by Kristen Pham
“Yes,” Valerie whispered.
Cyrus seemed to deflate, to shrink before her eyes.
“We’re over,” he said. “You’re free. Go be with who you really want.”
Cyrus turned and left, and Valerie didn’t try to follow him.
Henry’s soft knock roused Valerie from a restless sleep. She shuffled to her door like a zombie and opened it.
“You’re getting better at shutting me out. I didn’t know what happened until I found Cyrus,” Henry said.
“I learned from the master,” she said, and regretted her words when she saw Henry’s mouth turn down.
“You have no idea how much I wish I didn’t have to do that,” he said.
Valerie relented. “Maybe what Cyrus did is for the best. I’m only going to end up hurting everyone I love when my magic destroys my mind. The sooner he distances himself from me the better.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way. If you hold back from using your vivicus power—”
Valerie shook her head. “I won’t watch people die if I can help it. Every battle I’m in, I think about if I can save more lives by fighting or by using my vivicus power. In the end, after the fighting is over, it always makes sense to save someone. I couldn’t live with anything else. By the end of this war, I might be no better than Darling. Cyrus deserves more.”
“That’s his choice to make,” Henry argued.
“Maybe it’s for a different reason, but he already made it. I’m not going to stop him,” Valerie said.
“Just know that you can never send me away. So don’t try.”
“I think it’s the other way around. You’re the one pushing me away,” Valerie said. “Cyrus made me tell him how I felt about Thai by using the truth spell on Pathos that binds us. I thought about asking you some questions that you wouldn’t be able to lie about, too.”
“Part of me wishes you would,” he said, his voice ragged. “But a bigger part of me might lose it if you did.”
She nodded. “I’m not going to force you to tell me anything. I don’t like being cornered, and I’m not going to do it to you.”
Henry hugged her then, holding on to her like a lifeline.
“Everything sucks so much, you know?” he asked.
“Yeah, I do,” Valerie said. “I keep thinking we’ve hit the bottom, and then it drops out from under us again.”
The early morning light stole through her room then, turning everything pink as Henry quickly wiped a tear from his eye. “This night is finally over.”
For the next few days, Valerie threw herself into planning her battle strategy with more energy than ever. Azra and Gideon spent as much time as they could helping her refine her ideas.
Inevitably, Valerie was thrown together with Cyrus as they planned potential ways to combat the new light-sucking powers of the Fractus, but that was somehow less weird than her interactions with Thai. Cyrus was always watching them, and she could sense that he was waiting for a sign that she’d moved on.
Finally, Thai cornered her at the Lake of Knowledge, where she’d gone for a dip to clear her mind.
“Hard to believe that a few years ago, you didn’t know how to swim,” he said.
Valerie shook her short hair to get the worst of the water out and wrapped herself in her towel.
“It reminds me that I’m capable of overcoming something that really scares me,” she explained, remembering the first time she’d leaped into the ocean. It was the fact that she was so terrified that made her success so thrilling.
“You’ve come a long way since then.”
“I’m more afraid than ever,” she said with a shake of her head.
“I don’t think so. You used to have your fear hidden away, but now it’s out in the open and you’re dealing with it. I think that’s brave,” Thai said.
He’d stepped closer, and Valerie wrapped herself even more tightly in her towel and started walking home.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on between you and Cyrus?” he asked her when they reached The Horseshoe.
Her heart hammered. “He dumped me.”
Thai was quiet for a long time. “I’m sorry. I know how much you love him.”
“But not as much as I love you, and that’s why he’s gone,” she said.
He stopped her then, taking her arm to turn her to face him.
“What did you say?” Thai’s eyes were alive, his entire face lit up.
But she shook her head. “I wanted you to know. But it doesn’t change anything. If he saw us together, it would kill him. And I won’t do that.”
“But later, after he’s moved on…” Thai started.
