Hit by a freezing spell?
“Finish this!” Kurke yelled. “Now!”
Then Ivan did the worst thing he could do. He tried to grab the dagger out of my hands.
I had to do as Kurke had ordered. We struggled for control of the dagger, but I was stronger. My fingers closed around the handle and wrenched it away. And then, before I could stop myself, stop whatever horrible thing had control of me, my hands thrust the dagger toward Ivan.
Somehow I lost time. The next thing I knew, I was blinking and staring at my hands, and the ebony handle was sticking out of Ivan’s chest, the blade buried deep.
Now the same hands were pulling the blade back out, and blood spilled over Ivan’s chest. His mouth was round with shock or horror or something incomprehensible, and his eyelids fluttered.
What did I do?
So much blood. The knife clattered to the floor.
“No. Oh no. Oh no no no no no...” I tried to cover the wound with my hands, but there was blood, so much blood. I couldn’t make it stop, and it kept coming and coming. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Ivan...”
His mouth formed words, almost as though he thought he could speak, but no sound came out. He blinked and blinked again.
“You’ll be all right. You’ll be all right,” I told him. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I said the same words to my brother. False words. Lies.
Ivan would die, and it was my fault. And come morning, I’d have to dig a grave for him out on the hill, same as I did for Gavin. I leaned forward and babbled the only healing spell I could think of, one for cuts, over and over. If the blood leaking from his chest lessened, I couldn’t tell.
“Finish it!” Kurke’s voice. “Finish the spell now, Avery!”
I stared at Ivan dully. Horror sang through me. I wouldn’t. But my body moved of its own accord. My fingers, slick with Ivan’s blood, picked up the dagger and shoved his feet out of the way. I scooted closer to Oscar, knees touching his arm.
Think, Avery.
Somehow I was free of the compelling spell, if only for a moment. If I could break through it for a moment, I could break through it altogether. Couldn’t I?
The lines of the spell wavered before my eyes as though they’re in flux. It was woven as strong as ever, and yet—something had affected it.
I was losing control. Maybe even my mind. Stay calm, Avery. Stay in control.
But much too much had happened for me to believe that was possible any longer. I was falling over a cliff, and there was no coming back. I had killed Ivan, and I was about to kill Oscar.
And in that moment I thought of Orly.
“We girls can’t just tamp down our emotions and pretend we don’t have them,” she said to me that day in the Conclave. “That’s not how we work. We have to work with our emotions. Feel them. Don’t suppress them.”
It was what I’d been trying to do these three months, but I’d also been trying to stay in control, to stay calm. I felt them pushing at me, everything I was trying not to feel—panic, fear, sorrow, and a hundred more. The logical part of me said I couldn’t let them take control, or I’d lose any chance of stopping Kurke.
I raised the dagger above Oscar’s chest. There was no one left to stop me now.
Only myself. Only the voice of reason telling me to stay in control.
I closed my eyes and sank into the emotions. Terror washed me. Anxiety crawled through me. Grief like I’d never felt rushed at me.
Magic came to me, without my even reaching for it, pulled like a magnet. Power filled me, magic I couldn’t hold, more than I’d ever known. When I looked at the spell that held me, I saw woven magic that shivered and pulsed before my eyes. I reached for it with my mind, reached for the lines shimmery with flexing magic.
My touch shattered the spell like brittle glass.
I threw the knife against the wall and turned back to Ivan. His face was white as parchment, eyes fluttering, blood a dark smear across his chest. But he was breathing.
Kurke. I spun. It was difficult to say who was winning the battle between him and Master Wendyn at the moment. Both sagged with exhaustion, but they were still fighting. Kurke tried to wrench the dagger from Edie’s frozen grip and failed. Instead, he settled for tossing the fireplace poker at the master with such force that, after the master dodged it, its tip stuck in the wall. After a moment, it clattered to the ground. The master fired back with a spell that collapsed Kurke where he stood, though he was back on his feet in a breath.
Find a person’s weakness, and you control them. Papa was fond of that saying, although Mama would just smile a little sadly when he said such things. But what was Kurke’s weakness? His family? Women? His desire for control?
