Calling for my mommy probably wouldn’t look good in front of them.
“It is done,” Courage said, “With your name inscribed into our book, you have sealed your fate. You will return to your world and do what is expected of you. You will honour us in your deeds, you will be wise, you will be brave, you will carry hope within you, you will possess the drive to be better, and when necessary, you will have the strength to defeat your enemies. This is the will of the Gods.”
A powerful bolt of magic struck me, though where it had come from I didn’t know. There wasn’t any pain, only more stomach-twisting warmth. I squirmed, purely because my instincts told me to, but then I realized what was happening, and I stopped squirming.
It was my wings… they extended from behind my back and curled around me, bringing about a feeling like coming home after being away for a long time. Every time I’d felt my wings at my back, I’d been dreaming. It was like I was feeling them through someone else’s body. This time, though, I was me—I was real—and so were they.
Too bad it’s all a dream.
“They’re beautiful,” I said.
“They are yours,” Courage said, “Now go.”
The world tilted on its axis. My stomach lurched, my brain too. When I regained myself I wasn’t standing upright, but lying on my back. I opened my eyes, and the brightness was gone—replaced by a soothing, cool, blue light. I smacked my lips and started stirring, trying to get my bearings.
The vault, I thought. I’m in the vault.
It took a moment before my brain confirmed that, yes, I was in the vault right now. I remembered hitting the wall, and then the floor. I remembered passing out. But I also remembered… everything that had happened after. It wasn’t like a dream. It wasn’t slipping from my mind. It was all there. My mom, my ancestors, the Gods.
None of it was going away, like dreams and memories often did.
I blinked back the haze, the dizziness, and fought to get myself upright. Draven. He was lying on the floor, and his eyes were closed. Near him was Rey, the little silver tabby on his side, his eyes also closed. I rushed toward them both, crawling on my hands and knees to get to them.
“Rey,” I croaked, “Draven, are you alright?”
It was Rey who roused first, his ears twitching as he came into consciousness. He shook his head. “That was… something,” he said, stretching his back.
Draven wasn’t moving, but he was breathing—even if his breaths were a little too shallow for my liking. I stroked his face and tapped his cheek, then I pressed my ear against his chest, checking for the sound of his heartbeat. It was slow at first, but then it started to speed up just as Draven began to stir.
I held his face. He opened his eyes, and he opened them wide. “Seline…” he managed. “What… happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “I spoke the words and… are you hurt?”
He shook his head. “No, but, Seline—”
I hadn’t noticed his finger. He was pointing at me, his hand shaking slightly. I followed the line of his finger across my shoulder, and then I saw them, arching over me. My kithe. The light from all of the stones in the room caught on each white feather, making them look like they themselves were prismatic. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move. The only reason why my wings shook was because I’d started to tremble uncontrollably.
“Well, what do you know,” Rey said.
I snapped out of the daze and shook my back. My wings mirrored the movement, the feathers ruffling, muscles flexing. It was like I hadn’t forgotten, like I’d never lost them at all. Draven’s hand lightly brushed against my cheek. Tears had started to fall from my eyes, and if not for Draven, I wouldn’t have known.
I turned to look at him and saw myself reflected in his dark eyes. My lips parted, I took a short breath, and then I fell against his lips. Draven ran his fingers through my white hair, his lips parting just enough to receive my searching tongue. I wanted to taste him, to drink deep of him. In that moment, every inch of me was filled with hope, and passion, and want.
I wanted to get this done.
I wanted to do my mother proud.
I wanted to let go of my pain.
I wanted Draven.
Unfortunately for the two of us, Rey was in the room. He coughed, loudly, though it sounded more like a hack. “This is all well and good,” Rey said, “But we have a sociopath to catch, and I don’t think we can push that down in the schedule.”
“Right…” I said, pulling away from Draven.
“Do we even know where to start?” Draven asked. “Valoel could be anywhere. Maybe we could go back to the Arena…”
I shook my head and stared at him. “No. I know where he is.”
“What?”
“I know where Valoel is.”
“Forgive me,” Rey intruded, “But how is that possible?”
“Because I can feel all of the stones. They’re calling to me, all of them—even the ones he has. As long as he has them in his possession, I know how to find him.”
Rey bounded toward the vault door and called out. “Then what the hell are we waiting for?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I hadn’t had to explain the reason why I wanted the Order to rally every fighter available. All I did was ask, and Draven listened. It was only once the orders had been given to summon the fighters that Draven wanted to know why; he wanted to know what the plan was, if there was one.
Of course, there was a plan. I knew where Valoel was now, so we were going to storm his castle and cut him out of it. But having the plan didn’t necessarily mean it would be easy to carry out. Valoel had the Wrath stone, the strongest of all the others. Though I could feel my newfound power buzzing under my skin, desperate to show itself to the world, I knew, Valoel would make short work of me if I went in alone, just like he had last time.
I needed help.
“It shouldn’t take long to get everyone out here,” Draven said, “Do you have an idea of where he is, or do you exactly know where he is?”
“Do you have a map?” I asked.
Draven pulled a cellphone from his pocket, opened the Maps app, and handed it over. I let my hand wander across the screen, feeling the stones out with my mind, pinching and rotating on the display with my fingers almost as if they were working on autopilot.
