by Meg Bonney
I let out a sharp scream.
CHAPTER 23
It felt like someone was piercing my temples with thousands of hot, tiny sewing needles. I could smell burning hair and what had to be my own burning flesh.
I fell to my knees and screamed in pain, but I could not hear my own cries. I felt the pokes and pains in my temple intensify. I could see nothing but a jarring white light now, and I was weightless, like I was floating.
And then I hit the ground with a thud, the pain in my temple gone. I blinked rapidly and put my hand to my injured eye. It was there. The shell was gone. I laughed a bit, relieved.
Looking up, I stood, taking in a quick breath. I was not in the cave. Jason and the sisters were gone.
I was in a large empty room. The ceiling was higher than a two-story house, and the walls were a peach stone with markings and images carved into them. There were four large white columns toward the center of the room, and in the very center was a black circle on the silvery marble floor. The room was covered in a sort of haze, like I was looking through fogged-up glasses.
“Hello?” I called out. My voice sounded far away, even though it was my own and had come from me.
I heard a laugh. Sinder.
I reached for my sword on my back. Nothing. I looked down at my clothes. I was wearing a dark robe.
“Sinder!” I yelled. “What is this?”
She laughed again but was nowhere to be seen. It was like her laughing was inside my head.
“What is this? Where am I?” I demanded.
“You wanted sight. Here it is. This is what will become of you if you trust the Porter, continue on this path, and go with him to the temple.” Her voice echoed in my thoughts.
Fading in like a memory, four chairs appeared next to the pillars. In each chair was the slumped body of a person. Blood from each of them dripped to the floor. I stepped toward them. The floor was slanted to the center of the room so that the blood pooled in the black circle.
And then it was clear I was no longer in control of my limbs but more like a passenger in my own body. My movements were not my doing.
Who are these people?
“Who do you think?” Sinder spoke in my thoughts.
I moved toward the first one. She was dressed all in white, her head resting on the back of the chair. Her throat had been slit.
“One,” Sinder whispered.
I walked to the next chair. The occupant’s body was covered in chain mail, a shiny glove on one hand and forearm.
“Two.”
My heart beat more rapidly.
The next was a young man all in white, like the one at Ara’s tent today.
“Three.”
No, what is this? Stop this.
Sinder made no response.
The body I was trapped inside pivoted toward the last chair. It was a woman. Her hair was cut in patches, some so short that I could see her scalp. Her shoulders and head were completely slumped forward. A dark red splotch soaked the front of her cream shirt. I walked to her, dread building in me.
“And four,” Sinder said ominously.
It was Lacy. My sweet cousin Lacy.
My dream body was just as crushed by this as I was. We fell to the ground, crying. We sobbed, lying on the marble floor.
“Shh,” Sinder said. “Watch.”
Stop this! Stop it!
The hard marble floor trembled. I did not move. I saw feet walking toward me. Dark shoes. I blinked and more tears fell from my eyes.
“No, no, none of this. No crying. Crying is for the weak. Say it. Say it,” the man’s voice called down to me.
My body rose and straightened out the robe. The man’s hand lifted my chin, but my eyes stayed downcast.
“Say it,” he said. I could hear voices, murmurs in a room off in the distance.
“Crying is for the weak,” I said monotonously.
“That is right. Fix your hair,” the man said disapprovingly. “Does it always look like that?” He reached up and moved my hair around. I did not look up to see his face. He smelled like stale tobacco. He was breathing loudly. My eyes stayed focused on the ground.
“We are tough. We must never show emotion, or they will think us weak, and we cannot have that, now, can we? It is important that our power is fixed in the minds of the lesser folk of Everly. Now fix your robe. They will be here any minute. Go, take your place,” he told me, and I watched his feet move to the side. “Go on. Do not make us wait for you.”
I walked over and stood at the center of the black circle. Blood from the four victims was now a few inches deep. It covered my bare toes. I shifted my weight on my feet.
I knew this wasn’t really happening. But feeling like a visitor in my own body in some sort of dream created by Sinder did not change the realness of it all. I felt another tear roll down my cheek as the doors behind the man swung open.
“Stop crying now!” the man growled at me again. “Everything you do now reflects on me, and if you make me look bad or embarrass me in any way, you know the cost. I will burn them all.”
What is he talking about?
Sinder did not answer.
I wiped the tear from my face and did not look at the four dead people around me.
“Stand up straight,” he ordered. My head turned away from him.
My dream body obediently pulled up and rolled back her shoulders. I felt our fear. I felt the anguish that churned inside. I also felt the determination to keep control. The tears stopped.
“Don’t ruin this, or I will kill the rest. Understand?” he said. Then, “Welcome, welcome!” he bellowed, not waiting for my response.
I looked up enough to see a group of about fifteen people in their forties or fifties. They were all wearing gray, similar to the clothes worn by people we had encountered since our crossing into Everly. But this group was older; their robes were pressed and clean with long, billowing sleeves. Their eyes were emotionless, but their faces held big, beaming smiles as they approached us.
They formed a circle and joined hands just outside the four pillars, with me and the victims at the center.