I couldn’t think how to make those things help me.
“Kill him, Avery!” Kurke shouted at me.
“I won’t. I’m not performing this spell for you. You’re out of options.”
He cursed and shoved the master into the wall with a spell. “Fine.” He walked toward me, hand outstretched. The dagger flew into it. “I’ll take care of this myself. I can still kill Oscar, anyway.” He tossed a spell at me. My shield spell absorbed it, but I still stumbled backward and fell to my knees. He knelt beside Oscar and raised the dagger.
The only way I really had to get at Kurke was through our connection. The tether. Could the tether, the strength that tied us together, also become a weakness?
Only if I also used it against myself.
I rose to my feet on shaky legs, opened my mouth, and utter the words of the Dry as Desert spell. It was so easy, it was almost as though I’d spent weeks practicing it. In reality, I hadn’t said the words aloud since the day I first said it in the testing room of the Conclave.
Kurke’s arms lowered. The dagger clattered to the ground, useless. His hand reached for his throat, and he crumbled to the floor like ash on a breeze.
Moments later, heat overtook me. It washed in waves of fever, a desert wind pushing its way through my skin. I wavered in place, the room spinning.
Kurke’s shoulders shook. Was he seizing? Were these the last throes of his life, of my life?
He sputtered and coughed and jerked, and I realized he was shaking with mirth, not death. “You’ve killed yourself,” he said, and his voice was sandpaper, rough words scratching against the walls of his throat. “We’re inseparable, you and I, remember? My heart’s blood is your heart’s blood.” More rough chuckling. “And I thought you were...intelligent.”
There are hands on my shoulders, and my knees gave out. Somebody bore me to the ground. “Look at me,” Master Wendyn commanded. “Mullins, look at me.” How many times had he said it? I stared up at him, at his shirt, ruined by perspiration and blood. My head seemed to be lying in his lap. “What spell did you cast?” he asked.
I stared at him, struggling for breath, as heat and thirst and an awful aching in my head bears down on me. “Ivan,” I said. “Ivan is dying.” My voice sounded scratchy.
“Avery!” he said sharply. “The spell. What was it?”
I blinked and forced my thoughts together. “Desert. So thirsty.”
Then Master Wendyn did the last thing I expected him to do. He laughed. It was a short, sharp, bark of a laugh, and I felt it rumble through his whole body. He took my face in his hands and peered down at me. “But that’s brilliant.”
The words made little sense. Having just uttered the words that would kill me, nothing about it felt brilliant.
I blinked and blinked and blinked. By the third blink, Master Wendyn and Kurke had disappeared. Everything about Oscar’s room had vanished, replaced with a brilliant white and two people: Gavin and Mama. I almost couldn’t look at them straight on, they were so bright.
“Darling, what have I always told you?” Mama said, rubbing at her nose in that way she always did when worried. “Think before you jump.”
“You’re being headstrong again, she means,” Gavin said. He leaned clos
er and squinted at me. “This time might even be worse than when you jumped over the waterfall.”
“Didn’t...jump,” I rasped. “You pushed.”
“Regardless,” Mama said. “Think. You’re not a child anymore.”
I blinked, and they were gone. The master was looking down at me again. Concern overwrote his features.
“Waterfall,” I rasped. “Gavin pushed.”
Somewhere nearby someone wass wheezing in and out, in and out, and I realized it was Kurke.
No, it was me.
It was both of us together.
Master Wendyn’s hands were out, and he was spellcasting—healing spells. He was trying to help me, I thought. The ache in my head eased, and the pressure on my lung lightened. I wanted to tell him it was no use. But that would use up energy and words, and there were so many of them I wanted to say right now.
My last farewell to the master. This was it. I’d cry if I could. If I had tears. If I could breathe. If I weren’t dying.
“Thank you,” I rasped. “For being...my master.”
“Stop talking,” he said tersely.
Nearby, Kurke made a choking noise. No, it wasn’t only Kurke. I was making it too. My windpipe was closing.
