by Kim Smejkal
He took one step toward her. Two. His eyes assessed the upset birds and Celia’s hand with a shrewd calculation, and her chuckle petered out as the black swirls began overtaking the green in his eyes.
Watching his nostrils flare, Celia remembered Lyric’s warning too late: the scent of the afterlife clung like a film. Ashes and dust. Layers of it.
He knew.
Those dark eyes snapped to hers.
“How could you be so foolish?” he growled.
“They’ll be fine,” she said. If she kept pretending he was upset about the birds, maybe that could become the truth. “I’ll stay in here until they calm down.”
“Not letting you in there was for your protection!” he said. “There is no life in the afterlife. Not for them and certainly not for you. They would have sucked you dry of your ink and left you a husk, wandering around forever.” Halcyon was beside himself with anger. She’d never seen him so unhinged. The whites of his eyes were gone, overtaken by black.
“I told you,” he said, shouting now, “to stay out of that room!”
Fine, it wasn’t about birds.
She stood, forcing herself not to shrink back from what she saw: the master of something that had caused so much pain, a jailer, a manipulator, a killer.
And a liar. Such a good one, he’d managed to lie to himself for centuries.
“I made a deal that I thought would help my friend,” Celia said. “I’d master the ink illusions, look after Wisteria while you searched for Martina, be bound here for the rest of my life—and in return, I’ve gotten nothing but lies.” Celia raised her flushed face and glared. She was glad she didn’t have to lie anymore; it made her words hiss and crackle like the fire she felt burning inside her. She could hardly believe she had the spine to take a step toward him, and yet she did. And she kept right on yelling. “I’m alone in this bubble, scrambling around and playing with illusions and not making any difference, while there’s a door to the afterlife a few steps away?!”
Halcyon truly looked concerned. “What is wrong with you, Celia Sand?” he said, shaking his head, his eyes roiling. “Do you truly not care what would could have happened to you, or are you that talented at hiding your fear?”
Both.
“I wanted answers, and I got them,” she said. “I know you’re just like Diavala: treacherous. You manipulate everyone around you, and you like to be worshiped. I’ve somehow managed to go from one captor to the next.”
“I am nothing like her,” Halcyon hissed.
The lush aviary around them fell away, and the next moment, they were walking side by side along a forested path. Celia looked down, amazed that her feet were moving without her commanding them. It was high summer, the air hot and dry, the leaves and needles crunching underfoot shed from thirsty trees.
Halcyon paused as a slow snake slithered across the path, twisting and turning to avoid being stepped on. Dead leaves fell around them, one fluttering to land on his shoulder. He didn’t notice until Celia brushed it away, touching him without thinking about it. A flush rose into his pale cheeks, and he looked at her, startled.
Perhaps he expected her to be shocked at their new surroundings, but if so, he hadn’t been paying attention.
All of Celia’s shock had worn off. By then her spine was braced for anything. A new location, a new setting were all part of her life now.
Despite her noncooperative feet and hands, she could match him.
“I was hoping to explain everything over time,” he said. He sounded and looked serene, a stark difference from only a moment ago, but his eyes still swirled. He was having a hard time keeping his anger in check.
He inhaled deeply, gesturing for Celia to walk off the path and through the trees. Within a few steps they arrived at a high overlook: a rocky cliff dropping steeply downward. On the horizon, a mountain range looked like an anthill, and below them, rivers snaked like thin worms through wide, quilted valleys of color. It stole Celia’s breath, the beauty of it. Even more beautiful than the lake country surrounding Wisteria, and she hadn’t thought anything could be more picturesque.
Halcyon looked across the valley, his hair rustling faintly with the wind, his face painted with wistful yearning.
“This was where we were meant to be,” he said. “This is a rudimentary rendition of Poclesh, across the Lassina Sea. Such a beautiful land.” He swept a graceful hand outward; what he called rudimentary was so pristine and precise that Celia wondered how much more perfect perfection could be. “In life, I was a painter, my Martina was a poet. We met in the afterlife and bonded over our art, our dreams. We both knew this was the perfect place for artists to live—the entire land is a living, breathing muse—and we decided we would get there.”
