It was too much weird and scary, way too fast. I felt a little dizzy, like the knowledge had been a bat slamming into the side of my head.
I dropped my elbows to the counter and leaned into them. I’d upset my cup a little, and my arm had landed in rapidly-cooling drips of tea.
“How bad is that?”
Deepti leaned back on her stool. As a doctor, she was accustomed to delivering bad news. She glanced down at her hands, which were very clean. I was surprised to note she wore no nail polish—she seemed the type. Though I guess you can’t have that if you make your living in a sterile environment.
“If she’s convicted, it could be very bad,” Deepti said. “It could go to the tribunes in Istanbul.”
“Istanbul?” I said. “You mean where you guys sent Gwydian?”
“Yes.”
A spike of legitimate panic lanced up my spine. “But he’s-”
“A sanguimancer.”
I pushed off my elbows, shaking my head as I gripped the countertop and tried to scrape the offensive thoughts into a coherent sentence. “He’s a gang lord, a human trafficker, and a murderer! Hel isn’t any of those things. She’s a good person.”
“I know she is!” Deepti snapped. “I have done everything in my power to keep her from being forced to pay for Gwydian’s sins. But I’m afraid if it goes to Tribunal, her temperament may not make a difference.”
“You said they’d probably execute Gwydian.” I heard myself say it, but I didn’t know how I got the breath. My lungs didn’t seem to want to expand.
Helena, executed. The threads of my life were unraveling. My mind spun out in a hundred directions, seeking a thought trajectory, but gaining no traction. The kitchen shrank around me, pressing in so there was only blackness.
If Sorcerers came for Helena, there was literally nothing I could do to stop them. Helena, who looked like the human incarnation of summer and could kick my ass in less time than it took me to tie my shoes.
I’d given up my future for her. If they took her away from me…
Gone. No tethers. No world.
I wasn’t sure when I’d sat down, but I was leaning into the counter when I realized Deepti was crouching beside me. I was panicking. Great. I’d gotten medicine for this kind of thing, once all the shit started hitting me, but they didn't prevent the panics, just stopped them once they started.
The Sorceress had her hand on my shoulder, rubbing it. She was telling me to breathe, and I did. It was a thing that needed to happen, breathing.
She handed me my cup, and I took it, and drank. The heat of the tea settled me a little, but I was still shaking, still reeling a little from the sudden wide, open blackness.
“It isn’t easy,” Deepti said. “Most Sorcerers know what they are from youth. It’s so rare that someone learns about us at your age, there aren’t good systems in place to…help you acclimate. To help you accept it all.”
I put the heels of my palms against my eyebrows and pressed, trying to make the bright pops across my vision disappear.
“I’m fine,” I said. My voice sounded like someone had raked gravel across it.
Deepti’s hand stayed on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mr. Park,” she said. “I’m so sorry. But the truth is, if something happens to Helena, we must make certain the wider Guild does not learn what you are.”
I stared at my shoes, stretched out in front of me, slightly furry from shaving the dogs. I put my hand over the tattoo on my chest. “You mean that I can…”
“Yes. Of those Guild Sorcerers who were there the night we defeated Gwydian, only about five of them even knew what was done to you,” she said. “Those who do will remain silent. If it becomes known, I fear that—in combination with your association with Helena—you could become a target.”
I didn't really have the capacity to feel worse, so the information dropped into me without a big splash.
“How do we make certain they don’t find out?” I asked.
Deepti glanced at the stairs, as if looking through them, down into the dog rescue where Krista was probably still working on shaving Sully.
“You run,” she said. “Both of you. Together, or not.”
Chapter 9
helena
Eric was alarmed. He didn’t want me to see it, but it was there in the way he walked with his fists clenched, eyes slightly wider than his usual pale blue squint. We’d been working through a couple of satisfyingly explosive spell-bullets when Deepti texted him, and thirty minutes later, we’d come to a skidding halt in front of Ruff Patch.
He didn’t wait for me to duck inside first, just slammed through the door and made a stomping path toward the stairs. I heard Krista’s squeak of alarm and sent her a frantically apologetic wave.
“Hel?” Her voice had that warble of uncertainty to it.
“It’s okay," I said, but that was a lie. It wasn’t okay. And I don’t think she believed me.
There was no time to explain, and though I hated leaving her down there, all tattoos and anxiety, I didn’t really have another choice.
Eric shoved open the door, again without bothering to let me go first. He walked right through a mandala gleaming in midair, in Deepti’s signature golden magic. I had enough time to recognize it as a self-feeding circuit spell that had something to do with sound before I passed through.
The sounds of excited dogs downstairs muffled, and I closed the door behind me.
Deepti sat in the chair beside the staircase, but my eyes went straight to Jaesung, slumped in the corner of the couch we’d occupied that very morning. Poo-stank’s pointed ears poked up over the back of the couch beside him.
Eric circumvented the couch and tossed himself into the chair next to Deepti’s, then gave her something of a salute. I followed his path around the couch.
Jaesung’s expression did nothing to ease my anxiety. He was dull-eyed and far too still—an echo of his depression from last night, only this time, it had a different flavor to it. There was a sort of…lost look to the gaze that slid to my face.
