“Something else like . . . ?”
“Are you sure you’re okay with me in here?” he asked, eyeing the way my hands tightly clenched the couch.
“Does it matter?” I willed myself to relax my hands, then let my arms fall to my sides. “You already Scry on me. You opened mywindow — ”
“When was this?” He glanced at the small window to the porch.
“My first night here,” I told him. But that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about. “What broke the letterbox?”
“Ember . . .” His gaze traveled over my shoulders, his attention lingering on the several ceramic mugs I’d left on the coffee table, along with a half-eaten bowl of rice and three greasy protein bar wrappers.
My ears turned red as I silently prayed he couldn’t see the crumbs smushed into the couch cushions where I slept.
“Is your sink not working?” he asked quietly.
I cleared my throat, touching a hand to my neck. “No, it is.” To get us back to the point, I asked him again, less politely, “What broke the letterbox?”
Leland wet his lips, rubbing them together for what felt like eighteen years before he finally answered. “Jaxan.”
“Jaxan?”
“The Everblade, the artifact of creation. It cuts through everything. It’s the only thing that could’ve done it.”
I felt the blood drain from my face as I remembered the knife Jaxan had threatened to cut our tongues out with. Leland rubbed a hand over his jaw, deep in thought.
“You should also know” — he winced at the door — “Jaxan’s bonded to a Blackburn. He’s been slipping through Blackburn wards for as long as I can remember. The window wasn’t me.”
Jaxan was bonded to a Blackburn? Jaxan, the man who sent me to incriminate myself at the Allwitch temple? Jaxan could enter this house . . . any time he wanted?
“Great,” I said bitterly. Just. . . great.
“He wants you protected, so you won’t have anything to fear from him in terms of personal harm. But anything you keep here is fair game.”
“Can you fix it?” I asked, shuffling a foot in the direction of thebroken letterbox pieces. “I don’t care about Jaxan.”
Leland let out a small, humorless laugh, and said, “The Echelon Charley Starvos couldn’t fix it. Nothing can repair what the Everblade breaks.”
I opened my mouth to ask where to get a new letterbox, how much gold I’d need, where to get a job . . .
“It was the only one,” he said. “The Goddess made eight artifacts, one for each school of magic. The pair of letterboxes was the dark magic one. And before you ask, no. There’s no other way to communicate with the human realm. Spells don’t reach there. Not even gifts. Familiars — ” He must’ve seen the look on my face and known to stop speaking.
No other way to talk to the human realm? So that was it. This morning, I’d sent my last letter to Dad, and however he was doing, I wouldn’t know anymore. He’d assume I stopped writing to him, just like Helen and Ash.
My knees trembled, but I held on to what little strength I had left, just long enough to make my way to the pile under the window and drop to the floor.
I stared at the copper pieces shining in the low lantern light. My legs were drawn in, my cheek resting on my knee.
When I remembered Leland was still in the living room, I cleared my throat, touched my chin to my kneecap, and I looked up at him dimly.
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s all I wanted.”
I reached for the pile and stole a shard, absently turning it over in my hand.There’s no other way to communicate with the human realm. Occasionally, I’d drop the shard on the floor, its sharp edge leaving a scratch.
Leland crouched in front of me. “I’m not leaving you like this,” he said, eyes flicking to the shard between my fingers, the edge of it perhaps as sharp as the knife that did this.
I gently set it down. “I’m not going to . . .” My voice wavered,and I had to stop for a breath. “I’m just going to take a bath and try to go to bed. Please go. I calm down better by myself.”
Leland set his backpack on the table, his hands moving deftly as he sorted through it. I spaced out watching him, going into a numb state, forgetting I shouldn’t be looking at him like this. Eventually, he pulled out a flip-top glass jar filled with an earthy, green powder, then went to place his bag on the seat of a wooden dining chair.