“I can’t give you any promises, Thai. I don’t know who I’ll be if we ever come out the other side of this war. I can’t stand to lose anyone else, and that means I’ll use my vivicus power a lot. Even if my body survives this war, my mind might be stripped away from using my magic.”
“You don’t get it, Valerie. Even if your mind was lost and all that’s left is your heart, you would still be the only one I want. When this is over, if all you need is a friend to keep you safe, I’ll be your friend. If you need an ally to help you recreate this world, I’ll be your ally. And if the day comes that you need a man to love you with every cell of his body, I’ll be that man for you. But for now, while you’re not sure what you need, how about I just be here for you?”
If Thai would have touched her then, there wasn’t a force in the universe that could have stopped her from kissing him. But he didn’t. He smiled at her, the rare one that made her heart speed up and her mind slow down, and then he turned and continued walking her home.
Chapter 9
Valerie woke up the next morning with the sense that there was somewhere she needed to be, somewhere important, but she couldn’t remember where it was. The air hummed with magic in a way that seemed out of sync with the universe.
She found her brother in the kitchen, and his nervous energy flowed from his mind to hers.
“Do you have any idea what’s wrong?” she asked.
Henry shook his head. “I checked in with Chisisi, and nothing has happened on Earth that he knows of.”
As leader of the Fist, Valerie ought to have done that already, instead of sleeping.
“I’m lucky I have you here to keep us on track. I could never win this war without you,” she said.
Henry turned, but not before she saw the anguish on his face.
“I wish you’d tell me whatever it is you’re afraid that I’ll find out,” she said softly.
“I can’t. Not yet,” he said.
Valerie took a step closer to him. “You can see inside my head. So why don’t you see how deep my loyalty to you goes? Trust me.”
Henry’s hands trembled. “That’s just it. I can see inside your head. I can see how some days your grief is a weight that you’re struggling to hold up so it doesn’t crush you. Can’t you understand that I feel the same way? If the weight I’m carrying gets any heavier, I’m going to fall apart.”
It took all her self-control not to push him further, but at last, she nodded. “I’ll wait,” she said, and Henry released a breath of relief. “Let’s go to The Horseshoe and see if we can sniff out what’s wrong.”
Their walk was quiet, so they heard the shouting long before they reached their destination. A crowd had gathered around the fountain in the center of The Horseshoe. Valerie saw Gideon and pulled him aside.
“What is it?” she asked.
Gideon was pale, which frightened Valerie. Her mentor wasn’t easily shaken. He gestured to the fountain, and Valerie squinted. It had been dry for weeks because of the drought, but now it ran with a thick black liquid that looked like oil. It was spilling over the sides, running in dark rivulets along the ground. It left a dark, inky stain on everything it touched.
“I do not know how they managed this,” Gideon said, finding his voice. “The Fractus were observed at every moment while they were in Plymouth, and I s
aw nothing other than platforms transporting large boxes.”
“It must have been a distraction. The whole time, they were doing something below,” Valerie murmured, but she wasn’t surprised. She knew that there would be a price to pay for their ten days of peace, and now they’d begun paying it.
“I had Knights I trusted on the ground, hiding, but they saw nothing amiss,” Gideon said.
“Until we know what this stuff is, let’s get people out of here,” Henry said.
Gideon nodded, and he, Valerie, and Henry gently urged people to go home. People were reluctant to leave the spectacle, but eventually, they returned to their daily tasks, giving the black liquid a wide berth. Henry was kneeling by a puddle, staring at it intently.
“I don’t know what this is,” he said as he reached out to touch it.
Valerie snatched his hand back. “It could work like the Fractus’s black weapons. Or be related to that new power we saw in the Fractus from Elsinore.”
“I don’t think so,” Henry said, but he backed away.
“The flow is being stemmed,” Gideon said, and Valerie saw that the fountain’s output was now just a trickle.
But the once-beautiful work of art was stained with black, and the edges were eroded.
“I think the Fractus want to make sure that if they can’t get back inside, then neither can we,” Valerie said.
