’ll never know. It’s not as if I can go back in time and alter the past.

  A shiver crab-walks down my spine, and I cinch the blanket tighter around my shoulders. Moonlight reflects off the ocean in wavy white ripples. The ship creaks every other heartbeat and I close my eyes, imagine myself far away from here. No Joshua to deconstruct. No Ky messing with my emotions. There is just me. Alone and confused, teetering on the verge of brokenness.

  Who am I? What do I want?

  I. Have. No. Clue.

  I curl my toes, tense my jaw. Things have gotten so cataclysmically screwed up. Maybe I’ve never known the answers to these questions.

  Who am I?

  What. Do. I. Want?

  My life was decided for me the moment Joshua kissed my chubby baby cheek. And even now it’s the case. I’m the Verity’s vessel, so my future is obvious.

  But what does it mean that Joshua holds the Void too? How is it affecting him now that I’m gone? Will it spread? Is Ky better with me near? Does he feel the Void less with the Verity close? And how could the Verity inhabit the same space as the Void in the first place? Ky held part of the Verity before, even when he lived with a portion of the Void—does he know? It seems this last question holds the key. Void and Verity together, warring against one another.

  I’m missing something. It’s right there on the tip of my brain.

  Ugh. Why can’t I figure it out? This is worse than trying to master the Chopin-Godowsky études on piano.

  I touch my bang-matted forehead to the window, shift the blanket up so it covers my ears. I watch the waves as if they hold the answer, the secret treasure I seek just beneath the surface. An exasperated sigh escapes. How much longer until morning? Why does the night always feel so forever?

  “Dry your tears,” Mom would say. “No reason to fear the dark. Morning always comes.”

  She has always been so sure of everything. When I’d hide beneath the covers, terrified of my own shadow, she’d reassure me. Morning always comes.

  Always.

  I stiffen. Could it be so simple?

  I slide my feet into my sneakers and head for the door. Y
es, morning will come, but this can’t wait until then.

  I’ve got to talk to Ky.

  I’m standing on a ship’s deck on the East Coast in the middle of winter. Freezing doesn’t even begin to describe the sensation coursing through me. I use the blanket like a cloak, pulling it tighter around me. Never been on a ghost ship before, but my guess is it’s not much different from this. Shadows in nooks and crannies, hiding beneath stairs and behind barrels, play tricks on my mind, seem to watch me. Whispering their inaudible secrets.

  I take the steps down, down, down until I reach the main deck. No one stops me or orders me back to bed. I’m a member of the crew now. I’m one of them.

  What would Mom say if she knew I was a pirate?

  I move across the deck, the rubber soles of my Converse squeak-squeaking over the swabbed wood. It’s damp, smells of suds and pine. Ky keeps a tight ship, I’ll give him that. He’s obviously a no-nonsense captain, and yet there’s a sense of freedom here I haven’t felt in a long time—maybe ever. A feeling like I could be anyone, do anything, and no one would hinder me.

  That’s when I hear it. Piano music. Playing softly. The sound is authentic, too rich to be traveling through tinny speakers. The notes transition slowly, an adagio melody flowing from a skilled musician’s fingertips. A melody so familiar and near, I know I’ve heard it before.

  It’s the song from my coronation. The song from my dreams.

  And then I’m forgetting myself, losing my mind in the upsweep as the notes crescendo.

  I take a set of curving steps down into the side of the ship opposite the wheel and the captain’s cabin. A door waits at the bottom, but it’s locked. The music sounds closer belowdeck, but when I press an ear to the locked door, it doesn’t seem to be coming from the other side.

  I ascend the stairs, still my breathing, and listen. Then I move left. Below me, waves lap and fold and splash. The music is so close. My pulse slows to keep tempo with each struck chord.

  Back and forth, back and forth. My shoulders sag. The door I already tried appears to be the only way down on this side. I’m about to give up when I spot an alcove beneath the ascending stairway, so shrouded in darkness it could almost be a wall. I’m there in a breath, thanking the Verity for the door I find within the alcove’s secret space.

  This one isn’t locked.

  The second I open it my ears fill with the haunting melody wafting up a spiraling stairwell.

  I take the steps one at a time, afraid if I startle whoever’s playing they’ll stop, or disappear, or cease to exist completely. Toe, heel, toe, heel. The process takes eons, but the music continues, beckoning me deeper.

  At the bottom, a timid glow pulses from around a corner. I skirt it, and a baby grand piano comes into full view, hiding the musician on the other side. It must be bolted to the floor, been here since the ship was built, since before this otherwise unfurnished room had a ceiling. How else would anyone get it into this cramped space?

  So beautiful and sad and touching all at once, the song raises an emotion without a title. I stop, avert my gaze to a porthole stage right, unable to look upon the instrument pouring music into my depths. It takes three controlled breaths before I move again. The closer I come to the piano, the nearer I am to losing it. The way the music entwines with my soul isn’t something I can explain. It’s as if the song was written for me, speaking all my pain and sorrow and loss . . . everything I’ve felt in the past three months to cover a lifetime.

  This is it. This song. It’s . . . me.

  I tiptoe around the piano, and the composer becomes visible.

  I can’t breathe. Can’t move. Can’t think. Of course the song seems as if it was written for me. Because when I stand behind Ky, who doesn’t even look up from the ivories he’s caressing, I catch a glimpse of the handwritten sheet of music before him. The title reads “Ember’s Song.”

