During my fencing lessons with Nox’s father, I’d gotten used to being kicked, punched, and even sliced across the arm with a rapier.
I’ve healed black eyes and, once, a cut on my arm that stretched from my shoulder right down to my wrist. Still, the wounds were harmless and most of the bleeding came from my nose as I tried to heal myself during the night. They were painful, but surface level.
Asden knew how to teach me a lesson without ever really hurting me, which is more than I can say for anyone else.
When the ghost’s blade rips into my skin, it’s nothing like that.
The blood is instant, soaking into my shirt, and the pain is searing. White hot, like I’m being burned from the inside out.
It doesn’t feel like a blade, it feels like fire.
My knees buckle and I slump, expecting to hit the ground, but instead I find myself in Nox’s arms. His warm hands wrap around me.
He presses a hand against my bloody shirt and I see the unmistakable grimace on his face.
“I’m fine,” I manage to choke out.
“For someone who keeps so many secrets, you’re an awful liar,” he says, voice stretched thin.
“I’m not lying.”
The air feels chill.
“See?” Nox says, shaking his head. “Awful.”
He presses his hand harder to my stomach.
I will myself to get up, to do something other than just lie here on this broken bridge, in the middle of a devouring forest.
If Asden were here, he wouldn’t let me do nothing.
Get up, he’d say, with no words but a raised brow and a nod that I could easily translate. You’re stronger than this. Fight.
“Can you heal yourself?” Nox asks.
“I’m not sure I have the energy,” I admit.
Using magic takes so much focus and strength. When I was younger, it would exhaust me for days. I know now that’s because I was drawing from myself, but as I close my eyes and try to draw from the wind, I lose focus.
The air is too dry and I can’t find the strength to channel it.
I can feel my energy draining with every drop of blood.
“Use mine,” Nox says suddenly.
He wraps his hand around mine in a vise grip.
Even through the fabric of my gloves, I feel him. The energy of him is like waves rolling across me. I can taste it on my tongue a little.
Salt and winter berries.
“Take it,” Nox says, offering himself to me. “We don’t have another choice.”
When I realize he wants me to siphon his energy to heal myself, I panic. The last time I tried anything like that was with the man at the tavern who attacked us, and I nearly killed him.
I can’t risk that again.
“I mean it,” Nox presses, sensing my hesitation. “We need you to survive these trials, so you can earn whatever power is out here. Without that, we don’t stand a chance against Seryth and your mother.”
I know he’s right, but I’m still scared.
I don’t want to hurt him. I’ve been the cause of Nox’s pain before and the weight of it is almost too much to bear.
“Selestra,” he says.
His voice is soft and deep, and the way he looks at me tells me, impossibly, that he knows just what I’m thinking and he understands my doubts.
His hands tighten around mine.
“Take what you need from me. Please.”
So I do.
I take all that he gives me, absorbing his strength, drinking it in like the finest honey juice until my whole body thrums.
I feel strong.
A simple blade cannot hurt me.
A single piece of metal cannot break me.
I am Selestra Somniatis, I tell myself. I am descended from a goddess.
I whisper it inside my mind, over and over like a prayer.
I look down at my torn shirt and the skin begins to stitch together.
I blink in disbelief. I’ve never healed so quickly before. A wound like this would usually take me hours—maybe even days, back when I was younger—and yet here I can see the threads of myself pulling together before my very eyes.
It takes only moments.
Nox is strong and that strength courses through me like lightning. I can feel every note of him inside me.
His hand grips tighter around mine.
The power funnels between us, everything he is slipping over me in a blanket. I sense the edge of it. Of him. I teeter beside it, letting the warmth fill me.
Then I pull back.
Nox’s breath shudders against me and his hand hovers by my cheek. Thumb so close to the corner of my lip that if I close my eyes, I could almost trick myself into feeling him for real.
Into letting him feel me.
His eyes are such a deep, unyielding brown.
“Are you okay?”
His voice is thick and ragged.
He looks down at my shirt, still bloody. The fabric sticks unflatteringly to my stomach.
“I’m okay,” I say. “Thanks to you.”
I look at Nox, trying to spy any signs of injury or weakness. Something off in his eyes or an ashen color to his skin.
