Fire & Chasm

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  But it doesn’t matter. The wizard will have reasons to worry about her soon enough, and whoever was in the bed before . . . he’s not here to protect her now. It’s only her and the boy. So he takes the pillow from the far side of the bed and slides the casing off. He wraps it around the knife hilt, to shield himself from its fire. So the boy will be himself the whole time, knowing exactly what he’s doing to her.

  He thinks about tying her down first, like the wizards do to him. Not so she doesn’t get away—he could chase her through the dark and catch her again if she did—but so she doesn’t hurt herself. Not any more than necessary.

  But in the end, the boy is too impatient. Too afraid of losing his nerve. So he grips the knife and brings the blade down toward the soft, tender flesh of her stomach.

  Sick. Cold. Shaking. I sit at the dining table, my hands folded in front of me, trying not to think about anything. It’s morning and the sun rose a while ago and I was sitting here then, too. Tasting the lingering, sour burn of vomit in my mouth. My stomach’s empty and cramping—from throwing up, from being hungry. From the overwhelming feelings of disgust and self-loathing.

  I try not to think, to just be numb. I don’t dare move. Not after last night.

  It wasn’t me. I would never think those things. I would never do those things.

  Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

  I was wrong before. All this time, I thought I was the boy and the monster. Coexisting at the same time. But I was wrong. I was the boy. Only the boy, no matter how many wizards I killed. No matter how many times I enjoyed it. What I was last night . . . that was the monster.

  And now I’m what, exactly?

  I press my hands flat on the table, thinking about all the awful things I’ve done with them.

  Maybe what the wizards did to me . . . maybe I deserved it all along. I thought they made me what I am. But what if that’s who I always was, and that’s why they did what they did?

  Leora’s footsteps echo down the hall, and then she pauses in the doorway, yawning. I have my back to her. I don’t look up. I don’t say anything.

  “Hey, Az,” she says. There’s a smile in her voice. A warmth when she says my name. Neither of them should be there, but she doesn’t know that. She has no idea. “How long have you been up? Don’t tell me my father’s got you meeting him at the crack of dawn now. Wouldn’t that be just like him? He’s not happy unless he’s annoying everyone, trying to control them. You don’t have to listen to him, you know. I mean, I know you know that. But if you— Az?” There’s a hesitation in her voice this time. “Is something wrong?”

  My world is broken. Not as broken as it could have been, if I’d gone through with it last night. If I hadn’t woken up to find myself hovering over her, the knife in my hand. And I wasn’t even touching the obsidian that time. I can’t blame what I did on its influence. It was me, thinking those things. Watching her sleep and wanting to hurt her.

  No, not wanting to hurt her, exactly. But I was going to do it anyway. I had wrapped up the knife so its fire wouldn’t seep into me, so I could torture her in cold blood.

  Leora sits at the other side of the table and peers at me. The smile on her face melts away. “You look like you’ve been to the Chasm and back. Bad night?”

  “You should never have let me touch you.” I want my voice to sound empty. Cold and unfeeling. Not a monster or a boy, just nothing. But instead it sounds so alive and so hurt. “How could you have ever let me put my hands on you?”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  I flip my hands over, staring at the lines in my palms. How many times have they been stained with blood? “Let me tell you a story, Leora. Once upon a time, there was a boy. An orphan. Innocent, probably. As far as I can tell, but it was so long ago, and my memory’s still a little fuzzy. But one day the wizards got their hands on him. They poked and they prodded and when the time was right, they started the real stuff. They bound his hands and his feet while they cut into him and let his blood spill all over in sacrifice. But once wasn’t enough. That was just the beginning. They wanted him to be a monster.”

