“Mars…” Margaret whispered. I clenched my jaw as she spoke. “Mars, are you alright?” she asked. It took me a long time to form the words. Everything I had seen had painted an extremely clear picture. Every moment after we’d seen Luke’s body on the beach. Every conversation. Every sermon. It felt like we’d been watching Luke’s past for hours, but barely a moment had passed.
“I killed him,” I whispered. “I went after him, and I killed him. I convinced myself it was for the best. That it would fix things. That I was saving people. I was so, so certain. Just like when I tried to have Cammie killed. But it was just the same story. It was just a lie. Shifted blame. Petty pride. Margaret… Margaret, I am angry.” And I was. I didn’t have the fire I’d had in my youth. I wasn’t furious like a fire. I was more like a fly, trapped in a web and furious at my helplessness. But also at the spider. I had chosen to kill someone innocent. Again. I’d been pushed, sure. And I’d been lied to, and deceived. But I’d still made the choice. And I was livid with myself. But I was also furious at Luke’s mother. At Vitinia. I couldn’t grasp such pettiness. It didn’t make sense to me. I loved Cammie. I had pride in what she did. And I couldn’t understand why so many people just… couldn’t take pride in the ones they loved.
“Well. At least we know who to kill this time,” Margaret responded. I clenched my fists, crushing the paper in my hand before dropping it on the floor.
“I’m not doing that again. I’m not. Never again,” I insisted. Margaret crossed her arms.
“I understand. I do. And I know I pushed you in the wrong direction before. But… sometimes it’s all you can do,” Margaret pushed. I shook my head.
“You’re probably right. I don’t know. Maybe killing her is the best thing to do. I could do it. I know I could. But Margaret. I’ve chosen wrong twice now. I’ve made that judgement and been wrong twice. And I’ve learned better than to forgive and forget. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself. But I know I will never forget. Not again. I was speaking to you before. About how I shouldn’t have tried to forget who you were. But I can’t forget who I am either. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s the best thing to be done. I don’t know. But I know I can’t make that call. Because I am a woman who has killed an innocent man, and that means I can’t make that call ever again. I have to remember who I am, and make decisions around that,” I replied. She looked down and examined the carpet. I started counting in the back of my mind.
- 2. 3.
“Then what? What else is there to do?” she asked.
- 5. 6.
“I don’t know. I’ll confront them again. I’ll confront them both, this time. At their service in the morning. Or tonight. I don’t know. I need to think. But I will.”
- 8. 9.
“And if they take your mind again? If you get trapped permanently?”
- 12. 13.
“They won’t. I don’t think they can. I don’t think it’s as easy as it seemed. Or they would have the last two times, right? No, that's not right. She would have.”
- 15. 16.
“Mars, that’s not enough! You need a plan! You need to know more!”
- 18. 19.
“I know. But I also already know too much. And I know myself. I will keep stalling, and stalling, forever. I have to speak to her. I have to ask her why!”
- 21. 22.
“Why wasn’t there a trail to Luke? You would have seen that right? If you could save him, there would be a trail of aura. There always is, isn’t there?”
- 24. 25.
“There wasn’t for you.”
- 27. 28.
“And I died. But Mars. A woman like her… you aren’t going to be able to get through to her like you did for me. She won’t care. Not if everything we saw in your spell really happened. She won’t give up her power. You know she won’t!”
- 30. 31.
“I know. That’s why I need to speak to her.”
- 33. 34.
“Why? If you won’t stop her for good, and you can’t convince her to stop on her own, then why?”
- 36. 37
“Because I need to understand! I need to understand how, and why. I need to confront her because… because…”
I couldn’t get the words out. I forgot what number I was at. I didn’t know how to articulate what I was so afraid of. There was a loud knock at the door. Margaret and I both paused.
“We shouldn’t have heard that, right?” Margaret asked. I nodded. We were on the second floor, and while the front door had a knocker, it was unlikely to sound so clear from where we were. But it did. Like a bell in a silent room. I turned toward the door to the office, and Margaret lurched. “What are you doing? Are you really going to answer that? At Matthew’s estate? It could be anyone!” I paused.
“It’s safe,” I responded. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did. It was safe. It was just a feeling that split the dark of my mind like moonlight.
