And I still had to figure out how to switch our powers back.
SEVENTEEN
ARIYON
Having Pax here with me had boosted my morale. We’d become fast friends, talking every day through the window, giving each other fighting tips, and giving Maze and the others the middle finger every chance we got. Pax had a unique outlook on life as someone from the House of Ash. He said he never asked to be born with magic, so he wouldn’t mind being reborn without it. He was a good guy who had died before he’d been lost to the darkness of his magic and had no desire to return to it. I respected him for that.
“So, what’s your plan after you win and get reborn?” I asked him one morning. I’d been hoping Fallon would have come for me by now, but I wondered if time was different here. My hair had grown longer, and it felt like I’d been here an eternity, yet the nights of sleep didn’t add up for it. I tried not to think about it because it freaked me out too much if I did.
Pax replied after pondering a bit. “Get reborn in the Outer Stretch and live life as a magicless nomad. I’ve always wanted to travel. The Yellow Mountains, the hot springs of Galeesh, The Gilded City.”
I grinned. “You go there and tell them Ariyon Madden said to treat you like royalty.”
Pax barked out in laughter then, grinning ear to ear. “You know I might just do that.”
Now I was smiling. It was a nice thought. “And you’ll never… You’ll always stay magicless?”
Pax nodded. “I’ve heard the pull to feed and regain your magic is strong in the first month, but then it eventually goes away entirely. I’ll just need to stay strong until then. I don’t want to come back here. Ever.”
That we agreed on.
“Well, if Fallon can get me out of here, I’ll be in The Gilded City. You can always come visit and I can help you with whatever you need, man,” I told him.
Pax made a fist and held it up to the bars, and I bumped it.
“If Fallon doesn’t come, for whatever reason, ask for me in the Outer Stretch. We can be magicless together,” he said.
It was a sobering possibility, one I had to prepare myself for. Living without magic. No healing, no protection other than a sword or my fists. No fire or destruction magic. All the parts of Fallon’s magic that I had hated when I first met her had kept me alive down here. I’d gotten used to having them, to being feared. I felt invincible. Could I live without them? If it meant the alternative was drinking fae blood and blipping in and out of this realm forever, then yeah…I could.
“All right,” I told him seriously. Maybe I would. I wouldn’t want to face my aunt or Fallon or any of my friends at school with no magic. My entire life I’d been revered almost as a god. The most powerful healer of my generation and an heir to the most influential throne in the realm. For me to then be turned magicless… Well, it was laughable.
“Pretty boy. Dung for brains. Get up. You got a fight,” Maze growled from the hallway.
I stiffened. “Both of us?”
I had a dark fleeting thought that they might pit us against each other at one point, but I hadn’t let the thought go any further. It would be too cruel. He was my friend.
“Yes, both of you. Get up,” he said.
“Against each other?” Pax’s voice had lost all emotion—he sounded as dead inside as I felt in this moment.
Maze grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s a double fight. You’re a team.”
Relief spread through me, and Pax grinned. “Oh, nowthatsounds fun.”
Paxand I were ruthless together, and he reminded me of Ayden. We fought back-to-back and won. I trusted him. Now, we were being hauled back to our cells, bloody but not broken. We grinned at each other as we were tossed in, wincing from pain but still high off the glory of the fight. Fallon’s powers were insane! They were evil and I’d hated them because they were what killed my parents, but there was also a beauty to that much magic. Pax dominated by shielding and sending out force-field blasts. I had mastered Fallon’s destruction magic. One sustained touch and I could turn a grown fae to ash. I felt bad afterward, but it was kill or be killed, so I was doing what I had to in order to survive. Before Maze shut the door, he rapped on my bars with his knuckles. “Sleep tight. Tomorrow, you fight each other. Winner gets reborn.”
I heard Pax’s sharp intake of breath in the cell next to me. My own breath shuddered in my chest. I was speechless. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t be so cruel, could they? They’d seen us bond, fight together.
If I fought someone I considered to be a friend and killed him, what did that make me? A monster. Something I wasn’t willing to become for any reward. If I forfeited, they could throw me into the Bottomless Pit, and my soul and body would cease to exist forever. Or they could keep me down here, as a slave like Maze. I’d mop the blood off the floors and ferry souls in and out of fights for eternity. That was a worse fate than the Bottomless Pit in my opinion, but I wasn’t willing to kill a friend to save myself, so if that’s what happened, then so be it.
Tomorrow I would forfeit, and Pax would be reborn magicless. I hoped he lived a long and happy life and ended up in the Realm of Eternity. Maybe he could take a message to my parents for me.
Neither of us said a word after that, and I didn’t sleep, not even for a second.
EIGHTEEN
FALLON
