I didn’t respond. My eyes roamed listlessly around, catching a flurry of motion, blurry forms rising up from the well in the distance. The only thing clear was Leland.
Ember, he said,you can talk to me in here.
I wasn’t sure why it mattered.
Aren’t we dead?I asked.
Leland abandoned my zipper and moved back down to my legs.Not dead, he said, hinging my leg at the knee to check how it was Healing. Satisfied with the movement it made, he rolled my leggings back down to cover my shins.You found the Aspirants.Did you know? You found the portal where Dashell and Helen were hiding them.They’re pulling everyone out of the well now.He returned to my side and waited for permission to inspect the cuts on my chest again.
Okay, I said.
I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to remove my clothing so gently. Still, every centimeter the zipper rolled down felt like driving over train tracks. Leland carefully slid the jacket from my shoulders, leaving me in my white tank, or whatever color white was after running through a waterfall and seven levels of dense mist. See-through, probably. Though he didn’t pause to notice.
His throat bobbed at the sight of the deep carvings Rye had etched into my skin, and the adhesive tape around my arm, soggy and loosening. I lightly tapped my fingertips to the cold floor as he worked on it.
There was a gravity to the room. Those who moved in the background were quiet and methodical, like first responders atthe scene of a vehicle rollover. My eyes passed disinterestedly over a dark figure wearing a thick cloak and mask. And Nova.
There was more commotion. I recognized Trist reaching to pull someone from the well. Droplets of blood stained the floor around her — and everywhere around the area of the waterfall. A few feet closer to me was the seeping, red puddle, and I winced at the memory of Dashell’s head wound, Ven slamming into him.
Leland alternately worked on my cuts and watched me, a hand’s length away but a divide as vast as the Creatus desert stretched between us. It felt as dark now as it did when I was sinking.
I turned my head from him, not wanting to tell him about his Familiar — what I’d brought out in Ven, what had happened.
Here, said Leland. His large hands took mine, gently pulling me to his lap, not content until my legs were wrapped securely around his hips. I’m not sure what he was softly smiling at, because there was nothing in me except dark clouds raining from the inside out.
He used a Drying spell on my wet clothes, then wrapped a crinkling silver blanket around my shoulders. Pure weakness caused me to collapse into him. I melted into his smell, his warmth, some of it creeping into my skin. I should have been aching to touch him, but . . . I didn’t care. We stayed on the floor while he finished Drying what he could. I’d lost track of how many spells he’d cast, but he was at least down to half.
“Don’t waste your spells,” I scraped out of dry, cracked lips.
You’re shivering.
“I can talk,” I said, but barely. “Stop Contacting.” Every time he switched from Drying my clothes to speaking in my head was a new focus. A new Contact. One less spell for him.
“You’re . . .” He broke off to search my eyes for a minute. “Where are you, Em? Will you tell me what happened?”
“I can’t.”
Nova darted over and wedged herself underneath the blanket to lend some extra warmth.
“Can I look?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, not sure what he meant.
I figured it out when his hands cupped the sides of my face, and he leaned in. Our foreheads touched, the tactile requirement to cast Memory Share. Leland searched my mind, revisiting everything that had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours. Running from my room to find his empty bed. My conversation with Jaxan. Rye. He watched me lie to Rayne and Skye. He watched me lie to my aunts. He saw me use Pepper to get around the temple. He saw Ven. Dashell. But he stopped at the end, before Helen started turning the Ring of Greatest Fear. He didn’t make me relive it.
His head pulled back, and I lifted my gaze to meet his.
I could tell he was tired. His face was rough and unshaven, red like he’d been scratching it. His appearance was always neat, but for once, his clothes were moderately creased, his hair was ruffled, and the pine smell I loved so much was something I had to seek through a layer of salt and sea. A brighter me might’ve asked where he’d been, but I found it hard to care in the hollowness. Even Nova, the tiny ball of heat purring in my lap, couldn’t soften the deep pain in my chest that leeched every morsel of my motivation and interest.
“This isn’t you,” Leland concluded. “It’s the ring. You know what it did to your dad? It made his fear of the outside real to him. But you aren’t afraid of the outside. You’re afraid of butterflies. The problems you cause, as you put it. You feel low right now because the ring did what it does. It turned your head against you. Everything you heard it say — none of it is true. One person can’t destroy Everden. Especially not you.”
“I hurt you in my dream,” I said.
“No,” said Leland. “I was going to talk to you about that. Youdidn’t hurt me. What you saw in the dream wasmymemory. My subconscious showing you something I’ve never shared. And it scared me.”
I didn’t have the strength to ask what it was. Even if I did, I didn’t think he wanted to tell me. That was evident in his voice, his eyes, his posture.
Nova, attempting to knead heat into my legs with her wet paws, continued purring loudly, the rumble drowning out the echo of the waterfall. I didn’t think Leland knew about her. They’d been side-by-side a hundred times without him noticing.