“Of course,” Gideon agreed. “Why didn’t I see it before? But I still cannot fathom how it was achieved.”
“This is only the first horrible thing we know of that the Fractus accomplished over the past ten days,” Henry said.
Valerie’s gut twisted at his words. “I want soldiers tasked with finding a way into Plymouth so we can see what the Fractus are up to down there.”
“I’ll put a team on it,” Gideon said.
Every one of her instincts screamed that something dark was going on under her feet. This was only the first shot across the bow. Something worse was coming.
Valerie spent the day with Dulcea at The Society of Imaginary Friends going through tactics to attract new recruits to the Fist. On her way out, she saw Cyrus leaving the Weapons Guild.
She opened her mouth to speak, to apologize somehow for the pain she’d caused him.
“Don’t. Even talking about it could kill me right now.”
“Do you want me to go?” Valerie asked, her voice small.
“Yes, but what I want doesn’t matter right now. We have too much to discuss in terms of next steps for the weapons we use against the Fractus who have the ability to cast darkness.”
Valerie nodded, a little ashamed at how relieved she was that she didn’t have to face Cyrus’s pain right now. He led her into the Weapons Guild to the little lab where he worked on his weapons of light. It was abandoned except for Leo.
“Welcome, Valerie,” Leo said, looking up from the dusty volume he was reading. “Cyrus has come up with a new way of working with light that I’ve never heard of before, even from ancient masters of the craft.”
“The other lightweavers and I have a new technique for magically embedding light into the weapons made by the People of the Woods,” Cyrus explained, standing a little straighter from Leo’s words. “I want to test the theory with Pathos.”
“Of course,” Valerie said, removing her sword from its sheath and handing it to Cyrus.
He laid it on one of the black tables. Pathos glowed already, because Cyrus had imbued it with light again after her encounter with the Fractus from Elsinore when she visited Reaper’s camp.
Cyrus turned a crank on the wall, and the entire ceiling of the little lab opened up to the sky, and sunlight poured in. Valerie’s jaw dropped, and Cyrus gave her a little grin that was an echo of his usually mischievous smile.
“How did you manage a major architectural overhaul in here on top of everything else?” Valerie asked.
“That was my doing,” Leo said. “A friend in the Architecture Guild owed me favor. It took him several afternoons.”
“That’s all?”
“Magic, Val, remember?” Cyrus said, and it was like they were best friends again.
But when she smiled, his own vanished, and he turned to her sword.
Concentrating, light collected around Cyrus, and he glowed brightly. His fingers worked the light, and it knit together in ever-brighter strands. Then he touched Pathos, and the strange light pattern became embedded in her sword. There was a bright flash, and Cyrus stepped back, sweating.
Pathos lifted off the table, spinning, the blade flashing so brightly that Valerie had to squint.
“Is that supposed to happen?” she asked.
“I didn’t do that,” he said, out of breath.
Pathos spun faster and faster, and then abruptly stilled. Valerie started to reach for it when it slammed into the table. The blade sliced through and embedded up to the hilt. At Pathos’s touch, the entire table glowed.
Leo and Cyrus nodded in satisfaction.
“Better than we hoped,” Leo said.
“What happened?” Valerie asked.
“Leo treated the table with some of the magic from one of the Fractus’s black weapons. Our light weapons didn’t go out when they were near it, but they did dim. Pathos didn’t only resist the power of the magic, it completely reversed it.”
“So it transformed the dark magic into light?” Valerie asked.
Cyrus nodded.
“I never dreamed that would be possible,” she said.
“It should work against the Fractus’s old weapons,” Cyrus said. “That’s no guarantee it will be immune to whatever these new powers are.”
“But it’s a start.”
“It’s a major blow to the Fractus, my boy,” Leo said gently.
“But the amount of power I drew…it will take months to create the number of weapons we need with this light treatment,” Cyrus said.
Valerie saw now that Cyrus drooped, and his usual glow was almost gone. How much of himself and his magic had he poured into her sword?