The master’s face, anxious, hovered over my own. He’d given up the spellcasting. I could see he didn’t know what to do. For once, he was at a loss. I wanted to tell him it was all right, that I made this decision.
Then I blinked, and he was gone.
“He means well,” Mama said. “Even if he has been hurt. I like this Garrick Wendyn.”
“Doesn’t laugh enough,” Gavin said. “Can he do a fire-breathing spell? Ask him to do a fire breathing spell.”
“Gavin,” Mama scolded. “This is not the time for that.” She put a hand to my cheek. “Be happy, sweet one. Trust again. And sometime soon, reach out to your father.”
“Papa,” I said. Choke, really. “I can’t—”
“He is your father.” Her voice sounded stern.
I wheezed and couldn’t make words.
“Underwizard!” a voice shouted at me. It was clove and fire in my nostrils. “You must stay with me!”
The lights were brighter now, pulling at me. Master Wendyn’s hot breath was on my face, and I looked at Gavin and Mama and wondered which was the dream world, the one they’re from or the one where the master wasn’t making any sense.
One more rattling breath was all I felt capable of. I pulled it in, and it came. And stuck there. I stared at Mama and Gavin and felt the lights pulling.
“Blast it, underwizard!” The master’s voice pulled at me harder. “Find the magic! Fight!”
I blinked, and his dark eyes were still there, right in front of me, fierce in their intensity.
Even in death, he was pestering me about finding the magic.
But when I stopped to consider it, I felt it along my skin, the one cool thing in this hot, dry ocean around me. I pulled it inward, and for one moment, I was filled with total clarity.
The loud wheezing nearby cut off. Then white light surrounded me, and I blinked and fluttered to the ground in a million pieces.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
My eyes wouldn’t open.
I meant to rub at my lids, but my arms had turned into bricks. Halfway lifted from the bed, they fell back against the fabric beneath them.
“Mmph.” I tried again to open my eyes. At last I worked the seal over them apart, and the room around me came into focus.
I was in my room at Ryker Hall. A quilt covered me up to my armpits. I attempted to readjust myself in the bed, but I hurt everywhere. My body was a heavy weight that wasn’t used to obeying the commands coming from my brain. Further across the room, a chair sat near the window, and it was occupied.
“I’m reading,” Master Wendyn said from the chair. He held a book in front of his face so that I couldn’t see his expression, but it was his voice. “Any chance you’ll fall back asleep again?”
Again? I didn’t remember waking before now.
I eyed my arms lying across the bedclothes. With effort, I lifted them further than my first attempt. The effort exhausted me.
Memories returned to me. Kurke came to kill Oscar. Ivan, covered in blood.
I was alive. That meant Oscar was dead. Maybe Ivan too.
We killed Oscar. Me or Kurke; I couldn’t really remember. No wonder the master wouldn’t even talk to me.
Shame flooded me. My heart pounded, and my eyes burned. I wished the floor would open and swallow me whole. I didn’t deserve to be alive while he was dead somewhere—
“Stop that.” Master Wendyn’s irritated voice cut into my thoughts. He snapped the book shut and stared at me, scowling. He was dressed in one of his outlandish shirts, looking as normal as ever. It wa’s the most beautiful thing I’d seen in my whole life.
I sniffle. “Stop what?”
“Crying.”
My breath hitched. “What do you mean? I can’t cry.”
He raised a brow. “What’s that on your face?”
I swiped at my eyes—this time lifting my arm all the way—and my hand came away wet. “W-what? How—” I stared at him, trying to make sense of things. He had several days of beard growth on his chin, a deep purple bruise across one side of his face, and a puckered red cut across his forehead. “You’re hurt. Is that from—did Kurke do that? Because I was helping him?” I whisper, the tears pricking at my eyes again.
His face darkened. “It’s your own self you should worry about. You’ve been unconscious for three days. And please stop crying.” He grimaced and waved the book. “I should have let that desert spell take you. Do you always cry this much?”
