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Indeed, Az strokes my cheek affectionately before saying, “I can’t wait for you to see it. I’m hoping the effects of my brother’s magic wear off before then.”
Well, at least he’s still calling Kiran his brother, says my magic.
I figure if that’s what we’re feeling thankful for, we’re in a pretty rough place, indeed.
“I’m sorry about biting you,” Blaise says, her voice quiet as she speaks from the shadows.
I figured she was in here somewhere. Nothing else explains a wagon with zero sun access, but I haven’t been keen on trying to communicate with her.
I’d promised myself and Kiran that I wouldn’t allow myself to be manipulated again.
I tried my best with Blaise, tried to be her friend while still maintaining a healthy skepticism of her.
But she misled me, practically molding me like clay in her hands.
“I’m sorry about all of this, really,” she continues. “Here.” Something rustles, and I realize Blaise is coming closer. I stiffen as soon as she touches me. A pair of fangs flash before my mind.
She pauses for a moment, as if reconsidering, but then she hauls me upward in a fluid motion until I’m sitting up, leaning against the back frame of the wagon. “I’ll adjust you every few hours so you don’t have to worry about getting sores. And when it’s dark out, I can take you to relieve yourself.”
I just stare at her, my mouth open anyway because of the gag, but it would have been agape regardless.
She watches me for a moment, having the gall to look sorrowful, then slumps backward against the wall. The black box hooked to her belt clatters against the floorboards.
“Nox wasn’t being punished by the queen. Well, he was, in a way, but that wasn’t the entire story.”
She goes on to explain a tale that somehow ends with Nox and Farin, once sharing a body, now banished to another realm.
Apparently that very body, as well as his sister’s, joins us in the back of this dark wagon.
“Az promised to help. Once the Rip is opened, it will create enough power to separate Farin from Nox’s body. I just want him back. He’s all I have left. I’m sorry.”
All she has left because the sniveling scoundrel has betrayed everyone else who might have taken pity on her, my magic hisses.
“For what it’s worth, I won’t let him hurt you,” she says.
She must catch the sneer on my face, because she sighs. “I know. Not saying much coming from me. I really do like you. I’m not saying that because I want you to feel bad for me. Fates know I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I just…I don’t know what I need. I guess I just wish things had turned out differently. That you and I could have been friends.”
I don’t need to be gagged to communicate that I don’t really care what Blaise would have preferred from her life.
CHAPTER 36
NOX
“So, picture the Fabric as looking something like this.”
Zora’s taken off her outer tunic and folded it several times, lining up the decorative eyelets at the bottom of the hem so that one could easily slide a string through them to the other side. “The Fabric is the, well, the fabric, and the realms are the spaces between the folds. The folds are what keep the realms separate; however”—she traces the series of eyelets with her fingernail—“the designers of the Fabric, the Fates in this case, sometimes create eyelets, intentional holes, in the Fabric as a way of moving between realms. The thing is, if several eyelets are lined up, you can actually traverse several realms in one go.”
Zora runs her palms over the ground of the chasm until she finds a long twig. “This is you,” she says, holding it up in front of her face. “You started off in one realm, but then”—she slides the twig through the eyelets so that half remains on one side of the folded tunic, the other half on the other—“your consciousness got tied into the Fabric, allowing you to slip through an eyelet. So really, you’re two places at once. That’s why you can have a body on both sides.”
“Because my two bodies are just two sides of the same twig?”
She nods in confirmation. “Really, it’s a bit more complex than that, because you’re actually woven into the Fabric, but I’m simplifying it for your benefit.”
“Much appreciated.”
“Plus, it would be difficult for me to weave this piece of twig through my coat.”
“Understandable.”