“But with the help of the other lightweavers, couldn’t you manage it sooner?” Valerie asked.
“They won’t be able to draw enough power. I think that my powers changed after you saved me, Val. They were a little above average before, but now, they are untouchable,” Cyrus said, but without pride.
“Chern’s words are true,” a deep voice rang through the room, vaguely familiar.
Valerie yanked Pathos from the table and held it at the ready.
“Will you let her kill us, Cyrus?” a woman’s voice spoke now.
“Mom?” Cyrus asked.
Cyrus’s parents stepped from the shadows.
“Chern said that you were using magic to create weapons to kill his people, but we didn’t believe him,” Mr. Burns said.
“You don’t understand,” Cyrus said, his voice flat.
“Cyrus, sweetheart, you are so much better than this,” his mother said, her voice shaking.
“Enough. You’re coming home with us,” Mr. Burns said.
“Do you really think you can convince me to abandon everything I believe in and the people I love?” Cyrus asked. “Leave. I can’t stand to see you right now. You’re cowards, hiding behind your values. Can’t you see that what’s right is protecting innocent people?”
“If you really believe that, then you’ll come with us,” Mrs. Burns said.
“Chern says that if you come home with us, he will spare our people from this war,” Mr. Burns said. “He will bend space so that no one will ever find Messina again, and we will be free of the taint of magic forever.”
“He also promised that your father will be the one to lead our people through this time of chaos,” Mrs. Burns added.
“You and Cara will come with us. The time for your foolish rebellion has come to an end. I won’t let you ruin what I’ve worked for,” Mr. Burns said.
“You’re no better than Reaper, grasping for power behind the false idea that you know what’s best for
everyone,” Cyrus said. “Get out of here.”
“Now listen here,” Mr. Burns began.
“Get out!” Cyrus yelled, and both of his parents drew back in shock.
“If we leave, you’ll never see us again,” Mr. Burns said.
Cyrus’s mother gave her husband a sharp frown, but before she could contradict him, Cyrus spoke.
“I should be so lucky. Leave, and never come back,” he said, his voice colder than Valerie had ever heard it.
Cyrus’s mother paled. Valerie saw her eyes fill with tears before Mr. Burns yanked her away.
“Cy, no,” Valerie whispered. “They’re your parents. You only get one set.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore, either,” Cyrus said, and he left the room, slamming the door behind him.
Valerie’s headache had been mounting all day, and she stumbled home in a fog of pain. But the closer she got, the more it lifted. She guessed the reason when Clarabelle cantered up to her, exuding the promise of peace and love.
Since Azra and Clarabelle had moved into the forest near her house, Valerie had noticed green returning to the woods, and her little garden was positively lush.
“Were you waiting long, little one?” she asked.
Clarabelle was excited, Valerie could sense when the unicorn touched her mind. Something wonderful was about to happen.
I don’t know what’s going on with her, either. Azra stepped out of Valerie’s house, smiling at the sight of her foal rolling around in the grass.
“Someone’s coming?” Valerie asked, trying to interpret the barrage of sweet notes pinging her mind from Clarabelle’s.
Indeed. Someone amazing.
The air in Valerie’s garden shimmered, and two figures appeared, transported from Earth. She recognized the taller person immediately.
“Dr. Freeman! Is everything okay?” Valerie asked.
Gideon heard her shout and came outside. It was only the third time Dr. Freeman had come to the Globe. He’d said that it was overwhelming to be in a land full of so much magic. He preferred Valerie to visit him.
“Quite excellent, actually,” Dr. Freeman said. “Wouldn’t you say so, Ming?”
Valerie turned her gaze to the girl standing at Dr. Freeman’s side, and her eyes widened. This wasn’t the sickly child she remembered from the hospital, or even the thin, pale girl recovering from a long illness. In the months since Darling had cured her of cancer, Ming had flourished. Her short hair shone, and her eyes sparkled with health.