by Lan Chan
I braced for the inevitable, but the slug of awareness was no less harsh when Kai teleported in. His eyes were bloodshot. Any satisfaction I would have felt knowing he hadn’t been able to sleep either was muffled by purple nymph’s agonised wailing. She left my palm and flew at Kai. Several of the other nymphs joined her. He lit up like a Christmas tree leaking angelfire and enveloped them in comfort.
I crouched down to where Thalia and Peter were poking in the dirt of the original Arcana tree. A light green tinge shone off Thalia’s palm.
“Anything?” I asked.
Her mouth was a razor line. “Not that I can tell. It’s not poison or high magic.”
Peter placed his palms on bare earth. As he flooded it with hedge magic, I felt a corresponding tug in my gut. For several minutes, I sat there in a meditative state, trying to contain my magic so that it wouldn’t interfere with Peter’s investigation. When his eyes finally blinked open, I deflated.
“It’s not earthly in origin either,” he pronounced.
Disturbed, I found myself dropping into the comforting sight of the Ley dimension. The Arcana trees had once been two bright orbs of multi-faceted light. Now there were just gaping black holes where they stood. Not only that, all around the clearing, sections of the grass were almost emitting a faint, black ooze. I hadn’t been inside the Grove for weeks, but I would bet the grass was also dying.
I reached out with a sliver of bone magic and brushed it against the side of the black darkness.
My scream was no less ear-splitting than the nymph’s. I doubled over, gasping as a thousand needles burrowed into my skin. The agony was acute and throbbing in intensity. I had felt that pain before.
Somebody grabbed my arm and wrenched me away from the orb. The pain threw off the Ley sight. I took in sharp, ragged breaths as Kai blanketed me in angelfire. It eroded the heat lapping at my nerves until I was able to stay upright on my knees without Kai propping me up. The nymphs swarmed my vision. Jacqueline crouched down beside me.
“Lex?” she asked.
I turned towards the multi-coloured nymphs. “Has Emily been using the heavenly blade to prune the Arcana tress?”
Speaking the question aloud cemented the theory in my mind. Like a butterfly, the Angelical word etched on the side of the blade fluttered up: Anhiliah. Destroy. The blade had taken away my ability to bear children. And now it had killed the Arcana trees. What kind of messed-up weapon was this?
The implications of my question dawned on the nymphs. Their pained cries morphed into molten rage. Before they could fly away and launch an attack on poor, unsuspecting Emily, Thalia latched on to them with her magic. She cast a mint-green net around them, securing them to the spot.
“There’s no point in trying to punish, Emily,” Thalia said. “She didn’t know what she was doing.”
We didn’t even have to verify that theory. Emily was completely clueless when Jacqueline asked Astrid to fetch her. That she’d heard a wailing scream in the night and chose to stay in her room said it all. When she entered the clearing through the parting of guards and professors, her face was already sheet white. As her gaze hit the dead Arcana trees, she started to shake. Tears trickled down her cheeks.
“I didn’t mean to,” she cried, wiping hastily at her face. “I’m not good with plants, but they kept insisting that I help. The tree is so tough. Nothing else would work.”
Half of what she said didn’t make any sense. The Arcana branches were as supple as any other tree. Slave labour from the Herbology students ensured all the tools in the shed were kept in optimal condition. Thalia saw my perplexed expression.
“You don’t know,” she said. I frowned. “The Arcana doesn’t just allow anyone to touch it. Only you, Peter, and the nymphs have been able to take care of it.”
So when Emily began cutting the tree with the heavenly blade, the nymphs had assumed she would make a good fit to be my successor. Of course, they took no responsibility for their stubbornness. Inch by serrated inch, the nymphs’ claws began to grow. Sensing danger, Emily cowered. “Perhaps we should go back to bed,” Jacqueline announced. She bundled Emily away. With them went the Nephilim guards, leaving me in the clearing with the Herbology teachers, Kai, Astrid, and Professor Mortimer. A few minutes after they disappeared from sight, I heard Jacqueline barking orders for the rest of the students to leave the premises.
