North held me the entire time, forcing me to drink all of the bowl’s contents. Every single burning, foul drop.
I felt…
I felt nothing. And then everything.
This time I knew I was the one screaming. Beneath my skin, everything burst back to life with a roaring blaze that consumed me, pushing its way through my veins and forcing out the tolerable numbness behind my eyes. My head was thundering in pain.
Then North was holding the same bowl under my face, whispering in my ear, rubbing warm circles on my back.
“You have to spit it up—you have to get it out of you, Syd,” he said. “Throw it up!”
If I had been myself in that instant I might have been embarrassed, but I did exactly as I was told. I threw up until there was nothing left in me but dry heaves and thick tears.
Somewhere a door shut, but all I could hear was North’s voice; all I could feel was his warm breath on the back of my neck.
“That’s my girl,” he said. Sensation was tingling in my toes and fingers, but I still couldn’t move, paralyzed by the pain the cold had left behind, by its last grip on my body.
That, and the solid, undeniable warmth that was North.
The wizard fell back against the wall in exhaustion. He held me against him gently, as if I was glass—as if I could shatter and fall away from him at any moment and leave him breathless and alone once more.
“That’s my girl…,” he whispered, resting his cheek against my shoulder.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When I was a child, no older than five, I came down with an illness that left me bedridden for weeks. I have very few memories of that time. Flashes of my mother’s pale face, the wide rims of the doctor’s glasses. Mostly, I remembered the pain: the heaviness of my limbs, my head too weak to move.
It was exactly how I felt upon waking to the sun shining in my eyes and the sound of shuffling against the floor. The noise wasn’t very loud at all, but it worsened the pounding between my ears.
I blinked. My limbs were as heavy as stones; I strained my neck, trying to see what was making the noise.
A bald old man was rummaging through North’s leather bag. The sun outlined his profile, but I could still make out the deep wrinkles on his forehead and the tight line of his lips as he dug through the empty bottles. When his hand reappeared, he was clutching North’s stained purple handkerchief.
Whoever he was, he didn’t belong in North’s bag.
My voice came out a rough whisper. “Hey.”
The scrap of fabric fell from his fingertips. From beneath my layers of bedding, I glared.
“So you’re awake,” he said. He stood slowly. “Aphra!”
The old woman appeared instantly in the doorway. I felt the soft, worn material of her skirt as she knelt beside me and placed a hand on my forehead.
“How do you feel?” Her voice was the softest I had ever heard it.
“Hurts,” I confessed, closing my eyes. I heard the floorboards strain and creak beneath the man’s boots as he walked past me. There was the sound of bedding being pulled away, and a grunt from the corner of the room.
“Up, you bag of bones,” the man growled. “I let you go back to sleep earlier, but now you have no excuse.”
“Magister?” North groaned. “Gods, I was hoping that was a nightmare.”
“Nightmare?” he scoffed. “You’re lucky I came. It’s not an easy trip.”
“I didn’t ask you to come, old man,” North said. “In fact, I seem to remember telling you I wasn’t coming to see you, either.”
“And yet here I am to knock some sense back into that thick skull of yours,” he said. “How very lucky you are.”
“Wayland,” Aphra said. “You’re disturbing Miss Mirabil—may I suggest you do what your magister says?”
“She’s awake?” North asked, kicking off the rest of his blankets. He squatted down beside me, a bright smile on his face.
“Hullo, my beautiful, beautiful darling,” he said. “Feeling better this morning?”
I smiled back weakly. “Not really.”
He chuckled. “It might take a few days. The poison has to leave your body.”
“Poison?”
“Pascal, give them a moment,” Aphra said, nodding her head toward the door. “I’ll need your help to clear the snow off the path.”
The old man clucked his tongue in disapproval, but he went.
“Snow?” I whispered.
“It was quite the storm last night,” North said, brushing a stray curl off my face.
I swallowed hard, catching sight of the loom out of the corner of my eye. “Was it me?”
North brought over the pitcher of water and helped me sit up long enough to drink.
“Was it me?” I asked again, my voice stronger. “Did I cause the storm?”
North’s brow furrowed. “What gave you that absurd idea?”
“The threads,” I explained, but it was useless. North shook his head.
“When you’re feeling up to it, I’ll take you outside,” he said. “I’ll try to get a letter off to Owain to tell him we may be a day late.”
“No,” I said in horror, trying to sit up again. My head throbbed. “I can go now…we can’t get farther behind.”
North shook his head. “It’ll be a day or two before you’re strong enough to travel. I promised you that we’d get there in time, and I have no intention of going back on it.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” I said, trying for a smile. North only looked away.
“I need to tell you something,” he began, his voice tight. “That poison—that was the same poison that killed the king.”
“But how did he…?” My head spun. “You saved me. Why did he have to die if there were wizards there?”
“Because only I know who made the poison,” he said. “And because I’m the only person to have seen him make the antidote. It’s a hedge poison.”
“Dorwan? Are you sure?” North gave a curt nod, but his eyes betrayed his feelings. Had he known this entire time? Was that the real message we were taking to the capital?
