Windswept

2. Skin Deep-2

Maris suppresses a smile and closes her eyes. I deny a shudder of nervousness and force out a long, slow exhale.

“May I begin?” Maris asks, barely tilting her face in my direction.

I open my mouth. Close it. Yes, I mentally project, and Maris squeezes my fingers. It takes every ounce of self-control left inside me to not jerk away.

“Air and water join us here, use our light, and make a sphere. Seven colors round and round, shield our circle, hide our sounds,” Maris commands. She repeats the incantation two more times. The air warms and thickens. A growing charge pulses through my arms like an electric current.

Maris falls silent. Everything does. The mist continues to drizzle, blanketing the muddy earth and barren trees, but the steady hiss has vanished. Even though we sit within a few steps from the creek, I can’t hear it. With a start, I realize it must work both ways. No sounds in. No sounds out.

“We are safe to speak, but it won’t last long.” Maris slips her hand from mine. Her charcoal skin is pale in places where I’d unwittingly tightened my grip. Will I ever learn how to use the horse’s strength deliberately?

I rub my clammy, filthy hands together, trying to make them warm enough to stop shaking. They’re sweaty with nervousness, and the rust-colored film on my hands rolls into beads. It’s not gritty like the dirt I clung to when I climbed out of the ravine at Wildwood. It’s smooth, and presses flat into tiny flakes wherever I push down.

This is not earth.

This is dried blood.

David Andrews’s blood, caked in the webbing between my fingers and crusted beneath my nails.

The sound of his last, sputtering breath echoes in my brain. I let out a cry and wipe my fingers violently against my dress. Copper streaks the wrinkled white linen within seconds. The color leaves my hands, but there’s no relief from its weight, its smell.

“What’s wrong?” Jayce’s voice is an octave too high. “Is that blood?” She sniffs at the air. Her pupils dilate as she arrives at her own conclusion.

I can’t summon the focus to answer—can’t stop trying to make my hands clean. From the expression on Maris’s face, she’s seeing the memory of me strangling Vanessa’s husband. The image of life leaving his eyes. The nightmare I can’t wake from.

Her gaze trains on Asher’s mark, and she brings an open palm to the brand. Heat crawls across my chest, but I’m frozen in place. My arms don’t heed the mental command to bat her hand away. Two of the circles turn black, shimmering like the coming night, and then fade back into the appearance of an old scar.

“When did this happen?” She regards me with new distance, studying my face like I’m a complete stranger.

“Vanessa tricked me into believing her husband was attacking her. She told me he would kill her. She set me up. She made me believe . . . I thought he was Asher.” The confession tumbles from me, heavy and slipping.

“You’ve killed someone?” Jayce asks, her throat constricting around the words.

“She has taken two lives. Two of these rings belong to her now,” Maris says. Her fingers curl. She stares past me. I risk a glimpse of Jayce, whose face falls from brazen to defeat within a single second.

“Tell me about the first,” Maris orders, her mouth forming a grim line.

“An Unseen attacked Vanessa in the woods. I got between them. He picked me up by my throat and I . . . exploded,” I whisper. “I didn’t want to kill him, but he kept coming.” The memory plays in front of my open eyes. “If I hadn’t killed him he would’ve killed me.”

“Doesn’t matter. She’s useless.” Jayce shakes her head and mutters under her breath.

“I’m not useless.” My fingernails dig into my palms.

“Yes. You are,” Jayce growls.

“Enough,” Maris says. “This is Hope’s fault. She chose to keep Tanzy in the dark, and this is the price. Tanzy, you can’t kill anyone else, Seen or Unseen, for any reason.”

“A third kill, and you belong to Asher,” Jayce adds, focusing her icy glare on my face.

All the air is sucked from my lungs. I was under the impression the three circles had everything to do with Spera. How could I have missed this? A mental path quickly links the two lives I took, and arrives at one common denominator: Vanessa. She’s masterminded every move I’ve made since waking with the horse’s Vires blood coursing through my veins. She must know what will happen if I take a third life.

It’s an insurance policy, I realize. If I won’t use the strength for Asher, I can’t use it at all.

“This changes everything,” Maris says. The note of worry in her voice makes my muscles flood with preparation.

“What do we do?” Jayce asks, straightening.

“Tanzy can’t be trusted to defend herself, so a possible confrontation must be avoided at all costs. It is not safe to move far in the dark, especially with no strategy. For tonight, stay close to the riverbank. I can cast a shield to make you harder to find. The best time to move while this close to Asher is at first light. Hope will send word to Reese to arrange for emergency transport for dawn tomorrow. We will meet you here with word of how, and then Tanzy will go directly to Reese. Tanzy will be safest among other candidates, and Reese is best at teaching control, which Tanzy needs more than anything.” Maris speaks to Jayce as if I’m not present and don’t have a say.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Heat erupts in my middle. I may need Jayce more than I’m willing to admit, but I will not play the pawn in anyone’s agenda again. “I’m not leaving without Lucas.”

“I strongly suggest you reconsider.” Maris’s eyes bear into mine. “Lucas is the perfect bait. He will live as long as you do. Staying alive is the best way to ensure his survival, and the best way to do so is to stay out of sight. Lucas would not want you to come for him, not with this high a risk.”

