Kalan crosses into my vision and gives me a pained smile. Why is he still here? Why is he doing this?
Without another word, Kalan helps him leave, but Fenix refuses to let me go, keeping me tied up and vulnerable with his magic, the strands of control digging in and holding me, keeping the final word in our argument as his.
It fades when he’s left the area around us, and I slowly gain momentum and use of my body again.
“Ever, Ever!”
I turn towards his voice and see Ten and Crimson racing towards me. I take a much-needed breath, filling my lungs, and will my heart to calm.
I’m not sure I’m ready for this conversation.
Crimson reaches me first, despite me draining her power. “You should have killed him!” she shouts. And I can’t blame her. I should have.
I should have done what Lyle did to those men, all those months ago.
“Ever, listen to me? Listen.”Ten’s words are fuzzy inside my mind, distant. “Look at me!” The iron in his tone snaps my focus to him, and I don’t miss the slight recoil. “Ever, your eyes.”
I close them and turn away, already knowing what he’s going to see. The darkness that I’m having to come to terms with. It’s within me, like it or not.
“I’m sorry.” The words are the only thing I have left to give. My blood has already been given, and that did nothing to protect either of them from pain.
This is the only option left.
Or we’ll all be facing a world we don’t recognise.
The well of energy, tucked safely behind my ribs, is there, and I reach for it, pulling the drops of Crimson’s speed to aid me in my retreat, and I leave.
I don’t turn back. I refuse to look back, and I keep my shields around my mind to ensure Ten has no opportunity to change my mind.
It’s the fastest I’ve ever made it back to camp—a matter of seconds—and I head for my quarters without interference. I pull the drapes closed and collapse into a fit of tears on the bed.
It’s too much. Everything is too much.
The power, the magic, the wrongness of it all.
The fact that I have a hundred scars now decorating my body, all from Ten, yet he’d hate to look at even one of them because he was forced to put them there.
The longing for my old life—a life before Kirrasia, before Ten—swims into my memory. How simple. How sheltered.
For the first time in so many weeks, I think about the mill, and Sophie and her parents. What would become of them if I were to let Fenix’s vision come to pass?
So, I dry my tears and dig out the folded pieces of paper on which I wrote all the jumbled information. The splotched ink stains surrounding the names of my parents. And I take it to the candle on the small table and burn it.
Food and water are delivered during the evening, but I don’t turn to see who braved stepping into my tent. I’m too far gone, inside my own world, to care.
As the night creeps on, I sense the moment the new moon rises. The energy I’ve been replenishing these last few days seems to vanish, as if poured away from a cup, and as I clutch the necklace around my neck, it’s stone cold.
Vulnerable to Fenix. And Selina.
And whoever else has power from Novandia.
I change my clothes with the few additional shirts and trousers I’ve been granted, my old ones, sporting too many rips and tears from the fighting, stained with blood and only fit to burn.
I wait, and with my magic now lost, fall into a disturbed sleep, only to wake before morning with a dread deep within my bones.
Something will happen today. I don’t need Aslendrix to tell me that.
The Usher talks about Novandia’s gift and the new moon, when Aslendrix is absent, is as close as they’ll get, surely, as an opportunity for whatever he is planning.
