“I’ve lots already. Another won’t matter,” Sydney said. She sat straighter, rolled her shoulder to check the range of motion. “Much better. Thank you.”
“So was that the result of magic gone wrong, or was it on purpose?” Ian began cleaning up.
“Very much on purpose. He would have killed me if he could.” She closed her eyes against the shaking that still rattled through her. She had more control over the aftereffects now, but the blowback from her own spells had settled into her bones, made her joints hot and hollow. “Still, nothing I couldn’t handle. Can I borrow a shirt to go home in?”
“Of course. You don’t have to leave though, if things like a shower or rest seem like a better idea. I know they’d seem good to me, after an injury like that,” Ian said.
There was a piece of her that wanted to say yes. That wanted the animal comfort of a hot shower, clean skin, and a warm body in a bed. There were things that mattered more than what she wanted, however. “Just the shirt, thanks. And thanks again for patching me up.”
“I’d say anytime, but I’d rather not have to do that again.” He handed her a shirt, soft and clean, from his laundry basket. “Take care of yourself, Sydney.”
“Blood on the inside, got it.” She pulled the T-shirt over her head and left.
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The House of Shadows breathed, and Shara lived at the center of inhale and exhale. She felt its breath like her own. When its heart beat, its pulse beat in time with hers. She knew its thoughts as she knew her own, and she felt its pain. She was its avatar, and it was the seat of her power.
The House of Shadows was invisible, it was locked away, it was as forgotten as such a place could be.
She walked the halls, footsteps punctuating her thoughts. Only her footsteps. The other residents of the House of Shadows were shut away, and there were no visitors here. There were never what might be called “visitors” here. Only those who came to pay their tolls, blank-faced and silent, or weeping and judgmental. As if it were Shara who benefited from their sacrifice, as if she had made their decisions for them. As if she were the one who benefited from what they—in the end—gave away willingly.
The House sighed, rearranged itself. The hallway shifted beneath her feet, turning away from the rooms where the sacrifices waited, dreaming nightmares, and toward the great doors. To the outside world. The night was very cool, the lake quiet.
The outside world. The Unseen World. They kept her hidden here, like a secret, like a shame. A thing unbearable to look at, when all she did was work to ease their pain.
She walked closer to the waves, stepping forward until her feet almost touched them. Until the spell that bound her there, to the House, hooked into her, holding her in place. Her lips curled back from her teeth, and she backed away from the shore.
Hidden away. Prevented from leaving. Made powerless. But she held the key to their power, and she intended to use it to claim power for herself. It was why she had sent Sydney out into the Unseen World. Shara had strategized and planned in the hopes that the end of the Turning would see Sydney in a position of influence in the Unseen World—perhaps even as the Head of a House. There were circumstances that would allow it, and she was pushing things as hard in the direction of those circumstances as she could. Magic would be stronger then, because of her. Shadows could grow healthy again.
And when Shadows was healthy enough, strong enough, Shara would order Sydney to break the spell that bound her to this island. Then she would take her rightful place in the Unseen World, a Head of House like all the others, her presence there a constant reminder of where their power came from, of what they all owed Shadows, owed her.
Shara walked back inside the doors.
The House, the magic, wasn’t healthy now. Shadows was weak, and growing weaker. The balance was off; the spell had somehow gone wrong. It was unraveling. She couldn’t tell why or how.
She couldn’t stop it.
That was the pit in her stomach, the tremble in her step. There should be no magic here she couldn’t control, not in this place that she wore like a skin.
Sometimes bargains needed to be remade, a name signed again and again on a contract.
The sacrifice might not have been hers to pay, but she knew—oh, she knew—what it took to pay it. She also knew, knew in her bones, what the Unseen World did not. That magic was only truly yours if it came from your own pain, your own sacrifice.
This magic was hers.
In a room at the heart of the House of Shadows, Shara took a knife. She cut into her hand. She cut until she reached that bone, and she inscribed her spell, letter after letter, word after word.
She cut and she cut and she offered her blood and pain as sacrifice—not to the Unseen World, but to Shadows. She cut, and she bled, and each was a prayer.
? ? ?
When Shadows’ doors had opened, Grace had been close enough to smell the cold of the air outside, the flat mineral quality of it, almost buried beneath the watery scent of the reservoir. Not quite close enough to see the waves that lapped against the shore, not quite certain enough to push her way through the doors and into the outside. Into freedom.
She stepped back, sinking herself further into the shadows, and watched.
Each cut Shara had made into her own skin and bone had drawn itself across Grace’s arms, an echo of her own scars. An echo of wounds that she had seen made on limbs so small it seemed impossible that there was enough space for the glyphs to be carved, on bodies that had not lived long enough for the bleeding to stop and for scars to form.
Grace fisted her hands, then opened them, stretching her fingers as far as she could, releasing the ache of the magic pooled there.
She had tried, once, in her early days in Shadows, to offer comfort to the other sacrifices. A child with a soft fluff of white hair, like a dandelion, that she had picked up, held, crooned to through her own pain and terror. Everything that had been done to her would have been easier to endure, if she just could have helped someone else.
She had felt the House’s glee as Shara took the child from her arms.
Memories were merciful sometimes, and so she remembered that white hair and the red of her blood smeared on the baby’s skin from where her hands had held it, and not the next part. Not that. Not while she was awake, at least.
Grace had never offered comfort again.
But she bore witness: Someone should watch what it was the House did. And the House let her, because watching hurt. And she bore witness now, because Shara’s actions meant the House was hurt, and because Grace had, for just a moment, smelled the night beyond the doors. There was winter in the air.
? ? ?