Idriel's Children (Odriel's Heirs Book 2)

by Hayley Reese Chow

  Mogens’ other hand thrust forward with a second dagger, and Aza twisted out of the way. She made another lunge for the door, only to find Mogens’ cloaked form blocking her way. She slashed to cut his head from his body, but he beat her away with ease. He slashed, thrust, and feinted with smooth advances, his every move astoundingly accurate until she pressed up against the back wall. His blade crashed into the wood as she rolled away.

  “You scurry faster now.” Mogens turned toward her, his teeth open in a wide smile. “But I do quite like how my beauty mark turned out.”

  Her breaths came in huffs, and her limbs ached where the Dolobra had cut into her. But Mogens shouldn’t have been able to see her. This should’ve been easy. “How can you see me?”

  “And here I thought Seela had told you not to trust your eyes.”

  Aza stepped back and nearly stumbled on Seela’s body, the sound of paper crinkling as a blood-stained letter fluttered from her robe.

  Sensing her distraction, Mogens advanced again. Her muscles burning and sweat beading on her forehead, Aza matched him blow for blow. She struck for his neck and heart again and again, but his inhuman speed was too much for her lethargic mind. He easily took the upper hand, keeping her on the defensive. Even battered as she felt, she could keep up with him, but he was wearing her down—and she wouldn’t win that game. Not today.

  She got some distance to catch her heaving breath and tasted the oily scent of smoke.

  Mogens sniffed at the air. “Conrad is of such little faith.” He cocked his head to Aza. “I’m afraid our play time is running out.”

  He closed the gap between them, and Aza retreated, trying to conserve her strength while she looked for a weakness, for an opening, for anything that could give her the upper hand. Steel on steel rang out as their battle ranged onto the stone landing.

  Flames billowed black smoke from each end of the long snaking train of buildings. The ropes that led up and down the cliffside had been cut, and students clambered up the bare cliff wall to escape the fire’s fingers. A tiny gush of relief shot through Aza. At least Keo, Shad, and Witt were safe.

  The blaze crackled around them as their battle raged on, a new urgency in Mogens’ attacks. Aza’s bid for victory had turned into a scramble for survival. If she was to survive the flames, this had to end. And soon.

  A band of two-dozen figures clad in the gray robes of the Wraith-Called emerged from the smoke on either side of the landing. Hope sang through Aza. The numbers were in her favor. They could take care of Mogens and get out of here. Then she noticed the blood on their robes. The Lost.

  Mogens’ gravelly laugh rang through the air. “Well, at least he sent reinforcements.”

  But she had fire. Grabbing a burning spar, she heaved it toward Mogens. He dodged, just barely, and it crashed to the ground in an explosion of embers. With an inhuman shriek, Mogens raised his brittle, corpse arms, smothering the eager sparks. Aza grabbed another fiery plank, brandishing it before her, and a hint of fear tightened Mogens’ skeletal jaw.

  Mogens straightened, his green eyes narrowing. “As much as I’d love to make you scream, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you to the flames… but don’t worry.” He smirked. “The Dolobra will be waiting either way.”

  With that, he turned and shambled to the cliffside.

  “Coward!” Aza screamed, running after him.

  She cut through the Lost one after the other, dodging their clumsy strikes and shoving the abominable creations away. But even as she put them down, they’d already accomplished their task. The fire had cut her off from the exit, and Mogens now clambered to freedom. She coughed as the smoke clogged her lungs.

  You don’t have time for this, girl, Silvix’s voice shouted in her head. Get the letter from Seela’s robe and flee if you want your answers.

  “Letter?” Stumbling with exhaustion, Aza didn’t have a chance to second guess the strange words smashing through her mind. Cutting through one more attacker, she turned and raced back to where Seela’s body lay in the practice room. She snatched the letter from the floor and stuffed it in her pocket before a cry from the landing turned her attention outside.

  “Help!” someone called.

