Edge of Pathos (The Conjurors Series Book 4) (25 page)

Valerie reached into
her pocket to grip a chip from the pathway of The Horseshoe that she kept with
her for her travels between worlds.

“No you don’t,”
Reaper said.

He gripped her
wrist, and as the Atacama Desert faded into the guilds at the heart of Arden,
she screamed from the contact with his skin.

Valerie thrust
upward with Pathos, and Reaper was forced to release her to block her blow with
his scythe. Around her, The Horseshoe was alive with the sounds of battle.

The fighting in
Plymouth had spilled into Silva, and now the Fractus and the Fist were present
in full force. Arrows of light rained down on Fist and Fractus alike, turning
dark weapons back to simple metal.

Valerie saw Skye
trampling enemies with his hooves, but before she could make sense of what she
was seeing, Reaper was attacking again.

“You wanted this to
end today. I’m ready to grant your wish,” he said.

Reaper’s scythe
flashed, and it was all Valerie could do to evade his blows.

“Val, wake up! It’s
like you’re fighting underwater!”

Cyrus’s voice was
barely loud enough for her to make out over the sounds of the battle, but it
brought her back to herself as Reaper raised his scythe and brought it down
with the full force of his magic.

Valerie threw her
own power into her counter-blow, and when Pathos met the scythe, her entire
body rang from the impact. A dark crack appeared in Pathos at the same time as
a fissure of light appeared in his scythe, turning it to ash in Reaper’s hand.

The dark crack
spread down her blade to the hilt, and then Pathos shattered into a billion
sparks.

Valerie couldn’t
fathom that Pathos was gone. She looked from her hand to Reaper, too late to
see that he gripped a dagger in his other hand. He slammed it into her heart in
one powerful thrust, and Valerie saw Cyrus’s face contort before her world
narrowed to a point, and then was swallowed by darkness.

Valerie didn’t know
what it would be like to be absorbed into the ether, with her parents, but she
doubted that it included a shard of ice lodged in her heart. That was how she
knew that there was a flicker of life within her.

Her vivicus power
rose like a rising tide, spreading from her heart through her veins to every
part of her body. Every time she’d saved someone with her power, it had almost
consumed her. She thought she’d drown in it, or be swept away by it. And
always, there was pain, as if something incalculably precious was being torn
from her.

This time, releasing
her power was simple and painless. Her magic hummed within her, winding itself
around the shard of ice in her heart and melting it bit by bit.

She became aware of
the sensation in her fingers first. They were interlaced with Thai’s, she knew
from the scar on one of his knuckles. He was pumping his own magic into her,
amplifying and containing her vivicus power.

Her body ached
everywhere, and an acute pain in her chest made her worry that Reaper’s dagger
was still inside her.

Then she heard
sounds, a low bustle that reminded her of the Oakland Children’s Hospital. She
cracked her eyes open, half expecting to see Dr. Freeman leaning over her,
listening to her heart with his stethoscope.

Instead, she saw a
large tent set up with neat rows of cots. Thai’s grip on her hand relaxed a
fraction. His face was gray, and Valerie pulled her hand away, guilty that she
had stolen so much of his strength to heal herself. But he grabbed her hand
back and gripped it tighter.

“Don’t you dare,” he
whispered.

“Another heroic
battlefield rescue that you were unconscious for,” Cyrus said, and she turned
her head and saw her best friend in the chair next to her. “Why I’m not the guy
who gets the girl is beyond me.”

Cyrus sounded tired,
and his jokes were forced, but he was there, even though Thai was holding her
hand. She could guess what it cost him.

“Reaper?” Valerie
croaked.

“In Plymouth, we
think,” Cyrus said. “Sanguina and I attacked him together, and I called forth
as much light as I could. I think he would have killed us, but Willa set off a
whole bunch of explosions around that fountain that used to lead to Plymouth,
and he left to close the hole she created. We took off with you while he was
distracted.”

Valerie tried to sit
up, but the effort made the room spin, and she collapsed back on her pillow. She
touched her chest with a gasp, expecting to find a shard of Reaper’s dagger
still lodged in her heart, but all that was there was the bump of what promised
to be a fantastic scar.

Involuntarily, she
reached for Pathos, before remembering that it was gone, destroyed by Reaper’s
scythe. Its loss wasn’t anything like losing a person, but it was more than a
broken weapon to her. It was her connection to her mother, and a reminder when
she doubted herself that this ancient, powerful sword had chosen her to wield
it.

