The Silver Mask (Magisterium #4)(57)

Aaron didn’t say anything. Call felt it again, the touch deep inside his chest. His injured soul calming. The sense of something being restored to him, something he’d only now known he was missing.

He gasped and his eyes flew open. The blur was gone from his vision. In fact, everything was irradiated with light. His body jerked.

“He’s alive,” said Master Rufus in amazement. “Call! Call, can you hear me?”

Call nodded; his head hurt, but he was no longer choking and dizzy. He stared up at Aaron. “What did you do?” he demanded.

“I gave you back your soul,” Aaron said. “The piece you used to bring me to life. I put it back inside you.”

“Aaron,” Tamara breathed.

“Tamara,” Aaron said. “It’s all right.” There was a gentleness in his voice Call hadn’t heard since Aaron had died. It made him feel like something was expanding inside his chest, something so huge it might crack his ribs open and make him scream. He could almost see the invisible threads connecting him to Aaron — golden, silken-fine threads of soul that stretched between the two of them.

And the opposite of chaos is the human soul.

Master Graves was babbling. “But that’s impossible. It can’t be done. Souls can’t be traded back and forth like — like playing cards!”

Call sat up. The battlefield was thick with smoke. Mages were moving back and forth, putting out fires, rounding up the Chaos-ridden and the traitors. Call saw Jasper’s father led away by two burly Assembly mages, though he didn’t see Kimiya anywhere.

“So I’m okay?” Call said wonderingly, glancing from Tamara to Aaron to Master Rufus. “We’re both okay?”

But Aaron didn’t speak. He was very pale. He still had his arms wrapped around himself as if he was cold. “Call,” he said breathlessly. His lips were bluish. “It was never supposed to be me. I’m not the hero. You’re the hero.” Impossibly, he smiled, just the slightest crook of a smile. “It was always you.”

“Aaron!” Call cried, but Aaron had slumped down between him and Tamara. Sobbing, she put a hand on Aaron’s shoulder and shook him, but under her hand, he was still.

Call felt his own soul thrash desperately toward the golden threads connecting him to Aaron. As though his own soul couldn’t bear to let Aaron go. For a moment, the feeling was so intense that Call thought he might pass out again. He concentrated on holding himself together, on pulling in all his energy and his power, on tugging the golden threads to him.

“Aaron’s gone,” Tamara whispered.

Call opened his eyes. Aaron looked peaceful, lying on the ground. Maybe this was what was best, maybe he was supposed to see it that way, but Call was horrified. The idea of losing him and losing Havoc, too, felt like almost too much to bear.

Call looked around for his wolf, but Havoc was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t where he’d fallen. Had someone moved his body?

He shivered. He wanted his father. He wanted Alastair. He felt gentle hands on him. Master Rufus, holding Call by the shoulders. He hadn’t remembered Master Rufus being so gentle, but there was nothing but kindness in his touch as he held Call while a group of mages approached with a stretcher and loaded Aaron’s body onto it.

The ache in his chest wouldn’t go away. His head buzzed.

There were other groups of mages out on the field, loading other bodies onto stretchers. “Be careful with him,” Call said raggedly, as they raised the stretcher with Aaron on it and began to carry his body away. “Don’t hurt him.”

“He can’t be hurt,” Master Rufus said softly. “He’s beyond all that, Call.”

Tamara was crying softly into her hands. Even Jasper was silent, his face streaked with dirt.

Call wanted to get up and run after the stretcher and grab Aaron off it, to bring him back to his friends. Which was ridiculous, because Aaron was gone. Dead beyond Call’s ability to call his soul back, even if he’d been foolish enough to make such a terrible choice twice. But Call wanted to make sure he got a real burial this time.

Even if Call was in prison again, unable to attend it. He thought about the walls of his old cell in the Panopticon. It wouldn’t be so bad to be back there now. Maybe it would be restful.

Then he remembered the state they’d left the Panopticon in. Well, he was sure there were other mage jails. Probably one of those would do.

“It’s all right, Call,” Master Rufus said, as if he could read Call’s thoughts. “He will get a hero’s funeral. Aaron’s name will never be forgotten.”

A shadow fell over them all. “Callum, you’re going to have to come with me,” said Assemblyman Graves. He looked as though he’d been disappointed that Call had pulled through.

“Callum isn’t going anywhere,” Master Rufus said. “He saved us all and he nearly sacrificed himself to do it. If you try to arrest him, I will encase you in stone. Callum Hunt is a hero, just like Aaron said.”

“Yeah,” said Tamara. “Touch Callum and I’ll burn your fingers off.”

Call looked at her in frank amazement. He thought that she understood that he wasn’t actually evil, but he figured he’d lost her friendship forever.

But when he gave her a wobbly smile, even though there were tears in her eyes, she smiled back at him.