  Coughing, Aza barreled out of the burning building to find a knot of adolescent Wraith-Called on the landing beside her, struggling against their Lost brethren. In one leap, Aza crossed the landings, dispatching the creatures with quick, efficient flashes of her daggers. Precious time burned away in the fire until Aza gasped for breath over a scattering of bodies, their blood slicking the stone. She turned to the five trembling novices cringing against the cliff face. They looked younger than her by a couple years, and soot smudged their pale faces, their eyes wide with fear.

  “The flames are too hot to climb,” one whimpered.

  “Down,” Aza barked, her voice hoarse and her wounds aching. “There has to be another way down.”

  With a gasp, one of the younger boys nodded. “Y-yes, this way.”

  On quick, shuffling feet, he led them to the lowest landing. Showers of sparks rained down on their shoulders with agonizing stings as he took them to a square hole cut into the stone where a rope hung down to pull up supplies. Covering her mouth with her arm, Aza eyed the flaming building beside them. They had to get away before it collapsed, or they would be caught in the spray of fire.

  “Hurry, down the rope!” Aza ushered the cringing students one after the other, their faces already blackened by smoke.

  Four went down without a word, but the fifth hesitated, sobs racking his body. The building crackled ominously beside them.

  “Go!” Aza shouted.

  The boy shook his head, shock freezing him to the spot. “I can’t.”

  The building groaned as it leaned to one side. She should just leave him. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  You can’t leave him, Silvix cut into her thoughts.

  “I’m not,” Aza growled. She grabbed his arms and looped them around her shoulders. “Hold on!” As the building gave way beside them, Aza leapt through the hole, the rope loose in her gloves.

  Fire and debris rained down, and she squeezed the rope to slow their sliding, the heat of the friction burning her hands while the boy squealed into her ear. Time slowed, Aza’s hands on fire as she tried to control their descent, the sand sliding reluctantly through the hourglass while the fates weighed their lives in the balance.

  But at last, her luck gave out, and the rope snapped somewhere high above them. Together she and the boy plummeted the last fifteen feet to land in a heap of dense brush already sizzling from the embers.

  Ignoring the scream of pain in her ankle, she grabbed the boy and dragged him away from the cliff’s edge, away from the flaming debris tumbling in earnest now.

  Aza sucked in the fresh air of the valley and deposited their last member at the feet of the other novices. Then, together, they watched Somisidas burn.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Answers

  Vision swimming, body aching, and smoke still choking her lungs, Aza collapsed against a tree with a groan. The novices clustered somewhere off in the distance, but she pointedly ignored them. She could only think of Seela’s bloodied body somewhere high above her in the ashes of the monastery.

  For a moment, Aza hesitated, seeing two people at once. Seela had taken her in hand, taught her the secrets of the Shadow Plane, and connected her to a past long forgotten. But she had also betrayed her to Idriel’s Children, hadn’t she? She’d led her into the waiting trap set to snap not just on her, but her entire family. Now her friends were gone, and the creature that she had set loose was roaming free, lusting after her brother’s life. Aza had thought she’d earned Seela’s respect at least once. Had it all been an act? Had she been working with Mogens and Conrad all along?

  The letter, girl, open the letter, Silvix’s voice prodded.

  And now she was hearing voices from the Shadow Plane in broad daylight. Perhaps she really was going mad.

 
She withdrew the square of blood-streaked parchment from her pocket and considered the three looping letters of her name on the front. Bracing herself for the worst, she unfolded the thick paper.

  Aza,

  I can only hope you have survived to find this letter. But if you are reading this, then that means I’m not alive to explain myself, and the Dolobra now roams free. I expect you have many unanswered questions, so with this, your final lesson, hopefully I can grant you some understanding.

  Valente Conrad first arrived at Somisidas several months ago. His orders were simple. I would call the younger Shadow Heir to Somisidas. As I had already wished to train you, it didn’t take much convincing for me to agree. I had heard you in the Shadow Plane and written to your father, but he had been unmoving in his wishes to keep you away.

  Conrad arrived again four days before you with new orders. I would let the Plane drain your strength and then instruct you to release the Dolobra. I resisted. Conrad tried to entice me with his dream of Idriel’s resurrection and gift of eternal life.

