Iwillheal him.
With my intention strong and my power unbound, it floods my hands quickly. I stretch one down over his chest, waiting for the vibration of his heartbeat to pulse beneath my trembling hand as my magic begins to fill his body.
“Rhea—” Another’s voice calls my name, the air stirring before a man kneels down next to me. “Fucking gods.” I meet his dark, familiar eyes, and there is something shadowed in them that I don’t like. Something sad and tortured and pitying as they stare at me, as they flick down to Nox and then shut, Xander’s lips forming a frown.
Another tether snaps.
“He’s just knocked out,” I find myself saying. Begging. “My magic will heal him.” The alternative is not allowed. White flaresin my vision, and I think it must be due to my magic, but then Xander’s hand is on my shoulder and he’s telling me to slow my breathing down. To calm down. But Nox—he is still so pale, and his eyes won’t open, and he’s justlayinghere. I can’t tell if his heart is beating because my hand is shaking so much, andwhy can’t I feel his magic?
Another tether snaps, and it takes a rush of air with it as I feel my chest caving in.
“Xander, the king—” Another voice, softer than Xander’s, says.
“I know. Give her another minute.”
Just another minute.As if healing Nox could have a time limit. As if I wouldn’t stay here for one hundred minutes, one thousand, for a lifetime if it meant that he would be okay. Yet it was just earlier that I had thought of time as this arbitrary thing. What was the ticking of another hour when I was still stuck in this place? Now that minute feels like both too much and not enough, and I can’tcalm downas I watch my magic fill him. As it begins to seep past the edges of his skin, forming an outline of white around his body as if to say,all done.
That minute passes, and Nox doesn’t so much as flutter his lashes. An ugly word rattles in my head, one that denotes a finite end, a line drawn in the sand, and Irefuseto let it be true. I move both hands to his face, cradling it as I will him to look at me. To smirk. To run a hand through those errant waves. To undo this horrible thing thatI’vedone. Because there is nomewithouthim. “Nox, please. Please don’t leave me. I can’t—” My voice breaks. Myworlddoes. “I can’t do this without you.” How selfish and stupid I was to think I could live in a world without him. I had intended to run away, to get so lost in the world that I became lost even to myself, yet now all I want is to be here with him at my side because he came.Nox came for me, and I punished him for it.
The final tether snaps, and I feel the moment my heart shatters. Feel the way my blood freezes and that precious time stops. The world around me eddies and sways, distorting into nothing more than the shape of his face and the sound of a dying heart. The taste of salt coats my lips as tears drip down my face and fall onto Nox’s cheek. I let myself slip away because he’s already gone, so what is the point in holding on? His name still echoes in the chasm I sink into, but it’s nothing more than a vow broken. A promise unkept.Nox, stay with me. Nox, I can’t do this without you. Nox, come back,I cry.
But all that answers is a deafening silence.
I had once thought that taking a life felt too easy, especially when it came to the scope of my magic. I’ve always seen the value in life, never once sought out violence for the sake of it. I hated the notion that the magic I carried inside of me was something that, at its core, could be used for destruction. Nox had told me that this Void Magic had been given to me because I was seen asworthy. Because I was chosen to receive it like one might pluck a pretty flower from a garden to be set into a vase. It didn’t make me feel special then, and I didn’t think the choice was right, but I was willing to accept it, to do my best even though I was scared. I was willing to be that pretty flower placed upon a pedestal because who was I to disagree with the powers that be?
Except I had forgotten that the moment a flower is cut, it begins to die.
Receiving this magic has been nothing but a slow withering of everything that I am. I only wish I realized it sooner. Maybe I could have savedhimin the process.
My awakening back into this world is a twisting blend of the shouts of the men and women somewhere outside of the roomI’m in and curling in on myself in a pit of jagged darkness, barbed reminders of what I’ve done surrounding me so I can’t move without feeling their sting.
And I deserve to feel every ounce of pain that scores my flesh and writhes in my marrow. But before I can succumb to it fully, there is something I have to do.
Shadows cloak me as I pad quietly out of the room, my magic curling up from that well within me—both warm and cold. The feel of it nearly makes me stumble, my hand reaching out to press against a gray stone wall. Stone like the tower. Stone like the palace. Impenetrable and suffocating. At the contact, a sharp prickling draws my gaze down. Right to my palm, one now bare of the crescent scar.
“She needs to know—”
“—needs to rest, andthenwe’ll tell her. There’s no point—”
I push away from the voices and my thoughts, past a room where people are gathered, my fingers sliding along the wall as I search for a way out. I know I am with Xander’s resistance, here in a space hidden from the king. I know that they have sacrificedeverythingto help me escape, yet all it resulted in is King Dolian now knowing that there are guards working against him. Everything Xander has worked for, everything these men and women have endured and fought for, is gone.
“—sirens have infiltrated—”
I finally catch a break in the stone, tracing the perfect line as it travels up and to the right. The outline of a door.
“—know we can trust you?Youwere knocked—”
I push at the corner, and the door gives, my steps quick as I enter the hidden tunnel and shut it behind me. I call just enough magic up to light my way, forgoing the discarded torch on the ground. In the quiet of the tunnel, there is only the sound of my shuffling steps and the swish of my dress against the ground. The sluggish beating of my heart in my chest. But those thingsdon’t hold back the thoughts that crowd my mind as effectively as the voices of the resistance did, and the farther into the tunnel that I travel, the more insistent each memory becomes.
Him and me in his bedroom in the Mage Kingdom, his body beneath mine as I straddled his hips, knees digging into the bed. “You are my universe. You are my infinite sun and my endless sea.”
My jaw clenches, the hand not flaring with magic twitching along the wall next to me. I push back at the memory, as if I can shove it off a cliff never to be seen again. But I suppose that is both the blessing and the curse with recollections—they are meant to serve as reminders and are not so easily ignored.
I round the corner and follow the blue markings on the wall, and yet, despite how I try to focus on what must be done, my mind drags me back to what was.Sunlight gilds his onyx hair and plays off the silver in his eyes, his smile brimming with victory despite how it was supposed to be worn byme. “Why did you stop, Rhea? It was just starting to get interesting.” My eyes narrow, and his smile grows as a blush creeps up my neck to my cheeks—
“Stop it!” I shout, as if there is someone else in control. But there isn’t, the curator of my torment is me and me alone. Pausing my steps, I close my eyes andshoveat the thoughts that haunt me. I stuff them back, back, back into the darkest corners of my mind. Into the pit of that grief and despair while I call my magic up, the cold and ancient half, and command it to smother them. To decay the memories until there is nothing remaining but black ash.
For a moment, I think it works. My magic rises, bitter and insistent, and it spreads over my body and coats me in an icy numbness. Not to cleanse me of the pain that rises but to keep me frozen within it. But that is the other thing about memories—they endure. Especially the good ones. They rise past themagic and right back to the center of my mind. Like flipping the pages of a picture book, I’m trapped as an unwilling participant, reliving every tender moment with Nox.