  She shakes her head and tries to reach for my hand, but I pull it away. “It’s okay. It’s over now. You’re not—”

  “No. The story’s not over. To turn him into a monster, they had to keep hurting him. In lots of different ways. Sometimes they broke his bones. Sometimes they made him go for days without sleeping. They always helped him heal up afterward. A broken toy wouldn’t have done them any good. Sometimes they were even nice to him, for a few weeks or so, to make him wonder if maybe things would get better. If maybe that really was the last time they’d hurt him. But it was a trick, just to make their next torture session that much worse. And it worked. They opened up a link between him and the Chasm. They used violence and suffering to channel its spells into him. They thought they’d be able to use them—to use him. But you know that part already.”

  “Yeah, I do. I know this story. You don’t have to finish it.”

  “They turned him into a weapon. Into a monster. And then one day he escaped. The head wizard, the one who started the experiment in the first place, wasn’t the heartless bastard he wanted to think he was. He was supposed to kill the boy and end the experiment. But his conscience caught up to him, and he secretly let the boy go.”

  “See,” she says, “it has a happy ending. The boy got away. The wizard realized his mistake. You can stop there.”

  “Something happened to the boy, so he couldn’t remember anything. Well, almost. But it didn’t change the fact that he was a weapon. A killer who liked hurting people. No, not people. Wizards.” I pause there, wondering if this is the point in the story where she’ll see me for what I really am. Her eyes will get wide with terror, and she’ll say this is it, she never wants to see me again, and I won’t have to tell the rest of it.

  But Leora just bites her lip, her hands clenched into tight fists, and waits for me to continue.

  “The boy left the capital and ended up in Ashbury, where the head wizard’s daughter lived. They were linked. Maybe he was drawn to her. Maybe it was coincidence. It doesn’t matter. The Church took him in. They knew he was a killer, and they took him in anyway. And the girl . . .”

  “The girl fell in love with him,” Leora snaps, as if she thinks I’ll try to argue otherwise. “But that’s her story to tell, not yours.”

  “He fell in love with her, too. To her, he was innocent. He liked that. But the whole time he knew her, the whole time she thought he was just an altar boy—”

  “Az. Whatever you think you need to say, you don’t need to say it. All right? I mean,” she adds, her voice dropping to a whisper, “do you think I’m stupid?”

  “Of course not.” But she wants to see the best in me, even when it’s not there. “There’s just something you should know.”

  “Are you going to make me spell it out for you? I know.”

  I shake my head. My chest aches with what I’m about to say, but she deserves to hear the whole truth. She deserves to know what the boy who shares her bed is capable of, while he’s still here, while he can still tell her. “If you knew, you would have left already, Leora. You think I don’t know you well enough to know that?”

  “You’re the wizard killer.” The words drop from her mouth like stones.

  It hurts to hear her say it.

  If she had any lingering doubts, the look on my face must clear them all away, because she nods and says, “That’s what I thought.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “I don’t know. The whole time I’ve known you? Just now? Somewhere in between. I guess I’ve been piecing it together for a while—I just didn’t realize I was. And it’s not like you tried to deny it yesterday. I mean, if it wasn’t you, you shouldn’t have had to. But . . . I knew.”

  “There’s more to the story.”

  “Az, don’t. I know the rest. The boy was the wizard killer, but the girl loved him anyway
. That’s all that matters.”

  “The boy was the wizard killer. He killed so many, he lost track. And the girl didn’t know how much he liked it. How he enjoyed every second of causing them pain.”

  “And the girl still loved him, even knowing that. That’s how the story ends, so just stop already!”

  But I can’t. She said she loved me enough to break her own heart for me. I said I’d do the same, and I meant it. “And then the boy got his memories back. Slowly, at first. He thought that the memories didn’t change him, but they did. Sometimes, he couldn’t remember where he was. He thought he was back at the guild, being tortured again. And when that happened, he didn’t remember the girl anymore. I mean, he knew who she was. That she was the wizard’s daughter. But he couldn’t remember all the time they’d spent together. That she was his best friend. That he loved her.”