I tried to speak past the vise in my throat. “Can we revive them?”
Thalia shook her head. “We can’t do anything. We never had an affinity with it in the first place. You, on the other hand, might be able to.” She placed a hand on my arm when I stepped forward. “There is no life there, Alessia. Better to replant if you have seeds.”
The nymphs could not produce more seeds fast enough. They came at me from all sides. “I take it I’m forgiven,” I said out of the side of my mouth. This garnered a round of hisses, but nothing was thrown at my head, so I figured it was the only apology I was going to get.
It broke my heart to help Peter dig up the remains of the Arcana trees. The withered stems and trunk were brittle. They kept snapping as we worked.
Finally, when the debris was cleared away and a barrow load of fresh dirt blessed by the nymphs evened out the hollowed turf, I set to my task. Arcana seeds were the size of a fifty-cent piece and shaped like a cross between an apple and a quince seed. I brushed my fingertips over the selection the nymphs had provided and discarded the ones that weren’t viable. If only I had been able to diagnose my own fertility so easily. Picking two firm seeds, I dropped one each into the prepared holes and sat down in the grass between them.
Peter and Thalia had always taught me that forcing nature wasn’t our first preference. We were here to aid, not inflate. Nanna had said the same thing. Going against that felt strange. But when I saw the hole in the landscape, I couldn’t help wanting this one selfish thing. Not that the nymphs would have allowed me to back down.
Wrapping the Ley sight around me, I wiggled my palms into the dirt and flooded the ground with hedge magic. Tiny tendrils of blue light chased along the skeleton of the Ley lines until they reached the seeds. Being careful not to push them too quickly, I kept my magic contained to several dozen capillaries. The nymphs flew back and forth with miniature watering cans filled from the Arcana pool. They watered the earth, instilling their own magic into the trees. Once my hedge magic got going, the increased water would be necessary. The Grove seemed to sigh as the Arcana seeds swelled.
I blew out a breath when the first bud appeared, sending out its true leaves one after the others. The nymphs upped their speed. I grabbed the Ley lines and shoved magic in a steady stream. Focusing hedge magic into the earth where the life of all plants was determined, I allowed the roots to burrow deep, their feeder capillaries uncurling. The light of the Arcana trees expanded in my Ley sight. They surged upwards, eating up the space until they were almost as tall as they had once been before.
As though they were trying to make up for lost time, the nymphs continued to splash water around the leaf perimeter. Too busy forcing buds and then pollination to produce fruit, I didn’t notice the overwatering until the Arcana trees shuddered. The top branches arched up into the sky, hit an invisible barrier, and shook like they were being battered by a gust of wind. Confused, I glanced up. Had I not been in the Ley dimension, I would never have seen the flicker of silver light that settled over the tress. Nor would I have traced the line where the light originated to a gossamer thread that disappeared into the sky.
Overfed, the Arcana trees tried to keep growing. The thread pinged like somebody flicking fishing wire. On the rebound, a wave of silver snapped back, cutting the new growth where it stood.
Instead of dispersing, the silver light chased through the lifelines that made up the skeleton of the trees. The same bitter tinge of death flooded my nostrils. Unsure of what was happening, my instinct was to fight against it. Grabbing a fistful of hedge magic, I threw as much as I could to bolster the trees and stop th
e rot from taking hold. My magic collided with that of the phantom light. The moment it touched me, pain burst inside me once more.
My back bent as I cried out. Hot lava poured over my skin. Nausea rolled over me. I coughed and something metallic spattered from my lips. The tips of the uppermost leaves began to shrivel. Hell no!
Gritting my teeth, I pushed back against the force. My limbs tuned to jelly. Once, my magic was a force to be reckoned with. When had it been leeched so thin?