Celia’s breath stopped.
She’d been wrong: some things could still surprise her.
She’d thought Halcyon was alive and had found a way to the afterlife, with the ink somehow extending his life as he played with it. The fact that he’d been dead for a thousand years almost made Celia vomit all over his pretty illusion.
He and Martina had met in the afterlife and brought the ink out together. The big difference was that Martina had soon realized the wrongness of it all, and had tried to do the right thing.
Celia tried to run, her body in full flight mode, but her feet didn’t move.
Dead, dead, dead.
His body should have been ashes and dust. Instead, he was so adept with the ink, he’d crafted a new body for himself, complete with a strange, hard-to-pin-down tenor. That would explain how he could make a tattoo disappear from his skin. It had never been permanent; there was no real skin for it to stick to. It had been one illusion on top of another, and he’d wiped it away.
This would certainly explain why he was hunting for a soul who’d been dead for a thousand years: if Halcyon could exist on the wrong side of the veil, so could Martina.
It seemed as if that had been their plan in the beginning. It was still Halcyon’s, even if his beloved had had a change of heart centuries ago.
Halcyon’s eyes burned fever-bright as he looked over the cliff. Behind them, a rustling sound grabbed Celia’s attention, and she turned.
As if Celia’s thoughts had summoned her, Martina walked toward them. She had no tenor, just like ink-Anya earlier, a startling reminder that all this was nothing but an illusion Halcyon had thrown together relatively carelessly.
When Martina got to Halcyon’s side, they stood together at the edge of the cliff.
“All we wanted was a simple life,” he shouted, his voice barely carrying over the blasts of wind. “A poet and a painter, using the ink as a medium for our art. We made it so far, experimented so much, and that life we yearned for was within our grasp.”
Abruptly, he turned to Celia and grabbed her hand, pulling her toward the edge of the cliff, leaning her over. She shrieked in alarm, even knowing it was an illusion. Halcyon held her from behind as Martina looked on. Pebbles fell from under Celia’s scrambling feet and pitched over the edge of the cliff into the craggy abyss below. His chest pressed into her back, and she felt his labored breathing, his tight grip the only thing keeping her from following those pebbles. The wind whipped her hair around her face, blinding her as she cried out.
“But can you believe how this story ends?” he yelled.
Martina spoke from the first time, adding an echo to Halcyon’s words. “How my story ends?”
“Our ink was stolen by a child who had no vision for it, no master plan, and was too clever by half.”
“Diavala—” Celia gasped.
They were so far in the past—before Profeta started, before inklings—when the story was just between a poet, a painter, and the child who got in the way.
“By rights, that ink was Martina’s, but she gave up looking for it too early,” Halcyon said.
“I didn’t,” Martina said calmly behind them.
“You did!” Halcyon shouted over his shoulder.
“No.
I saw the way of things,” Martina said. “I accepted my fate.”
Halcyon continued as if Martina hadn’t spoken. “Martina might have returned to the afterlife, but she will join me again on this side one day. With you around, I’ll have that much more time to search for her.”
“I will never come back,” Martina said. It sounded like she’d said the same line many times before.
He laughed in Celia’s ear, his breath as hot as fire. “It took me some time to find Diavala, but I did. She was using the ink as a toy, pushing it into others’ skin as if it were a novelty instead of art and substance itself. If she hadn’t stolen it—hadn’t brought doubt about the nature of our work—Martina and I would be in Poclesh, living our dream. And to this day, Diavala acts as if she was blameless in Martina’s ultimate demise. I killed Diavala, but as it turned out, death was too lenient. Justice has to fit the crime, don’t you agree?”
Celia choked, her tears too thick to see through, everything blurry and undone, unwinding. She already knew what his ultimate confession would be. It was in his breath, his grip, his wind-whipped hair. Telling her this story had rekindled his ancient rage, a rage she understood well, the same one that had fueled her since leaving Asura—the ever-present desire for reckoning against the one who’d taken Anya from her.
