“Glenn!”
Glenn grabbed hold of the ledge and started to pull herself up but watched in horror as the rock surrounding the hole grew until it closed off completely. She was ripped away from the wall, and sent flying across the room and into the icy water of the pool. The cold lanced into her, every scrap of energy she had drained out of her. Glenn went limp, sinking down into the murk, but then a hand seized the back of her shirt and pulled her toward the surface.
Glenn sucked in a desperate breath. Her feet kicked at the rock as she tried to stand, but Abbe yanked her forward, dragging her out of the water and tossing her like an empty sack onto the stone shore. Glenn barely even felt the pain anymore. Her body was like a lump of clay.
Useless. Lifeless. If there was any Affinity left in her now, it was too far away and too small to touch.
Abbe towered over her, one hand lit up like a lantern. Her face was twisted into a horrible mix of hatred and glee. With the other hand she reached into her robe and pulled out a silver-bladed dagger. The way the light from her hand reflected off the mirrorlike edge was almost blinding.
“You don’t have to do this,” Glenn said.
“Sorry. Killing you is the price of admission into the good graces of the Colloquium.”
“How can you just switch sides?”
Abbe laughed, making a sick echo off the damp stone walls. “I thought you would have learned more by now, Glennora.” Abbe leaned in to whisper in Glenn’s ear. “There are no sides. The Magisterium.
The Colloquium. They’re the same — words on banners that people wave around to get others to do what they want. It’s a game. Pity you had to learn that too late.”
Abbe pulled back the dagger and in that second, Glenn dug inside herself and prayed for strength, but when she prayed, she didn’t see 813
or three distant stars, she saw the faces of Kevin and Aamon, her mother and her father. She saw them all and reached for one last bit of Affinity, her fingers scrambling toward it. Glenn strained and pushed, but in the end it was too far. Time slowed. The tip of Abbe’s dagger rose. She remembered Kevin’s lips on hers. His hand on her back. The look in his eyes. The swirling snow. A night she could have seized that was now lost.
There was a scream and Abbe flew away from her, her body bent nearly in two. Time rushed forward again. Across the cavern, Abbe was rising from the water, her black hair plastered against her face. The dagger was gone and her eyes were blazing as she looked past Glenn to the mouth of the cave.
Glenn turned and caught a flurry of movement. There was a dark blur and then a sound like thunder as the cave lit up with a flash of light.
When Glenn’s eyes adjusted, she saw Abbe slumped and unconscious on the shore across from her and a figure standing between them.
Her back was to Glenn, but it was clear that this was not the wasted woman she had left lying on Opal’s bed. She was impossibly tall, with hair the color of coal. The bracelet was gone from her wrist, and her entire body glowed, illuminating the cave with a murderous green light. She stalked across the shallow end of the water toward Abbe’s limp body, pulsing with violence.
Glenn forced herself up and staggered through the freezing water.
She made it only a few steps before her legs gave out and she collapsed, falling into the water and against her mother’s legs. Glenn reached up and grabbed hold of her dress.
She turned and Glenn saw those eyes, perfectly black, without thought or feeling or recognition, just as they had been that night past the border when Glenn was six. Whatever impulse had sent her mother down into the caves had already been wiped away and replaced with blind hate. Glenn marshaled her fear and grabbed her mother’s wrist, turning her away from Abbe.
“Stop,” Glenn breathed as she forced herself to stand.
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For a moment the two of them stood inches apart, the Magistra glowering down at her. “What do you care if she dies?” she asked in an awful, distorted echo.
“I don’t,” Glenn said. “I just don’t want you to be the one to kill her.”
The Magistra’s eyes narrowed. Glenn saw her chance and threw her arms around her, pulling her close, battering at the wall between them. When it fell, the entire weight of her mother’s last ten years crashed into Glenn all at once. In that moment, Glenn knew that during all those years, there was a small kernel of the woman her mother once was, imprisoned deep inside her, forced to watch the things the Magistra was doing and helpless to stop them. Every death hung on her like the links of a chain, endlessly heavy, always present. There were ghosts in the Magisterium, and they never let her rest.
Worst of all, her mother always knew exactly how far away she was from everything she wanted — her husband, Glenn, their life in the Colloquium — and she could do nothing about it. The moments of the three of them together — gathered around the dinner table, in the garden, floating in the cool lake waters — lived in her like bits of a distant sun, dazzling but too far away to reach, taunting her day in and day out.
“Come back,” Glenn whispered, willing her last bit of strength into her mother, unraveling a plea that had been knotted up inside her for ten years. “I know you’re there. Please. Just listen to my voice and come back.”
Glenn held her breath and pulled away slowly.
Her mother was gazing down at her, her eyes a deep and piercing blue.
They rose out of the cavern together, Glenn’s mother’s arms wrapped tight around her, until they reached the surface and landed on the muddy ground.
“What do we do about …”
In answer, her mother lifted one hand, and the ground shook as the gash in the earth sealed itself up.
“She’ll free herself eventually,” she said. “But we’ll be long gone before she does.”
Her mother’s palms were pressed into the muddy ground, just barely keeping her upright. Her chest was heaving. The blue of her eyes was already clouding over as her Affinities rushed back in. Glenn took her arm and held it tight.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said. “You’ll be all right.”
“Glenn!”
Kevin dropped to his knees in front of her. Aamon appeared just behind him.
“I’m okay,” she whispered, overwhelmed by the feeling of being near him again. “I’m fine.”
Kevin pulled something out of the inside of his coat. The bracelet.
Glenn took it and hurried to her mother’s side.
“Glenn, no,” her mother protested. “You should — ”
“Take it. I’m too exhausted to do much more damage tonight
anyway.”
Glenn clamped the bracelet onto her mother’s wrist. As soon as it touched her, she winced, but the change was slow in coming. Glenn held her breath until she felt her mother’s body begin to wither under her touch.
Are these the only choices for her in the Magisterium? Glenn wondered. A monster or a frail woman aged beyond her years?
“Sturges’s forces are in retreat, but it won’t last long,” Aamon said. “Opal has coordinated with the last of Farrick’s forces.”
“Fine,” Glenn’s mother said, finding a surprising amount of command in her tired voice. “Aamon, have Opal take Kevin and Glenn as far west as she can.”
“No!” Kevin shouted. “We’re not running away.”
“I’m sorry,” Glenn’s mother said crisply. “There’s no other choice. It’s too dangerous here. It’s no place for either of you. Aamon, we’ll coordinate with the Miel Pan to secure the border.”
“Mom — ”
She turned to Glenn and knelt down close. “There’ll be no more fighting for you,” she said. “If you keep on like you are, you’ll lose control. I won’t allow that. Opal will keep you both safe. She can help you control your Affinity in a way I never learned.”