“I was with him for a little while, when we were both boys. The only reason I met him was because I was snooping around, looking for information around one of the hedge camps. He showed me…He showed me a lot of these poisons and tricks that he thought I would like,” North said. “He thought we were alike, and that I would appreciate knowing them, I guess. It was a long time ago.”
“And it’s the same poison?” I said.
“It was the perfect plan,” North said. “No one recognized the poison, so they assumed it was foreign—”
“And that it came from Auster,” I finished. “He fooled everyone. How could something like this happen?”
“It happened because I didn’t stop him years ago, when I had the chance,” North said angrily. “I underestimated how much hatred he has…to do something like this…”
“It’s not your fault,” I breathed, my eyes drifting shut. For a moment he didn’t say anything, but I felt his dry lips press lightly against my cheek.
“Rest, Syd,” he said. Another dreamless sleep washed over me.
After sleeping for so long, I sat up slowly, my limbs stiff and aching. I knew another day had passed us by—a day we could have been traveling.
I felt surprisingly alert as I glanced around the room. The cool air was a welcome replacement to the unbearable warmth of the blankets.
“North?” I whispered.
I heard a muffled crash outside. My legs buckled beneath me as I stood, but I forced myself over to the window. I pushed it open, thrusting my head into the freezing air.
It was barely light outside, but the wizard and his former student were standing side by side, knee deep in a blanket of snow. Around North lay dirt and grass in stark patches of brown, but for the most part, the snow remained undisturbed and piled high.
I reached through the window’s opening, barely able to contain a grin as I scooped up
a handful of snow and let it fall between my fingers. It clung to my skin in a way sand never would have, and it was soft. I brought my lips together and blew. A thousand little specks of white flew off the window ledge, floating to the ground.
Under the cover of snow, small, smoking chimneys were the only parts of the roofs visible to me in the valley. I missed the endless sea of billowing green grass, but there was something beautiful here as well. I turned to look for my boots and a blanket in order to go outside, but Pascal’s voice stopped me.
“If you want to track him using magic, you have to be willing to open yourself up fully to the magic.”
“But doing that is agony,” North said. “I can’t hold on to it like the others can—how am I supposed to track him when I can barely hold myself up?”
“I know, Wayland, I do,” Pascal said. “I know how difficult it is for you, as it was for your father and his father before him. But you must try.”
North knelt in the soft dirt, pressing a hand to his face. “I see a line of red, pulled tight…and…a ribbon of white, hot to the touch…”
“Keep going,” Pascal said. “You mentioned he specializes in ice—see if you can find a gathering of blue. He’d be calling that magic to him most strongly.”
“I can’t.” North rubbed his face.
“Don’t be afraid,” Pascal said. “You’re holding yourself back by anticipating the pain.”
“Does it ever go away, even just the slightest?” North asked quietly. “I don’t remember my father ever being so weak.”
“You’re just as strong as your father was,” Pascal said. “Weldon was only better at hiding the pain.”
I shut the window, feeling as if I had already heard more than I should have. He had only brought up his parents once—and that was enough for me to see how deeply he felt their loss. Resting my forehead against the glass, I watched the two figures circle each other, North’s cloaks flying around him. As always, he wasted precious time untying and retying each cloak. More than ever, I realized how important my work could be to him.
The loom was still waiting for me, its rough wooden frame balanced carefully against the wall. I sat down in front of it, pulling my bag toward me. My mind was fully absorbed in every detail of the cloak, straying only once to acknowledge the sunlight filling the room.
I was halfway done with the cloak before I forced myself to stop and relight the fire. Sometime after I finished the castle walls of Fairwell and before I had begun the green of Arcadia’s mountains, the embers had died out completely. The wintry air that saturated the room had stiffened my fingers to the point that they could no longer move.
I must have watched my mother light the kitchen fire a thousand times with an ease and fluidity brought by constant practice. But she had let me try only once, and that one time—with the spilled stew and ruined pot—was enough to convince her that I had no place in the kitchen.
I ground the hard, thin piece of wood against the other, softer piece with as much strength as I could, but all I got for my effort was tired arms. I was working so hard, was so busy praying to Astraea for just a small spark, that I didn’t hear the footsteps behind me.
“Girl,” Pascal said. “If you were out in the wild, you’d pass out and freeze to death before you saw even a hint of fire.”
I blew my unruly hair out of my face and glared up at him. He gave a dry laugh as he knelt beside me.
“May I?” he asked. I passed the wood to him, watching in frustration as he used magic to light the fire. “Now, coffee?”
He disappeared into Aphra’s room and returned with a kettle, two beautiful teacups, and a little burlap sack.
“Where’s North?” I could already smell the coffee, and my empty stomach twisted in anticipation.
“Out prowling for Dorwan, I assume,” he said gruffly.
I looked down at the cup in my hand, studying the little blue flowers.
“Why are you training him again?” I asked when the silence finally became unbearable.
“Wizards have ways of detecting others of their kind,” Pascal said, pouring the coffee. “It’s a difficult technique, but one he needs to learn regardless of whether he wants to stay a step ahead or seek Dorwan out.”