Deepti must have told him what had happened. My heart twitched. It should have been me that told him. He still probably wouldn’t have taken it well, but it might have been better than this.
I wasn’t sure what his reaction would be once I got close. Almost timidly, I closed the distance between us. He watched me approach, watched me slide onto the arm of the couch beside him.
Then he leaned into me. It was all the encouragement I needed to slide my arm around his tense shoulders. His head was heavy against my side, and the uncertainty radiating off him was almost worse than anger might have been. Jaesung was usually calm in a crisis.
I listened numbly as Deepti laid out the situation. A trial, then most likely a tribunal. My chances of winning were not great for either.
“Our best hope is that the Tribunal elects to punish you by sealing your magic,” Deepti said. “You would be monitored the rest of your life, subject to random checks by your local Guild to ensure your seal remains intact and functional.”
I was staring down at Jaesung’s hand, which was resting slack and warm on my leg.
What a mess. To think, I’d been so content on the drive to Duluth. Had it really been only twenty-four hours ago that Eric had teased me about loving my job? Twenty-four hours ago that we still had hope that Jaesung’s leg would be fine and nothing would have to change.
“How likely do you think it is the tribunal will vote for a seal?” Eric asked. I was glad he did. I couldn’t even speak.
Deepti shook her head, and my heart sank further. If Deepti didn’t even know…
“There are seven Justicars who vote in the tribunal. One each from North America, South America, Asia, Africa, and Australasia. Two from Europe.”
Eric scratched his beard. “How many of those can we convince to be lenient, given that Helena helped us bag Gwydian?”
“Three I can be mostly sure of,” Deepti said. “The Asian Justicar is Bikram Acharya. He and I have met
several times, and I believe he can be counted on for tolerance. Gloria Vasquez and Aronui Rapana are also likely to vote tolerance. The rest…I would imagine span between unlikely and definitely not. One of the European Justicars is Nikoline De Vries.”
I was starting to fucking hate that name.
“Or course it is,” Eric muttered. “What is she, Enforcer De Vries’s granny?”
“A Great Aunt, I think. I’m not overly familiar with the family’s genealogy, but I did some research when he elected to stay on in the area, and a little more this morning when I got a copy of his report.”
Jaesung’s eyebrows had pinched. He didn’t understand the references to De Vries, but if he wasn’t going to ask for details, I wasn’t going to give any.
“So what are my options?” I asked. “Do I have any?”
Deepti regarded me, a crease in her smooth brow.
“If we take the chance,” she said, “there is also a possibility they will vote for your execution, and I do not like those odds.”
Jaesung’s hand clenched convulsively on my leg. Weirdly, I didn’t feel as scared as I probably should have. The reality of everything just wasn’t hitting me.
“What’s the alternative?” I asked.
Eric’s expression was all gravity. “Get out of Dodge,” he said.
I almost rolled my eyes, until Deepti nodded. I looked between them, trying and failing to wrap my mind around what they were telling me to do. My arm tightened around Jaesung’s shoulders.
I had just found him. I had just started to let myself really, unequivocally love him.
He spoke at last, and his voice was weirdly raspy, like he had a cold.
“They mean me too,” he said. “You go down, I’m the next domino in line.”
I heard De Vries’s low voice in my head. They won’t spare anyone who gets in their way.
“This can’t be right,” Eric snapped, appealing to Deepti, as if she’d been keeping the truth from us. “Hel has support in the Guild. People know she helped take down Gwydian. They know she’s the last D’Argent. That counts to a lot of us.”
Deepti actually lowered her head into one hand, her bangles sliding in a soft tinkle down her arm. “Yes. She has support. But her case is exposing major philosophical differences between members of the Guild, both locally and internationally.”
There were people on the other side of the world who knew about me? People arguing about whether I deserved to live for my contributions or die for what I was? That was…insane.
“The sooner her case is over,” Deepti continued, “the sooner these divisions can be mended.”
“What happens if I disappear?” I asked. “Does the Guild stay fractured, or will that just convince everyone I’m the monster De Vries thinks I am?”
“Hopefully, neither,” Deepti said. She folded her hands in her lap, lacing her fingers together. I spotted the henna on the back of her left hand, a mandala that matched the faded one on mine. “But it’s most likely to be the latter. Which means you will need to be very well hidden indeed.”
I bit my lip. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been called a monster a thousand times, but it had been nice to think for a while that there were people who knew what I was and didn’t think I was some sort of twisted hellhound.
Eric peered at me thoughtfully. “Do you know where your cousin went? He’s dodged the hell out of the Guild.”
I bristled. My cousin Morgan had run off the night we defeated Gwydian. He’d wanted me to come with him, but I’d already made my promises to the Guild—something he hadn’t understood. He’d left without me, and hadn’t contacted me since. I really didn’t know where he was, or if he was okay.
Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell anyone in the Guild. Some habits die hard.
“No,” I snapped, a little too harshly. “I wasn’t lying about that.”
Jaesung’s head moved against my rib cage. Dully, he said “We can go to Korea.”
