The Wishing Heart

by J. C. Welker

  As the pull escalated, Rebel pressed against Anjeline, her heart slowing with each breath, trying to ignore the tempting magic that could save her. It caressed her, fondling lines of seduction over the cracks in her heart, the aching darkness. She felt Anjeline clench her arm so hard it hurt. It should hurt.

  Losing Anjeline would hurt forever.

  She looked up, meeting the gaze of the man, of the father, whom she’d dreamt about seeing since she could remember. “You’re the reason I need saving. You took away everything I could’ve had…” She inhaled over what he’d taken away. A childhood. A home. Love. Time itself. The things that should have been hers, taken from her because of his revenge.

  Nero’s mouth twisted over the truth of her words. “We’ll make it right…” He put his hand out farther. “Wish for your heart now. We’ll be safe with your jinni. You’ll be blessed with all the wishes you ever wanted.”

  Blank windows of his soul stared back at her. Now, as Rebel looked at the man who was supposed to be her father, she saw past his hard gaze to the inhumanity in them. There was nothing in his eyes that resembled emotions. Nothing left of the man her mother must have loved once before he let darkness devour him. She would not let it devour her. If Rebel ever had family, surely, it wasn’t him. It was the fox hanging on for dear life. It was the fiery Wishmaker at her side.

  “I am not your flesh. I am not your means,” she threw back at him. “You made a mistake. It’s not my heart I’m doing this for. You can’t bring back your family. And I can’t bring back you.”

  The barb hit home.

  Nero’s expression twisted between heartbreak and hatred. “Dark. Light. It matters not. Better to rule among demons than to serve among angels.”

  The melody in the air had increased. The roof’s door was vibrating again, the knob jerking wildly. It would be less than minutes before the wolves burst through.

  “You’ve made your choice!” Nero’s eyes flashed.

  A great wave rippled out from the staff.

  The force jerked Rebel forward. There was a shimmer where her bag had been, and then her satchel dangled from Nero’s shoulder. In that sudden, fatal instant, she realized he now possessed the vase.

  “No!” Rebel spread her arms, trying to keep Anjeline behind her.

  Magic yawned from his staff, spinning a kaleidoscope of light and creating a sucking vortex. An ever-widening tempest that inhaled the space between them. It pulled at Rebel and Anjeline, lurching them forward, grasping at their limbs and hair. Stray pebbles scraped along the ground and disappeared off the roof.

  “Let go!” Nero’s voice lifted above the growing gale. “Come with me!”

  The vase exerted its will over Anjeline, greater now with the staff’s power, and the force of it yanked her helplessly toward the magician. Terror struggled up Rebel’s throat. She dug her heels to stop themselves from being dragged and held on to Anjeline’s hands.

  Something appeared behind Nero’s shoulder. With the element of surprise, Jaxon lunged for the staff, knocking the vase from the magician’s grasp. It dropped, skittering across the rooftop. Nero seized Jaxon by the throat, and in a stream of magic, he was propelled back with devastating force.

  Then Nero charged for the vase—but to their surprise—it jerked away from him. The vase altered its course and hovered in midair, suddenly surrounded by a glowing nexus. A shield of protection. Someone’s magic. But not his own. Far off in the distant sky, a shadow rose atop a flock of gleaming falcons.

  Someone was coming.

  With eyes wide, Nero lashed out at the vase, only to be jarred back at the protective bubble girdling it. He raised the staff, uttering words of a defensive charm. A web of mystical threads wrapped itself around him and penetrated the shield. His fury swelled like a rushing wave, dark and deep.

  The vortex’s force increased.

  The embroidered creatures upon his magician’s suit began to move, their lion-like bodies with the twin goat heads and reptilian tails, peeled up on his sleeves. A surge of towering black shapes extended from the beasts, fangs reaching out to lick at Rebel’s arms. The things broken inside her heart clenched and ground, as if she weighed twice as much, her boots losing their grip on the roof.

  Jaxon desperately held on to the roof’s ledge, keeping his beaten body from being blown away by the gale. The incessant dark magic grew to an almost unbearable pressure, siphoning all strength from Rebel. She sprawled forward, falling to her knees. Anjeline tumbled over her shoulder and toward the vase. Her fingers scrabbled against the roof as its lure wrenched at her legs to draw her within.