A short-haired woman to my left met my stare as she bowed. She smiled at me, but this time her eyes echoed her smile. It was genuine, which made me shudder. How could anyone smile in a room that held four dead people? I felt sick. The smell of the room made me feel even sicker.
So much death.
I shifted my feet in the pool of blood as two young men about my age walked over, one on each side of me.
One of them untied the robe, but I did not stop him. The other boy pulled the robe from my body and draped it over his arm.
What is this?
No answer.
I looked down to see that I was completely naked. One of the boys cradled my robe as if he were carrying a person. The circle parted for him to cross through it. Tiny drops of blood dripped from the bottom of the robe and left a trail as he walked away from us. The circle closed again.
My eyes stayed fixed on the ground, but I could see both feet of the man from before as he entered my dream body’s sight line. He bent down and dipped a thumb into the pooling blood at my feet. He stood slowly and smeared the blood on my forehead. My gaze stayed fixed on the blood. I did not move. I did not speak.
The blood ran in a slow drip down the bridge of my nose and fell from the tip into the pool below. I wanted to wipe it away. I wanted to run out of there, but I had no control. I was just watching. A stranger in my own body.
The circle parted again, and I watched the man’s feet as he walked out. The people of the circle began to hum one long note in unison. I sunk to my knees in the blood of the four people. I extended my arms out to my sides.
The young man who remained in the circle knelt in front of me. His hair was short and dark, and he had a certain softness to his face that the others in the room did not. I met his eyes for a moment and could see the sadness in them. He wasn’t li
ke the others with their strange looks. He dipped his hands in the blood and ran them down one of my arms, then the other, covering my skin in red. He put his blood-soaked hands on my neck, smearing it down over my breasts and then my stomach.
The circle’s humming grew louder.
My eyes closed as I began to shake. This can’t be real. This can’t be real.
The humming stopped.
I opened my eyes and was back in the cave. Jason was holding my head to his chest, rocking me back and forth. The fabric of his shirt covered my face, and I breathed in and out deeply as I wove my fingers onto the back of his shirt, holding so tight that I felt the fabric begin to tear a bit.
I was back with my Jason. I was okay, or as okay as I could be after what I had just seen. And then the shock faded as a nervous fury gripped my body and the familiar heat coursed through me.
“It’s okay, Maddy. It wasn’t real. Whatever she did, it wasn’t real,” Jason assured me as I sat up, every muscle tensing as I tried to calm down, but it was no use.
I frantically wiped my face with the gloves. My breath was shaky and unsteady. I looked at my hands, turning them from the front to the back.
“She is fine. Now she knows,” Sinder said.
Sinder’s voice. But this time, she was right in front of me. Kaya and Sinder were arguing. It was as if they were swaying back and forth, but I couldn’t tell if they really were or if my eye was jumping around.
My body felt like it was on fire, and I could not stop shaking.
“Maddy, it’s okay,” Jason soothed me, holding my hand in his hands.
I pulled my hand away quickly. Somehow, his touch made me uneasy now.
“There! She is just fine. I just felt that she should know the truth about what her future could hold,” Sinder said to Kaya. “And now you can heal her. She will be fine.”
“That is not a certain future, Sinder. You meant to hurt the girl. You toy too much with the hearts of others,” Kaya said. Then she turned to me. “Are you all right, dear?”
But I didn’t answer. I was trembling uncontrollably. The images of the dead. The blood, and the young man covering me with it. His touch. The man’s stare. And the humming. All my muscles tensed, making it difficult to walk, but I forced my steps.
“Maddy?” Jason sounded apprehensive as I approached my aunts.
I reached behind me and flicked back the holder that kept my sword in its scabbard. With one fluid motion, I pulled the blade from my back and swung it with a grunt, hitting the back of Sinder’s neck and slicing through to her throat. Blood sprayed my face, Kaya’s, and the cave walls as Sinder’s head fell at my feet.
Kaya screamed as she fell to ground, staring at her sister’s decapitated body. She turned up her pale face to look at me. The kindness that she had once worn on her peculiar face vanished. She looked shocked, bewildered at my actions. I didn’t need to look at Jason to know that he would have the same look.
I pointed the tip of my sword at her.
“If that is what magic is about, I want nothing to do with it or you. Never, ever come for me again, or I will do the same to you,” I said as blood dripped from my chin.
Kaya shook her head slightly. “You were meant to be different,” she whispered sadly.
“Madison?” Jason muttered.
I reluctantly turned to look back at him and adjusted my eye patch. Jason’s mouth was open in shock, his eyes wide with terror and fear as he stared back at me. He started to say something, but I didn’t want to know what it was. I walked past him, back toward the Jade Village.
“It was nice to meet you, Aunt Kaya. Tell my mother I said hello.”
CHAPTER 24
The sun was brighter than I remembered it ever being when we reached the Jade Village. Jason and I walked in silence. We weren’t strangers to silence. We were pretty comfortable sitting in silence most days, but this particular silence was somehow louder than any conversation we had ever had.
I had nothing to say. I felt nothing. I could only think about the image of Lacy and the people in the chairs and my blood-soaked feet. It replayed in my thoughts like a movie that I didn’t want to watch.
