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I remember empty eyes. Big, doe-like empty brown eyes. Nothing there. I remember the mangled body of a boy-child at my feet, the red line across his small neck, smiling at me as blood flowed out of it.
—Nyssa’s journal
Cecil lay on the bed, not moving, struggling to breathe, her body in a kind of stasis to slow down the poison that was eating her up. Parts of her flesh were bare for the world to see from the toxin that tried to dig its way into her before they put her into this stasis.
I’d only known her as a powerful witch and seeing her like this was heartbreaking. When I first saw her in this state, I learned I had more gifts than I originally thought when I had destroyed Maura’s living room just because I was screaming out in what Maura later told me was grief. I had never felt grief until Cecil.
I never felt many things until Cecil.
At least nothing I could remember feeling. My memories were a crazy, messy haze, sharing only fragments with me when it wanted to.
Cecil’s hair framed her face in clumps of what used to be reddish-brown hair. Now there was a dullness to the strands, just like in her face. She wasn’t there with us. She was off in whatever world she created in her mind, a world that hopefully helped her fight to live. Her skin used to be golden and warm, a perpetual tan. Now it was ashen with a layer of blood, grime, and sweat. I reached out and touched her hand. Cold.
A rattling noise came from her chest with each breath she took, but she was still holding on.
Maura, her aunt and leader of the coven, stood around with the rest of her coven sisters. They were preparing to pull Cecil out of stasis to try a treatment they thought would work to counteract the poison. They had also nearly reached their two-week limit. Cecil needed to come out or she never would.
I glanced at Maura and she gave me a nod to let me know they were ready to begin. I leaned over, my lips by Cecil’s ears.
“Baby-cakes, I need you to fight. You need to fight really hard to live when they lift the spell because we need you. I need you. I have so much to tell you.” I kissed her cheek and moved to the corner to give them room to work. Sandriel, their healer witch, stood by Cecil’s chest, ready to administer the antidote that better work.
The other witches surrounded her body, a low hum coming from them. I couldn’t make out any of the words, but I could feel the change in the space around them. The air charged up, growing heavy as they weaved their spell. Their tempo increased, and the air moved with it. At the spell’s peak, I could feel it wrap around Cecil, then all seven witches made a hand movement and the spell yanked at Cecil.
She woke up screaming and thrashing, trying to claw at her chest. The noise was so animalistic and painful that I almost thought she was about to shift into a beast. Her scream tore at me, and I pressed harder against the wall, knowing I couldn’t do a damn thing. Maura held down her shoulders while the other witches grabbed a limb to hold her still. Sandriel moved quickly, taking the needle and stabbing it into her arm.
Still, Cecil thrashed while they held her down.
“We need to calm her down,” Sandriel said. She looked at a witch and jerked her head towards a side table with a small dark blue box. “Jessica, get the anesthesia. It’s the one with the green cap.”
Jessica scrambled over, her face pale, her eyes wide and frantic. She fumbled with unzipping the case, and I wanted to do it for her because we didn’t have time for her to be all shaky. Only my promise to Maura to stay out of it kept me still. I didn’t have the ability to help them. My specialty was with energy not magic, and I didn’t want to disrupt their flow.
Finally, she got the damn thing unzipped and grabbed a needle, passing it to Sandriel. Sandriel uncapped it and stabbed Cecil with it, pushing down on the plunger. Cecil’s frantic movements slowed down seconds later.
Long moments passed until she finally stopped moving altogether, her chest still rattling as she breathed in and out.
In and out.
But then not in again.
“Shit,” Sandriel said and began ripping apart Cecil’s shirt. An open wound in her chest gushed and I nearly yelled at them to save her. I was choking on my heart. There someone lay, important to me, and I couldn’t do shit for her. I was useless. Powerless.
No.
Not ever again. I glanced around the room wishing an answer would just come to me on how to save her. To make her well and lively again. Not this broken person who laid before me.
“Nyssa,” Maura snapped, her eyes on me as she held a cloth over another bleeding wound. “I need you to leave.”
“What?”
“You’re worked up right now and it’s interfering. I need you out now.”
“Bu—”
“Get out,” she yelled, her eyes lighting with magic, her dark brown eyes no longer chocolate warm. They were a swarm of bees instead. “We can’t save her if you are here making it difficult. Your energy is disrupting our magic.”
I took in gulping breaths, my eyes going back to Cecil as she struggled so hard to breathe, to live.
“Nyssa.” The pain Maura pushed into my name caught my attention and I looked back up at her. “Please.”
Her eyes were as desperate as the word please. I nodded, my eyes going back and forth between Maura and Cecil.
“Okay.” I nodded again and woodenly made my way out of the room. I walked numbly through the halls until I reached the living room. I curled up on the couch and cried. I rarely cried, if at all, but Cecil was making me cry a lot lately. All I had to do was think about her face as it was now and compare it to how it was when she was healthy, and my damn eyes would leak on their own.
This was why I didn’t like to form connections, to create relationships. She had the power to destroy me and that was exactly what was happening. A part of me was still in that room, pleading with Cecil to live because I truly needed her. She’d wheedled her way into my heart and I couldn’t cast her out. She had a tight grip on me and what made it so easy was that I was already empty. She filled me and at the same time caused me so much pain.
Strong arms wrapped around me and lifted me into a lap. A large hand brushed through my hair. The familiar scent lulled me into sleepiness. I turned to look up into silver eyes. Black hair framed a strong and determined face. I reached up and rubbed my hand against the stubble that covered a sturdy jaw. I’d told him last week that I liked the beard and he’d kept it since.
“Hi,” he whispered in a deep voice.