The truth of it is nearly crippling. How can I save Lucas if I can’t kill whatever is guarding him? I chose to follow Jayce in order to keep my options open. In less than an hour, I’ve lost them all.

“If anyone can keep you hidden, Reese can,” Jayce says, softness returning to her voice. “She has a safe house for candidates in the Outer Banks—Carova, specifically. Where the wild horses live.”

“How many candidates are there?” I ask, even though my mind is still fixated on the house up the hill instead of the safe house.

“Seven, at present. Including you.”

“Doing what, exactly?”

“We research and train. And mostly, we stay alive,” she answers.

I imagine us around a table, taking tallies over breakfast of who killed who in our past lives. How will they feel about me? About Spera, who never lost, who was burned alive beneath Asher’s fiery touch? How are we all supposed to live under one roof when we’ve been molded to kill one another?

I swallow. “And everyone gets along?”

“We have a common goal and a common enemy. Sometimes that’s all it takes.” Jayce shrugs. “We try to recover any newly awoken candidates before Asher does. We want to find the rest of the Artius six before they do.”

“The Artius six?” I ask.

“The six candidates from Spera’s life. You, me, and Vanessa are all we’ve identified so far. There are three more out there.”

“What’s so special about the other five?” I ask.

Jayce quirks a brow. “Hey, you might be the Vessel, but Reese says each of the Artius six has a part to play in finding and opening the veil. We’re still figuring out what. We’re searching for the ritual scrolls. The more information we find, the better chance we have of figuring a way out,” she says.

“There’s no way out.” I stare at my hands, at the remnants of dried blood I can’t completely pry from beneath my fingernails.

“There might be,” Jayce says.

I roll my eyes.

“Regardless, the longer you stay out of Asher’s grasp, the better,” Maris interrupts, and then turns her attention to me. “Spera, I have something for you.”

“My name isn’t Spera,” I murmur. Spera knew what to do, who to trust. I’ve spent the last eighteen years of my life as a puppet, and I’m still not wholly sure who holds the strings above me.

“Spera is so much more than a name,” Maris answers. She reaches a hand inside a fold of her cape and pulls out a black cylinder. The tube is made of stone, and is colder than the winter night.

“What is this?” I inspect the tube on my palm.

“Purified Tenix. Do not open it here. This is for you alone. Open the vial after you’ve reached the safe house.”

“How do I use it?”

“It’s not a matter of how. It’s a matter of why. You’ll know what to do when the time comes,” she says. “Now, I need to return to my element, and you need to rest.”

Maris raises her hands, and Jayce mimics her. I clutch the stone vial, bite back a line of questions, and elect to stay silent as Maris begins to speak again. “Seven colors wove the spell, elements you served us well. Return you now from where you came, with thanks until we call again.” She repeats the chant twice more. The prism barrier dissolves into mist, and fades into the clearing night.

Maris walks into the heart of the creek. Submerged to her waist, she twists at her hip to look back to me, regarding my face for a full second before speaking. “She is around you all the time. Don’t forget it.”

My mother, bound to air. Now a piece of wind and sky once more. Ever present, ever invisible. In truth, not much about our relationship has changed. I wrap my arms around myself, rebuking a sudden chill, determined to blame it on the winter air, which has plunged ten degrees now that the storm has passed.

Maris slips into the water until she completely disappears under the surface. A turquoise flash erupts from somewhere below, and the creek resumes its steady melody. In Maris’s absence, the night is considerably darker. A nearly full moon peeks out from wisps of clouds, casting enough light to discern solid from sky, and to betray the worry in Jayce’s eyes. I ignore it, my gaze instead traveling up the long hill—toward Vanessa’s house and Lucas.

“Don’t even think about it,” Jayce warns.

“Too late.” I glance down at the stone vial. Can I use purified Tenix to save him? I wouldn’t even know how to start.

“If you go barging in there right now, all you’ll do is kill again or be killed, and then Lucas is as good as dead.” She pauses and lets out a hard sigh, which vaporizes in front of her face. “I’m with you. We can’t just leave Lucas here without trying to get him out at least once. But our best bet is to make our move just before dawn. We’ll need to be in and out, and back here in time to meet Maris again. I will give it one shot. One. But you have to wait until I say go.”

Heavy silence follows in the absence of my answer, testing the weight of our fragile bond. I look away from her and to the creek. Moonlight shatters against the moving water, splitting everywhere it lands. My path forks here, too. If Jayce helps me rescue Lucas, will I owe it to her to travel to the safe house?

“Well you’re not running up the hill. Does that mean you’re going to wait?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Just promise me you’ll tell me when you do,” she says.

“I don’t make promises.” The thought escapes me before I can rein it in.

“I appreciate the honesty,” she answers with a snort. Jayce moves closer to the wall of brush and bramble, and gathers a pile of leaves and sand into a bed.

I don’t know how to get back to the house, other than heading uphill. My feet are b****y. My limbs tremble with fatigue and the aftershocks of too much adrenaline. What good would I be alone against Asher, Vanessa, and Dana? The weight of the day, of what I’ve lost, of what I’ve done, sinks me where I stand. It takes every ounce of remaining strength to maneuver the few steps to drier ground.

I find a softer place along the foot of the wall and take a seat on the dirt, tucking my numb, torn feet beneath my legs. Feeling comes back like the blade of a knife, and draws a howling line up each arch. I clasp my hands over my toes and rub the sting away.