Page 10

Chapter ten

O delle wrestled down the panic rising in her throat, threatening to strangle her. She was with an immortal sorcerer who had lived long before electricity and modern comforts. They could figure out wilderness. She looked around her to see how said sorcerer was faring and grimaced.

Antony lay curled in the snow, short breaths panting out of ashen lips and clouding the chill air. If he had looked exhausted before their near-death encounter, he was barely conscious now. Odelle crouched next to him, and he feebly pushed at the ground to sit up. She helped him with an arm around his shoulder.

“I take it that you weren’t thinking about the Sanctuary when we went into the portal?” Antony looked around him. “Or did the pocket dimension develop weather in the hour we were gone?”

“I was actually thinking about getting as far away from the Shadows as possible,” Odelle explained. “On the bright side, I think I succeeded on that front.”

Antony sagged against her where he sat in the snow.

“We don’t…” His chin dipped towards his chest for a moment. “Have a way to portal back.”

Antony might have been trying to help, but right now his exhaustion was getting in the way. Odelle surveyed the nearby landscape. If Antony could just get enough rest to recover from using the Light, they could probably cook up a plan to get home.

Nearby stood a formation of dark rock, a few stubborn trees clinging to it. If nothing else, it could provide them with protection from the wind. Odelle grabbed Antony under the armpits and hauled him to his feet. He helped as best he could but ended up flinging snow in Odelle’s face in the process. She spluttered. His added weight caused her to sink deeper into the snow, hindering her ability to walk.

“Up shit creek with broken paddles,” Odelle muttered under her breath.

Together, the pair began an ungainly trudge towards the rocks. The distance they traversed was only that of a few city blocks, but between Antony’s state and the icy footing, it took them an eternity. Reaching the rock, Odelle caught sight of an indent hidden by a boulder. Calling it a cave would have been like calling her brownstone a skyscraper, but it would have to do. Antony was sliding down her shoulder, making it clear he wouldn’t be able to go much further.

The duo staggered behind the outcropping, Antony instantly slipping to the ground. Odelle dragged him a bit further in, tucking him as close to the rock and as far out of the wind as possible. He mumbled something that might have been a thank you, but his eyes were already fluttering shut, consciousness slipping away.

Odelle hesitated, hovering over him. There wasn’t anything she could do but hope that he recovered quickly and had some idea of how to get them home. After all, when Nora had exhausted herself while using the Light, all she had needed was twenty-four hours of sleep. Odelle shivered. If Antony needed that much sleep, she might freeze to death before he woke up .

Unable to stop herself, she reached out and tucked Antony’s coat tighter around him. He unconsciously wriggled into her touch, probably drawn to her body heat. At least they had been dressed for Chicago in winter. Still as Odelle put her back to Antony to sit and keep watch at the entrance to their rocky nook, she cursed herself for wearing a dress. Squatting down, she pulled her pencil skirt as far down her thighs as it would go, trying to avoid letting her bare skin touch the icy ground. Usually cold thighs were worth it for the convenience of taking her legs on and off with ease. This experience might just change her mind.

Odelle’s calves throbbed where they pressed against the sockets of her legs, thanks to all the running. As much as she ached to take them off now, she didn’t dare. Not somewhere as unfamiliar as this. Who knew what kind of creatures might think she and Antony would make a tasty snack?

At the thought of having to run from wolves, Odelle started laughing. She didn’t know where it had come from, but it was a choked sort of sound. It caught in her throat and grated deep in her chest. This was utterly ridiculous. She continued to shake with manic laughter until she realized she was no longer laughing, but sobbing. Tears froze on her eyelashes and left frosty trails down her cheeks as she hiccupped, wondering how everything had gone so terribly wrong. She had wanted to show Antony that she wasn’t beneath him just because she wasn’t a sorcerer. To prove to herself that he was wrong for rejecting her. All she had shown was that she wasn’t cut out for this. That this was Nora and the Eteria’s world, not hers. Her unwillingness to call Nora and Adam for help, to prove to them—and herself—that she could keep up with the Eteria, had shown just the opposite. Now she and Antony both might die because she handled rejection like a toddler who was told they couldn’t have a candy bar .