Pathos had had
dozens of owners over the centuries, and had survived thousands of battles. But
she had broken it. An old, horrible feeling clawed at her heart that she was
meant to be alone because everything she touched suffered.

There was some truth
to it. Hadn’t she failed Midnight, her father, Dulcea, and Henry? They were
only a few of many more who had been hurt because of choices she’d made, or
times when she hadn’t been strong enough. Her eyes drifted to Cyrus, whose
heart she’d obliterated, and then to Thai. Would he be next?

She pulled her hand
from Thai’s, and this time, he let her go. She couldn’t stand their love,
didn’t deserve it. She knew that the worst part of herself was surfacing, but
she didn’t have the energy to fight it. It was time for the Fist to find a new
leader. She’d done her best to defeat Reaper and hadn’t come close. But she
knew no one would let her quit, not now. The thought was so overwhelming that
Valerie squeezed her eyes shut.

“I’m really tired,”
she said. “Can you guys leave me so I can rest for a while?”

“Sure, Val,” Cyrus
said. “I’ll tell Skye and Chisisi that you’ll talk to them later, when you’ve
had a chance to recover a little.”

 “You can do
better than this,” Thai said, and she heard a thread of anger in his voice.

Even with her eyes
shut, she knew that he was still there, as if he hoped that she would get mad
at his comment and fight back.

Instead,
Valerie found that she could summon unconsciousness and draw its numbness
around her like a blanket, so she did.

Valerie’s dreams
were odd fragments, shards of time that contained memories too painful to touch
when she was awake. Her memories were intermingled with Henry’s, and she
relived with him the loss of his mother and father, and countless nights of
terror from Zunya and Sanguina.

Wherever he was, did
he see her memories of fending off thugs when she’d lived beneath the overpass
in Oakland, foster homes where she’d been beaten or locked up, or each moment
when she’d lost someone she’d loved?

The pain kept
mounting and mounting, so intense that her head ached. It was more acute than
even the stabbing pain in her chest from the wound Reaper had given her. Had
Henry seen that, too? Did he know she’d almost died?

Abruptly, her
memories and Henry’s memories were wiped away, and Valerie knew she was fully
in her twin’s mind. He was back in Babylon, on the top stone tier of flowers,
staring down at the lake, which perfectly reflected the trees around it.

His self-hatred had
reached a crescendo, and then it evaporated all at once. She saw his decision.
She didn’t even have the chance to scream before Henry threw himself off the
edge, not into the water, but onto the rocks beside it.

Valerie was falling,
falling, falling, and she sat up in bed with a gasp when Henry’s body smashed
into the rocks, expelled from his mind.

Valerie reached for
him, and her certainty that their connection was one that could not be broken
so easily obliterated any other possibility. Her mind found his, so faint that
it was almost an echo, but completely open to her. His thoughts flowed through
her as if they were her own.

He was almost gone,
and in his final breaths, he was overpowered by the need to see his sister, his
only family, one last time, to look into her eyes when he passed into the
ether. If she could be there, she’d see that he was sorry, understand how much
he loved her, know that he had to die because he was a plague on the universe.

Valerie had taken a
wobbly step out of bed when her body hummed, touched by magic that was within
her and around her at the same time. She heaved as she was racked with waves of
nausea.

The bed she gripped
faded, and she collapsed on the wet sand of the lake in Babylon. For the second
time in her life, blood had called blood, and it was a tie that overcame even
the magic that Reaper had sewn into the fabric of the molecules in her body.

Henry’s broken form
was bleeding on soft, green grass, where he’d rolled after crashing on the
rocks. He didn’t move when he saw her, but the relief in his mind flowed
through hers. He couldn’t let go without seeing her first. The force of that
need had dragged her to his side.

“I won’t let you
die,” Valerie said, kneeling at his side and summoning whatever magic remained
in her after using her vivicus power to save her own life.

“You can use your
power to fix my body, but I’ll always be broken inside,” Henry said, his words
barely audible. “Please forgive me, and let me leave you.”

“I can fix it all,”
she said, as a strange sensation of weightlessness enveloped her.

Valerie always
thought after she used her vivicus power, her magic was gone until she built it
back up, but she was wrong. More magic than Valerie imagined could live in the
entire universe, much less inside of her, filled her. It was light and love,
and she would embrace it even if she lost her connection to the logical part of
herself by using too much of her vivicus power, like Darling.

