Elias was a little sad to see their retreating backs as they left the clearing.
“I know you are angry,” Elias said to Henrik. “But it is done now, and we should activate the spell before the sun sets.”
“I suppose it would be nice to sleep without worrying,” Henrik conceded.
Johan patted Henrik on the back as if he was proud of him for not continuing the argument.
Elias collected the rock from where he’d stored it safely and retrieved a knife while he was at it, then they all headed outside.
“How does this work, then?” Henrik eyed the rock sceptically.
“The sorcerer said to make a shallow cut, just enough to draw blood, on one palm each, and then we all press the wound to the rock at the same time. He said we will know when the spell is done,” Elias explained. “I’ll go first.”
Elias sat cross-legged on the cold ground and picked up the knife. He winced when the metal cut into his palm, but once satisfied the cut was sufficient, he passed the knife to Henrik.
Henrik and Johan quickly copied the action until both their right hands were dripping crimson onto the grass.
Elias gulped a lungful of air. “Here goes,” he said, picking up the rock he’d survived almost drowning in a river for.
He was worried for a moment when nothing happened, terrified he’d been swindled and had gone through all this for nothing, but when Henrik and Johan pressed their cuts to the rock as well, Elias felt it then. His hands quivered a little as he continued holding it, and a tingling sensation began in his fingers and travelled through his body until it felt like his heart skipped a beat.
Henrik and Johan both stared at the rock wide-eyed, evidently feeling it too, and then right as Elias was about to say “Do you think that’s it?” the previously dull, brown rock glowed like a star in the night sky.
They were silent as they witnessed the light trickle out of the rock and sink into the ground beneath them. It danced across the grass like fireflies, more and more of them bleeding out of the stone and spreading out to surround their home until finally the rock had returned to its original state.
It was unlike any magic Elias had ever encountered. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the way the light appeared to guard them, and he was so relieved he could hardly hold his exhausted body up. Because it had worked. It hadn’t been for nothing.It had worked.
Like a reflex, though, Elias reached inside himself to brush against his own well of magic, only, it was no longer there.
Elias hadn’t even realised he’d started to cry until Johan wrapped an arm around him and Henrik brushed his thumb under Elias’ eyes.
“I really don’t regret it,” Elias sniffled.
Johan cleared his throat. “Even without regrets, you… you still get to grieve, sweetheart. We will grieve with you. To havesacrificed this for us…” Johan choked up at the end. “You don’t have to mourn alone.”
Henrik held Elias’ hand and squeezed it tight while they sat in the quiet together for a while.
“This was quite an extreme measure to get out of doing any work, you know,” Henrik said, and they all burst into laughter, bringing some much-needed levity to the moment.
“Come on, it’s freezing,” Johan said, and in a swift movement, which took both Elias and Henrik by surprise, Johan scooped them up and carried them inside.
They all landed on the bed, and Johan squished Elias between the two of them. “This is where you belong.”
Belong.
Had Elias ever truly belonged anywhere?
“Are you okay?” Henrik asked him softly.
Elias smiled a watery smile. “I will be. The whole time I was enslaved, I only ever dreamed of escaping and getting my magic back. And when we did? It was like my anger tarnished it. I shaped it into something it was never supposed to be.”
Johan stroked Elias’ hair and stared at him with so much understanding it was hard to finish what he wanted to say.
“In the mills, it never even occurred to me to dream of having a family of my own. A home with people within who care deeply for me. My life with the two of you is literally beyond my own imagination, and if the price to pay to keep it safe is my access to magic? So be it. I would have paid more.”
Elias blushed, feeling slightly embarrassed by his emotional theatrics for the first time in his life. Maybe because there was a vulnerability to them this time. A truth that he kept buried. Johan and Henrik had the power to destroy Elias, and he had to try and trust that they wouldn’t. Not an easy thing when your own parents sold you to the worst people the world had to offer.
“Will you forgive me, Rik?”