At last, we reached Ara’s sand-colored tent. I pulled back the cloth opening of the tent to walk in. It was empty. No Ren. No Ara.
I walked to the cot I had slept on and sat down. Taking a deep breath, I cradled my head in hands.
“Mads?” Jason sat next to me.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I replied, not lifting my head. I still could not look at him. I still felt hot and my heart was racing faster.
“It’s okay, Mads.” He put his hand on my back.
I stood and backed away. “I don’t deserve comfort, okay? I just need to find Ren. We need to get to the temple. Time is running out.”
Jason stood slowly. His eyes brimmed with tears, and he was wringing his hands, something he only did when he was truly worried.
I did this. I made him feel like this.
Even though I felt bad that Jason was upset, I didn’t feel guilt for what I did to Sinder. Not at all.
“Oh, hello,” Ara said as she entered the tent. “I thought you had left for home.”
“Where is Ren?” I asked.
“Madison, your face. Are you all right?” Ara asked, concerned, looking at me and then at Jason. Jason didn’t respond. He just stared down at the sandy floor of the tent.
“The blood isn’t mine. I’m fine.”
Ara was silent for a moment, but I saw sorrow in her eyes as she looked at me. Not disappointment, but not something I wanted to dwell on.
“Oh. I see,” she replied softly. “Come here, Madison.” She held out her hand, but I didn’t take it.
Jason moved next to the doorway of the tent and crossed his arms.
“Where is Ren?” I repeated, walking toward Ara.
“He went to ask others if the Magics have been freed,” she replied.
“They weren’t,” Jason said.
I sighed. “It was all a lie. My aunt is still there, and I need to get there, like, now.”
Ara grabbed a basin of water and sat it on the table next to me. “I see,” she replied. I could tell she was putting the story together on her own, or at least parts of it. The sun beamed through the tent flap and it was as if the skin on her high cheekbones sparkled purple for a moment.
“Jason, what happened to her?” Ara asked as she grabbed a cloth, dipped it in the water, and started wiping my face with it. I pulled away when she put her hand on my chin.
“It’s okay,” Ara said softly. She wiped my face but didn’t hold my chin this time. She wrung it out, and the basin of water turned pink.
“We ran into some Witches, but Maddy took care of it,” Jason answered softly.
“I see. You are the messiest girl I have encountered in all my years, Madison. Just look at you,” Ara said, shaking her head and examining my fingers. “I have another shirt that might fit you.”
I nodded.
Ara looked from my good eye to the eye patch. “What have we done to you, Madison? Your heart is so heavy with dread.”
I swallowed hard and looked away from her studying eyes.
Ara thankfully didn’t press the matter. I didn’t want to talk about it. Cutting Sinder’s head off was rash, but really, it was her own fault. Or maybe it was the hot flash. Either way, I couldn’t feel guilty about it.
“Let’s get moving. We need to get to the temple,” I stated. “Where can we find Ren?”
Before anyone could answer, I heard a voice outside the tent. “Madison!”
I jumped and so did Jason, startled by the sudden shout. Ren. I stood and walked out of the tent into the immense sunlight, following his voice. A blinding gleam shone from the water. I glanced back at the tent, but Jason wasn’t following.
And then I saw him a few yards away. I didn’t yell back as I watched him. Ren was breathing heavily, scanning the are
a for me. He held both daggers in his hands. Even at this distance, I could see his panic. He yelled my name again. But why did he look so worried?
Was Sinder right about him and his intentions? I needed to know.
“Ren,” I called out without moving.
Ren spun quickly, and I could see the relief hit him when he saw me.
“Madison!” His heart was racing so loud I could hear it as he came close.
“I saw the blood in the cavern,” Ren said breathlessly. “I thought something happened to you.”
“No, it’s okay now. I’m okay.” I looked down at my feet.
Ren bent to meet my stare. My gaze followed him back up as he stood tall again. “You do not even believe that. What happened to you? There is blood all over you.”
“It wasn’t Lacy,” I said, feeling a sudden seething anger toward him. “It was Sinder, and she told me what you did.” I pushed my hands into his stomach and knocked him to the ground.
“Madison, what are you doing?” Ren stumbled backward in the sand.
“I told you I wanted the truth. You said you told me everything, but you didn’t. Now, I need the truth. I want all of the truth.”
Ren’s confused expression turned serious. “Okay,” he replied. “What do you want to know?”
“Did you use Witches to find me?”
Ren nodded. “Yes.”
“You were going to kill me,” I stated, seriously and even-toned.
“Yes.” He ran his hand over his chin and rubbed the back of his neck. “But that was before all of this. I swear. After I found the ritual, I came to find you. I did not enter Greenrock with ill intentions.”
I studied his face for a few moments.
Then I swallowed and looked away. “That is what they said, too.”
“Whose blood is on your face?” Ren asked, wiping my eyebrow.
“The last person who lied to me.”
“Madison, we are in this together now. You must understand that,” Ren said, and set his hand on my face. I stared back into his eyes for a moment before turning my head sharply.
