“But their magic lives on,” says the echo. “Their magic must be destroyed.”
Emil takes a sharp breath. Then, “I can’t do it,” he says. “I can’t end what I’ve come to love.”
There’s a pause, a brief silence, and then, for the first time in long minutes, the echo repeats exactly what Emil said. “I can’t end what I’ve come to love.”
I am stricken with confusion and fear and an overwhelming and unexplainable grief.
My eyes fill with tears and I don’t understand why.
None of this makes sense to me, and I know I’m missing something absolutely critical.
I’m missing the right answer.
But I don’t know the question that will elicit it.
I approach Emil carefully and quietly, watching for a reaction—any reaction—but he remains where he is. Doubled over. Slumped to the floor. Driven down…
I lower myself into a new kneeling position, so close to him now that my knees are only inches away from the top of his bowed head.
I try to breathe out my anxiety, try to bring moisture to my lips as I ask, “Whoareyou?”
His voice is bleak. “I am nobody.”
“I am nobody,” says the echo. It speaks only once and then falls silent.
Softly, I persist, “What was your name?”
“It was taken from me.”
“It was taken from me,” says the echo, again only once.
And then, there’s silence. It’s the same terrible silence that feels like it means something.
I’m suddenly reminded of a heated conversation between Emil and Anarchy. It was one morning back on the island outside the little hut where I slept.
I woke up to their voices.
Anarchy spoke about the other keepers. She had been a youngling when they’d been created. She said there were whispers about who they wereandwho they weren’t. But as for the keeper of dark magic, there was only a terrible silence.
She asked Emil why there was such a hush around his name.
He didn’t give her an answer.
Perhaps it was because he couldn’t.
“Nobody named you,” I whisper, although it’s a guess this time.
“Youdid,” he says, his voice still muffled. “Diavolo. Keeper. Enemy.”
“I am your enemy,” says the echo.
I thought he was my enemy because he took my mother’s heart, but now I’m not so sure.
“Why are you my enemy?” I ask.
“Because my entire purpose is to constrain your magic,” he says. “From the moment of my transformation, this was my fate.”
“Because I have no choice,” the echo says. “The magic in your mother’s heart should have died with her. Instead, she passed it on to you. It is a magic so terrible that wars were fought to defeat it. Hundreds died. The soil was turned to ash and the sky to blood. It cannot happen again.”