She’d been no better than Halcyon. She’d hated Diavala so much she’d broken her own rules, all while telling herself it was for Griffin.
But Halcyon was so blinded by it, he didn’t even see that his own illusion was arguing with him: he knew Martina’s wishes weren’t the same as his, but he didn’t care.
“You threw Diavala out of the afterlife,” Celia said. For the first time, the words took root inside her. Diavala had been nothing more than a casualty of Halcyon’s misplaced quest. “You cursed her to be a dead soul in the land of the living.”
The similarities between Diavala and Halcyon were frightening, but the distinction was all about power. He was skilled enough to use the ink to create a body and sustain the life he wanted. Diavala could not. She faced an eternity of grappling, of struggle, of not having a choice.
“I did,” he said. “And it’s a perfect revenge, don’t you think?”
Celia would have agreed if she hadn’t suffered at Diavala’s hand. “But why did you let her create Profeta?” Celia screamed. “Why let her be happy at all?”
“I’ve watched her for centuries, Celia Sand, and she’s never been happy. Whenever she was close to getting what she wanted, I stepped in. To drown her, to start a plague, to flog her, to make her believers doubt by creating a senseless war. Until this last time, in Asura, when she was ready to claim a mortal body and be worshiped in the flesh . . . Well, you took care of that for me, didn’t you.”
Celia shook her head and closed her eyes, her face flushed, throat tight.
“Your game with her was deeply entertaining,” Halcyon said, whispering the words in her ear, pressing his cheek to hers. “I almost stepped in more than once when I thought she’d bested you, yet you always recovered and pushed back.”
He paused. Taunting. “Right to the tragic, bloody end.”
Celia had started crying some time ago, but those words made her gasp out screams.
He was saying that Diavala would have never claimed that stage she’d tried to steal as the Divine.
That, maybe, Anya’s death didn’t have to happen.
Halcyon would have stepped in and done it all for them if only they’d waited for the Curse of the Divine to do his work.
“My revenge is perfect because it’s infinite,” he said. “No matter how high Diavala climbs, she will always, always fall.”
He let Celia go.
Celia screamed Anya’s name as she fell.
And she fell for so long, she screamed her voice hoarse. The wind tangled into her lungs with a force that choked her. Gasping, screaming as the ground rose toward her, expanding in detail as she closed in: the boulder where her skull would shatter, the crag where her legs would twist and snap, the moss her blood would soak into.
Her arms windmilled, as if a ledge made of sky could save her.
A thunderous clap echoed off the hills, so loud that instinct pulled her windmilling arms in to clap her hands over her ears.
Solid floor beneath her body, no more wind.
She scrambled up to sitting, then standing, panting so hard and so violently disoriented that even though her eyes were open, she could see nothing, register nothing.
Her hands flew to her hair and tugged down. A shriek rose out of her throat.
“Celia, I understand how overwhelming this is,” Halcyon said, “but you came here because, in the end, we have the same enemy. Diavala took everything from both of us, and I recognized the rage in you because it matches mine.”
With her heart still thumping, she came back to her senses slowly, adrenaline buzzing through her veins. His words disgusted her, they were so misplaced, so willing to ignore collateral damage.
“But the Touch,” she gasped out. “You said you could make a cure.” The reason she’d come in the first place, the thing she’d bargained everything for. “Is there a cure for Diavala’s Touch, or was that another lie?”
He sighed, as if her question were mundane and disappointing. “The only way to avoid the Touch is if you’re dead. That’s why Diavala couldn’t harm me when she came three years ago, that’s what I was going to help your friend with. I never lied to you; it will give him immunity.”
It was one thing to suspect you were working for someone who’d gone mad with his hate, another thing entirely to hear unequivocal proof leave his mouth. Celia tried to bolt for the courtyard but made it only a few steps before she threw up.
