She showed up in Ella's house like she'd never left. Mary Stonesworn. Still all black and fire and barely-suppressed world-ending. Me? I was elbow-deep in Ella's old pack trying to figure out which broken bits were keepsakes and which were figments conjured by the helmet I can't take off.
She didn't speak. Just stared at the scorch by the hearth where Ella came undone. Quick. Sudden. One word about Mary and then—nothing. Silence thick enough to chew through. Light out. Mind fractured. I remember the smell. Burnt steel. Burnt skin. Burnt hopes.
We were both relieved. That's awful to admit. But she was gone before she went, broken in a way fists can't fix. I'd been pretending I wasn't flaflad since the backflip. Since the fire. Since the voices started nesting behind my eyes.
Mary left before it all cracked. Not out of cruelty. Maybe guilt. Maybe she couldn't bear to see us come apart. But now she was back. Said she found something. A rite. A theory. Some ritual half-written in blood and divine margins. Said the Power can bind soul to vessel, seal madness inside the shell if I never remove the helmet.
Wear it forever or vanish entirely.
I don't know if I'm real anymore. The furniture blinks when I'm not looking. Mary's voice stretches sideways. My name echoes backwards when I whisper it. Yesterday I debated with a lamp about the ethics of soup. It won.
The sun only burns on Tuesdays. That seems important.
Ella's gone but I still set out two plates. Sometimes I think she's in the mirror behind me. Sometimes I think I'm in the mirror and the real me left months ago. I cry when I smell roasted meat. Panic when candles flicker. The fire speaks now. It says things I forget immediately. Mary watches like she's studying a dangerous relic. Maybe I am.
I'm hexjinxed. Everyone I care about either dies, leaves, or becomes a whisper in the smoke.
She claims she's here to help. Said she's done adventuring. Wants to stay. I think she's lying. She sneaks off sometimes, comes back warm like she's been spellcasting again. Her eyes flicker like torchlight when she thinks I'm not looking. One of the voices says she's sealing my fate. Another says she's my only hope.
I packed the last of Ella's gear. Locked the house. Walked away without a word. Mary didn't say goodbye to the house, I didn't want her to. That would've made it real.
For a moment on the road, everything quieted. No whispers. No illusions. No fire under my fingernails. Just breath. Just wind. Just ground beneath my boots that didn't bend like paper.
She reached for my hand but didn't touch. I looked at her and saw a girl who wanted to stop running. I didn't believe her.
But I wanted to.
And that's the closest I've come to peace since the helmet started speaking. Since the campfire, vampires, or Ella, that lit up like a star and died screaming. Since the gods stopped answering.
Mary says I can stay.
So I will.
It's quiet when I smile.