  This did not wholly surprise me, as I have had students in the past who have fallen into Idriel’s empty promises of immortality as a Lost soul. But this was the first true child of Idriel I’d beheld. I turned him away, but he seized control of my students, filling their minds with dark yanaa. Many of my students were too weak to resist him. They were as the living Lost, their lives twisted in his horrid hands.

  My students are everything to me. So, in an attempt to buy time, I acquiesced. He didn’t have the strength to control me, so I thought I could stall. I thought I could drive you away. You arrived, and I tried to send your friends away to keep them safe. I tried to wear you down. But you were so much stronger than I could have ever imagined. The tenacity and speed with which you learned nearly overwhelmed me, and I could truly see you were a descendant of Silvix. I wanted to tell you more but with Conrad and that abomination, Mogens, listening, I could say nothing.

  I’ve made a plan to evacuate the school and get you away from here. I can’t risk the countless souls the Dolobra would take, even at the risk of my students. But I expect I have stalled too long, for I sense something else… more powerful approaches.

  The Dolobra is a terrible creature. A devourer of souls in the living world and in the Shadow Plane. Like the Lost, it hungers for yanaa and will seek out you and your kin. To bind it is to sacrifice your mind and lock the two of you together in an endless struggle. To defeat it, you would have to kill both halves at the same time—a nigh impossible task.

  Though you are young and still have much to learn, you are strong, Aza. Perhaps even stronger than Silvix. But even you cannot do this on your own. I wish I could be there to guide you, but I have every faith that one way or another, you will right this wrong.

  Please forgive me for my weakness and my mistakes that have led us to this dark path. And I hope that one day, you, a victorious Shadow Heir will find me in the Mortal Wood and put my aching, shamed spirit to rest.

  Until then, be safe Aza.

  Seela

  Aza thought of the soul-eating Dolobra loose on the Shadow Plane and swallowed.

  “Will the Dolobra be waiting for Seela when she tries to cross?” she asked aloud, her breath crystallizing in the crisp mountain air. “Will she make it?”

  “She did not.”

  Aza looked up and there was Silvix standing before her, as if he had crossed straight from the Shadow Plane. His presence didn’t even shock her. Her mind was too far gone. “I… see.” She knocked her head against the tree. “Odriel take it,” she swore bitterly. “Just run me through.”

  Memories of her mother reciting to them from The Heir’s Way drifted to her—how they honored their own. Seela wasn’t an Heir, but she deserved such a send-off. She swam through those warm memories now gone cold and scraped up the only words she could remember, whispering them to herself in the quiet of the valley:

  A fallen ally, a friend, a teacher,

  The battle claims those we hold most dear,

  But we carry them with us,

  Their strengths become ours,

  And through their memory, we will be more,

  Then we ever were before,

  For you, the fallen, we will walk on,

  With you not here, but never far beyond.

  Silvix stood, silvery in the overcast light, and put his fingers solemnly to his lips. “May Odriel guide us all.”

  Perhaps it was the shock, or her wounds, or her sheer exhaustion, but all of Aza’s thoughts and emotions froze into a solid block of nothing.

  “Just leave me alone,” she muttered to the ghost. With that, she let the blood-stained letter fall to the ground, rested her forehead on her knees, and let the darkness take her.

  ✽✽✽

  Aza woke up to something heavy around her shoulders and a low fire crackling in the dusk. For a moment, she blinked her heavy eyelids, hoping to remain in unconscious oblivion for just a few moments longer. But her thoughts refused to obey, and the day’s events came rushing back to her all at once.

  Keo, Shad, and Witt were gone, Somisidas had burned, and Seela was dead. All because of her. Because she wouldn’t listen to anyone but her damned self. If she had just followed her father’s advice from the beginning, she would have followed her brother to Carceroc, helped the Maldibor, and gone back home. Instead, she had fallen straight into Mogens’ trap, again. And now, who even knew if her brother was still alive?

  What if she was the only Heir left?

  The sorrow built in her forehead, threatening to trace the permanent tear-stain scar Mogens had marred her with all those years ago. How could she have been so stupid? She, a Shadow Heir, with their legendary cleverness.