  I slip onto the bench beside him, don’t make a sound. He doesn’t react to my presence and I don’t speak. My lashes drift to my cheeks. I cinch the blanket around my shoulders. Listen.

  I twist Joshua’s ring around my finger, as has become my habit. As if I’m trying to decide whether it fits there or not. This isn’t the way things were supposed to happen. Kiss of Infinity aside, I spent three years falling in love with Joshua. But does my past define my future? Do Joshua’s choices dictate my own? What about my life? My choices?

  What about Ky?

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Joshua

  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

  The Third Reflection saying haunts me as I leave Rafaj behind. I am simply doing what I must to ensure the Verity is not destroyed by El’s temporary confusion. She has no idea the reason she has feelings for Kyaphus is because of his connection to me. But all will be well soon. Two ingredients? The Unbinding Elixir requires but two ingredients? Obtaining them will be easier than a walk through the Haven. Unfortunately, I must seek the assistance of a traitor in order to secure the first.

  As I said, desperate times.

  A long-ago memory ascends as I venture deeper into the dungeons, the memory of the day I first saw her. The day my link to her soul became more than a mere complication.

  I stood on the back porch of the brownstone beside hers, frowning at the walls and concrete that seemed to spring from every direction. Who would live in such a trap by choice? The Third, from what I had seen so far, was a jungle, but not the kind I had become accustomed to. Trees were present, but appeared artificial, as if included in the landscape for decoration. I enjoy structure, revel in it, but this was too much. Where was the freedom? The pure abandon I felt back home in the Second?

  I stooped, collecting a new lightbulb from a low round table. After unscrewing the burst bulb above the rear door, I reached to insert the fresh one in its place, and that’s when I heard her.

  Her voice came to me as if out of a dream.

  The lyrics were dejected and despondent, crushing my heart, not because of what they meant, but because of who I knew they poured from. It was her, the girl I had felt the entirety of my existence but had never laid eyes upon, not since I was a toddler. Makai urged me to wait until he was present to stage a meeting. It would seem like chance, when in truth everything was set in place. But how could I ignore the heartbreak that was my own? I had to see her. I could not delay any longer.

  The bulb slipped from my fingers and crashed to the porch. Her song ceased and my heart raced. No turning back. She knew I had been listening. What could it hurt to greet her?

  I moved to the wall between our yards and peered over. And there she was, making a run for her back door. She was short, soft, and pale. Her hair was not dark enough to be considered black, but not quite light enough to be a simple brown. Everything about her was in between. Her voice was too beautiful to be singing such a wretched song, her insecurity out of place among such loveliness.

  When I hopped the fence and saw her face at last, I was a goner. As much as I made every effort to hide it, there would never be anyone else.

  Which is exactly why I must not turn back.

  I turn my attention to the task at hand, shoving away the memory and storing it for safekeeping. When I reach the lowest part of the dungeon, determination drives each step. Past the façade to the white-doored cell beside Ebony’s empty glass one. I don’t even give it another thought before I unlock the door and enter.

  My boots scrape smooth cement as I slide into the windowless, white-walled room. It smells of sanitizer and bleach. I blink away the burn and stare at the prisoner lying strapped to a makeshift medical table.

  Jonathan Gage’s eyes remain closed. Hard to believe I once considered him a friend and ally. His strapped arms and legs twitch, but otherwise he gives no indication he’s aware an intruder lurks nearby. His bare chest climbs and descends, and a scar slashes his torso from shoulder to hip. His Guardian tattoo remains stamped on his right breast, a crown encircling a crossed sword and arrow. “To the Crown until Death,
” it reads. My fists clench. If I could rip the farce off his naked chest, I would.

  Kuna was my friend, unlike this wretched swine. And yet Kuna has passed and Gage lives on. In what Reflection is this right or just? I was powerless to stop what happened. If in some way my actions now make up for my past failures, I will forever thank the Verity for the chance to set things right.

  I glare at Gage. What does one say to a murderer?

  The fluorescent light overhead buzzes as I approach the man who killed Kuna. For a moment I see the man I served beside. The one who helped Makai train me. The one I would have given my life for had it become necessary, as is the Guardian way.

  But that man is dead, and I doubt he will ever return.

  I lean forward and brace against the table’s edge. “I know you are awake, Jonathan.”

  A menacing grin slithers over his mouth. “To what do I owe this pleasure, David?”

  “It is ‘sir’ to you, traitor.”

  “Ah, how the tables have turned.” His eyes remain closed. “Was it only last autumn I said the same about Kyaphus?” He tsk, tsk, tsks. “Tell me, if I am a traitor, why have you come? Surely you have not ventured all the way down here to catch up on old times.”

  My fingers press harder into the table. “I am here to strike a bargain. Your life in exchange for what I seek.”

  “And what is it you seek?”

  “You know the whereabouts of Isabeau Archer.”

  “I do.”

  “Take me to her.”

  “And why would I do such a thing?”

  “Because, should you refuse, I will kill you.” My words are blunt and simple. True.

  He laughs. “You don’t have it in you, David.”

  The sound of metal sliding against leather echoes around the small space as I draw my sword. In one swift move I wield the weapon, which is more like a third arm, and press it to his neck.

  His eyelids flash open, but his gaze remains fearless. Calling or none, he was always good at masking his emotions. A well-oiled machine made to protect and defend.