  “Anjeline!” Rebel reached for her. “Stop!”

  In that instant, Anjeline stopped.

  Suspended.

  Between the magician and his daughter.

  She felt her magic rise, commanding. Anjeline’s foot was beginning to disappear into the hungry mist sweeping around the vase’s opening. Searing tears blinded Rebel’s vision as she tried to stretch as far as she could, lying flat on the roof. Her ribs stabbed as she reached for Anjeline, conscious of their utter helplessness. Her heart tearing itself apart.

  Dark and light battling within.

  Everything fell quiet around her as her past was being blown away and her future was being sucked from her. But in that second, all turned calm. There was only Anjeline, holding arms out to her. “Remember…” she called to Rebel, the vortex ripping away her words.

  Remember where your magic comes from.

  Rebel’s heart might be flawed, but there was no part of her that hadn’t made up for it, becoming stronger. Her pendant flared with her mother’s signature, as powerful on the charm as Nero’s magic, and within rushed her own weapon. It happened almost as a second thought, an instinct that she didn’t know she had. Her legs shook with the effort, standing straight up, slow and weak, as in a dream. She reached out, too far away to touch Anjeline, but she had to try.

  So she reached.

  Not with hands, but with heart.

  Magic seethed, filling the dark cracks of the organ thrashing in her chest. Her fingers felt heavy like they belonged to someone else. Then began to heat. Magic throbbed in her palms. Illuminating and tingling. Now, she stood in front of Nero, feeling it swarming in her blood, calling to her like nothing she had ever heard, and she pushed against the vortex.

  Against his power.

  Her insides hummed, her heart raging in her chest into a beautiful inferno. And in that moment, she was not a lost girl. She was not even the Fingersmith. She was Rebel, who spurned the darkness, who would never surrender under the world’s fiction and the denial of love that it had heaped upon her. She rose in the radiance of her own magic, hair streaming and eyes blazing, gentle, savage, and beautifully broken. Fear no longer existed, only a raging desire to undo everything her father had destroyed. She reached farther, twisting the wind with her hand.

  The vortex cracked.

  The lure lessened and Anjeline swayed an inch closer to her. “Grab my hand!” It took all the air in Rebel’s lungs to call over the wind. “Please, Anjeline…don’t leave me!”

  With another inch, they touched.

  Fingertip to fingertip.

  With that contact, she realized everything she’d wished for was right in front of her. Not because of a wish, but because of those eyes gleaming like living fire. They were powerless to save themselves, and yet only one thing could. Love creates a magic of its own.

  Nero was wrong. He had forgotten the most important thing about wishes. They weren’t meant to be taken, to be fulfilled for oneself, or even for the moment, but for each other. Now she understood. Everything she’d done since she’d discovered wishes were true wasn’t to heal her heart’s brokenness. But to fill it. To find her home. She had found it. And she would give everything for it.

  She had a promise to keep.

  Rebel directed all her energy into this one, single act. “I already have my wish,” she called to Anjeline over the rushing vortex. “It
’s you. I wished for you. And I won’t let him use my heart against you.”

  “Rebel, no!” Anjeline screamed.

  She closed her eyes to the chaos, to the one she would be leaving, and breathed as deeply as she could. “I sacrifice my wish,” she said, “for your freedom.”

  And with it, Rebel’s heart gave one last beat.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Time itself froze.

  Moonlight flashed off the vessel swirling in the vortex. Hope flickered one last time in gentle eyes. The magician’s roar of rage canceled out as Anjeline exhaled a mounting scream. A scream that jostled the bones of the dead.

  And Rebel’s wish answered her call.

  Nothing could stop the sacrifice from being cast, and the cuffs that had imprisoned Anjeline for years unlatched from her wrists. Metal clattered against the roof alongside the sound of her freedom. With it, the vessel keeping her bound began to disintegrate until the swirling winds swept away its dust. The lure on her released. Her essence unshackled.

  With a whomp, her magic returned to her all at once.

