Bailey Baz's Arc

Chapter 9 of 44

Bailey rose from the deep water. The green light faded behind him. Malachar was sealed, but the debt still sat in his bones, a hundred years heavy. He climbed onto the rotted dock and pulled the old book from under the plank. He had one thing left to do. Cora had given him the totem that started all of this. Now the vines still tugged at her end of the swamp's magic. He had to reach her before the emperor's fall pulled her under too. He followed the vines to the root den. Cora sat inside the hollow, back against a twisted wall. Cora glowed with a radiant beam of red. Her cracked wand lay in her lap. The black totem piece hung at her throat, and it glowed faint blue. She looked up when his shadow crossed the opening. "The wards are gone," she said. "I felt them snap when you did whatever you did down there." "I bound him," Bailey said. "But your necklace. It's part of the chain. Malachar meant to take you." He knelt and touched the totem piece. It was warm and wrong. A thin thread of magic ran from it, down into the mud, toward the deep water. The same kind of chain that froze his own years. "This is holding you to him. If I don't cut it, it drags you down with him." Cora's hand closed over the stone. "My mothers wore this. All of them." Her voice shook. "You want me to break the only thing they left me." "I want you to live," Bailey said. He opened the book and found the line he needed. Not the deep binding. A freeing line, spoken over the totem itself. He pressed his palm to the warm stone and read the old words aloud. The thread of blue light stretched thin. Cora gasped. The stone burned bright, then cracked down its center. The magic snapped free and sank into the ground, gone. The necklace went cold in his hand. Cora breathed hard. She touched her chest, then her face. "I'm still me," she said. "I remember everything." She was free, and whole. Not like Bailey, who kept his self only because the vines still fed him. "You're loose from him now," Bailey said. He set the broken piece in her palm. "The chain is dead." She stared at the two halves. "And you? You freed me. Who frees you?" Bailey said nothing. His own debt had no line in the book. He looked at his small hands, the same size they had been for a hundred years. Malachar was buried. Cora was safe. But the jar was still full, and it was still him. Cora then remembered something so important and thought to herself if she should tell Bailey. She pondered as Bailey kept his eyes facing the floor. “Bailey,” She uttered. “I just remembered something. Something very bad. Four years after you died. I went searching for you. I had a feeling that there was something wrong.” “Why would you come searching for me?” Bailey asked. Cora answered, “You were my brother. I don’t think I made it back alive either.” Bailey’s mind flashed back to a memory that he never had before. A memory of playing games with a sister two years younger than him. It was Cora, but now she’s forever two years older. A heavy step sounded outside the den. Iron chains dragged in the mud. A broad shape with horns filled the opening. "Boy," said the horned man. "They told me a warden bound the emperor. If it's true, then you owe me an answer about a curse."