She squeezed Henry’s
hand and brushed his cheek with a kiss that released her power into his body,
joining with his. Their combined magic collided with a low boom that rippled
out around them.

Valerie gasped as
her magic tore through her in a torrent. Without Thai there to help control it,
the pain was intense, but it worked its way through Henry’s system. Her
connection with Henry’s mind let her see her power at work more intimately than
she ever had before. It stitched together broken bones, healed torn places
within him that were internally bleeding from the impact of the rocks.

But the magic didn’t
stop there. It traveled through the circuits of Henry’s brain, rerouting,
rewiring. She saw broken connections and healed them. Places where the flow of
chemicals in Henry’s brain had been choked off opened back up.

Finally, even her
newly discovered store of magic was used up, and she collapsed backward on the
grass next to Henry, entirely depleted. She managed to turn her head to look at
him, and the sight was familiar. When she’d been initiated into her guild,
she’d had a vision of the future where she’d seen Henry from exactly this angle
before he vanished from her mind, gone forever.

But little things
were different from her vision. Instead of smiling at her in resignation,
Henry’s eyes were watery. And her connection with his mind was intact, though
it felt like an entirely new thing. His self-loathing and fear were muted, and
in their place was a tentative peace. It coexisted with grief and pain, but in
an entirely new way.

Henry
was telling her something, but Valerie couldn’t hear the words. She watched his
mouth and finally realized that he was reciting the words of the prophecy he’d
received from an Oracle three years ago.

Over mountains, across seas,

Through despair, into bliss,

Though pain will bring you to your knees,

You’ll find the answer you seek in a kiss.

“You’re the answer,
Val. You can heal more than me. You’re going to make the whole universe better
somehow,” he said. “And I’m going to help you.”

Henry’s
words should have added to the burden of responsibility she always carried with
her, but right now, she was weightless, and she let Henry’s hope flow from his
mind into hers, buoying her up.

When Valerie awoke,
she was back in her cot in the long tent. Before she could question if she’d
dreamed her entire encounter with Henry, she saw her brother sleeping in the
chair next to her, still wearing the bloody, torn clothes he’d been in when she
saved him.

She thought she’d
been drained before, but she’d been stronger than she knew. Now, she couldn’t
summon the strength to even let Henry know she’d awakened.

Her mind was as
sluggish as her body, and she struggled to remember little details, like when
her hair had grown long again, or why Nightingale was nearby, obviously caring for
her when he’d made it clear that he wouldn’t heal her, the last she remembered.

In place of her
memories was a connection to something or someone else. At first, she couldn’t
place what it was, but after a minute, she figured it out. She could sense Darling,
the only other vivicus in the universe, as if he lived in a piece of her heart.
She hadn’t seen him all year, and it was a relief to know that he was okay. She
didn’t understand what had triggered their sudden connection, but before she
could think about it more closely, Henry’s eyes opened and he saw her.

“Nightingale! She’s
awake!” Henry called, moving to her side.

Nightingale’s cool
green hand was on her back, helping her sit. He brought a drink to her lips and
helped her sip it. She coughed at the taste, but he kept pouring it down her
throat.

The potion hummed as
it made its way down, and a little of her energy returned. She searched the
room for Thai, and saw him assisting another Master Healer with a patient.

He looked over his
shoulder at her and briefly shut his eyes in relief. But before he turned back
to his patient, she saw him shake his head once, his lips compressed tightly.
Henry followed her gaze.

“He’s mad at me
because of Tan,” Henry said, staring at his shoes.

“Not you. Me.
Because I was giving up, and he knew it,” Valerie said.

Getting the words
out required about as much effort as running a marathon, but Nightingale’s
potion was helping. It was like being hit by a bus instead of a train.

A giant red bird
entered the room and came to rest beside her. She stared at him. Why was he so
familiar?

“You have brought
Henry back to us,” he said, his black eyes alight.

Valerie turned a
questioning gaze to Henry.

“Who?” she managed
to ask.

Henry began biting
his thumbnail.

“What’s wrong with
her, Dasan?” he asked the bird. “Why doesn’t she know you?”

Dasan passed a wing
over Valerie’s head, and from the buzzing between her ears, she guessed that he
was using some kind of magic on her. She trusted that Henry wouldn’t let him
near her if he was dangerous, so she remained still.