  “So you don’t always remember me. But you know who I am now, don’t you? You love me now, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I do. That’s why I’m telling you this. Because the story’s not over. Because when he thought he was back there, being tortured, and when he didn’t remember who she was—who she was to him—he became a danger to her. And she sort of knew that, but she didn’t want to admit it. Because she loved the boy so much, she thought she could ignore the monster.”

  “Az. I’m warning you. Shut up.”

  “But the monster tried to hurt her. To get revenge on the wizard who hurt him. And one night, while she was asleep—”

  “No!” She slams her hands down on the table. “What in the Chasm is wrong with you? Why would you say something like that?”

  “I would have killed you, Leora.” Admitting it out loud makes my chest feel raw. Raw and dead, like I wanted Hadrin to feel. “I would have settled for just making you suffer.” Hadrin thought linking us made me a danger to her. But maybe I was already a danger to her, and the linking spell between us is the only thing keeping her even remotely safe. “But don’t get me wrong. I would have killed you if I could. And I would have—” My throat tightens, and it takes all my effort to say the words, to give her my one last truth, the one that might actually be enough to save her. “I would have liked it.”

  She gapes at me. Finally seeing me. Emotions flicker across her face. I watch little bits of her shatter, piece by piece—the boy she thought she knew, the one she thought she loved, crumbling away.

  The silence stretches out between us, until I think she’s never going to speak again. I clear my throat. “I should leave.” I don’t know where I’ll go, but I shouldn’t be here.

  She swallows. “You didn’t kill me, Az. You knew who I was.”

  “It still makes me a monster.”

  “They were the monsters. My father tortured you for years. I remember the day I bled all over. I didn’t know it was from your wounds at the time. But when I look back on it now . . . What they must have done to you . . . They deserve whatever you did to them.”

  “Don’t make excuses for me, Leora. I know they deserved it, but you didn’t. You can’t be with someone like me.”

  She scowls. “Don’t tell me who I can be with.”

  “I could have killed you.”

  “No, you couldn’t have. You’re still my best friend. You’re still the boy who climbed that apple tree just because I dared you. The only person who ever really understood me. You have to be, because I still need him. Whatever part of you would have hurt me, that isn’t you!”

  I told her my truths, and she still sees only the boy. She thinks the monster is something separate, not really part of me. “It is me. Stop pretending it isn’t. The more I remember about my past, the more I forget about my present.” I rub my face with my palms, wishing for this to be over. “And one of these days, that boy who’s your best friend won’t be here at all.”

  Tears well up in her eyes. “No. The Fire doesn’t sacrifice people. It wouldn’t have done this if it meant I was going to lose you!”

  “The Fire has nothing to do with this. I’m going to forget you, Leora. It’s only a matter of time, and—”

  “You’re not going to forget.” She says that like she knows for sure.

  “I lost my memories before, and almost everything about myself. I still don’t know why, and that means it could happen again. I’ll lose my mind.”

  “It won’t happen.”

  “You don’t know that. You don’t know what they did to me, what I’m—”

  “No, I mean, you won’t lose your memories again. I, uh, sort of know how you lost them.”

  “You what?” I was supposed to be the one revealing secrets, not the other way around.

  “When I unlocked your memories. I told you, it was like I found this door. And I saw where the door came from. It was the Fire, Az. The Fire blocked your memories.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I finally ask Leora, after staring at her for a while in disbelief. Disbelief in what she said, and in what she did. I kept my secrets because I thought she’d hate me. Because I liked who I was in her eyes. But I don’t understand why she’d keep something like this from me.

  “I was going to. At first. But the Fire put that locked door there to protect you.”

  “To protect me, or everyone else?”

  “Maybe both. To keep the spells you got from the Chasm locked away. And so you wouldn’t have to remember all the bad things they did to you.”

  “And you know all this how?”

