“I’ll never be able to leave the Mist, or Rosewarren,” I said. “Do you understand what you’re asking of me? I’ll be responsible for it, for all of them. And I’ll be trapped—just as I am now, but even worse. I’ll be bound to my duty, ensnared in it, just the same as she has been.”
“No you won’t, not in the slightest.” Gareth’s voice was ragged, as if he were struggling to hold himself together, but his hold on me was strong, his breath on my neck steady and warm. “By her own doing, shehas always been alone. But you won’t be. We’ll figure out a way, all of us, to make things right. We have Ankaret to help us, and three gods who will grow stronger every day, and we’ll forge alliances with Olden scholars, and I’ll read every book that has ever been written. We’ll find a solution. We’ll rebuild everything, including the Order.”
I shook my head. More work, endless work, and the unknown dangers that would come as two worlds licked their wounds, and no promise of relief. I couldn’t bear all of that. I wasn’t strong enough for it, not anymore.
All I wanted was to go home.
That was what I’d wanted more than anything for as long as I could remember. And here at the crossroads of my life, with the Warden’s will scraping mine raw on one side and an endless stretch of days unfurling on the other, it was the purest thing I could think of: Ivyhill, and all its parks and hothouses, the vines grown by my mother’s hand, every cheerful shuttered window that I’d painted on the walls of my room at the priory.
Suddenly I was ten years old again, my heart in pieces as that fearsome black carriage took me farther and farther away from everything I’d ever known. That heartbroken girl had hoped something marvelous would happen one day, sweeping away every pain she had suffered. On that day, she would be able to go home again. She had held on to that hope for years, far longer than she should have. Some spark of it still lived inside me, and now I was considering stamping it out.
“I just want to go home,” I whispered. “If I do this, I’ll never be able to. Ever.”
“Then we’ll build a new home, together,” Gareth said fiercely, “and we’ll make it just as it ought to be. We’ll fill it with happiness, years and years of it.”
Our home.“Our home.”
“Yes, darling. Mara, my love.” He kissed my hair. I felt his tears on my neck. “Our home.”
I hovered at the edge of something colossal, refusing to blink. The world shimmered before my eyes.
When I said her name, I could barely feel my tongue. “Ankaret?”
Yes, Mara?
I took a breath and blinked at last. Tears spilled silently down my cheeks. “Do it.”
She obeyed immediately, skimming down my arm with her long firebird’s tail streaming behind her. She wound herself around the spot where I gripped the Warden’s wrist, faster and faster until the shape of her disappeared and became simply a spinning ring of fire.
“Mara, don’t let her do this!” The Warden was insensate with anger. It jolted through me like poison. “This is the only way! Ourfreedom, Mara!”
I closed my eyes, pulling back against her with all my strength. My hand and her wrist were now fully wreathed in fire; we were in it up to our elbows, and it kept expanding. The Warden writhed, trying to buck me off of her, but Gareth was holding on to me, hands clasped at my waist and his face buried in my neck.
And as Ankaret’s fire raced through me, and through the Warden, and then back into me again, a feeling beyond pain took ahold of me—a white, quiet feeling, like the highest reaches of the sky—and suddenly I could see the entire beach. I saw Farrin holding on to Gareth’s waist, and Gemma holding on to hers. I saw Talan and Ryder, my parents, fierce-eyed Alastrina, and solemn Caiathos, muttering to himself as if in prayer.
They made a chain of bodies, digging their heels into the earth and holding onto me with all their power. Tears streamed down Gemma’s face. Farrin sang under her breath, her brow tight with concentration. I felt their heartbeats crowd against mine; I heard the thunder of theirlungs. They poured their power into the river of Ankaret’s fire and held onto me, keeping me upright even when everything in me longed to fall.
Don’t let go.Farrin’s voice, and then Gemma’s.Don’t give in. We love you.
“Stay here with me,” Gareth murmured against my hot skin. “Stay with us, Mara.”
I was burning, everything I knew was burning—but instead of becoming ashes, all the inner pieces of myself shifted, expanding, and my bones turned unbreakable and golden. Soon my skin would peel away to reveal the old magic beneath—this ancient power of binding that was now mine to carry—and as my mind began to buckle under the stress, it recalled a line from one of my old books at Rosewarren, one of the first I’d been tested on during those early years of training.
Aelum: A fundamental substance, invisible to everyone but the gods. The basis of all magical life.
That was what Ankaret was doing, I thought, feeling strangely calm. She was moving aelum from the Warden’s body into mine, shifting the very foundations of our bodies. Distantly, as my vision turned black, I heard the Warden start screaming. Even after everything she had done to me, I found myself wanting to comfort her.My heart and all its goodness.
Then, all at once, it was done. The world turned cold and dark around me. I fell into its quiet gladly.
Chapter 46
I came back to myself a day later, or maybe a hundred. When I opened my eyes, I had no sense of time or place, or whether or not I still had a body.
After a few moments, I decided that wherever I was, there was no danger here, and a few moments after that, I comprehended that I was in a bed, and that Gareth was beside me.
I couldn’t see his face, didn’t have the strength to lift my head, but I could smell him, how warm and clean he was, and that he must have been reading recently, because the earthy scent of old books was on his skin. He was caressing my upper arm with his thumb—slow, gentle strokes—and that was when I realized that my feathers and down were gone. I was myself again, at least for now. I didn’t know how to feel about that; gladness felt too simple.
I pressed my cheek against Gareth and curled my fingers into the soft linen of his shirt. His arms tightened around me; I felt his breath in my hair. The wonderful quiet made it easy to find sleep again.
