by Kristen Pham
“I’ve survived worse, and so will you,” Summer said. “But I wish you did not have to encounter so much pain while you are barely more than a foal.”
“I haven’t thought of myself as a foal since long before I ever came to the Globe,” Valerie said.
“That is good. Because it is a leader we need, not a child,” Summer said. “Now we must leave.”
Clarabelle gave a stomp of her silver hoof. Not without my gift!
“Indeed,” Summer said.
Summer braided a small part of Clarabelle’s mane, and then reached to her side for a dagger she kept there. In one smooth slice, she cut the braid off.
Valerie gasped. “What are you thinking?”
“It is what she wishes,” Summer said with a gentle pat of Clarabelle’s flank.
It will grow back. Azra watched Clarabelle toss her mane, which was now a few strands lighter. Wear it, and you will heal much faster. Clarabelle is not yet ready to share waters from her horn, but this will help.
Summer tied the iridescent braid around Valerie’s wrist. Azra nudged Henry with her nose, but he didn’t stir.
Each day, I have hoped that he would find peace, and I think perhaps my wish has come true.
“It seems like he’s finding his way back to himself. To us,” Valerie said. “I wish you were here to guide me.”
Your heart needs no guidance. Follow it freely and see where it leads.
As the three left the tent, Valerie considered the fact that Pathos wasn’t the only thing that had chosen her. Clarabelle had, too.
Henry helped Valerie walk out of the tent that afternoon, and she didn’t know if it was the cool breeze or Clarabelle’s gift, but she was fully alive again.
“Am I remembering right that Kanti was here?” Valerie asked her brother.
Henry turned away when he replied so she couldn’t see his face. “Yeah. She had to go back to organize more soldiers from Elsinore, but she’ll be back soon.”
“Did you two finally talk?” Valerie asked.
“We tried. It was weird,” he said.
“Try again. This is your soul mate we’re talking about, right?”
“There are so many people I can’t imagine will ever forgive me, and Kanti’s one of them. What I did in her name… Who knows how many people will die because of the powers I gave Reaper’s army?”
“I think it’s time to take your magic back from Reaper,” Valerie said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Use your power for the Fist, on your own terms. I’ve seen the inside of your mind. I think you have a much better imagination than Reaper does. Explore your ability to gift Conjurors with new powers and help me turn the tide of this war,” Valerie said.
Henry’s mouth hung slightly open at her words.
“I’ve always thought of my power as the opposite of your vivicus magic, something evil inside me,” Henry said. “But you’re right, it doesn’t have to be.”
“There’s nothing evil in you, Henry,” Valerie said.
Even if Henry’s mind hadn’t been open to her, she would have known from the tears he was holding back that, for the first time, he believed those words.
That afternoon, Skye burst into the hospital tent, nostrils flaring. Valerie worried that he might trample the cots.
“Are you aware one of the Healers here has been forbidding me to enter this tent ever since you were stabbed by Reaper? And your brother supported this!” Skye said, tossing his mane.
Valerie glanced at Henry, and he shrugged, not even a little sheepish. And she had a pretty good guess which Healer had forbidden Skye to enter. Thai was still barely talking to her, but she knew he was near, trying to make her more comfortable, though she could tell he didn’t want her to know he was doing it.
“I apologize for them, Skye,” she said.
“You are the leader of the Fist! Injury or no, you can’t be unreachable for eight days. Eight days!”
Valerie was a little dazed at his words. Had she been out of it that long?
“You’re right. I won’t make excuses. Starting today, I’m back and ready to resume my responsibilities as leader of the Fist,” Valerie said.
Skye flicked his tail, but some of the tension had left his stance.
“I’m sure your friends told you that the battle in Arden was a crippling defeat,” Skye said.
The weight of the war settled fully back on her shoulders, and she pulled her blanket around her, suddenly cold.
“Tell me,” she said.