“It looked like he was in pain,” I said.
“He was struggling with himself,” Pascal corrected me. “Over the years he’s become more and more convinced that magic is nothing more than pain and destruction. It’s hard to persuade him otherwise, especially after all that’s happened to him and his father.”
“I don’t understand,” I said slowly. “Don’t you use Astraea’s teachings in your lessons?”
“Those are the myths,” Pascal said. “The reality is that magic is little more than a curse.”
“They are not myths!” I said.
Pascal held up his hand. “You may believe whatever you choose to believe, but understand this, Miss Mirabil: magic is a responsibility, a burden, a duty. You are a slave to your faith and country. You don’t choose to have it. Very few of us would, given the choice.”
“Some wizards seem to enjoy having power,” I said.
“Dorwan?” Pascal said. “I’ve often wondered if it isn’t a weight for him as well. From what Wayland’s told me, he wasn’t allowed to participate in the ranking tournaments due to the circumstances of his upbringing. He didn’t fit in with the hedges as a grown man, but he certainly couldn’t join wizard society. He was trapped between what he wanted and what he could actually have. Perhaps that’s why Wayland stayed with him as long as he did—they were both outcasts.
“They must have been together for six, maybe seven months before Wayland decided to leave. Dorwan disappeared, only to show up again a few years later at Provincia, demanding a meeting with the Sorceress Imperial. She refused to see him, by all accounts.”
“How long ago was this?” I asked.
“Two years ago, I believe,” Pascal said. “Right after the Sorceress Imperial had taken her oath of office.”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe North would ever choose to associate with Dorwan. They’re completely different wizards.”
“Different upbringings, different choices,” Pascal said, rubbing his forehead. “You may not get to choose whether you’re born with magic, you may not get to choose the people you’re born to—but how you conduct yourself is entirely up to you.”
I set my empty cup down beside me, unsure of how to ask my next question. “Do you think that magic can exist in someone without them knowing it?”
“There are always possibilities. Take Oliver, for instance. He never would have recognized the ability within himself if Wayland hadn’t come across him in town and begged me to train him.”
“But it is possible that a person, even without training, could use magic?” I pressed. “Has that ever happened before?”
Pascal gave me a curious look. “I suppose it’s possible, though it would be extremely difficult to control it. Magic exists everywhere, all the time. It never abandons us, though it can punish and compel us if we don’t learn to master it. It is a tool, much like your loom.”
Pascal glanced over at the unfinished cloak. “You are the wizard, and you can use that loom to shape the thread to create colors or shift patterns,” he finished.
Something in his words struck me deeply, and I was on my feet before I even realized it.
“Where are you going?” he asked, startled.
“Just outside for a little bit,” I said. “I want to walk around in the snow before it’s gone. Will you tell North where I am?”
He nodded. “Don’t stray too far from the house—and watch your footing. It would be extremely irritating to have to dig your body out of some snowdrift.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said dryly. I picked up a blanket from the floor and wrapped it tightly around my shoulders. With my boots on and my hair pulled back, I stepped out into a world of white, the likes of which I had never seen before.
I
had things to do, but more important, things to think about.
Later that day, as I helped Lady Aphra mix elixirs and drafts, I tried to shake Pascal’s words from my mind. You are the wizard, and you can use that loom to shape the thread to create colors or shift patterns.
“I’m surprised you learned so many mixtures in so short a time,” Lady Aphra said. “What made you decide to learn?”
“In the beginning, it was because I wanted to know what North was hiding,” I admitted. “But I like it. It’s something I can do without him, something that comes easily to me.”
“I’m sure Wayland appreciates it,” Lady Aphra said. “He never was very good at mixing them. If you’re interested, I have a more in-depth book. It’s fairly old, but it’s served me well. I’m not sure there’s much else I can get from it.”
I nodded. “I would love it, if you’re sure you won’t need it.”
She tapped her forehead. “I have it all up here now. That’s what age does to you.”
Back outside for a walk, my feet had a miserable time against the patches of ice, and dirt caked the wet hem of my dress. I stayed out for only a short time and shut the door of Lady Aphra’s cottage behind me silently, feeling the warm air prick my frozen skin, a delicious relief.
“Does it matter?” North’s voice carried from the other room. “I told you I tried, but it didn’t have any effect—none whatsoever.”
“Did you try with a fresh sample?” Pascal asked. “I don’t think this will do anything. It’s lost its potency.”
“Once, and it was enough to realize the amount I needed would be fatal,” North said.
“This may be your only chance,” Pascal said. “You didn’t seem opposed to the idea when you first wrote to me about it.”
“Things have changed,” North said tightly. “I’m not so sure the journey to Provincia will be worth it now—if they find out about the jinx, it will all be over.”
“The choices will be death or subjugation,” Pascal said. “You might as well use it now.”
I stepped into the doorway, but the wizards didn’t look up. They were huddled close to the fire, bent over empty bottles, herbs, and North’s stained handkerchief.
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