“How are you?” I ask.
“Dizzy,” he admits. He runs a hand through the messy black of his hair. “But you didn’t drain my soul, so I consider that a victory.”
“You’re welcome.”
Nox stands, swaying a little, and I move to steady him.
He pauses at my touch, eyes shooting to my hand. The moment stills and I feel my heart begin to race.
Then Nox clears his throat and picks up his fallen sword, moving slowly away from me. My blood glistens on the blade, where it dripped from my wound.
“What’s the score now?” he asks.
“The score,” I repeat.
“For saving each other’s lives.” His lips quirk upward. “I’m guessing I’m in the lead.”
I roll my eyes. “Not likely. You’re as bad as a damsel.”
Nox grins. “Guess that makes you my knight in shining armor.”
I laugh at the sly tilt of his eyebrows, forgetting for a moment where we are and all the horrors around us.
Unfortunately, the forest doesn’t let me forget for long.
I turn to the sound of footsteps, so many I almost mistake it for a rumble of thunder. Then I hear the crack of trees falling in their wake, see the tops perish to the ground and tumble over the cliff edge to make way for a small army.
A dozen dead warriors now stand at the foot of the bridge, swords drawn and bones jutting from their slashed armor.
We take off in a run, just as the dead slump onto the bridge. It staggers with the weight of them and Nox lags behind, weakened.
I grab ahold of his hand and pull him onward until we reach the edge of the bridge.
“Up ahead!” Nox says, still breathless. He gestures with the compass.
North.
It should be our safety. Or, knowing how sadistic my aunt can be, yet another doom.
When we come to a stop at the top of a great waterfall, I see it’s the latter.
It gushes like a fierce, salivating beast, colliding into a pool of dark blue water below.
“We have to jump,” Nox says.
“What is it with you wanting to jump off things all the time?” I ask. “First the Floating Mountain and now this. Can’t you keep your feet on the ground?”
Nox takes his sword strap off. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Where’s your sense of self-preservation?”
“I don’t need it,” he says, grabbing my hand. “I’ve got you to save me.”
He pulls me off the edge and we hit the water below like knives, slicing through the blue.
I brace myself for it to be cold, but the lake is warm and welcoming.
I half expect there to be some kind of monster lurking beneath, or for flesh-eating fish to begin chasing us, or the weeds to tangle me up and drown me at the bottom.
Instead, my feet touch down on soft soil that springs me back to the surface.
Nox is already swimming back toward the waterfall and I follow him underneath to find a small ledge. He heaves himself up and holds out a hand for me, which I take gladly, but as soon as I’m out of the lake water, I feel the bitter cold of the forest gnawing at my skin.
I shiver, wrapping my arms around myself to keep warm.
Above us, the cavernous ceiling glistens with orbs of blue light, like hundreds of tiny tinted scars have embedded into the rocks. The ledge shimmers with a layer of thin water that looks like silk, sliding around the edges of my boots. It ripples in some sort of arrow.
I squint at it. The split curves up toward the star-freckled ceiling, dripping with water. I step forward to see an opening. It’s wide enough to slip through.
“Is that some kind of cave?” Nox asks. “Tell me you’re not thinking about going through there.”
I am.
I can’t explain it, but something about it draws me in, and the longer I stare at the jagged rocks, the more I inch forward. There is something in there, calling to me. I hear it on the echoes of the wind that whistle into the gap.
“I’m voting no,” Nox says. “I’d rather head back out there and face off with the ghost army.”
I hold out a hand, palm up to ask for the one lifeline Eldara left us. “Compass,” I say, not taking my eyes off the cave opening.
Nox drops it into my hand with a sigh. “Really,” he says, grimacing toward the cave. “We don’t need to make it so easy for your aunt to kill us.”
I look down at the compass, and when I do, I can’t help but smile. The needle is resolute, unshaken, as it points toward the inscription.
Magic is never lost to be found.
“North,” I say in a breath.
If Eldara wanted us to find something in this forest, then it’s in there.
I know it. I feel it.
Nox groans, but I don’t stand around to listen to him object.
I move forward, across the clear ripples of water and toward the thing that calls to me from the darkness.