“We lost more than two hundred soldiers, and Arden is in the hands of the Fractus,” Skye said.
“Two hundred…”
“And another score of Conjurors lost their lives on Earth. That doesn’t address the human toll,” Skye said.
Valerie rubbed the goose bumps on her arms, as she thought about how many humans had been hit by lightning, slaughtered with black weapons, or torn apart by Reaper’s powers. All while she’d embraced oblivion to avoid it all. She should have been out there, fighting.
Something of what she was feeling must have shown on her face, because Skye’s tone softened.
“The losses are not on your shoulders alone, vivicus,” he said. “It is a weight we will all carry together to our graves. But now, we must focus on the battles at hand. We must help those on Earth while also retaking control of Arden. We must use our grief as our strength to move forward. We must use it to crush the enemy.”
“Is Reaper creeping into other parts of the Globe, or are his forces localized in Arden now?” Valerie asked.
“Arden and Plymouth are infested with Fractus. But Reaper has not yet tried to retake the Roaming City. The People of the Woods have experienced occasional attacks, but not a full assault. He has made no forays into Elsinore outside of recruiting new soldiers. Even in Dunsinane, we only have occasional skirmishes.”
“Then we need to take back Arden first. Reaper’s going to find out that holding a city that’s hostile to your presence is much harder than conquering it. He once told us that he had people in every guild that supported him. Now that’s going to work against him, because we have people everywhere, even in his own army, who will turn on him. The Knights Mira helped me recruit are waiting for my order to turn on Reaper. It’s time to use that to our advantage.”
After hashing out plans with Skye, Valerie went to the safe house on Earth where she usually met with Chisisi, but he wasn’t there. Henry had come with her, and she turned to him.
“I think I know where he is, and I want to visit him alone,” Valerie said.
“Keep your mind wide open to me,” Henry said. “I’m coming if you sense even a whiff of Fractus trouble.”
“I will, but I don’t think I’ll find them where I’m going.”
Chisisi sat with his back against his brother’s gravestone, staring up at the night sky. Valerie sat next to him, gazing up at the familiar constellations that she’d studied before her adventures on the Globe ever began.
“Though I’ve known the legends of magic since I was a boy, at times, it is unbelievable to me that Conjurors are crossing the universe to enslave humanity,” Chisisi said.
“Every day, I wonder if I’ll wake up and find myself back in foster care, and all of this will have been the best dream and worst nightmare of my entire life,” Valerie confessed.
“Zaki should be marshaling the forces on Earth, not I. I am ill-suited to leadership,” Chisisi said.
“I’m beginning to think that the more you hate being the one with power, the better-suited you really are,” Valerie said. “That’s what I hope, anyway. Because I can’t wait for the day when no one is looking to me for direction.”
“I am thankful you guide us today,” Chisisi said.
“How bad is it here?” Valerie asked.
“When the flame went out, a series of coordinated attacks were carried out that appear to have been planned in advance. Leaders in twenty-four countries were assassinated, and countless ot
hers died in the attacks.”
Valerie swallowed, hoping she’d be able to save her tears for so many lost for when she was alone.
“But if the Fractus thought that they would simply step into the power vacuum they created, they were wrong. New leaders have already been elected by humans in nearly every country, and they are resisting the Fractus with all of the fight they can muster,” Chisisi said. “People will not bend easily to the Fractus’s will.”
“Then Reaper will break them,” Valerie said.
“He will try,” Chisisi replied.
“How do we fight a war that’s all over the world? I don’t know where to start,” Valerie admitted.
“One battle at a time,” Chisisi said. “Beginning, I think, back at the Atacama Desert in Chile.”
“Why?” Valerie asked.
“When the flame went out, it released a phenomenal amount of power. The sand that melted into glass is woven with pure magic,” Chisisi said.
“Kind of like the Carne Reaper is dredging up in Plymouth,” Valerie said.