  Instead, she’d been the fool who had destroyed an ancient monastery and unleashed a soul-devouring monster onto her friends and family. Silvix’s look of astounded horror would forever be branded in her memory. Her father in the Mortal Wood must be so ashamed of her.

  A flash of movement caught her eye, and Aza looked up to see Witt walking toward her out of the dusk-drenched foliage. Her eyebrows raised in surprise. Of course, someone had to have built the fire, but what was he doing here? Hadn’t he left with the others? If he had any sense at all, he should have abandoned her and her fool’s quest. Just like Keo. Just like Shad. They’d been the smart ones.

  “You’re awake.” He smiled at her, his unguarded, happy expression completely bereft of guile or blame. What was wrong with him? “You know, when you sleep, you really sleep hard. I had to check to make sure you were breathing like five times.”

  “What are you doing here?” she croaked. “Where did the novices go?”

  He nodded next to a satchel by the fire. “The novices left some supplies and then started toward the village where they get their provisions.” He shrugged. “And me… I couldn’t leave. I didn’t make it far before I decided to turn around.”

  Aza’s throat clogged. Not in front of Witt. Don’t let him see you cry. Don’t cry. Crying is weak. Shadow Heirs don’t cry.

  “Anyways, we should get you something to fill your belly, Aza. There’s not much in the bag, but it should be enough for something decent.”

  His talk was so easy, so familiar, she half-expected her brother to emerge from the brush behind him with his own fish and bantering insults. Her brother who might be dead already. Aza pulled herself in tighter, trying to keep the emotions from spilling out. She didn’t deserve this. Why was he here? Why couldn’t he just go away? Then it occurred to her. He didn’t know.

  He didn’t realize it was her fault.

  Witt looked up at her again, and his smile fell away. “Aza?” He crouched beside her. “Are you okay?”

  “No.” And for some odd reason, that simple word let loose the floodgates. The sobs and tears gurgled out of her throat in a deluge she could no longer hold back. “It’s all my fault.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay, Aza,” he crooned as if trying to
soothe an infant. “It’s okay to not be okay.”

  Aza shook her head, her words only half coherent through the hitched gasps. “No. You don’t understand.” She pointed to the letter, the blood on the parchment now a rusty shade of brown. “I did this. It was me.”

  He squeezed her lightly as her grief dripped from her cheeks. “I do understand, Aza. I know what it says.”

  Aza leaned away, and he withdrew his arm as she tried to calm her uneven breaths. She scrubbed her cheeks with her sleeves in a vain effort to reclaim some of the dignity that now stained Witt’s shirt. “If I had just listened to my father, none of this would have happened.”

  Witt nodded, his placid expression unruffled by this revelation. “Maybe. You can’t really ever know what would have happened if you’d gone with your brother. Maybe those Hunters would’ve gotten to you, like they did your parents.”

  “Yes, if those Hunters killed my parents, then there’s no reason to believe my brother and I would’ve survived either. There has to be a different reason they wanted to unleash the Dolobra.”

  Witt’s mouth twisted. “Well, we always said we couldn’t trust Ivanora’s word for it anyway.”

  Aza’s brow wrinkled, and she sat up straighter. “That’s right. Which is why I never saw them in the Mortal Wood. Because they’re not dead.” Her mind spun slowly like a fire trying to catch on damp wood. “And that’s why Mogens and Conrad need the Dolobra. Because you have to go into the Shadow Plane to kill it. And my father doesn’t walk the Shadow Plane.”

  Witt’s eyes widened, and he looked up to where Somisidas lay in ashes somewhere above them. “And they’ve killed Seela and… and if they think you’re dead too then there’d be no one there to stop it.”

  A sudden bark of laughter erupted from Witt, and Aza looked at him incredulously. He’d finally cracked under the weight of their desperate situation. “Why are you laughing?”

  His laughter continued, loud and unabated, until tears ran down his face.

  Even as Aza resisted the urge to slap him, her traitorous mouth lifted up at the corner. “There’s nothing funny about this.”