Page 68 of Ruby & Onyx

Sir Magis squeezes my shoulder so hard that I fear that I am the only tether keeping him from being swept into another world.

And then it all stops.

The death grip eases. The room settles into quiet. The wind disappears. The tingling in my veins subsides and light pierces through the veil over my eyes, slowly revealing the room around me. Papers are scattered across the room, chairs lie flipped on their sides, and every candle is extinguished.

“Radya! Are you okay?” Sir Magis snaps his fingers in front of my eyes.

“Did you see them?” If the air in this room physically reacted to the spell in such a real and powerful way, then what if it also brought my parents to me, and it wasn’t a hallucination? No, that can’t be. Because if they were real and not just an apparition, then I could have joined them. Did I squander my chance to reunite with my family?

It had to be imaginary.

It had to be.

“Whom did you see?” Alarm rings through his eyes, wrinkles his brow, and echoes in his voice as he reaches out his hand, beckoning me to my feet. But I’m not ready to move, not ready to let go.

“I saw… I saw… ” I choke on the words as tears well up behind my eyes.

“Spells of this caliber have made even the sanest of people go mad. The magic preys on their vulnerabilities before granting their wish, showing them impossible dreams to tempt them into madness.” He pauses to look at me, letting out a sigh marked by pity. “Whatever, or whomever, you saw… it wasn’t real. Don’t let the madness take hold.”

My parents are gone and never coming back. They weren’t here. And even if they were, could I forgive them for what they did? If it weren’t for their decision to cross the border into Mendacia, then none of this would have happened.

Are the parents that I remember even worthy of my tears? How do you reconcile happy memories with tainted truth?

Maybe I’ve always been alone. Maybe I always will be alone.

“Radya? Speak to me. What’s going on inside your head?” Sir Magis stands hunched over, hands on his knees, peering down at me.

“Nothing,” I breathe, shaking away all thoughts of the family that was or could have been. The rosy memory of them is no more real than the hallucination. “Did it work?”

“You tell me.”

All I can do is let it go and drive the madness back inside.

“Right. Where are the invisibles usually stationed?”

“That’s hard to say, as I have not removed the blinders myself. I would assume that they’re waiting outside of this room.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” I say, turning myself into a pillar of steel and ice.

All sorts of debris litter the room, so I carefully step over each obstacle before reaching the door. When I touch the handle, a thought occurs to me. If the spell caused so much damage in this room, did it also affect the rest of the palace? If so, would everyone in the palace know what took place?

Now that I think about it, did I explicitly forbid Sir Magis from telling anyone about my request? I assumed that he would understand the need for secrecy involved here, but I didn’t require it as a part of the blood oath.

Before turning the handle, I look over my shoulder at Sir Magis, who is now tidying the papers on the old wooden desk. He’s moving lightly across the mess; quite calm and unbothered for someone keeping a secret from their king.

He wouldn’t have told the king of our plans, would he?

The paranoia echoing in my brain will not cease now that the seed is planted. I have to ask, “Did you tell anyone that we were attempting this spell?”

A crooked smile forms on his lips as he replies, “Of course not.”

“Do you plan to tell anyone?”

“Of course not,” he says again.

“Good, please keep it that way,” I assert, trying to evoke a tone that borders on threatening.

“It will be our little secret.” He taps his fingernails on the desk in a grim rhythm akin to a death march, which makes me ill at ease.

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