“Perhaps, but that magic had degraded over years. This is new magic, and not released from a person, but a flame born of thousands of Conjurors who donated their magic to create it,” Chisisi said.
“I never knew that was how it was made,” Valerie said. “Reaper will want to take it and use it to his own advantage.”
“A large number of his army reside in the desert, so miss’s speculation rings true to me,” Chisisi said.
“This time, we’ll stop him before he can seize more power,” Valerie said, but she was faking her confidence.
Valerie’s heart was beginning to beat faster as she began making and rejecting plans in her mind.
“Before we take back the world, stare at the stars with me now,” Chisisi said, and his words brought her back to Earth. “You never know if it will be the last time you examine them.”
It was nighttime on the Globe, as well, when Valerie returned to the hospital tent.
“What the hell, man? Are you following me?” Cyrus’s voice was near, and Valerie peered around a tree and saw his familiar glow.
Thai was standing nearby with his hands shoved in his pockets.
“I don’t know who else to talk to about this,” Thai said. “Henry doesn’t see what a big deal it is that Valerie almost gave up on herself, and abandoned all of us.”
“It’s not her leaving all of us that’s bothering you. You just can’t stand the fact that you couldn’t fix her. That you couldn’t be the hero,” Cyrus said.
“That isn’t it! She can do better than giving in to all her self-loathing. She isn’t Henry!”
“You know what I think you need?” Cyrus said.
“What?”
Cyrus slugged Thai in the eye with enough power that Thai banged into the tree behind him. He returned with a punch of his own that skated across Cyrus’s cheek, and soon they were grappling on the ground.
Valerie briefly considered interrupting them, but decided that if they wanted to waste their energy fighting each other instead of the Fractus, that was their business. But she wouldn’t watch, either.
She quietly walked past them, to the entrance of the tent, and Cyrus spoke again, out of breath. Valerie paused, unable to stop herself from listening.
“You and I can’t fathom what it’s like in her head,” he said. “Our parents, our families, they’re all alive. We’ve never lived on the streets, been beaten up or mentally tortured. She can’t be a hero every single second. Every once in a while, she’s going to fall down, and you get to be the one to pick her up. She considers you her soul mate. You, not me, are that lucky. So never complain to me about her again.”
Thai came by her bed that night as she was carefully spreading the ointment that Nightingale had given her on the scar on her chest.
“I saw you pass by when I was talking with Cy,” he said.
“Talking seems like a weak word for what I saw,” she said.
“So you heard what he said?”
“About cutting me slack since my life has sucked? Yes,” she said.
“Well, I completely disagree. It’s not that it doesn’t make my heart hurt to think of all the ways you’ve been bruised, but he doesn’t know you as well as I do if he doesn’t see that in spite of that—or maybe even because of it—you aren’t someone who gives up, who takes a nap while the world burns.”
“And that’s how I want you to see me. It’s part of why I love you. You force me to be the best version of myself, and you don’t tolerate anything less. But sometimes, it scares me to think that someday, you’ll find out the truth about who I am and be disappointed.”
“I don’t think so. Because Cyrus is right. The day you finally let me be yours, I’ll be the one who’s lucky to be with you, not the other way around.”
“Ew,” Henry mumbled from the cot next to hers, where he’d been napping. But before he rolled over, she could swear she saw him grin.
Chapter 31
With her body functional again, Valerie threw herself back into the middle of battles, only taking breaks to check in on Emin and sleep. Her magic was depleted, but now she knew how much she was capable of tapping into if needed.
The months of fighting she’d engaged in before Reaper had put the flame out hadn’t prepared her for the ferocity of the battles now. Her enemies had their full magical potential unleashed, and many relished the opportunity to exercise powers that had been stifled.
She found herself not following Dasan’s advice to rest her vivicus power. Again and again, she poured herself into the wounded and dying, and though she didn’t regret it, her mind was like a balloon on a string that she had to consciously reel in sometimes in order to access information. The more she used her power, the stronger her connection with Darling became. She could sense every time he saved a life, and she began to yearn to see him again.
