A young witch once asked how to hide her diary from her mother, and I had to chuckle. You cannot hide from family. Among family, a ward is always welcoming; among family, locks and protection spells do not exist.
— Charley Starvos, Echelon to the
School of Creation Magic
The air was different, lighter here, not so thick with humidity. A churning in my gut told me if I opened my eyes, it would all be real — I didn’t say goodbye to Dad, Ash might be gone forever, and I was stuck in Everden. A light breeze the cool temperature of early spring blew hair into my face, triggering an unpleasant tickle I would’ve given anything to itch, only my arms were dead weights. I figured the sedative Leland had stabbed me with was still in my system.
Potent, but it did nothing for the pain. My arm felt broken, throbbing and sore, the pain radiating from the point of the injection. With aching eyes, I blinked up at a flat, slatted cedar ceiling. No one was with me. I’d been left on my back, on a cushioned bench under who knows whose covered porch, with no idea where I was, let alone what jurisdiction I was in.
I imagined Helen lived in Hartik’s Hollow, the capital where the Echelons’ palace was. This place, quaint and remote as it was, was the furthest thing from where I pictured her living. An Echelon would live in a gated estate, with secondary homes on the property housing their staff. But this was just a small, simple cottage, and the nearest sizable town — judging by the smokestacks rising in the distance — was pastures away.
I could only turn my head a few inches, and even that was difficult. Aside from my head, nothing moved, not even a twitch. I let out a grunt of frustration and turned my head back to the landscape. Maybe I was in somedistantpart of Hartik’s Hollow. The winding stream cascading down the hill certainly fit what I’d seen in brochures as a kid. Peaceful, like a painting of a fairytale or a quiet town in an old part of France.
I’d once found it charming, how witches used candlelight and flame in lieu of electric lighting. I’d wondered what it was like to live in a place without road noise, how much quieter it would be with a public transportation network fueled by quantum magic. No cars, and no modern-day weapons either. Which was, in part, what drove witches to leave the human realm three hundred years ago, forming Everden in a divine event that witches called the Sundering and humans called Halloween. They did have modern-day plumbing; I’d been sure to ask that in my first letter to Ash, after they took her away.
I wanted to believe I was safe outside this fairytale cottage; then I remembered I was alone and paralyzed, my arm aching so badly that, if Iwasn’t, sawing it off would have been under consideration. I fixated on the effort of breathing, letting my eyes close, and at some point, when I no longer felt my arm ringing, I drifted back to sleep.
Consciousness returned slowly, but even heavy-lidded and disoriented, I tracked the shadow of a towering presence moving across the porch. My eyes snapped open for me.
Leland monitored me from his position by the foot of the bench I was lying on. I tried to get up from my reclined position, but the drugs in my system forbid it. I truly hated him.
“How are you feeling?” asked Leland.
“Ash?” My lips cracked painfully as the word stretched from my lips.
“Lee-Land,” said a new voice, an explanatory one that was firm but feminine and coming from behind my head.
I rolled my eyes back for a better picture. She was around our age, her face pretty and full of youth, and her thick, blond hair was twisted up in a loose messy bun. “Or if you prefer,” she said kindly, “try Truth-Teller. Hehatesit.”
“Ash?” Why was no one answering? “Ash?” I tried again.
The witch’s gaze pivoted to Leland. Her shirt was like scrubs, the white cloth decorated with a summery pattern of sunbursts and silver confetti in celebration of the summer solstice season. “Goddess above, Leland. How much sedative did you give her?”
“She knows who I am,” Leland said thickly, holding my gaze as he leaned with his hands spread wide apart on the wooden arm of the bench. “She’s asking about her sister.”
“Right,” said the stranger, adding wistfully. “I forget humans have them.”
She meant siblings, the reason Helen had been dispatched to the human realm twenty-four years ago, to see if it was possible to conceive two children by the same man. Well, here I was. I don’t know why Helen ever agreed to it.
“Sisters,” she mused. “Do you love them as we do Familiars? Or is it more like fathers? Friends?”
“I don’t know.” My voice was raw, and I had to clear my throat to continue speaking. “I’ve never had a Familiar. Maybe like friends. But I don’t know. I didn’t have many.”
Leland’s broad shoulders blocked my view of the countryside on the other side of him. The veins bulging from his forearmsand the eerily familiar rose tattoo spiraling up to his elbow, though — those I saw perfectly.
“Ember, Trist is a Healer. She’s going to check your injuries from the portal and Heal the effects of the sedative. Does anything hurt? Can you move your legs?”
I stretched my neck and attempted to lift my limbs, but the only goodthatdid was deliver a shock of pain down my spine so intense I had to bite down on my lip. After a breath, I said, “I can’t move anything below my neck. And my arm hurts where you stabbed me.” And, because Tristhadn’tstabbed me, it was her I looked up to and asked, “What happened to my sister? Where is she?”
Trist wasn’t looking, too busy glaring at Leland, her body rigid with sudden fury. “Youstabbedher?”
Leland met my eyes steadily and said, “I tried not to.”
I tried to understand the crease between his brows, the way his hazel eyes constantly scanned and assessed me. I suppose hehadoffered me the syringe, asking me twice before he decided he had to do it. But what did he expect? He saw what happened to my dad, why I needed to be in the human realm.
“Ash is fine. Safe. But . . .” Leland blew out a breath. “She had to leave for Alchemia. Did no one tell you she was an Allwitch?”
I turned my head to the side, gazing away from him. “No,” I said softly. “They didn’t.” Alive was good. Safe was good. But Allwitch wasn’t. Alchemia wasn’t.
