Because everything the Ring of Greatest Fear showed mehadhappened, and I was the cause.
Dashell’s death. Every Aspirant who disappeared. Dad’s car accident and anxiety disorder. Leland’s life, hanging in the balance with mine. It played on a loop. It played in the background as Helen’s boots clicked in an even rhythm in my direction.
“Everything is your fault, Ember,” she said, the magnification of her voice like fast-spinning blades.
I was too removed from the reality of my surroundings to know what this was. If it was really Helen saying that, or if it was the ring — I didn’t know. All I knew was it felt real.
My head drooped. A new heaviness was injected in the air.
“You,” Helen seethed. “You are the cursed one. Cruelty was necessary to make you understand. In Everden, you will not find happiness. Our world is not meant for second children, and I have beenbending over backwards to stop you from detonating and destroying us.”
My nose bled in a heavy flow. My head was shaken to the point of irrevocable damage. Thoughts I wished to speak died on conception. I tried to lift my arm to swipe the blood but couldn’t; my arm was too heavy. I heard my cuff clang as my wrist struck the ground and prayed Helen didn’t.
“You cause so many problems,” she said factually. “Every time you speak, the world gets worse from it.”
I violently shook and could no longer sit up against the pillar. I fell forward, reaching for the cracks in the cold floor, if only to have something to touch, to feel less alone. Then my grip slipped, my limbs malfunctioning as my lungs choked. The palms of my hands shriveled inward like fallen leaves dying.
Exhausted, I left to the place I went to forget, my internal world. There, my thoughts shifted rapidly. Dad. Skye. Leland. Leland taking my hand. Leland telling me his secrets in his room. Leland depleting himself on my cuffs. Gold cuffs. Iron clang. There’s no one worth burning for. The last thought landed.
There’s no one worth burning for.
No one worth burning for, yet that’s what I was doing. I hadn’tdoneanything — Helen only wanted me to think that, to hate myself so much I no longer cared how I was perceived. But I was a half witch, and I belonged here as much as I belonged in the human realm.
And for as long as Leland lived, for as long as I wanted to be here, I wasn’t leaving.
Somehow, I grasped my wrists through the tremors and shaking. Metal clanged, my cuffs bashing. I tore them off and flung them across the room, the room echoing with a denseclinkas they collided with whatever wall I’d thrown them into.
Free of them, I was free to become ether. I drew on the feelings that made me disappear. I was going to get out. The Echelons were going to know what Helen did.She, not me, was responsible for the disappearances.
I pictured Leland in romantic tangles. Case. Vyra. Brothel after brothel.
But the ring was too strong. Fear sapped me. It was over. It was too hard and painful to think, and whether I was responsible for the Shadowrealm or not no longer mattered, nor did it matter if I was punished for the things I did or for the things I didn’t. I wasalready responsible for too much. The butterflies I’d caused were too terrible.
I’m sorry, Leland, I thought, then stopped convulsing.
My body gave up its fight and disconnected from reality, and the emptiness I sank into was black and cold.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
EMBER
Notably, when a witch is busy fighting battles in her mind, she will be less available to fight in the war waged outside of it.
— Helen Blackburn, Echelon to the
School of Mental Magic
Iwas not alone. I always thought I would be in the end, that the end would be me, eternally sinking backward into an infinite dark-gray abyss, like how it felt to be alone in the vast, blank space before Leland would show up in my Lucid Dreams. But there were hands.
Quick. Large. Warm. Firm but gentle. I smelled pine, distantly. Mostly, I smelled the sea. A little iron. A lot of blood.
I stayed there in the dark, detached from life as the hands slid up from my ankles to my shins. It was the only pleasantness I had in that moment. Hands, little by little, injecting me with their warmth.
I opened my eyes and blinked in the dim, dungeon-like basement of the Allwitch temple. I was on my back, in the same spot where I’d died on the stone floor, but I’d been rolled. The hands moved up to my skinned knees, and Leland faintly smiledat me. The sight of him put an ache in my heart I wasn’t sure would ever heal.
You okay?he said in my head via a Contact spell as he lightly tugged on the zipper of my jacket, waiting for permission to pull it all the way down.Diagnostic showed cuts on your arm and chest, he said.Can I look?