  “I saw it. It was just a flash. Just this warm feeling when I used my power on you. The Fire had put the lock in place, but it also let me unlock it. It wanted me to. Because you need the spells, because you’re the only one who can stop Endeil.”

  “You’re saying the Fire wants me to . . . what? Fight the Church?”

  “No, just the High Priest. He’s corrupt—he might still be the head of the Church, but he doesn’t represent it anymore.”

  “What else did you see?”

  “Nothing. But, Az, I didn’t tell you because I knew you would worry. I mean, a primal force puts up a wall in your head to keep the bad stuff from getting out? That’s pretty serious. And then I undid it. And I know you asked me to. I know the Fire wanted me to do it. But it just made everything too real. How bad everything must have been for you, and how powerful those spells must be. How dark. I didn’t know how to tell you that I knew. And I didn’t know how you’d react to finding out it wasn’t just some spell or some trauma that blocked your memories, but the Fire itself. Especially since you’ve got this chip on your shoulder about it.”

  “About what?”

  “The Fire. About how it’s never deemed you worthy of a power.”

  “Yeah, well, wizards don’t get powers.”

  “You’re not exactly a wizard.”

  “Right. I’m worse. I’ve not only used spells, but spells from the Chasm.”

  “It’s not fair. None of that was your choice.”

  Maybe not at first. But now? “The Fire has a lot of reasons to condemn me. I’ve made my peace with that. You should, too.”

  “Oh, right. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you, because you’d see it as some kind of punishment. Some sign that you’re . . . I don’t know . . . not on good terms with the Fire. And you’ve got enough to worry about as it is.”

  “So, the Fire wants me to use these spells? Spells that came straight from the Chasm? It wants me to kill Endeil?” And here he thought he was still its favorite. But me? It never favored me—only condemned me. And now it wants me to sacrifice myself to save everyone from the High Priest. And I’ll do it. Whether it’s the punishment I deserve or my chance at redemption, I’ll do it.

  “The High Priest is that dangerous,” Leora says. “So if you have to use those spells, then yes. But I think what the Fire really wants is—”

  The front door slams open, interrupting her. We both turn to look toward the living room. I’m on my feet, moving to get between her and whatever threat might be coming toward us. I thought I’d
have more time, but Endeil must have found me already. My hand instinctively reaches for the knife, though realistically I know it’s my spells I should be using, preparing to give myself to them, to let the past take over. But I’m not ready for that. I’m not ready to become someone else completely, to lose Leora, and myself. So I don’t call up the spells, not just yet.

  But it’s only Hadrin who appears in the doorway. His face is ghastly pale, almost green. He’s limping, dragging one foot. His robes are filthy and smeared with grime. There are scrapes across his knuckles and along one side of his face.

  Leora gasps, and all I can do is gape at him. He looks so unlike himself.

  “Well, don’t just stare at me like idiots,” he growls. “Help me—”

  And that’s as far as he gets before he collapses.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Hold still,” I tell Hadrin, trying to get a better look at his foot.

  He flinches, even though I haven’t put my hands on him yet. “Don’t touch it.”

  “I have to.” If he wants me to heal him, anyway. He’s almost lucky that I cut through his tattoo the other night. Otherwise, I’d have to do it now. Or else let him suffer.

  He pushes me away, grimacing.

  I glance over my shoulder, exchanging a look with Leora, who has her arms folded in frustration. “Just do it, Az. He’s being such a baby.”

  Hadrin grits his teeth. “I can hear you, you know. I’m not so old and feeble that you have to talk about me as if I’m not in the room.”

  Leora clenches her fists at her sides, looking like she wants to kill him. Like it’s taking a lot of effort for her not to. “Heal him, Az. Now.”

  I put my hands on Hadrin’s broken foot before he can protest again. He cries out, and I ignore him, concentrating on casting the spell. But I take some pleasure in the fact that he’s the one screaming at my hand.

  The spell takes more energy this time than it has in the past, and I’m drawing from all three of us before I realize it.