Page 115 of Spellwright

With the gargoyle clamped onto his face, he couldn’t speak, but maybe he didn’t need to. He turned his hand. Where his sleeve had torn, words spiraled along his skin like a moving tattoo. All her mother’s spells living inside him, making him who he was.

She didn’t know if he would give any of them up. If she’d have to somehow pull what she wanted out of him, like tearing a page from a book.

Except, she couldn’t think of him like that. He was more than a book. Sebastian breathed. He had a heart that beat and beat, no matter how much he doubted it or how cold his blood ran. And yes, he was made of spells too—the very ones Fia had longed for—but they, he, didn’t belong to her.

“Please,” she said, splitting herself open.

Fia had never been able to read his expressions very well, his seriousness a mask of its own. His eyes, though, gray and shifting, looked fleetingly lost by her single soft word before they clouded.

When he made no move to help, she stepped toward him, scared of each passing second, each moment Penbrook lay there unbreathing, but she wasn’t scared of Sebastian, even if she should have been. They were, in some ways, the same. Born from and shaped by Sable. Taught that true love didn’t exist. That happiness was nothing more than a fairy tale. He knew nothing else of the world. He was alone.

As Fia had been.

“Sebastian…” But she didn’t have the right words.

He looked down at her, the gargoyle caught across his mouth like the strangest disfigurement, small drops of blood beading where the claws pierced skin. He no longer fought to remove it, as if the containment of the spells brought him some reprieve despite the pain. At least, she hoped it did.

He reached out, and he might have taken her by the throat, might have calmly squeezed, no need for curses when he had strength. Instead, he pressed his hand to one of the many pages of her dress.

A rustle of her gown, a shiver like ice along her spine.

The lightning spell flooded from his fingertips onto the page, each line dark, dripping ink down her skirt, overwriting the other spells with a singular power until Fia could feel it pulsing around her. Could feel her mother like a breath exhaled, there in the magic—she was everywhere—for this one moment. And as Fia released the spell in a scattering of golden dust, she finally released Sable too, with a soft goodbye.

Sparks all around her, eyes gone glassy, Fia burned with want and need, but there was something gentle about the way the magic spiraled out from her chest, so she still felt like herself. Arms flung to the sides, she tipped back her head as the sky roiled like the sea turned upside down.

A shock of lightning crackled across the darkness, a jagged line of silver that forked, then veined to the ground. It hissed quickly past her, the hairs on her arms standing on end, only for another burst to flash across the sky. The lightning cracked again and again, spiking the earth, splitting branches from trees, wild and searching.

Until it struck Penbrook’s chest.

His back arched with the impact, and Fia crashed down beside him. Felt the shudder of energy all around him, an aching static that had her heart beating double.

Thin silver lines snaked across his cheeks as a flood of magic rushed through him.

His eyelids fluttered, and then they opened.

She pinched her hand the way she’d nipped Penbrook so many times, wondering if she was the one dreaming. It hardly seemed possible that he was looking back at her, dark eyes struck through with golden threads of lightning.

“Fia,” he gasped weakly, like coming up for air.

“You’re… you’re steaming,” she said ridiculously, staring at the boy she hadn’t thought she could save.

“Yes, well…” Penbrook touched his chest, where his shirt was streaked black. “You struck me with lightning.”

She grimaced. “Does it hurt?”

“Enormously.” Even so, Penbrook managed a tilted grin. “I still much prefer waking to softer things.”

Before Fia could gather the swell of her emotions, footsteps sounded on the path. She snapped to attention, knowing better than to turn her back on Sebastian.

“Can you stand?”

“I think so,” Penbrook wheezed.

Climbing to her feet and tugging a ragged Penbrook up with her, Fia saw Sebastian moving quickly between the trees. Away from them. Before he slipped completely from sight, he glanced back, the gargoyle still clamped over his mouth, catching Fia’s eye for one lingering moment.

And then Sebastian was gone. Along with the last traces of her mother.

A strange pang of regret struck Fia—but she didn’t have time for the ache to sink in or to wonder what Sebastian would do now. Or even to marvel at the magic that had restarted Penbrook’s heart. But oh, her mother had been right, the night-wild lightning was brilliant.