Odelle clutched her coat around her and shook as the events of the past few hours crashed down around her. Eventually, she collapsed sideways against the rocky wall, letting her eyes drift closed. It wasn’t like she would be able to do much if a bear decided to eat them for a snack.

A hand covered her cheek, and Odelle nuzzled into it with a sleepy grumble. Gaining awareness of the cold around her, she frowned and tried to burrow further into the warm touch on her face.

“Odelle,” a musical voice murmured very close. So it was going to be one of those dreams. The ones she liked to pretend never happened.

The hand on her face patted gently and her vision cleared as she came to awareness. Meeting hazel eyes framed by long pale lashes, Odelle jumped, banging her head on the rocky wall at her back.

“Sorry.” Antony grimaced, also drawing back. “I just wanted to ask you if I could borrow your earring.”

Blinking in sleep and confusion, Odelle scrubbed at her face. She grimaced when her hands came away flaked with mascara, probably smeared down her face from her tears the night before. Attractive. Looking up, she regarded Antony questioningly through eyes that probably looked like they belonged on a raccoon.

“Not that I don’t think you could pull it off, but are your ears even pierced?” She asked.

Antony snorted.

“Glad to know that you thought I was worried about my fashion choices when we’re stranded in the wilderness, but no. I was going to use the crystal in it to try to start a fire. ”

Sure enough, behind Antony was a neatly stacked pyramid of sticks that would be the envy of any Boy Scout. Still, Odelle frowned as she pulled the jewelry from her ear.

“I know that you can focus sunlight with crystals to start fires, but don’t you need— well… sun for that? I’m pretty sure we’re far enough North that it isn’t going to fully rise here.”

Antony took the offered earring from her, holding it up to inspect the pear-shaped cut crystal that dangled from it.

“True, but one of the perks of being a sorcerer is coming with a built-in source of Light.”

Antony seemed to find the crystal suitable and carried it over to the pile of sticks, but Odelle sat up straight with a frown.

“Hold on a second, I just had to virtually carry you here because you had exhausted yourself using the Light. I’d rather be cold than do that again,” Odelle protested.

Antony paused, fingers hovering near the crystal.

“This won’t be nearly as much Light. I promise I’ll be perfectly fit to find us a way out of here.” Antony fixed Odelle with a sincere stare. “Trust me.”

Possibly against her better judgement, she did.

Antony’s gaze returned to the dangling clear jewel, which he held near the kindling. Holding his pointer finger near it, he narrowed his eye. Then a bolt of pure sunshine emanated from his hand, even brighter than the Light Odelle had seen Nora use to defeat the Shadow—so bright Odelle threw up a hand to shield her eyes. A moment later the scent of smoldering wood filled her nostrils. Dropping her hand, she saw Antony standing triumphantly over a fire that was already beginning to crackle merrily .

“What was that about not using too much Light?” Odelle scolded, “You could have sent a signal to the International Space Station with that thing.”

She stared at Antony, half expecting him to keel over from such a display of power after just recovering. He shrugged, brushing off her admonishment and looking none the worse for wear.

“When we’re out of this mess, I’m going to need more information on this International Space Station you mentioned,” Antony deflected. His eyes twinkled with curiosity, and Odelle thought that she might just be willing to send him to space to be rid of that gaze.

“Get us home and I’ll write you a whole book about the ISS,” she grumbled. The heat from the fire began to reach Odelle, thawing her chilled fingers. She scooched forward, cramming more of herself into the circle of warmth. As she crawled, she winced at the familiar stinging of her legs where they rubbed in her socket. She knew better than to sleep with her legs on, but last night that had seemed like the least of her problems.

Antony frowned at her, noticing her discomfort.

“Don’t you need to take those off for a while? We could melt some snow with the fire to clean them with.”

