CoS16

## Chapter 16

**Chapter 16** of **City of Spells** follows **Zekia**.

## **Full Version**

ZEKIA WAS VERY GOOD at being invisible.

She was also very good at being alone, even in rooms of people. Even when those rooms and those people were in her own mind.

Wesley was gone, again.

He had left her with Ashwood, again.

And this time, he had hated her enough to drill into her mind while doing it.

He’d left holes there, where she was sure there wasn’t space left to leave any more, and now Zekia felt the shiver of emptiness in her bones.

He didn’t understand that none of this was a choice.

She’d tried to tell him about the future and how it would be worth it in the end. Every death and every bad thing would make way for the light, because Zekia was saving the world.

She was saving everyone.

She was *good*.

And once they were done in Creije and Tisvgen, they could travel to Rishiya and begin the next phase. That was where the resistance was, waiting to be liberated to Ashwood’s new realm.

Where Zekia’s Kin was.

Where her family was.

Where Wesley was probably waiting for her to save him again.

*He doesn’t want to be saved*, her mind chided. *Not by you.*

Zekia tried to push her thoughts aside, but they were stronger than her. Probably because there was hardly anything left of her anymore. No family. No Wesley. Even her visions had turned against her, only ever feeling like nails in her skull when they came.

Without her Kin to help steady her powers, what should have come to Zekia as wisdom was now always an army of futures that seemed like they were attacking her, fighting for space in her head, and they wouldn’t stop until Zekia had disappeared and all that was left was a shell, filled with their wicked deaths.

Even having Ashwood’s Crafters by her side didn’t help. Zekia needed her Kin. She needed a blood connection to settle her spirit.

It had been worse since Wesley left. Zekia felt more unbalanced than ever. Visions were a funny thing. They were never certain, almost always perilous, and they sent Zekia into a tailspin that made her forget who she was and why she was.

This one was no different.

Or it was different, because it was worse. Because it was the first one in so long that was clear.

Zekia dropped to the floor as the images flashed in her mind.

Her mother was a goddess.

She had bronzed eyes and freckles that sparkled like glitter in the sun. Her hair was a bundle of tight curls, just short enough to touch the very tips of her ears and though she wore a dress the same deep and galactic purple as the Loj—though her smile was warm and her eyes were kind, and the staves against her black skin looked like pretty pictures—she was a fighter.

Zekia could tell just by looking at her. She wasn’t sure how or what it was exactly, but a part of Vea Akintola looked ready for war.

She’d grown up on stories of her mother, and even a few scattered photos, but those did no justice, and stories were often prone to lies. People liked to remember the dead the way they weren’t. They liked to take the best parts of them and pretend that was all there was.

Zekia had grown up being told that her mother was perfect and she’d grown up knowing it wasn’t true. Now, seeing her as clear as a shadow moon, Zekia could understand how the lies got mixed with the truth.

Her mother was not perfect, but she was glorious.

She carried a child in her arms who Zekia knew was her brother, though she’d rarely heard about Malik besides what a great leader he was destined to be. All the stories about her brother were about what he could have been, or should have been, but rarely what he was.

Malik was supposed to save them.

Malik was supposed to be Liege.

Malik was supposed to change the world.

And instead they got stuck with her.

Zekia’s brother was tiny and that struck her as odd, since he would have been older than her if he were still alive. But now she was looking at him, a baby, and she was suddenly the older sibling. It felt like an enormous responsibility, even if it was to a dead boy.

Vea carried Malik into a small shed.

Zekia watched.

Vea held him up in the air and sobbed.

Zekia watched.

Amja drew strange symbols on the floor, her hands shaking the entire time.

Zekia watched.

And then Malik cried and the shed was engulfed in black flame and everyone screamed and the forest withered and all the while Zekia watched.

She wanted to look away, or even blink. But you couldn’t blink if the thing in front of you was actually inside of your mind.

You could only watch.

Only listen.

Only wish that it would stop.

The flames seemed endless and Zekia wasn’t sure how long she would have to stare as her mother and brother died, but soon minutes passed and the black smoke faded, as did the forest, and from it Wesley Thornton Walcott appeared.

A phoenix from the ashes.

The smoke morphed into his face and he was standing in front of her, with his bone gun pointed at Dante Ashwood, while a song chanted in the distance.

*Time will be carried in strange hands,*

*across the realms and through stranger lands.*

*What is done will be undone,*

*a battle lost is a battle won.*

*When midnight rings on a child’s betrayal,*

*every success is doomed to fail.*

It repeated over and over until Zekia started mumbling the words to herself, humming the tune like she had known it her whole life. It played for so long that when it finally stopped, abruptly and without warning, Zekia kept singing, thinking that it might start up again.

But it didn’t.

And Wesley still stood there, pointing his gun, like he was frozen in time. A clock chimed somewhere and only then did Wesley blink, as though it had sprung him back to life.

Dante Ashwood, made of magic and the kind of dreams you remembered vividly one moment and forgot the next, smiled.

“My boy,” he said.

“Not anymore,” Wesley said.

He fired the shot and Ashwood exploded into a flurry of shadows that flew away like bats. They screeched and screeched as they fled toward the shadow moon.

And the sun burst through.

The darkness faded and the light broke and all around Wesley, silver soaked the streets.

Magic dust. Staves inked on the stone under people’s feet. Painted on buildings and thrown between jugglers like balls, while a crowd clapped and laughed and sang.

A world of magic.

A world of peace.

Zekia let out a breath like it was her first as the vision faded and she was plunged back into the real world.

She gasped in the air and clutched at her throat, the blood from her nose dripping down to her chin.

She wiped it away with shaking hands.

Her demon nudged at her legs, but Zekia could not move to calm the beast, nor reach into its mind to tell it to just *go away*.

It didn’t make sense.

Wesley—*her* Wesley—destroying the man who was meant to make the world better, and creating something even more glorious in its place.

Zekia pressed a hand to her head to try to stamp out the future, but it still sang in her mind like a song she’d never forget the tune to. Like the ghostly vision that Ashwood had shown her, only for some reason Zekia felt this one in her heart and in her spirit.

It soothed her, and that was the most confusing part of all.

When Dante Ashwood walked through the door to her room, Zekia pulled herself to her feet and quickly brushed off her dress. It had dust marks from the floor and it wasn’t quite white anymore and she didn’t want him to be angry about that.

“What is it, my little warrior?” he asked.

He crossed the room and reached out a hand to her bloody face.

“Was it a vision?” he asked. “What did you see?”

Zekia pushed the possibility of a new future out of her mind, where he couldn’t find it.

“I didn’t see anything new,” she said. “More of that scary world we have to stop.” She looked up at him. “We will stop it, won’t we?”

Dante Ashwood nodded and kept his hand on her face, stroking her cheek like she was his favorite thing.

“Of course we will,” he said. “Together, we will change everything. But first, we must talk about your family.”

Zekia stared at the dirt on the edges of her dress.

The walls of her mind were closing in again and if she didn’t concentrate hard enough, then she knew she’d forget what she had just seen. She knew she’d forget everything that mattered.

Zekia was so tired of forgetting.

She was tired of her mind being such a lonely place.

She smiled up at Dante Ashwood and, in the perilous corners of her mind—where she kept the memories of Saxony and Amja and her father, where she kept the hearts of her Kin and the fragile pieces of her childhood she couldn’t quite let go—Zekia called out to Wesley.

*Please, she said. Please don’t leave me here again.*