“Hi,” I croaked.
“I heard about Cecil.”
“They’re still working on her.”
“I know.”
“I’m afraid, Landus.”
“I noticed.”
“I can’t lose her.”
He shifted me until I straddled in his lap and my head was tucked into his chest. He rubbed my back. I was tall compared to most women, but Landus had a way of making me feel childlike in size. He was just so big. “You won’t lose her. Cecil is strong.”
“I know she’s strong.”
“Then trust her.”
“It’s hard to. I couldn’t do anything but watch. I’m useless. I haven’t felt useless in so long.”
He continued to rub my back as I worked at preventing myself from continuing to cry like a blubbering baby. I felt like such a baby.
“Can I bring you home?”
I shook my head. “I want to stay here.”
“She’s in good hands. Sandriel is an amazing healer and I brought my own healer. He’s in there helping right now. With those two brilliant minds working together, they will keep her alive.”
“I want to stay.”
“Nyssa, please let me take you home. You can get some sleep and rest, and when you wake up, you can come back.”
“What if she dies?”
“She won’t.”
“How are you so sure?”
“Because she’s strong. She won’t let herself die, especially because you’re here and she adores you. She won’t leave because she isn’t ready to.”
I snorted and stood up, grabbing onto some of the anger his words made me feel. I didn’t even understand why I felt like that. His words felt like a lie.
“You’re wrong.”
“I’m not.” He stood up, trying to pull me into his embrace
I shoved him back, forcing him to stay in his seat.
“Yes, you are. You don’t know. People die all the fucking time and mostly without notice. One day they’re there, laughing and playing, and then the next day they aren’t. They are just dead. Gone. There is no one there for you anymore!”
I took in gasping breaths while Landus stared at me with an open mouth and wide eyes. I had truly surprised him. I didn’t even know that was possible. He was very much a go-with-it kind of man. Oh, you’re going to barge into a fight, sure I’ll join you; he’d held that kind of attitude since day one, and it was one of the things that made it so hard to resist him.
I needed to resist him.
But it was impossible.
“I thought you said you never lost a loved one. That you didn’t have anyone.”
I glared at him for a moment, letting the anger go. It took work but it was doable. I was misdirecting again. Cecil’s word. Misdirection. Misplacing my anger. I was a pro misdirector.
“I’m sorry, I’m not mad at you. I’m frustrated and I’m scared, and I tend to snap out at people when I’m like that.”
He tilted his head to the side, his eyes doing that thing again where he sees me, not just looks at me but really sees me in the deep dark depths of my being. My insides always warmed with that look and today was no different. He called to me and I wanted to reach out and touch him.
“Who did you lose?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must or you wouldn’t have said something like that.”
“I don’t know what I said. I just took my anger out on you.”
“You talked as if you understood what it’s like to lose someone or someones. It feels like it was more than one person.”
“Well, I don’t have an answer for you. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
“You know something.”
I shook my head and he must have seen something in my expression because his softened and he pulled me into him. This time I let him.
One of the witches came into the room and paused when she saw us. Her eyes flickered between Landus and me.
“Is she okay?” Landus asked, tightening his grip around me before I could pull away.
“For now. It’s a waiting game.” With that bit of simple news, she nodded and slipped out of the room.
“Let me take you home. We’ll know the moment something changes.”
My shoulders sagged and I nodded into his chest. He led me to his monstrous truck and tucked me in. He even buckled the seatbelt for me.
We didn’t say anything to each other on the ride back to my house. I spent most of it going over what the hell I said to him. I did sound like I knew what it felt like to lose people. I flipped through my memories, but the older ones were hard to focus on. They were more of emotions rather than images. I remembered hopelessness, so much of it, and then the sorrow. A crushing amount of sorrow. Then excitement and nervousness. Frustration. Again with the hopelessness. Then instincts. When I lived in the Woodlands, I lived off of my instincts. Everything I did was about survival. There were flashes of memories, of moments that stuck in my mind, but nothing really took hold until Cecil had found me.
So how did I know what it felt like to lose loved ones?
I rubbed at my chest, feeling an ache that felt empty and ancient, as if there was nothing to fill it. Cecil filled a part of it, I could feel that much, but I couldn’t understand what it was that I was feeling.
“Are you okay?” Landus asked, his eyes on me despite the busy traffic. It was late evening now, the sun just starting to set. Summertime was when the days were long, the moon sluggish to come up.
“I’m fine,” I said and turned up the air conditioner.
He focused back on the road, confident in his skills to never rear end someone.
I had met Landus only about two weeks ago and yet it felt so much longer. He quickly wormed his way into my life. Of course, it didn’t help to have a megalomaniac out there trying to destroy four different factions of beings for revenge. Fricken Baron. He was the reason Cecil was the way she was now. And the reason I could feel over seventy gates in the city when there were normally only ten or so. I’d spent the last week exploring as many gates as possible in hopes of finding Baron or what his plans were. He’d been in hiding since we retrieved the beings he kidnapped and ruined whatever spell he was trying to cast, but he couldn’t stay hidden forever. Soon he would come back out of his hole and I wanted to be there when he did. I wanted to tear him apart, limb by limb, and force him to eat them.
I sighed and focused on the passing scenery before I lost control of whatever powers I had. They have grown in strength in the last few days. My control and ability to manipulate energy in dangerous ways were increasing, and I didn’t know why.
Scratch that. I had a good idea why. I might be the mythical beast known as a phoenix. And if I was, I was so screwed. Especially if Maura’s translations of the journal she’d found were right.
I glanced over at Landus briefly and then back out the window. The silence filled with my secrets was heavy but durable.
I am a survivor. I can do this.