Odelle only paused a moment before wriggling to kick off one leg, then the other. As she rolled down the tight socks on her legs, she couldn’t help groaning audibly. The only thing better than unclipping her bra at the end of the day was taking off her legs.

Antony reached for a prosthetic and then paused, waiting for her permission.

“I was just going to clean them for you,” he explained.

Odelle blinked. Nobody had cleaned out her sockets for her since Irina when she was a small child. Even then, Odelle had become quite self-sufficient with it by the time she was a teenager. It was something so simple, yet something nobody had offered to do before. Certainly not the parade of men who stayed the night and then were gone in the morning.

“Knock yourself out.” Odelle shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “That’s my least favorite part of getting ready for bed every night. I’m just surprised you thought of it.”

Antony began wiping down the inside of the socket and her thermoplastic socks with melted snow.

“Your legs weren’t the first prosthetics I’ve built. A lot of Warriors lost limbs in battles against the Shadow but still kept fighting.” Antony turned the socks inside out to dry by the fire. “I’ve also repaired a good amount for people who didn’t treat them well, so I know a thing or two about taking care of them.”

Odelle looked away. Antony was just caring for her like he would any other soldier, but she couldn’t even fight. Silence fell that was only interrupted by the crackling of the fire. In the stillness, her mind began to supply her with images from the day before. She pushed away images of the Shadows chasing them, of one pulling Antony to the ground. She could just make out a bald patch on the back on Antony’s head where the Shadow’s grasp had burned away a chunk of hair.

“I’m…so sorry,” Odelle murmured.

Antony jerked his gaze away from the fire to stare at Odelle in puzzlement.

“For what?”

“For the plan going wrong. I— I threw the crown back to the Shadows, and now they have it, and we’re stuck out here in the middle of buttfuck nowhere.” Odelle couldn’t help the bitterness of her tone, so angry at herself that her words tasted acrid in her mouth.

“Odelle…”

The softness of Antony’s tone, the way he shaped the word with his mouth so gently made Odelle’s chest squeeze even more painfully. He was coddling her—he thought her so incapable that he didn’t even want to confront her with her own failures.

“You saved my life.”

Odelle’s head snapped up. Of all the platitudes she had braced herself for from Antony, that wasn’t one of them.

“That Shadow had me at its mercy. If you hadn’t thought quick enough to get it away from me using the crown, I’d be dead.”Odelle frowned. She doubted that a sorcerer like Antony wouldn’t have been able to dislodge the creature. Still, her chest lightened.

“The Shadows have the crown now. It’s exactly what we were trying to prevent.”

Antony shook his head, the expression on his face combined with the shadows cast by the flickering light of the fire making him look tired again.

“Your plan was the only reason we had a shot at all. And the only reason it didn’t work was because I didn’t realize the crown was already controlled by the Shadow.” Antony scrubbed a hand over his face, the gesture speaking more to emotional fatigue than physical. “That would be why the Shadows hadn’t tried to steal it from the Whitehalls. They gained control of it by warping its power. Corrupting Mrs. Whitehall.”

“Corrupting her? How?”

Antony let out a sigh that spoke volumes to how heavily two-thousand years of life could weigh on a person. “My guess is that it distorted the crown’s power, pulling it back into amplifying traits and pushing it too far. It could intensify her best traits so far that they became her worst, consuming her identity entirely and turning her into a vessel of negativity, ripe for the Shadow to control. It would be easy for the Shadow to do, considering the crown already contained Light.”

“Wouldn’t the Light make it harder for the Shadow to corrupt the crown?” Odelle latched on to the less disturbing part of Antony’s words, not wanting to focus on what the Shadow did to those it corrupted.

“The Shadow can’t exist without Light coming first,” Antony explained. “I suppose it’s the great duality of the Eteria’s existence. Celebrating the Light, the powers of all that is good and positive in the world, it’s how we keep the Shadow at bay. But just like our best traits can be our worst traits, the Light is the origin of all Shadow, as love is the precursor to grief. Káthe fos ríchnei mia skiá . The motto of the Eteria: Every light casts a Shadow.”

