The horror wasn’t made of illusion. There was nothing for me to untie.
But Jacob had often used something I called not-illusion. It was his shadows and his eclipse.
I’d never realized before, but I had something similar inside me too.
My mom (before I realized she was my mom) had said Jacob was the eclipse to my sun. She’d shouted, “How can there be shadow without sunlight?”
As a truth seer, I unraveled illusion and unknotted lies. But I did something else. Something like the light had done. I shined in the darkness.
Before, my light had been small, because I was chained and locked inside my own darkness. I’d been trapped in Hell Gate, and then the asylum.
And maybe, if I’d tried before, my light would’ve failed, because I was relying only on myself.
But now I knew.
The sunlight came from the truth, which was greater than evil, greater than horror, greater than hate.
Finn looked back at me, smiling. “I was thinking of the message my mom left me.”
“What?”
“The truth can set you free, but first, you have to set the truth free.”
I grinned, and then I did exactly what he said.
106
The wind’s fire flickered and guttered, its flames doused under the Bard’s constant attack. It spun protectively around the trickster and the woman clinging to his furred back. The musician was sprawled under his four legs, unmoving.
The wind didn’t know whether or not the musician was breathing. There were things a breeze could do that a fire tornado could not. Rushing into a human’s lungs was one of those things.
The woman bent over the trickster’s wet back. His hackles stood on end, and he crouched over his brother, his tail swiping furiously. He bared his teeth and snarled.
The citrus and pearl dust scented woman volleyed illusion after illusion, breaking the Bard’s attacks and then thrusting her own at him.
The horror pressed inward, attempting to swallow them whole. It had already swallowed the stone horse. Its valor and courage had been consumed in one valiant charge. It had saved the trickster and his siblings, bucking the horror back, but in doing so, it had died, crushed in the horror’s maw.
The wind swirled around the trickster, shoving the horror back. The horror winced, shying from the flamelight, but soon, all the fire would be gone.
Fire was purifying.
Fire was cleansing.
Fire protected from horrors in the night.
What would the wind do when its fire was gone?
All tornadoes eventually dissipated. The vortex weakened, cold air broke them, and their twister became thin ropes that fell in threads to the ground.
The wind knew it was weakening. Soon, it would narrow and fall apart. And then it would be of no use to the woman, the boy’s child, the trickster, the musician—none of them.
It moaned, lashing out at the horror and the Bard.
In the darkness beyond, the Smiths launched firebolts into the black swarm.
Were the cruel one and his sister still alive, or had the horror consumed them? It didn’t know. It took all the wind’s energy to keep spinning in a violent circle around the woman and her brothers.
“I’ll conjure an ocean,” the Bard said. “Is that what you want, Celia? Are you demanding an ocean to drown in? Or would you rather I chain you and turn your blood into the sea? Do you want a poetic death?”
