ChaoticArmcandy

  A frayed and breathless silence held sway in the dim basement chamber as Aralia stalked over the threshold, her hands folded at the small of her back. I could only gape at her speechlessly, but she avoided my gaze, and turned to the two siblings. “Well?” she said tightly.

  “I believe her,” Monarda said promptly.

  I stared at Aralia, my mind clumsily fumbling to make sense of this. She looked strained. More strained than I had ever seen her.

  Emilia was nodding slowly, and giving me the re-appraising look of someone who had reached into her pocket for her st shilling and pulled out a gold lire instead. “She’ll do.”

  Aralia sighed, an unsimple sound that had something like relief in it, as well as regret. “Then we are in agreement.”

  “W-what are you saying?” I stammered. “Aralia?”

  Only then did her gold-flecked gaze turn to me. “I’m sorry, Ellie. We had to be sure.”

  I stared at her, then at Monarda, my cheeks growing hot, my insides beginning to itch with self-consciousness. “So that was—a test?”

  “You did very well,” Aralia said, her tone almost kindly.

  My knees did not quite give out. I swayed, disorientated, my whole world spinning with whipsh. I felt like a cat toy being batted around on a string.

  Monarda stepped closer, reaching out to steady me.

  I flinched away. “Don’t.”

  She hesitated.

  “Ellie…” began Aralia, very gently.

  I didn’t care. I felt very far away. “No,” my voice snapped. “Don’t ask me anything. No more tests. No more demands. I can do this….I will do this, just—stop looking at me like that,” I burst out.

  Aralia’s throat flexed. “What do you mean?”

  The inside of my body felt very light and clear, like a hard snap freeze. I was numb, but set. I was grimly determined. Nothing could get to me, nobody would hurt me anymore. I felt my mind bricking up, protecting itself. No ground was solid, no anchor trustable. And that was fine. Preferable, even.

  “Just—stop pretending I am anything more than an asset,” came my voice, sharp and merciless, emerging from a rubbish heap in the way far back byrinthine curves and corners and nooks of myself. It poured on and on and would not stop. “Stop pretending you can afford to blur what that means for us both. I am a pawn on the board. This would have been so much easier for everyone if you had treated me only that way from the beginning. You knew—you must have known—that it would come to this. Didn’t you?”

  She wouldn’t look at me.

  My throat tightened with despair, almost enough to choke my voice, but the words sped up, grew barbs—

  “You should just been honest about what I was for, all along, instead of trying to save me. I would have respected you for that. At least I never got confused about what you were to me,” I lied coldly. “Was I fun for you, Aralia? Was it hot for you to use me to py out your fantasies? Did you like having a little closeted secret? A hush hush doll? An easy comfort item who couldn’t risk you losing interest or getting tired of me or—”

  My numbness cracked. I bit the edge of my hand to stop up my mouth, to hold the pain at bay, rabid shame and self-loathing lunging and snapping like a broken-toothed dog inside of me. Everyone was throwing me away like worthless trash—because that’s exactly what I was.

  A muffled whimper escaped me and I bit down harder, desperately muscling down the intrusive thoughts, reaching again for that clear, cold distance, trying to cloak myself in it.

  There was a shattered silence in the room, like a tumble of fresh rubble. Monarda was shifting uncomfortably. Emilia was looking at Aralia like something she’d pulled out of a blocked, stinking drain.

  “Are you done?” Aralia asked me stiffly.

  I stared at the bnk ashcrete floor and gave a broken nod. I couldn’t break down yet. No matter what happened, I had to hold it together a little longer.

  “Very well, Ellie. Let’s be frank with each other. No more games, no more pretense. We know who you were just visiting on the third floor, you little fool. I can put two and two together.”

  I looked up, shaken, into the hunting gaze of a golden eagle. Aralia’s eyes had grown fierce and hard.

  “Thankfully, none of us wish to see Mi in the Ministry’s clutches. If you are willing to surrender yourself, and if you follow my orders and follow them well, not only will you avert the danger that threatens her, but with these two as my witness, I promise to procure Mi swift and secret passage to a safe harbor and I will ask no price and compel no favor in return, excepting this one, of you.”

  I stared at her, swift despair thundering in my head even as stricken hope filtered down through my chest cavity like sudden rainfall on dry, cracked soil. I had indisputably made a mess of everything, but if Aralia could be trusted to follow through on this…

  “Swear,” I blurted. “Swear on…on those old oaths you cimed to me. Swear by anything still sacred to you.”

  I had nothing else up my sleeve, after all. And the transactionality of her offer was somehow reassuring—it was simple, a trade as old as stone and water, a life for a life.

  “I swear it by the spirits of my teachers, by all the Makers who came before me and will come after,” said Aralia simply. “I swear it by the starlight and by the deep dark. I will get Mi clear of this pce if and when she is willing to go.”

  I turned desperately to Emilia, then Monarda. “Will she—will you make sure?”

  Emilia shot a look at Aralia that could have fsh-frozen liquid lead, but Monarda broke in without hesitation, speaking directly to me. “Mi saved my friend’s life. I owe her, Ellie. I won’t let her be left behind.”

  There was no armor in her honey-brown eyes. I was abruptly, pathetically grateful for the tiny toehold of semi-solid ground she had offered me.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, throat tight.

  Monarda nodded, and looked as if she wanted to say more, but I had already turned away.

  I couldn’t afford to feel much more. Above all, I had to hold myself together.

  It wouldn’t be much longer now.

  I cleared my throat roughly and spoke to Aralia, numbly proud that my voice did not tremble or waver. “So, how are we doing this?”

  ChaoticArmcandy