Odelle hugged her arms around her torso and frowned. “If the Light creates the Shadow, then where did the Light come from?”

“Where do love and joy come from?” Antony shrugged. “Wherever there is life, there is Light. An unshakeable truth of the universe. And so it also brings Shadow, the two constantly entwined in an eternal dance that defines the experiences of all living things.”

Antony gazed at the fire, but Odelle got the impression he didn’t really see it.

“How long do you think Mrs. Whitehall was corrupted?” Odelle asked to draw Antony away from whatever deep pool of thought he had fallen into. “She was incredibly rude the first time I met her, but I don’t know if that could have come from a good trait.”

“Maybe she was very honest, and it turned into saying things without even considering their effects.” Antony shrugged. “But she must have been corrupted for quite a while. She was very far gone. I’m not sure any of her original essence was left in her body. ”

“That’s why she—” Odelle cut off abruptly. For the first time since jumping out of the gallery window, she thought about the fact that Mr. Whitehall was dead. Odelle hadn’t thought it so plainly in all the shock of being stranded. But it was true. Mrs. Whitehall had murdered him. One second, he was alive and trying to protect her; the next he was crumpled to the ground, an inanimate object. She should have been concerned that she and her companions would be blamed for the murder, considering their fingerprints would be all over the scene, but her brain fixated instead on the sick crack of his spine as it snapped.

Bile burned in the back of Odelle’s throat. She barely turned around fast enough to not be sick on her coat as her stomach emptied itself. As she choked and sputtered on acid, a pair of cool hands rested on her head, pulling her hair back from her face. If her eyes hadn’t already watered from the burning in her chest, they would have from embarrassment.

When the heaving subsided, Odelle slumped back once more. She grabbed a handful of snow to scrub the crust from her lips. She couldn’t quite bring herself to meet Antony’s eyes, but she found herself equally unable to not look at him at all.

“I vomited the first time I saw somebody killed too…and the second.”

“But after that it got better?” Odelle questioned.

“It never gets any easier. I just stayed away from battles,” Antony looked away as he responded, as if this were a fact he was ashamed of. Odelle was struck by the urge to pat his shoulder in comfort, but she didn’t know that it would be welcome. Instead, she tucked her hands under her armpits to warm them.

“Did a lot of other people vomit too? You certainly seem to have experience holding back the hair of puking girls, and I know you didn’t get it at college frat parties.” Odelle forced herself to joke, needing to do something to distract herself from what had been one of the heaviest conversations of her life.

“Worse actually, I gained my wonderful experience of holding back hair with Thad.” Antony leaned in conspiratorially, seeming to sense the need for some levity. “When he was in his two hundreds? Total party animal. Went out and worshipped Dionysus more nights than not.”

“He doesn’t have much hair to hold back though,” Odelle said, picturing Thad’s close-cropped hair, curled tightly to his head.

“He’s had many phases. In his earlier years, he loved having long braids. Said his hair could hold more gold beads that way.” Antony’s wistful smile laced his words with fondness. She enjoyed the image of him and his friends enjoying their youth, far more than she liked imagining him on a battlefield. It suited his delicate smiles better.

Odelle chuckled, positioning her bare legs towards the fire to warm. Despite learning horrifying truths about the Shadow and having vomited in the middle of the conversation, talking with Antony lessened some of the weight on her conscience. Even if Antony wasn’t too terribly fond of her, at least she wasn’t alone in the tundra. And she wasn’t entirely responsible for the plan imploding and a man’s death. Although, ending up stranded in the frigid wilderness was completely on her.

“You should get a little more sleep,” Antony advised after a few minutes of companionable silence. “Get some rest while we have warmth. Who knows how long of a trek we have ahead of us to find civilization again.”

Odelle nodded, lowering herself onto her side, curling around the fire to retain as much heat as she could without embers singeing her coat. As she let her body rest once more, she tried not to think about Antony gently stroking her hair away from her face. She failed.