“How are you suddenly so confident?” Margaret pushed. Again, I paused. I didn’t know. Which scared me. Because it was a confidence I didn’t own that had gotten me captured the first time. But… it felt different. The same, but different. I didn’t know where the feeling was coming from, but no part of my mind was protesting. There was no war of fear and confidence. It wasn’t even confidence, really. I just felt… safe. So I ignored her, and I left the study.
She continued to protest as I descended the stairs, but I’d already made up my mind. There wasn’t a second knock. There was no indication that anyone still waited on the other side of the door, even as it was taking me long enough that most would try again. But it was silent, save for Margaret’s protests. A single knock was all we got. Still, I believed whoever it was would still be there. Waiting. Or perhaps the noise had simply been enough to get me out of my head for a moment, and I wanted to hang on to that. It was small. It was answering a door. But it was something I could do. Something I understood.
I finally made it to the door, and Margaret appeared in front of me. “At least let me look outside first and see if it’s safe,” she asked. I hesitated, my hand halfway to the handle, then nodded. She sighed in relief, then walked toward the window. I waited, my hand still near the handle, when she stopped, and simply said, “Huh.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
I didn’t want to ask what that meant out loud, or I would defeat the purpose of waiting for Margaret to check, so I just watched the ghostly woman and suppressed my nerves. “I could swear she is looking at me,” Margaret whispered. I furrowed my brow, but said nothing. Margaret stared out the window in confusion for a long moment, before she finally remembered why she was there and looked back in my direction. “It’s safe, as far as I can guess. She’s alone, but…” she trailed off. I knew what she had to say, at least in part. No one had come here at this time of day, as far as I could remember. I wasn’t certain we’d actually been here at this exact time, so that didn’t necessarily make it dangerous. But it was odd to have a visitor at all.
Nevertheless, I opened the door. As I did, it took me several long moments to process the face I was seeing. I recognized the young girl looking up at me, and I recognized the calm that settled over me as I saw her. “Chandara?” I asked. The young performer tilted her head at me.
“Did I tell you that was my name? How funny!” she responded. I blinked, and she shrugged, then pushed past me and walked inside. “How is your day going?” She asked this as she walked through the mansion like she’d been there a thousand times, and I followed her to the luxurious sofa she eventually settled on.
“Um, it’s…” I trailed. I didn’t know how to answer that. “Were you looking for me?” I asked instead. She smiled at me as she made herself comfortable.
“Well, sort of, I guess. But also, not really. But don’t try to distract me! That doesn’t matter. Are you doing better now?” I opened my mouth to tell her I was not, but I realized that wasn’t true. I also realized I hadn’t met her in this loop yet, but for some reason I couldn’t quite follow that train of thought. I always had that feeling around her. Like I was sitting by a warm fire, and anxiety couldn’t reach me.
“I’m not sure,” I answered honestly.
“Oh, yay! I think you’re doing better! You seem a little confused about it. But… I can tell. You aren’t the same as you used to be,” she answered.
I wanted to ask what she meant. I wanted to ask when she meant. I couldn’t deny that I’d been changing, if only slowly, since I arrived in Beddenmor. It would be impossible not to, in one way or another. I’d seen the city die over and over again. I’d died myself nearly as many times. I was always going to go mad—or find another way to change. But I didn’t understand how she could know that. I opened my mouth to ask all of these, but a different question fell from my lips instead.
“Why do I always feel so… comfortable around you?” I asked. The child kicked her feet as they dangled from the sofa, and the buns in her hair seemed to bounce as she did. She smiled brightly at me before responding.
“Do you need help?” she asked. “I can give you something, I'm good at that. Everyone says so. Maybe just some advice?” The offer was absurd. The entire situation was. A child showed up at an abandoned house to offer me advice. She seemed to know me. Down to my ongoing emotional state. And even as I questioned why that was, even as she brushed my own question aside like leaves in autumn, I felt at ease around her. I let out a deep sigh and sat next to her on the sofa.
“It’s not quite the same as it was in the library. I can still feel my own confusion slipping away, but I can still reach it. It doesn’t just melt away like it did back then. Why is it different this time?” I asked. If she could ignore what I said, I could do the same. It was an unusual response from me, but around Chandara, I always had unusual responses to everything. She beamed at me.
“See! I told you! You are doing better!” she exclaimed. I offered her a small smile at the corner of my mouth.
