Logically, I knew I couldn’t single-handedly destroy Everden. I knew the majority of the hopelessness I was feeling was the ring. I knew if Leland said things were under control, they were, because that’s what he did. He took care of things. But as it was, I was in his lap and hardly moving, another thing for him to Heal, protect, deal with.
“Water,” I said, and Leland cast me a cup and filled it to the brim.
And as he quietly battled elemental magic’s side effects, myhand shot out for the loose sedative, and I stabbed myself in the thigh with it.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
EMBER
Strength in covens, you say? Why then, have I always found, the easiest way to get people to join me is by not inviting them?
— Jaxan D’Oron, Echelon to the
School of Dark Magic
Iawoke in a prison cell, cold and damp, but I was so bone tired from the sedative and the Ring of Greatest Fear that I didn’t have the capacity to be bothered by it. Prison was a place to nap, which is what I did, in and out for most of my first day in that cell. If I awoke at all, it was only in the tilting, surreal state that exists between wakefulness and dreaming, and when I fell back asleep, I slept deeply, any brief moments of consciousness utterly undisturbed by my propensity for wayward daydreams.
The cell was spacious, and though it was cold, I wasn’t freezing. I was in Leland’s sweatshirt, the silver foil blanket draped around me.
A crusty slice of bread was slid under the narrow slot at the base of the bars to my cell. I left it there, next to the first slice of bread I still hadn’t touched. Had I been here eight hours? For two meals? The small window high on the wall showed onlydarkness, so . . . maybe it had been longer.
Through the thick walls of stone, I heard a shovel scrape the floor of the cell beside me. Moments later, a pungent smell infiltrated my nostrils. I peeled a sharp stick of hay from my cheek and scooted back from the rough mound I’d slept on, now worried aboutwhatI’d slept on. But the straw was dry and clean.
Prison hadn’t come up in conversation when Leland had Healed me in the temple. In the state he’d found me in, he wouldn’t have mentioned it. I suppose consequences were expected, and a prison sentence was no worse than waking up in the Allwitch temple, shattered, unsure if my brain would ever recover from being smashed to muddled pulp.
Today though, the heaviness was in my body more than in my soul. I gazed out at the dark hallway. And felt . . . maybe not happy, but I was here, and I was trying to be.
Hours passed, and my mind never wandered to Gray. I was certain I was officially done with him. I tried not to think about Leland. Sometimes, I thought of Helen, and for the first time since I was old enough to understand she’d left, no nauseating feeling gnawed at me, and no inner voice told me to block it out by thinking about something else. Skye had been right about that too. She’d wanted me to find out why Helen left. And now that I knew she thought she was doing it for the realm, my heart felt less like a hole and more like something old and nicked. With a little attention, maybe one day it could be good again.
I ate the hard bread and watched the jailer make his rounds. He had the same vacant expression I assumed I’d once had. Dead and distant eyes. A gloomy, dark-blue aura. But unlike me, he had deteriorated. If I asked him to toss me the keys, I imagined he’d numbly keep walking as if he hadn’t heard.
I marinated on the problems in Everden, and there were many of them. Allwitches exiled. Aspirants deteriorated to nothingmore than machine labor, forced to work for the Council. Dark Witches were a subclass. Women were dying in childbirth. I’d let them convince me I was the problem that needed to be fixed, but the threat was never me or my half witchness. The threat was what the realm was already willing to put up with. I’d just been too busy fighting to breathe to see it.
By the light of the small window, I guessed it was the following day when a marshal arrived outside my cell. He unbolted the heavy iron door, instructing me to follow. I tried to get information from him as we went down three sets of narrow stairs.Was I free to go?He didn’t say.Were my friends okay?No answer. I knew better than to ask about Dashell, his body having been relocated to the desert to look like a coincidence I shouldn’t know about.
I was marched through the long, marble halls, busying myself with the task of straightening my appearance to keep me upright. Fixing my matted hair and patting down my curtain bangs, which were sticking straight up. There wasn’t much I could do to salvage my outfit, but I ran a hand down my face and massaged out the straw-shaped depressions and hard lines wrinkled into my skin, until, at last, we reached Jaxan’s office.
He was at his desk chair with his arms folded squarely over his chest, swiveling his back to the gigantic windows illuminating his decadent two-story office.
“Door,” he said to his staff.
It was shut at once, secluding me with Jaxan’s smug smile and his thousands of bottles of oozing dark magic.
Because I knew Jaxan wanted me in Everden bad enough to sacrifice the Everblade for it, and because I was so worn out from all I’d been put through in the last forty-eight hours, I wasn’t particularly concerned about being civil. I was irritable, and there was strength in it. Like the bitter edge of a hangover, I trudged forward, uncaring if I was silent or smart or docile.
“Have I been imprisoned long enough for you to convince the Council you didn’t set me up to do this?” I asked, approaching the vacant chair across from him.
“Don’t sit,” he said, frowning at my stained and disheveled attire, the prospect of it contaminating his expensive, antique furnishings. Part of me wanted to sit out of spite, but then he stood.
While Jaxan methodically adjusted his shirt cuffs underneath the sleeves of his suit jacket, I narrowed my eyes at a shelf of dark magic, nearly choking trying to picture myself drinking it and becoming a Dark Witch.
“Reconsidering?” he asked with an intrigued expression, then fastened the button of his navy jacket with aggravating slowness.
I had to laugh. After what he’d put me through in the catacombs?
“No.” My eyes flicked away from his collection of dark, swirling liquid. “I’m still not interested.” Though I did wonder if Leland knew something I didn’t, if there was more to why he said I should be a Dark Witch on the night before I thought I lost him. “Besides,” I went on, gesturing to Jaxan’s door and the trial room beyond it, the place where they’d decided I should attend the Creation Academy Unselected until I proved I wasn’t a threat. “I’m on probation. No spellcasting until I’m fit for it.”
