“Two have done it,” I said. “The Founder of the Tribunal and a Warden of the Woods. And now, me.”
“They’ll need blood to bring you back,” Simon said. “Yours. And a blood mage who can use it. Outside of you and me . . .”
“I know of one other,” I said. “And I have this.” I brought out the empty vial that used to belong to him. “Can you help me fill it?”
Grimly, he took the tiny bottle, removed the stopper, and helped me make a cut wide enough to release a stream of blood before positioning my hand over the bottle to catch it as it flowed. When it was full, he replaced the stopper and laid the cord over my head. The glass clinked as it came to rest against the flower of the bell.
“If that blood is lost,” Simon warned, “none of this will work.”
“Don’t worry,” I replied. “I know the perfect person to entrust with its safekeeping.”
He helped me to my feet. “Are you ready?”
I nodded, forcing myself into the appearance of bravery as he made a cut in his own hand and then clasped mine with it.
His voice, as he began the spell, reminded me of the carillons at the Stella Regina: deep, resonant, affecting and musical. I could feel his magic and mine both answer his call. And every word felt like a new wound, slowly eviscerating the unvisceral, cutting the physical from the metaphysical.
“Et sanguis meus tua . . .”
By your blood and mine . . .
“. . . divinae luce . . .”
. . . and the light of the divine . . .
“. . . et ego tres partes dividio.”
. . . three parts I divide.
“Anima mea, visus, et substantia . . .”
Soul, sight, and substance . . .
“. . . nunc in sanguine quod factum est . . .”
. . . by blood now undone . . .
“. . . faciet, a sanguine rursus . . .”
. . . will, by blood, again . . .
“. . . ut uniatur.”
. . . be united as one.
“Merciful Empyrea,” Simon said as he finished the spell.
I was not simply me—I was me times two: my spectral and material selves were now separate parts.
I commanded my spectral self to step away from me, and she—I—obeyed. We looked at each other for one second, blinking. Two sides of the same coin. The same but not the same. She had dark hair; I had light. She had blue eyes; mine were silver. I was cut and bruised and damaged; she was without scar or flaw.
Wordlessly, I lifted the lid to the luneocite casket and climbed into it, then leaned languidly back while I watched. I saw myself settling into the glass coffin at the same time as I actually did it. Only when my spectral self closed her eyes—my eyes—did my vision become singular once again.
While she rested there, I slipped Zan’s ring from my finger and placed it under her clasped hands.
Simon laid the lid down over my spectral body, and I felt another tether snap—just like when the blood bond broke between me and Kellan. Only this time, it was the last thread of quicksilver connecting my selves that was dissolving.
“Bleeding stars,” I said as I felt the silver melt away. It wasn’t until it was leaving me that I realized how much a part of me it was. I had walked the Gray, Onal once told me, before ever taking a living breath in the material world. My silvery eyes and ashy hair were the physical manifestations of my unconventional path into existence—a quicksilver souvenir from the spectral world.