Nothing. Maggie tried to think. What had happened right before he collapsed? Strange shadows had gathered around his shoulders. A bright burst of light, one that Maggie had once seen before. Whatever had initially ensnared Arthur wassomething else, but his collision with one of the unsettled dead was what brought him to his knees. Was he lost in one of the unsettled’s memories? When she had been lost, she remembered Arthur saying her name, calling her back to him. Maybe all he needed was to be reminded of who he was.
“You’re Arthur Taliesin,” she said, so close their lips were nearly brushing. “You’re a world-renowned alchemist and scholar. An incredible teacher. The best brother and uncle in Atlantia. Rory and Simon need you, Arthur.” Gods below, she couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave this room without him. “Ineed you, Arthur,” she repeated, saying his name again and again so he could remember. Tears streamed down her face now, because she realized how true the words were, and it cracked something in Maggie wide open. She felt raw and exposed, but she’d never been so sure of something.
“You’re Arthur Taliesin,” she repeated, trying not to sob. “You’re stubborn and aloof. You’re brilliant. You’re a pain in my ass.” A flicker of something. Around them, the unsettled dead were swarming, but none of them touched her, keeping a strange distance. “Arthur,” she pleaded.
“You…” she began, but she couldn’t quite get the words out. “You’re the kindest man I’ve ever known,” she said. And she wondered how she could have ever thought he was like Evan. No matter what mistakes he had made, he was nothing like the man who had broken her.
The flashes of recognition faded as quickly as they came, and Maggie looked into Arthur’s eyes with despair. “Please,” she begged. “Please, Arthur. Don’t you get it?” Her grip on his cheeks was tight, leaving red marks where her knuckles weredigging into his stubble. She didn’t know what else to do, so she told him the truth, the hard kernel that she had been keeping close to her because she was afraid of it. “I love you, Arthur Taliesin.” She pressed her forehead into his and said it again. “I love you, Arthur.”
At first, Maggie didn’t think it would be enough. She had left him, after all. Maybe he didn’t care that her affection for him had turned into something she couldn’t ignore, no matter how much she thought she should. But then, Arthur was gasping, and he sat up straight, nearly knocking Maggie to the side. His hands reached for her as he asked, “What happened?”
But all she could do in response was sob, collapsing onto his chest and wrapping her arms around his neck. She knew they didn’t have time, but he was alive. Above and below, he was alive. “Maggie?” he asked again, the confusion so plain in his voice that she realized he must not remember any of it. Not a single word she’d said.
She pulled back, brushing away her tears, and said over the din of the fissure’s roar, “We need to finish the incantation.” He scrambled to his feet, bringing her with him, and they were back at the rune, back at the position they were in before everything went to hell. This time, Maggie finished every Diadhan word. This time, when the pall began to recede toward the fissure, they were ready for it. They gripped the edges of a table and let it move around them like they were river stones.
As the pall seeped away, everything that was supported by it—pieces of equipment and pencils and paper—began to fall. The equipment all shattered, glass and pieces of metal skittering across the floor.
When the unsettled dead drew nearer to the fissure, each one burned bright, tiny supernovas returning to the world they’d abandoned for one last glimpse of this one. Maggie hoped the woman who had lent her her memories and the little boy who had found Arthur returned to safety and comfort again in their final rest, wherever that was. She hoped it was peaceful. She hoped it was beautiful.
As the last of the pall returned to the underworld it came from and the last of the unsettled dead crossed the thresholds between, the fissure began to close, like it was being sewn by an invisible hand, one looping stitch after another. When the last stitch was done, the fissure was gone and there wasn’t even a seam to mark where it had been. The world was whole again.
Maggie sagged with relief. She turned to Arthur to ask him what happened and saw a wispy shadow flutter away from his shoulder, slipping out one of the windows and returning to the forest. “Was that a wraith?” she asked, incredulous.
He rubbed the back of his head, watching the wraith vanish between the trees. “I didn’t know what was happening. One minute I was focused on you and the incantation, and the next I was walking toward the fissure, convinced I needed to see what was on the other side.” Maggie shivered, but there was an edge of excitement in Arthur’s voice. “A wraith possession! That’s so rare.”
“It almost killed you,” she said, though she couldn’t help her grin. She wanted to throw her arms around Arthur again, but she held back. As she looked at the wild mess the pall had left behind in the lab, she whispered, “We did it.”
“Youdid it,” he said. “I would have walked straight throughthat fissure if it wasn’t for you.” She tugged down the mask she’d worn over her mouth and nose. The smell of the sulfur was still strong in the air and clinging to their skin, but the swirling miasma that made up the pall was gone. It should have been so much easier to breathe, but she still felt like she couldn’t get enough air.
“Do you remember anything?”
“I remember walking toward the fissure,” he began slowly. “I remember…so many jumbled memories. They…” He paused, looking around the lab as if it would give him some answer about what had happened. “They weren’t mine. Did another unsettled touch me, too?”
Maggie nodded. “I think it was trying to stop you from getting any closer to the fissure.”
His eyebrows furrowed, as if he was trying to sort through all the tangled memories. “It’s confusing,” he said. “I can’t make sense of most of it. All I know for sure is I saw your face when I woke up.”
Maggie should have been relieved that Arthur did not hear her confession, but all she felt was a burning regret. The damage was done. She had broken his heart, and it almost killed him in the pall. Admitting she loved him would do nothing but break him again, because it didn’t change the fact that their relationship was over. It just made it hurt all the more.
Outside, the clouds were finally thinning. The hazy sunlight coming through the windows became the bright, blinding sun of summer, shining on the wreck of the classroom. Shards of broken glass and metal from the shattered equipment were everywhere. Remnants of the pall slime, sticky and oozing andthat same unnatural purple, were piled in corners and on desks and in the inner workings of the electronics in the room, which would most likely never work again.
Maggie walked over to the window, moving her hand through the late-afternoon sunbeam that was now streaking through the glass. Despite everything, Maggie felt a giddiness take over. She reeked of sulfur, and she was covered in pall slime, but they had done it. The pall wasgone.
When she turned to Arthur to say as much, he looked pale and spent, and his expression was something she could only describe as empty. “What’s wrong?” she asked, suddenly worried the wraith possession had taken more out of him than she had thought. “Is it melancholia?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine. I’m just relieved.” Then he said, “I’m just glad we did this one last thing together.”
She hesitated and then whispered, “Me, too.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
On paper, Maggie had everything she wanted. The pall was gone. Her office was hers again. Her translation seminar was fully funded. The confirmation email from Edna was sitting in her inbox, with Dean Clearwater copied, outlining the details of the grant. In fact, there was little evidence that Arthur Taliesin had ever been in her office at all.
At some point, Arthur had come to campus and moved his furniture back to storage. He had even returned her desk to its original location, so the only signs of him were the disturbed dust bunnies and that tiny sprig of dried lavender on her bookshelf. And the ache in Maggie’s chest that only seemed to grow with each passing day.
Dahlia curled up on Maggie’s couch, flipping through the same romance novel Maggie had been reading with Arthur. Dahlia hadn’t left Maggie’s side since they dissipated the pall, letting her alternately reason her way through their breakup, cry, and question every decision she’d made. After she had done all that, Dahlia had asked her gently, so gently, if she ought to reconsider.
Maggiehadreconsidered. More than once she had been ready to drive out to Atlantia or find Arthur on campus and tell him what really happened in the pall, but she could package upthose feelings and put them away. Eventually, the pain would dull. That was what was best for them both. Look at how much she had already upended in the short time they’d known each other.
