Page 119 of Blackwicket
It continued to call names, a current of them, chanted in a reverberating din, until at last I heard another familiar to me.
Isolde.
Upon speaking my mother’s name it grew silent, then, like the gentle mist of the sea, it moved on, lingering for a breath above the supine body of my sister, who reached a hand weakly up to touch it even as it billowed from the wrecked tower window.
The tower shook, the beams splitting as the wall the portal had existed in caved in, bringing the tower down with it. The floor pitched, the framework separating, Fiona’s body sliding towards the empty air.
“Hold on to me,” Victor rumbled, convulsing in a way that had become familiar to me. His Drudge was fatigued, the effort to sustain it for more than a few moments impossible. But those few moments were enough. He leaped as the tower crumbled, catching Fiona as she slipped helplessly over the edge.
Clumsy and fighting for form, Victor crashed back-first into the slope of the mansard roofline below, before tumblingonce to the porch cover, managing to land on his feet and jump aside of the falling debris.
The landing was jarring, and Victor was unable to keep hold of us. Our bodies hit the snowy ground with significant force, and we rolled several feet as Blackwicket House continued its disintegration, until the entire middle lay in shambles, its emptiness exposed.
I dragged myself to Fiona, who lay coughing, shaking in the cold. I was in pain, my ribs screaming as I maneuvered myself closer, pulling her onto my lap. Her eyes had been closed, but she opened them, searching for me, struggling to focus. Small wisps of magic slipped from her, and her breath came in a quick staccato.
Voices raised above the sound of the waves on the cliffs below, Thea and Jack rushing towards us, Ramsey and Hannah attempting to keep pace, their age impeding them.
Victor had made his way unsteadily to his feet, his right arm limp at his side, wrist turned at an awkward degree, broken.
“Do you want them to come?” he asked, voice bruised in his throat.
I nodded, eyes welling as I cradled Fiona against me, aware that the time for goodbyes was diminishing, unwilling to withhold something so precious from Thea and Jack.
Knowing my wishes, Victor made no effort to extend the last seconds my sister and I had alone. He limped his way toward us, knelt in silence, a knight bending knee in reverence to coming sorrow.
“Wait for Hannah, she can help you, she knows how… Hannah!” I screamed across the cliffs, knowing it was useless.
“No, Eleanora, please.” Fiona took in two sharp breaths, trying to find enough air to speak, “I don’t want it. I don’t.”
“You don’t have to die, Fiona.” I cried, the words untrue.
“Listen.” The plea was desperate, “The night after he gavemagic to William, Roark went to Dark Hall. He’s still there. I can feel him. You have to find him.”
There were too many questions I’d never be able to ask. I made room for only one.
“Who’s Roark’s father?” I wanted to know who else besides William she’d trusted enough, or who had been wicked enough to take advantage.
“He doesn’t have a father, Ellie,” She panted, her mouth bowing into a faint smile. “I made him in Dark Hall. Just like Mother made us. Dark Hall is in our blood. It’s who we are. It’s why the Fiend leaves us be.”
I hadn’t been prepared for this answer, for the implications.
“But Victor…” I looked up at him just as the answer became clear. Victor had a part of me permanently entangled in his magic.
“You can’t tell anyone, you can’t,” Fiona insisted. “No one can know what we are. Just find Roark before the Authority does. Before William.”
If the Dark Hall magic I’d unwittingly given to Victor served as an inoculation against the harms of the Fiend, it meant William would enjoy the same. The Fiend had never been a threat to him. It had all been pointless.
Fiona seized, blood bubbling from her lips, and I openly wept as Victor solemnly brought a hand to his face, pressing fingers into eyes gone bright with unshed tears. Thea and Jack had finally closed the impossible distance, and the boy stopped to take in the awful scene, huffing with exertion and grief, before he threw himself down, crumpling against Fiona’s emaciated, worn-out body, now empty of the curses that had been keeping her alive.
Thea knelt beside him, tenderly taking Fiona’s limp hand. My sister gazed at her, drinking the woman in with the awe of someone looking heaven in the eye.
“You were everything,” she muttered, the effort difficult. “Take care of our boy.”
Jack sobbed into her chest.
Thea, grief overwhelming her ability to speak, could only bring Fiona’s thin fingers to her lips, kissing her knuckles before pressing them against her tear-stained cheek.
My sister turned her head, resting it wearily against my chest, her breath slowed, and the desperate heaving calmed. Two tears fell from the corners of her green eyes, our mother’s eyes, as they closed. Along with the last of her life magic curling through her lips was a whisper that lingered long after she’d left us.