Valerie was grateful that Gideon had always made sure that she practiced fighting without the aid of her magic, because now, she had very little of her power to draw on. But she was less sluggish than she’d been when the flame had bound her powers on Earth.
She spent part of each day strategizing with her generals about when and how they would attack Reaper in Arden and the Atacama Desert, but she was pulled away with growing frequency due to emergencies on Earth where every soldier of the Fist was needed. She refused to excuse herself, even if Skye shook his head disapprovingly and Chisisi watched her with worried eyes.
Valerie had successfully led a team of about thirty soldiers to protect the Prime Minister of France and was organizing ongoing protection when a strange, unpleasant buzzing filled her mind. At first, she thought it was an attack from a Fractus with psychic powers, but when she focused on her locus, the sensation remained, and with it a sense that a balance was on the verge of being upset. Then her wrist burned.
The iridescent bracelet made from Clarabelle’s mane was humming. A streak of gray wound its way through one of the locks of the unicorn’s hair.
Terror filled her, and the Laurel Circle was ice. Kanti had been fighting at her side, and she clutched her stomach.
“Do you feel it, too?” Valerie asked her.
“Something’s wrong,” Kanti said. “It’s like I’m about to fall off the edge of a cliff.”
“Clarabelle’s in danger,” Valerie said. “And I don’t even know where she’s been hiding.”
“Neither do I. But I know someone who does,” Kanti said.
They returned to the Globe, to a gigantic field on the snowy plains of Elsinore, where Kanti’s new recruits were training. Everyone went silent at their princess’s arrival and dropped to a knee.
Valerie turned to her friend with wide eyes, but Kanti took it in stride, as if she was getting used to her new role.
“Send me Blake,” Kanti shouted.
Someone pushed through the neat lines of soldiers and came to a stop in front of Kanti.
“What is it, my princess?” he asked.
Valerie barely recognized the man before her. When she’d seen him last, he’d been one of the nearly invisible, breakable Fractus. Now, he was fully visible, and she could see that he was very young, not more than a year or two older than she.
“You told me that Clarabelle helped you develop your power to fly,” Kanti said.
“And my speed,” he added, standing straighter.
“How did you meet her? We need to find her right away. Something’s wrong,” she said.
“Every day at high noon, she came to a site on Earth called Machu Picchu. Those of us whose hearts were true could find her,” Blake said.
“I know that place,” Valerie said. “There’s no easy way to get there.”
“Unless you have a rock from the site,” Blake said, reaching into his pocket. “Azra said I could give it to someone I trust who needed their help.”
“Your princess thanks you,” Kanti said, taking the rock from Blake.
Valerie and Kanti gripped hands and traveled to Earth. They were transported to a place so ancient that the land had the echo of magic’s hum from before Conjurors had ever left the Globe.
“This place is huge,” Valerie said, her eyes scanning the ruins.
“And we don’t even know if Clarabelle is here,” Kanti said.
A crackle of electricity was all the warning that Valerie had that Reaper was near before pain licked her back.
She tackled Kanti to the ground, covering her body with her own.
Kanti plunged her fist into the ground, and the magic Valerie sensed earlier responded to her friend’s touch. Green shoots wriggled out of the ground.
“Distract him,” Kanti whispered.
Valerie pulled herself up and assessed her surroundings, but Reaper wasn’t visible. She reached inside herself for the dregs of her magic and let her power search for her enemy.
Reaper was leaning against a tree, and he was bending light so that she couldn’t see him unless she squinted. Her sixth sense for danger wasn’t blaring like it usually did when he was near, and she could see why. He was clutching his head.
Valerie erased the distance between them, and hit him with all of her strength right in his nose, which snapped with a satisfying crack. Touching his skin was agony, and she cradled her hand, hoping it wasn’t broken.