I scrubbed at my eyes, wanting to cry now more than ever. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, even as my tears overflow. Friar’s bones, but this was embarrassing. I scrubbed harder at my face and then gave up, wailing, “I never cry. I’m just...so...ashamed!”
“Sweet carrot sticks, Garrick, what have you done?”
The voice brought me up short because it was so very Oscar-like. In fact, I’d put money on the fact that it was Oscar. I took in, through the blur of my tears, the wavy form of a round man standing in the doorway to my room, floppy hat on his head.
“Oscar?” I whispered, unwilling to trust my eyes. “You’re not dead?”
“No, and nor is Ivan.”
“He’s...not?” I whispered, and even more wayward tears gushed out.
“Didn’t you tell her anything?” Oscar’s voice asked, and the wavy form moved closer, swinging something by his side. I scrubbed at my eyes, and his form came clearer.
"I’ve hardly spoken," Master Wendyn said. "She woke up and went straight into hysterics. I’ll never understand females," he added, halfway to himself. He pushed himself to a standing position, working a spell as he went. By the time he reached me, he’d plucked a handkerchief out of the air. He held it out to me and pushed my feet aside to perch on the edge of my bed. "Here, clean yourself up. I suppose we should talk if it will prevent an uncomfortable crying episode. Hold on." He pulled several more handkerchiefs out of air and dropped them in a pile on my lap. "In case. Although, I’d prefer if you didn’t need them."
I sniffled and wiped my eyes and thanked him. “But why aren’t you dead?” I said to Oscar, who was standing at the end of the bed, swinging Forthwind and looking for all the world the same as always. “Or why aren’t I dead?” I sucked in a breath. “Wait. It’s not over yet. The blood oath isn’t finished. Kurke’s still out there somewhere.”
Oh. I had spoken of the blood oath without a single clouded thought or drift in concentration.
“Wrong on three counts, underwizard,” Oscar said. “Look, I’ve had my fill of talking about Matthias to the Council, so you’re on your own on this one, Garrick. Not to mention that misguided maid is back again. I’ll go get rid of her.”
“Edie? Try another forgetful spell,” Master Wendyn suggested.
“Edie?” I repeated, as
more memories came back to me. “She was...helping Kurke, wasn’t she? I thought you let her go.”
“So he did,” Oscar said. “I cast the forgetful spell myself, making her forget everything about Matt and your gender and that unpleasant scene in my bedroom. But I had to come up with a new reason for letting her go. I told her that her knick-knack dusting was shoddy. Trouble is, she keeps coming back to apologize and beg for her old job back. Persistent little thing.”
That sounded like Edie.
“Oh, before I forget, Ivan says hello,” Oscar continued.
“He does?” Flashes of terrible memories came to me. Ivan’s bloodstained chest. The knife in my hand. “He’s—he’s not mad at me?”
“Couldn’t help it, could you?” Oscar turned back. “Nice work at those healing spells. They worked pretty well to patch up that hole you put in him. He took a few more spells, and he’s still mending; but he’ll be all right.”
A thumping sounded through the wall.
Oscar rolled his eyes. “That’ll be him. Have your talk first, and I’ll send him over.”
“Ivan...did magic, didn't he? A freezing spell.”
“Among others,” Oscar agreed. “An unknotting spell too. Wordless magic, at that.” He and the master exchanged a glance. “We’ll decide what to do with him before too long.” He shuffled closer and placed a hand on my shoulder. “I thank you for stopping Matthias, Avery Mullins, and at your own peril. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but anger crawled through that boy's soul, enough to send him teetering into madness. And I never saw it.” He shook his head and shuffled out, closing the door.
I watched him go, mystified. “Kurke is dead, then? How is that possible? I should be dead too.”
“Are you being honest right now?”
At the heat in the master’s voice, I blinked and stared at him. “Why...why wouldn’t I be?”
a“What I mean is...just answer me this question, Mullins. And I won’t be casting a deception defense to ensure your honesty. I’m going to trust you.” Tightness lined his face. Whatever the question was, it was very important to him.
“Fair enough,” I said with a nod. Trust. This was new territory for us.
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