“I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t feel much better than I have in a really long time,” I responded. Chandara continued to grin, unfazed by my response.
“Or maybe getting better just doesn’t look like you thought it would?” she asked. I looked at her for a long moment, then leaned back against the couch.
“I suppose that’s possible. Nothing ever does,” I agreed. Then the absurdity of the visit occurred to me again, as Margaret walked into the room and leaned against the wall. I didn’t know why it was so easy to forget, but there was something beyond strange about this girl. “How do you do that? Are you a mage?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m just an actor! I play a mage sometimes, though. Or, uh, I’m an understudy for one,” she lied. I believed her, for a moment. It made perfect sense for several breaths, until I remembered it didn’t.
“That. How are you doing that? Are you like Luke? Or… sorry. Are you like Vitinia? Are you controlling my mind? Some kind of soul magic? Please, just tell me. Magic isn’t supposed to work that way. I’ve… I’ve never seen anything like it,” I pushed. Chandara tilted her head.
“Really?” she asked. She looked at me like I was a child trying to hide a mess I’d made. “Are you sure?” I furrowed my brow again.
“Yes. It goes against everything I know about magic,” I answered.
“That’s funny,” she giggled. “It seems to me a lot like something you would see a lot.” I was only growing more confused. But in a weird way, that helped. The more absurd the conversation got, the faster I regained the threads of thought I was following when her strange presence tried to wash them away.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know at all!” she replied. “There is just something… unbelievable about you. Has no one ever told you that before? I think it’s really obvious!” I shook my head to deny it, but I paused. There was a truth to her words I couldn’t deny. It wasn’t what she seemed to imply, but the truth was there nonetheless. She was right. People never phrased it quite like that, but she was right. They did think of me as… unbelievable. Or rather, everyone I had met since leaving home had thought I was a liar.
Whenever I used magic, even in front of someone, they thought I was a liar. They would watch me bring someone back from the dead, and still, they would think it was impossible. I would say I was a time mage, and they would call me a charleton. A snake oil salesman. A fraud. Everything my Grandmother had told everyone I was. Every lie she’d ever told about me had been believed, long after I’d left. Chandara saw the moment I understood what she was saying. That wasn’t just because of who I was. It wasn’t because I was pathetic, or because nothing I did was believable. It was the same thing I was facing now.
Luke had practically told me, when he captured me. “I don’t want to believe you. I wonder why that is. You can’t lie to me. Not right now. I just saw your magic myself. And yet, I feel an intense certainty that you must be deceiving me somehow. I am both certain you are honest and unmistaken about your abilities, and certain that you are either lying or delusional. Do you have any idea what might cause that?”
I hadn’t thought much of it. But…
“I thought so,” she replied. “I told you I was good at this!” I stared at her. I was still processing. Because if my grandmother could somehow stick a spell like that to me… Something that could alter the minds of people who perceived me… If Vitinia could instill in me confidence that didn’t belong to me… Couldn’t she have also cursed my own perception of me? How much of the person I believed I was… was me?
“Who are you?” I asked. She must have expected as much. Once she called attention to what was happening, it became easier to get through the fog I always fell into when she was around. She knew too much. She remembered things from other loops. Her troupe’s performance changed. She came here, to an abandoned mansion, to speak to me. The one person who knew about the loop. She wasn’t just a child.
She just smiled at me, with the wide, toothy grin that all adults forget how to make. “I’m Chandara! Remember?” she replied. I opened my mouth to push further, but simply let out a breath instead. She was like the scent of smoke, and asking for answers was like trying to catch it. I looked down at my feet, unsure of what to say. And when I did, I saw a trail of Aura. Like always, several extended from my feet in different directions. But I knew which had been there, and how many. I had them engraved into my heart. And there was one too many. Or rather, one which had always been there, and I had never noticed. Because, once Chandara pointed out what was happening to my mind, it stopped working as well.
And I knew exactly where it went.
I knew what I needed to do. I knew how to confront Vitinia. And it wasn’t killing her. If Luke were anything like me, and if that vision were true, it would work.
I could do it. But I needed a few days to myself first. A couple, gentle days with Junia, and Millie. A conversation with Harrison. Time to just… think. And then… then I would stop Vitinia.
End of the First Day