She’d bargained for Griffin’s death.
Halcyon looked down his nose at her. “Clean that up and meet me at Rian’s,” he said before stepping over her. “Let’s settle our debt so you can focus.”
Chapter 25
As she ran to Rian’s, Celia’s imagination spun out of control: Rian killing Griffin and Zuni with some toxic tea, then Halcyon’s curses of immortality, scattered around like confetti; or more illusions, tormenting them with their worst nightmares or forcing them to lift daggers to their own necks.
Halcyon could do anything because the ink was ever-powerful. It was meant to craft millions upon millions of parallel worlds, each individualized. The sheer expanse of what it was designed to do was amazing to think of. It was creation itself, on a different plane.
But it didn’t belong here, so everything around her was wrong. Wisteria was wrong.
The townspeople watched her run. Davi’s and Giada’s stares from the front window of the Outside Inn were hawkish; Garuld and Rosetta swiveled to follow Celia, Garuld’s cane tapping a beat into the stones, increasing in pace when Celia tried to pull away.
So strange.
And, just then, sinister. All claws and teeth. They were in on the con.
Or perhaps they were part of it . . .
Xinto flew beside her, his wings whipping ferociously as he tried to keep up, inconveniently reminding her that she’d created him from nothing, and yet he’d developed a personality all on his own. She hadn’t had to command his behavior for a long time.
He’d evolved.
It suddenly didn’t feel foolish to believe that Halcyon had stocked Wisteria with ink-people. Their fierce devotion, their willingness to accept even the strangest occurrences. Celia had dismissed this thought before because they all had tenors, but if the ink listened to intent, their tenors could have been their own adaptations.
Michali emerged from their shop, a ream of fabric in their arms, shaking their wheat-colored head and clicking their tongue in disappointment. Celia must have looked a fright, with blood on her face and wind-whipped hair.
With their longer legs, Lyric finally caught up to Celia. Their shouts had chased her for blocks. “What did you do?” they asked over and over.
Celia’s eyes stung, and s
he tried to bat Xinto away. Instead of answering, she swerved down a side street. She could fold herself to Rian’s like Halcyon undoubtedly had and lose Lyric that way, but that meant she’d be at Rian’s . . . something she wasn’t ready for yet. So she had to lose Lyric the old-fashioned way.
“It’s me!” Lyric called, desperation in their voice. “Celia, it’s just me!” They sounded hurt—why would their first friend run from them like this?
Celia reared to a stop, and Lyric didn’t have time to avoid crashing into her. They went down, tumbling to the ground, scraping skin as they went. Lyric’s hands were everywhere, trying to catch themself but also, mostly, trying to catch Celia.
They skidded to a stop and lay beside each other, panting and bleeding, their legs snarled up together. Celia heaved herself onto Lyric, straddling their hips, and pinned them down, grabbing their arm. “Is this real?” she hissed. The fresh scrape on Lyric’s arm was already a vicious red, speckled with pebbles from the road.
Lyric frowned, panting, and tried to push Celia away. “Whatever you’re ranting about—”
“Will Rian heal it?” Celia asked, pressing closer so Lyric couldn’t move. “I’m not letting you up until I know you’re real. You said you don’t know how to have a friend, but a friend would tell me whether they were real or not, Lyric!” Her voice pitched higher. Behind them, Garuld and Rosetta had caught up and were staring at them from the mouth of the alley. Michali was behind them with the bolt of fabric still in their arms, as if they were determined to mend any ripped clothing immediately.
Lyric went from shocked to angry in a heartbeat. “Of course I’m real.”
“What about the rest of them?” Celia nudged her chin toward the mouth of the alley.
Lyric tried to look away, but Celia pressed closer, chest to chest, not allowing it. “You know exactly what I mean, Lyric. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
All fight left them, and they sagged under Celia’s weight. When Celia let up on her grip, worried that Lyric had passed out, it gave Lyric the opportunity to shove their legs up, push Celia off, and scramble away.