Page 18

I jump off the horse. “You’d really do anything for this cure?”

Calix leans towards me. “You’re not planning to hold me hostage, I hope.”

I grab that fake-fancy face with a bright smile and an eager shiver. “Aquamare can be used in place of the fungi. I’ll find it, and in return you’ll unmask yourself.”

He rips himself out of my hold, and I wade into the swamp, waist-deep, searching.

Calix stirs on his horse and I feel the heat of his stare as he watches me. “How are you so sure this will work?”

“Grandfather was once poisoned like your brother. Also the wrong time of year for the fungi. He’d studied water-roots in depth and though they look different, the way they break down is the same. It’s this burst of poison they both release that’s the antidote.”

“Why don’t the vitalians know of this?”

“Back then they wouldn’t listen to him, a par-linea.” I let that word linger a longer moment. Let it sink in: it’s a par-linea who will be healing his brother. “This cure survives only through Grandfather’s notebooks and... well, me.”

He shifts tightly in his saddle again.

I yank and pull at weeds, even hold my breath and submerge in the murky, cold depths. It takes an hour before I find the yellowed root, and I brandish it high, waving from the water. I wade back, weighted by drenched clothes and tangling reeds, but I’m laughing. “Your brother is saved. Take off your mask!”

Calix looks towards the hills in the distance. “There’s no point.” The sun catches on the ridgeline, sinking beyond it. “I won’t be seeing you again.”

At the edge of the swamp, I stop. The way he says those words. Like a promise.

The mud sucks around my boots, rooting me there. My heart is banging tightly in my chest. I squeeze the aquamare, fighting an achy swoop in my belly.

“Since I won’t be seeing you again,” I choke out finally, “there’s no threat in me knowing the you behind your mask.”

Calix is cold. “You won’t like him. Or perhaps you will, but for the wrong reasons.”

“I don’t care about your face! I want to know who’s beyond the magic. I want to know who I’ve... spent this time with.”

“We’ve only shared a few moments.”

His answer comes too quick, too pointed.

I steel myself against the sting. “Moments can be real too, if you want them to be.”

Calix readjusts his grip on the reins.

I keep speaking, “But they can only be truly real if you let yourself be vulnerable. If you can expose your true self. Without that, what we’ve had will never be deeper than banter and rivalry.”

These words have him stiffening. “What?”

I throw up my hands, scratching my face with the aquamare. “I thought you wanted to be friends.”

He turns his horse before me and grabs the aquamare. His gaze holds mine too tight. His voice vibrates too deep. “I can never have friends.”

That’s it. He turns his back and rides off, and I’m left wobbling in the marsh, watching him.

Until he is gone and there’s no elegant cloak, no sharp tongue. No trace of his shadow.

Just the stillness of something abruptly ended, and the ache of something I don’t... have the words to name. A something that lingers.

The next week.

The next month.

Even three years later...