  And Anjeline’s full form was revealed. Like liquid fire, her runes gleamed and quills splintered through the sweater, painting blurs of smokeless fire around her. Ablaze. Fanning heat into the ether. She was bound no more. Her magic back within her control. Rebel had fulfilled it. A simple wish with such resounding sacrifice.

  Time stirred up again.

  A final noise escaped Rebel’s throat. A last breath. Her body swayed as the vortex faded, toppling her over just as Anjeline outstretched her hands. She clutched Rebel’s limp body in her arms, now absent of a pulse. The perfect stillness of death.

  Cries of rage roared from Nero’s throat at the unexpected turn of events. He raised the staff to retaliate at the same moment the roof’s door ripped off its hinges. Wulfram and his pack surged through like one massive beast, a harmonized sea of murderous movement that was chased by the Bright Guard. Somewhere above, the Siren flew, hissing and screeching, descending faster, filling the sky in a lethal song.

  Anjeline merely held up her hand against them.

  Now with power restored, she could see the magic threads on every surface of the world. Her magic flared. Shapes of fiery smoke materialized around her like a shield of beasts, driving back the enemy and encircling them in its protection. Nero pushed against her magical blockade, and lycanthropes clawed at it as if swimming, but none broke through.

  In the distance, the shaded figure riding atop the falcons drew into sight. The magician who had tried shielding the vase. A mother coming to protect her daughter.

  But Anjeline’s world shrank to the lifeless girl in her arms. All this time, she had wanted justice on Nero, to make him bow before her wrath, to reap the cost of what he’d done, but now with the opportunity, all she wanted was her back. “Faddi?” A trace of limp hair fell over Rebel’s face. Anjeline touched her chest and felt a stream of love for the broken and silent organ inside. For her hungry voice and bruised heart. To finally have freedom with such loss wasn’t freedom at all.

  Under her protective smoke, Jaxon crawled closer. “Quick,” he rasped, clenching his side. “Wish us away, then you can fix her.”

  Anjeline knew otherwise. “It isn’t finished.” The sounds of their enemy raged behind her, but everything was indistinct, hazy and slipping away at the loss before her. Her sorrow receded, and in its wake, her insides flamed in dissent. All the glorious Jinn power within her couldn’t revive a life gone. It can’t be, Solomon. The hope, the will of wishes on their side, had exceeded this. Had exceeded everything Madrath warned about.

  Rebel had to wake.

  Anjeline stared at her chest, willing it to rise with a breath. It didn’t matter that she was Jinn and her love too dangerous. All that mattered was the girl, limp in her arms. After she had touched her, after she had kissed her, she realized she’d been waiting for this since being birthed into fire. And she would take punishment to have her back. “Your heart isn’t broken. It’s overflowing,” she whispered to her. “You are light, Rebel. Release it, my love…and rise up.”

  Rise up…

  And come away…

  In a hopeful touch, Anjeline brushed lips to hers, calling to Rebel’s blood. Casting a wish of her own. An invocation. Thick potency gathered there, into the core between them, through and within, removing the boundaries that separated. And she became conscious of a weight being lifted from the lifeless body. Aware of the humming in Rebel’s unmoving chest, a pent-up force pushing to be released. Magic.

  Rebel’s magic.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Fireflies danced before Rebel’s eyes like tiny sparks, pulling her toward a starry sky. Multiplying until they were all around her, all she could feel, as if she were flying, drifting toward the heavens. She felt of light, flowing and free. No longer confined in the prison of her body. She was a shining piece of limitless state. Connected to every living creature.

  The stars swirled and flashed into images before her, one after the other: birth, life, heartache, countless decisions that had built and molded her into who she had become. She watched all the world around her, strung on a visible thread of a vast tapestry, and looked far below, seeing the twinkling city stretched out before her. She saw the clock tower chiming in the distance, the river glistening like a glass road, and Westminster as a big gray beast. But underneath her, a figure stretched out ahead, illuminated in a fiery glow.

  Anjeline.

