One after the next, darts flew at him. Ven tossed his head and hissed louder, growing increasingly agitated. The fifth dart in, his amber eyes snapped into something different — a precariousness I knew because I’d felt it. I burned with it. I knew he was reaching the point where his anger wouldn’t be contained. His territorial energy was too unstable, like I was. Ven growled, much too quiet.
“Stop it!” I yelled, and threw the entire bag of baby carrots out of my satchel and into the connecting room, hoping he’d chase it.Shoo, shoo,I waved.
But Ven stayed, growling as he continued taking darts that should have been aimed at me.
“Stop it!” I shouted at Dashell. “Stop it, or he’s going to attack you!”
The last dart struck Ven in the side.
He roared and spun, leaping paws-to-chest into Dashell and forcefully knocking the Echelon down. There was a crisp crackof skull on stone as Dashell’s head smacked the ground. Ven pounced on Dashell’s flattened body and brutally pinned him.
Helen screamed into her hands as blood leaked from Dashell’s head, and Ven, not done yet, took Dashell’s neck in his jaw and fatally ripped into him.
In his last breath of life, Dashell’s fingertips glowed a faint spark of blue, then Dashell and Ven were gone. Teleported, as if Dashell had held on to life just long enough to spare Helen the heartache of witnessing the exact moment it ended.
I was too shocked to move. I’d witnessed the killing of an Echelon. The youngest Echelon in Everden’s history was now dead, I was certain of it. Yet my brain kept replaying the sequence, unable to wrap my head around where and when and how, even though I’d witnessed it.
A prolonged scream of agony ripped out of Helen. The pain of it pierced my soul and caused me to freeze. I stood where I was, waiting for her scream to stop repeating, for her to run out of breath. I waited for anger. I waited to hear every scathing thing she deserved to say to me.
“What have you done?” she cried. “You controlled that beast! You told him to attack!What have you done?” In between furious, asthmatic breaths, she repeated the question. “What have you done? What have you done? What have you done?” Then, after a long inhalation, she said, “You never should have come here.”
I didn’t disagree.
“I didn’t want to,” I said quietly. “I wantedto stay in the human realm. I thought you were going to let me.”
“I tried,” Helen said with bitter regret. “I did everything I could to try. I didn’t want to have you. Jaxan kidnapped your sister and made sure that I did. I didn’t want you interested in Everden, so I told you nothing about it. Then, the night you turned eighteen, I made a Deal with him. I traded Jaxan myvotes on the Council so you could stay home for eight more months. I told the Council you were dangerous. I sickened your father, so you wouldn’t want to leave him. I put nightmares in your dreams and made you weak. I ignored you and cut you off from your sister. I wanted you to have nothing to stay here for. But none of it worked. The only hope I have left is to make them fear you.”
“I can’t leave yet,” I said, shuffling backward into a cold stone pillar for support. “I have to stay for Leland.”
“Leland?” Helen laughed pitifully. “Do you really not see it? TheTruth-Telleris a weapon. Jaxan designed him to destroy you, and if you don’t leave, you’ll destroy Everden for him.”
“No,” I breathed, “I have to stay to save him from being murdered by a Death Bond.”A Death Bond he consented to when he wasfive.“A Death Bond he didn’t want.”
“Youcan’tsave him,” Helen said, shaking her head. “What the Truth-Teller wants most in life is redemption. How do you think he gets it? He wants to be dead. That future is already written.”
Now I was mad, furious. Because Leland was not dying; I would not allow it. Because Helen had always been perfectly clear that I was a humongous problem but never took the time to tell me why. Because she could have apologized. Because she could have told me where the Aspirants were. Because Dashell should be alive. And because they shouldn’t have harmed Leland’s Familiar.
“What are youtalking about?” The nervous convulsions in my stomach forced me to yell. “What exactly do you think I’m going to do here? Who, if not your ownfamily, are you trying to protect?”
“Everyone,” she declared, panting. “Everyone. From a cursed half witch.”
I was so used to her silence, her tight composure, that I barely recognized her as the speaker of the words shuddering out of herthroat.
“It’s been tit for tat with Jaxan for twenty-three years. The Curse upon you is atrocious, Ember, and I will die before I allow you to stay here and destroy us.”
Atrocious, she said.Yet not so atrocious she felt the need to tell me what it was . . . Helen was worried about me being dangerous in the future, yet she was the one actively hurting peoplenow. Me. Everden. Every Aspirant she took into her Shadowrealm.
“Youhurt people!” I yelled, releasing some anger to remind myself I had a right to be mad. “Youmade me sick with your mental magic!Youhurt Dad! You separated Sevens from their Familiars. You have them in captivity. Who knowshowyou’ve been treating them — ”
“And I would do it again,” she said soullessly, once again pulling the long silver chain from her blouse and freeing the ancient necklace with a sapphire ring pendant. Her thumb turned clockwise around the center of it. “I apologize for the pain of what is about to happen, but I need you to understand. You need to leave Everden. You are a danger to everyone. And I need you to confess it.”
I slid to the floor, my back against a pillar. The room spun, fading as the sickest parts of my brain slowly swallowed me, and for as long as Helen continued to turn her finger around the ring, my worst nightmares were real.
I don’t enjoy horror. I turn away from saws and chains and hooks and cleavers. Real or pretend, there is no lens, no framing or poetic imagery I can appreciate when the crux of a story is pain and suffering. A year ago, though, I neglected to mention this, and for an hour and thirty-nine minutes, I’d sat in a dark movie theater, pretending I wasn’t miserable, quietly wishing I’d brought a bigger hoodie to hide in as Gray and I watched “the darkest film of the year.” After collecting myself in the bathroom, I’d left the theater drained and shaking and afraid ofthe floating spots I saw in the mirror.
The terror the Ring of Greatest Fear induced was worse than that.
My eyes had been cinched shut since her ring began its turns, but I could neither stop seeing nor plug my ears. There was no way to avoid watching or listening to it. I couldn’t even talk myself through it. Not even with logic, assurances ofthat could never happen,you would never be involved.