The rest of us were quiet a moment, waiting for him to qualify that.
His throat flexed as he swallowed. “My dad. He’s been telling me for years that he’ll buy me a ticket any time I want to come home, even just to visit.”
My heart gave a little jolt in my chest. “Your dad?”
The man had been abusive. An ex-boxer and an alcoholic who started hitting Jaesung’s mom when his gym faltered. I’d assumed their ties ended there. I had no idea they were still in contact.
“Yeah,” he said, sounding like every word weighed a hundred pounds. “I’ve never gone back, for obvious reasons, but…I don’t know. If I was going to hide, I’d go to a small town in Korea.”
Eric was nodding. “That would work for you, sure. Hel would stick out like…”
Deepti sat back, glancing up at the ceiling. “A white girl in a homogeneously non-white culture. She’d be too obvious, unless you were somewhere there were lots of foreigners.”
Jaesung closed his eyes and heaved a sigh. “Yeah. Maybe not.”
“Vancouver?” Eric suggested. “I’m trying to think of places the two of them could disappear. You ought to move a week or so after the initial spot, so Deepti and I don’t know where you are either.”
You’ll be a danger to everyone around you. More than you already are.
I thought of Isaac. I thought of my mom.
“Maybe we shouldn’t run together,” I said. “Jae would probably be safer without me.”
His head moved, and I knew he was looking up at me, but I couldn't make myself look at his face.
“What?”
I swallowed. “I paint a giant target on anyone I’m with. Like you said, I’m the first domino in the line. They won’t be after you unless you’re with me. You won’t be a priority.”
He sat up, and cool air rushed into the place on my side he’d vacated.
“What the fuck are you talking about,” he said. At last, there was animation in his voice. Unfortunately, it was the wrong kind. The angry kind. “I’m not—Helena, how is it still not clear to you that I don’t give a shit if being with you puts me in danger?”
His shoulder had slipped free from my grip, so I sank my fingers into the back of the couch.
“I give a shit!” I snapped. “You think I want to be the cause of you getting killed? You could have died last year! You can’t dance anymore because-”
“For fuck’s sake,” he growled. “Do you actually think I would trade back your life for my damned knee?”
I closed my eyes, emotion rushing into my chest. It had been exactly what I wanted to hear that morning. Exactly what I’d been needing him to say for so long. Exactly what I knew I would still doubt, whether he said it or not.
“I don’t know!” I said, and jammed my hand over my eyes, trying to block the feeling of everyone staring at me. “I came into your life and just—wrecked the hell out of it. I broke everything! You got held hostage, turned into a shapeshifter. It fucked up your career and made you have to lie to everyone! How am I supposed to know if you regret any of it?”
The silence was so deep that, a second later, I wasn’t sure if I’d actually said any of it. I lowered my hand, and lifted my eyes.
Jaesung was staring at me. He looked dumbstruck. He looked hurt. He looked pissed off.
It took several beats of dead silence for him to form words. “How can you not know?”
“Because I’m not…”
“Worth it?” he snapped, and the bitterness in his voice was a spike. I clenched my legs around the arm of the couch, wishing I could just disappear. Wishing Eric and Deepti weren’t sitting there, witnessing all of this.
“Hel, you vanish and everything that happened, everything I lost, means nothing. All that bullshit is only worth it because you are.”
My words were weak now. I couldn’t think of how to express what I felt, how much I wanted not to screw up his life any more than I already had. Even if that meant leaving him.
“You can’t give up your whole life.”
; “My whole life is different now.”
I know, I wanted to say. That’s my fault.
“Your family,” I managed.
That’s when Deepti spoke. “We can make sure Mr. Park’s family understands that he had to leave for his own safety.”
I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to imagine his mother, sitting in that home where Isaac had died, cradling the picture of a son whose life had fallen apart, and who she might never see again.
I knew the pain of losing family, and I didn’t want to inflict it on either of them.
But Jaesung, Deepti, probably even Eric, were going to argue until I agreed. I was going to exhaust myself slamming against their stubbornness.
“Fine,” I said. But inside, all I could feel was my heart, beating a frantic warning against my sternum.
I had found a home in Ruff Patch, with Sanadzi and Krista and Jaesung. That era was ending before its time, and because of me, the person I loved most in the world would be as rootless and lost as I had been before meeting them.
And Krista would never understand.
I couldn’t help but feel like a giant rock dropped into the middle of a pristine pond, shuddering through its ecosystem, shattering any semblance of peace it had ever known.
Chapter 10
Jaesung
Mom had called me four times, but I couldn’t make myself answer. I wasn’t sure if I just couldn’t force myself to endure what was probably going to be a tirade about school and ballet, or if I was putting off the inevitable struggle of having to pretend like it wouldn’t be one of our last conversations for a Very Long Time.
I didn’t want her to be angry with me. I didn’t want that to be either of our experiences. I just hadn’t figured out how to avoid it.
So when my phone rang again with the +82 international code, it was almost a relief. I stopped staring at the empty duffel bag on my bed and picked up my cell. Talking to my dad didn’t have nearly the same emotional stake. And anyway, I needed him for the next step.
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