  No longer bound, kneeling over a lifeless body. Rebel’s body. She could feel every fiber of Anjeline’s essence, her pain, her sorrow, and the pure devotion that dwelt there. Felt the heat and scent of her, the thrill of her kiss, and those eyes that she saw the world in. The world she wanted. Words were being whispered to her. She saw Anjeline’s eyes, looking directly up at her as her spirit was drawn ever upward.

  It seemed impossible that this would be how she would die. Losing everything that she had found. She was not ready. Not yet. Love creates a magic of its own. Her father had been wrong. It wasn’t fleeting in the way he had let it slip away. It was more savage than any force, than all the power he’d stolen. Nothing mightier in any realm than the devouring of it, no miracle greater than when it banished the darkness within. And she had to wonder if her books—what she perceived as magic and truth—might just be wrong. Maybe light didn’t always burn away the darkness.

  Or maybe, her soul shouted, it must consume it.

  Words whispered louder. Rise up, my love.

  Rise…

  Up…

  They pulled Rebel from the sky, toward her home, and then she was being channeled inside herself again. There was a thrumming. A release of the muscle in her chest. A sharp intake of air drawn in—then expelled in a blinding light. Her heart overflowed at its seams into a thousand stars. As if her blood had turned to liquid fire. As if her heart had become starlight.

  Starlight transformed into a force.

  Chapter Fifty

  It was like someone had turned on the sun.

  A hungry swell of magic birthed forth in stuttering pulses. So bright that Anjeline turned her eyes from Rebel’s lifeless form, lest the light rising off her razed to the ground everything that it touched. She became aware of her own essence rising to meet it, flowing from every pore. Her magic intertwined with Rebel’s, merging together, smoldering with an intensity that could only be matched by a comet capable of trembling the earth. Illuminating the night.

  A protective rushing of brightness surrounded them.

  The gravel on the roof rose and fell with little rattles as the magic light streamed across. Shimmering ripples defined its hungry path, first gently, and then with a greater force—searching out the enemy, devouring the darkness in its wake. Streams of it spiraled and snaked around lycanthropes and mermaids who were trying to break through Anjeline’s smoky barrier. Their energies waned as the bloom of brightness landed upon the wriggling bodies, turning them sightless.

  Nero tri
ed to shield his eyes while others discovered their bodies were unable to move. Unable to break away from the magic, their limbs appearing to turn unpleasantly dense. The brightness seeped through the cavity of every beast, Siren, and magician. Penetrating skin, convulsing through their veins, and bleeding into every porous fiber of bone and tail. Others emitted assorted cries of devastation, shocked to find the weight of their extremities increased by the light. Their bodies seemed to become petrified.

  The magic turning them all to stone.

  As the beam of light reached Wulfram, his muscular tone visibly changed, hardening by the instant. His arm splintered as he tried to move, to flee. His eyes swirled to white, his skin turned hoary and spread down the length of him, trapping him in stone.

  The Night Guard rounded in retreat—turning into statues in mid-motion—piled upon each other in an effort to escape the light. Some tried to snap their jaws, only to have them break off and shatter once they hit the ground of the roof. The tendrils of magic rushed upward and froze the Siren’s face in mid-cry. Petrified mermaids and vultures plummeted from the sky.

  And at last, the light caught Nero’s horrified face.

  Anjeline watched as it rose up to meet him, licking against the night. An expression of sudden terror appeared on Nero as the magic luster swelled around him. His power ebbed, and the pull of his sorcery receded. His body went rigid and the staff snapped in his grip. It couldn’t have been pleasant to see Anjeline and his own daughter finally outshine him. Burning him at the falter of his dark magic. But his face showed none of it other than pure fury. Right until the last remaining pieces of his heart became rock hard, and the light imprisoned him within stone.

  Still, the brightness expanded.

  As Rebel’s magic united with Anjeline’s, it swept across the building until the ripples of luster reached down into the avenue, where it sped through the streets, flooding the city. Within homes and dens, people stopped as a glowing wave washed over them, a mystical breeze tossing their hair and ruffling their clothing. No corner of the city was untouched as the gleaming crashed through the Black Market, lifting roofs and tearing doors off their hinges, chasing away the darkness and bringing radiance to the night.