Blushfire's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

The rotation held for six nights. On the seventh, Blushfire came home before dawn with four new lines in the black book and found Melissa asleep at the kitchen table. Her head was down on her arms. The lamp had burned low. He touched her shoulder and she did not wake at once. When she did, her eyes took too long to find him. "How long have you been like this," he said. "A while." She sat up. Her hand shook when she reached for the cup. "Since the second night you used it." He pulled the crystal out from under his shirt. The small flame inside it was steady, but the light around it had thinned. He could see the grain of his palm through the stone. He set it on the table between them. "You said it would only pull a little." "I said it would pull what it needed." She met his eyes. "It needs more than I thought." He counted her. The freckles were sharper because her skin had gone pale under them. Her wrists were thinner. He had been looking at the ridge every night and not at her. "I'm done with it," he said. "You have four names left to reach." "I'll find another way." "You said that before Echo." He put his hand flat over the crystal. Choji lifted his head from the rug and watched them both. "I am not spending you for a page." She was quiet a long time. Then she reached across and closed his fingers around the stone. "Then give it back to me." He did. She held it against her chest. The flame inside brightened a shade, then another. Color came back into her mouth first, then her hands. It was slow. It was real. Whatever the crystal had taken, it could also return, if he stopped drawing from it. "I'll take the tattoo artist to the ridge tomorrow," he said. "Or the Keeper's apprentice. I'll use a hand again. I'll be slower." "You'll be alive. So will I." He went to the porch and watched the sky gray. Choji leaned against his leg. The stag would still be there tonight. The entity on the far side would still be listening. He had four names left in a book that could not be closed, and no anchor of his own body that would let him work alone. He came back inside. Melissa was standing now, one hand on the chair for balance, the crystal warm at her throat on a cord he had not seen her tie. She looked at him the way she had looked at him the night she first gave it over. "You will ask for help tomorrow," she said. "Yes." He unbuckled the crimson scarf, folded it, and set it on the table between them. He did not want to walk out with it while she watched him lie.