“Alessia!” Thalia said. Her hand touched down on my arm. The moment a connection was made, Fae magic flooded my senses. Without meaning to, but unable to stop myself, I grabbed hold of every aura in the Grove and used it to bolster my power. I became a lightning rod, drawing energy to me. By contrast, the silver light was a circuit breaker. It sucked up the energy I threw at it and spat out death.
Pain tormented every scrap of my nerves. I gave an agonized growl and shaped the added power into a shield. The Ley sight blurred. I could feel the blood dripping from my nose.
In the real world, I heard a feminine gasp. The sound of something cracking filled my ears. I glanced inwards. My throat locked. The midnight-blue aura that had always been mine was broken. Millions of hairline fractures decorated its exterior. Like a smashed glass glued back together. Exertion lashed at me. My cheek planted on the grass. When had I toppled over?
“Blue!” Kai’s voice was beside my ear. Angelfire lit up my insides. It ran along the seams. What he said next was muffled by another voice in my head. Her accent was Caribbean.
Anhiliah, she said. Destroy.
No!
Recrepo, I screamed back. Reflect.
My vision exploded in silver.
Everything around me turned into a spectrum of colour. Instinct kicked in. I yanked at the other auras for more power.
“Astrid!” Professor Mortimer exclaimed. I threw my arms over my head which corresponded to bracing a barrier around the Arcana trees. The thing that was fighting against me gave a bemoaned sigh and receded. Not because it wanted to, but because the bone magic lashed out against it.
The silver connection to the sky evaporated. So did the last of my strength.
35
A groan woke me. When I opened my eyes, Astrid’s wan expression was the first thing I saw before Doctor Thorne’s hulking form came between us.
Confusion made me dim-witted. “Where am I?”
“Where do you think you are?” Doctor Thorne coaxed.
I squinted as I pushed myself up and propped a pillow against my neck. There was a dull ache in the back of my head. “Well, the Spartan decor says the Academy Infirmary but there’s a Nephilim in here.”
Doctor Thorne’s lips parted into a chilling smile. “For a second there, I thought you’d come back half-witted.” He tried to hand me a foul brew. It was the colour of moss and slugs.
“Not on our life!”
A sigh. “It has been specifically made for you.”
“Tell Peter I specifically declined it.”
Not taking no for an answer, he shoved the glass at me and let go, forcing me to grab it before it fell. I held the offending thing out as he fussed over Astrid.
“Really,” she said. “I don’t need ministrations.”
“You collapsed,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but only because Alessia took too much of my power.”
Memory slammed back into place. “Oh shit!”
I tried to jump off the bed, but the sheets were tangled around my legs. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to and...” The rest was kind of hazy. Right now, I wasn’t even sure why I needed the additional power so badly. It was this uncertainty that made me give in and take a gulp of the brew. There were some things you knew you would regret right away.
As the stink of sulphur and the feeling of slime coated my throat, I gagged. Slamming my hand over my mouth was the only way I stopped myself from throwing up.
While Doctor Thorne and I had a standoff over the brew, Astrid managed what I couldn’t and extricated herself from the bed. She took a step before all colour drained from her cheeks. Doctor Thorne caught her before she crashed, easing her back down. Against the stark white of her skin, Astrid’s lips almost seemed...green.
“Neither of you is going anywhere for the next while,” Doctor Thorne announced.
“But I have a guard shift,” Astrid protested. “And I need to help with Emily –”
He held up a foreboding hand.
“Help with Emily why?” I asked. It occurred to me that Astrid had probably been lucid while I’d passed out. Which made her weakened state even more alarming. And then she sneezed, and my radar sent out alarm signals.
“Emily is adamant she wants to leave the Academy,” Doctor Thorne said.
“Wah?”
Astrid nodded. She sat on the side of her bed, her hand braced beside her for balance. “After what happened last night, she refuses to be here. Jacqueline is in a meeting with the elite guard as we speak. Between you and me, they’re not going to have much luck convincing her. She’s just too scared. It’s been weeks and she hasn’t adjusted. When I guard her, I can see her flinching at everything. Our world isn’t the right place for her.”
