She screamed until footsteps came down the hall, finally, finally, until Jorn’s arms circled her and yanked her away from the bars. Metal clinked against metal even through Cilla’s cries tearing the air in half. Someone had the keys. Someone opened the cell. Jorn pushed her inside, and Amara stumbled and almost fell.
“Go!” Jorn shouted, but there was no point. No amount of Cilla’s blood on Amara’s skin would distract the curse this time. There was too much of it, and even more kept coming.
Cilla’s scream ended in a choke.
43
If Nolan took control of Amara, he could take those steps forward so she wouldn’t have to; he could reach for Cilla’s battered body in the wall and take whatever blood would stick to him.
He couldn’t. He was trapped, the way he’d been before he’d ever taken the pills.
At least Pat would be safe with Cilla dead, he thought distantly. At least Nolan would have his life again.
But for now … for now, he was here, watching through Amara’s eyes fixed on Cilla’s broken face, and Nolan could only repeat to himself, This isn’t my body, this isn’t my pain, this isn’t my world, this isn’t my love.
Stones on each side. Cilla’s eyes forced shut. Lips that had kissed Amara’s, torn beyond recognition.
Not my pain not my pain not my pain I don’t want to feel this not my pain.
The hands Cilla had revealed her royal mark with, swallowed by stone. Amara’s hands had looked just like that, mangled on the floor in that other cell. Nolan had put them back together. This time he couldn’t do a thing. Only watch and wish he wasn’t. He’d tried to climb into Cilla’s body at Olym’s farm, and it hadn’t worked, for all his extra pills, for all that he’d focused and wished and concentrated so hard—
It hit him so clearly that the cell went quiet for a full second.
He’d done it all wrong.
Instinct. That was how he’d first controlled Amara. He’d wanted her to run from the mages—urged her on—slid into her mind without realizing it. It was how he’d first left, too. Her pain had cut too deep.
Emotion and instinct. Only with those could he take control.
And now, with Cilla dying and Amara screaming and the palace shivering and crying with magic and the rock still churning … This wasn’t like sitting in his safe, sunlit room and squeezing his eyes shut to concentrate. This was not a school assignment. This was not a world to chronicle in his notebooks, to distance himself from.
This was real.
My pain, Nolan whispered. Mine. He couldn’t control Amara anymore, but he’d never needed that to make her heal. He only needed to be present. If he could slip into Cilla’s body … if the pills still offered him control over that …
He opened himself to Amara’s panic until it seared through him so hot and sharp he could no longer separate it from his own.
The air smelled of dust and blood. Cilla wouldn’t last much longer. He’d lose her like he’d lost Maart.
That thought did the trick.
Nolan abandoned Amara’s panic for Cilla’s pain, for blackness, for crunching in his ears, for pressure on every part of his skin. Pushing and breaking and digging in deep. The pain ebbed, flooded back in. At this point, Cilla should have been past the pain. Her nerve endings were destroyed. She was supposed to fade and die.
Instead, her bones snapped into place, broke again from continued pressure, mended themselves a second time. Cuts healed over. Blood drained from places it shouldn’t be, slipping back into burst vessels that shuddered deeply under her skin. Muscles braided themselves back together.
Healing would keep Cilla alive, but it wouldn’t make the curse stop coming. Too much blood had already spilled, wet and slick.
The stones fell away, anyway. Clattered to the floor and mattress. Nolan followed, falling amid rubble as the stones’ grip on him—on Cilla—loosened. He sucked filthy air into punctured, half-healed lungs, dirt clogging up his nose, and knew something was wrong.
The curse wasn’t supposed to end, not with so much blood spilled, and Cilla healed, yes, but she did it jaggedly, first on one side and then the other. She felt different from Amara in a way beyond the physical. Something pushed at him, nagged at the edges, tried to get between her and him like a fingernail prying at a seam.
But she was alive. Healing.
Nolan pushed himself up onto all fours. Cilla’s body was taller than Amara’s, shorter than his, heavier than either of them. His hands on the uneven floor were the deepest brown, his fingers short and broken.
He hurt. But he’d saved her.
Using blurred, newly healed eyes, Nolan sought out Amara. He found her across the cell, lying on her back along with Jorn and the marshals. Debris and dust swept a half circle on the floor, blasted outward—Nolan possessing Cilla must’ve knocked them all back. Magic on top of magic on top of magic.
Jorn was already climbing to his feet. Nolan glanced over, then—wait—he glanced over. He was directing Cilla’s body. He had control. Mixing spells either snuffed out magic or amplified it. But for how long?
Jorn shouted at the marshals. He supported himself against the wall, his coughing a distant sound through the ringing in Nolan’s ears. Nadi reached the cell and took in the situation without a word. Amara stayed on the floor in a half-sitting position, motionless from her toes to her eyelashes as she stared at Nolan.
He’d seen her in dirtied mirrors, in glass reflections, in still water. Not like this, solid and footlengths away. Face-to-face.
Did she see him, too? Did she recognize him?
Before either of them could talk, the ceiling shook. Nolan’s head snapped up. Stone crumbled and dropped. Something rippled through the walls and floors like rings expanding in the water—like the curse. Jorn backed away. So did the marshals. Another lump of rock fell from the ceiling.
Cilla healed fast. Crushed ribs snapped back to their normal positions, pulling lungs with them, sucking in air and dust. Nolan pushed himself up, though his movements wobbled. Pain lanced through his legs. He fell again, to his knees and then sideways off the mattress. Cilla’s hands scrambled on the floor, but not because he made them. Was she back in control? He tried to move. Cilla didn’t respond.
Nolan still felt those fingernails prying at him, though, wedging him loose. He couldn’t let them succeed. Cilla wasn’t done healing.
More stone fell from the ceiling. Amara stumbled back, her eyes fixed on Cilla. The marshals were shouting. The metal beams of the cell were twisting loose from the walls. The air itself seemed to quiver.
The anchor, the curse, and Nolan. Too much magic stacked in one body.
A beam lashed around, knocking over a marshal, slamming into Jorn’s skull. He crumpled. A perfect triangle of dark shone on his temple, the skin scrunched up on one side. As Nolan watched, it uncoiled, spread out, and started to knit itself back together.