I leaned back on the pillow, trying to swallow the news. “But if she goes back to the human world, the demons are going to get her for sure.”
“There’s no way the Human League are going to allow us to keep her here against her will.” She shook her head and leaned over with her elbows propped on her knees. “I worry about what conclusions the Council might resort to.”
So did I. But the Council was the least of our worries. If that demon at Terran Hospital was anything to go by, it meant that Emily would be in constant danger. The problem was that she felt that way about the Academy and the supernatural world. The difference was that she also felt trapped here. At least back in the human world, things were familiar and they made sense to her.
Astrid made a faster recovery than I did. She was allowed out before noon. I was forced to stay in the bed until I gulped down every last drop of the disgusting brew. If someone had a gun to my head, I would say that it did make me feel better. After the initial reaction to the scent and taste, the herbs in the brew eased some of the dimensional dissonance that was making my vision blur. It still wasn’t pleasant.
It was almost dark when Doctor Thorne finally discharged me. “Let’s not meet in here for a while,” he said.
“I would bet on it, but I think the odds suck.”
I heard him chuckling as I pushed the infirmary doors open. Before going back to the dorms, I swung by the Grove. My memory of last night was hazy at best. If there was a chance that the thing I had seen in the Ley dimension was still there, I figured I better report it to Jacqueline. But all was quiet in the Grove. Both Arcana seeds had grown into fully fledged trees bearing ripe, golden fruit. Their leaves were a lush darker green tipped with golden green where there were new flushes of growth. As I stood there, my apprehension about last night’s events seeped away until I wasn’t even sure what I had been worried about.
The purple nymph fluttered to my side. She made an agreeable chattering noise and pointed to the trees. I didn’t understand her words, but the gist permeated the language barrier. “Oh really?” I said. “Now all of a sudden I’m forgiven?” We were joined by the pink and yellow nymphs. They hovered in a row of colour in front of me. I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Fool me once,” I told them. The answering shriek almost busted my eardrum. “Just for that, I’m leaving. I may or may not come back. It depends on how nice you are to me.”
An acorn hit me in the back of the head. It was the only one. I counted it as a victory.
Sophie and Diana jumped up from Sophie’s bed when I walked through our bedroom door. “Finally!” Sophie shouted. “I thought he was going to keep you in there forever.” She pointed at a box on my bed. “Did you hear about Emily? She left that for you.”
“And there’s
some big announcement the Council are going to make,” Diana added.
It was too much information in three seconds. Feeling like I was floating, I went to my bed and picked up the note left on the box. I knew the heavenly blade was inside.
A corner of the flap was slightly askew. “Couldn’t wait, huh?”
At least Sophie had the decency to seem abashed. “You were taking forever, and they wouldn’t let us into the infirmary in case you were still stealing powers.”
“Can we please not describe it that way?”
Diana shrugged. “What does the note say?”
I sat down on the bed and opened the envelope. Inside was a note card in thick paper. Emily had beautiful script. It matched everything else about her.
“Dear Alessia,” I read. “I appreciate the sentiment, but this should never have been given to me. I’m not cut out for this dangerous world the way you are. It scares me out of my mind even though everyone tells me my mind is the one thing they can’t manipulate. If I could, I would give up this power in a second. Even though I can see the supernaturals trying to protect us, it is too easy for them to slip. I just want to go home. I know my being here hasn’t been easy for you. I hope everything that I have seen is wrong.”
I turned the card over, but the other side was blank. “She’s gone?”
Sophie nodded. “The Sisterhood have agreed to watch her closely and the elite guard will have a squad always tailing her. She doesn’t know about the last part. Mama says this is the first time ever that a human has been allowed back into their world after learning about supernatural society.”
“So now they’re using Emily as a test case? I don’t like their chances.”
“Neither does Mama. At least the good thing is that she can’t be compelled to give any information and they can’t take it from her mind.”
Diana huffed. “Don’t worry about that. All you have to do is sneeze in her direction and she’d give up everything she’s got. I don’t like it.”