It was like I could hear the stones calling out to me, reaching for me. They were singing distantly, like sirens wailing from across a dark and unknown sea. The closer I got to the right spot on the map, the louder their voices became, until finally, my fingers settled on a point and the voices stopped.
“Here,” I said, “This is where Valoel is.”
Draven looked at the screen. “This is… there’s nothing there. It’s just barren ground, nothing’s been built on it.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. That’s where the stones are.”
He took a deep breath. “Maybe we should scout the place out.”
“And risk Valoel spotting our scout? We can’t let him know we’re coming. Whatever this place is, wherever he’s hiding, he’s counting on it being the one place in the world where he feels safe. We need to make sure it stays that way until we’re ready to strike.”
“And if he has Serakon with him?”
“Then we have to be ready to fight.”
A thud nearby caught my attention. Felice had landed only a few feet away from where Draven and I were standing out in the courtyard. She watched me from where she stood, approached slowly, and reached for my wings with her hand. She touched them, ran her fingers through them, as if to check they were real.
“Did you think I’d put prosthetics on?” I asked.
She cocked an eyebrow. “Knowing you? Anything’s possible.”
I grinned at her, but said nothing more about them. There was a time and a place for that, and this wasn’t it. “Are you ready for this fight?”
She spun around and showed me the sword strapped to her back. “Feels like I’v
e been waiting years for this.”
“Me too…” I trailed off.
It truly was the fight to end all fights. Alright, maybe not all fights, but it was an important one. Maybe the most important one we’d ever fought. The worst part of it was, I had no idea how it was all going to go down. I’d said the words, I had three God stones, but Valoel still had the upper hand—and as far as I knew he still had an unknown number of Serakon under his control.
There were no guarantees, here. I wanted to tell everyone as they started showing up that they’d be okay. I wanted to reassure them they had nothing to worry about, but I couldn’t, because I was worried. Valoel had royally kicked my ass the last time we fought, and it didn’t even seem like he’d broken a sweat.
Was it going to be the same this time?
Fate and Ness arrived, then Six, Aaryn, and even Ferrum. None of them could believe what they were seeing. I had my kithe back. They’d all heard the story, they all knew what they were seeing was impossible—Aevian wings don’t just grow back. We aren’t reptiles. And yet there I was, standing on the edge of the Aevian fountain, with my wings tucked away behind me and three God stones in my possession.
“This is everyone who is going to be useful to us,” Draven said. Over a hundred members of the Obsidian Order stood in front of me, watching me from where they were. It wasn’t a fighting force, it was an army. “We’re ready when you are.”
Rey nudged my leg with his back and looked up at me. “I’m ready, too.”
I shook my head, knelt beside him, and stroked his chin. “No…” I said, “I can’t risk losing you.”
“I don’t want to wait here while you go to war. Not now that I can help it, now that I have a choice.”
“If something happens to me, I’m going to need you to carry my memory. You’re the only one who can.”
“If something happens to you, I’m pretty sure we’re all dead.”
“Maybe, and maybe not. You’ve watched over me my whole life. You’ve taught me, you’ve protected me, you’ve kept me safe. Let me do the same for you now.”
Rey’s eyes sparkled. He nodded and sat down by my feet, curling his tail around his legs. “Just so you know, I’m not happy about this.”
“If I die, you get to go live with Bastet.”
A pause. “That’s… yeah, that actually makes things a little better.”
I raised myself up again. From where I was standing, I could see the eyes and faces of everyone assembled. Once upon a time, most of the people standing in front of me had been a fresh-faced, wide-eyed Prospects competing in trials and tests to prove their worth. Now most of them were graduates of the Order’s training program, and the others were well on their way.
They were young, still, but so was I. We all were. And we were about to embark on an insane mission to try and stop a sociopath from burning the Earth to ash. No pressure, right? I took a deep breath and took their faces in one more time. I knew what they needed, now. I knew what I had to be; what I was born to be.
I needed to be their leader.
“I’m not gonna lie to you,” I said, “I’m not gonna sugar coat this. You’ve been called because you’re the Obsidian Order’s best and brightest. You can fight the hardest, you can out-think your enemies on the field, and your powers are among the best in the entire Order… but there’s a good chance we’re all gonna die tonight. I can’t force you to come with us, we can’t make you fight. But I need you one more time. We all do.”
Silence moved through the crowd like wind. Felice was the first to step up, though I knew she would be. “Just tell me where the bad guys are.”
I nodded. “I know a lot of you are probably going to have a hard time deciding—”
I was interrupted by the sudden shuffle of feet and bodies. It looked like… everyone was stepping forward, joining Felice in her decision to fight. Fate smiled at me from where she was, her mercurial eyes shifting with the light. Six, who stood beside her, grinned a predatory grin, her amber eyes glowing against the darkness around her.
Seeing them all come forward like that, watching them step up for me, filled my heart with something like pride. The last time I’d been here, I’d aired all of Draven and my dirty laundry for everyone to see. It had been a spectacle, one that didn’t paint Draven with any flattering lights, but didn’t do me may favors either.
Though no one had ever said it aloud, I knew my approval ratings around the Black Fortress had fallen a little. It wasn’t that anyone thought I’d done anything wrong, but any admiration they’d felt for me, any merit I’d earned in their eyes, had been tainted by… pity. People around here felt sorry for me, sorry for what had happened to me.
It had felt weird, walking around the fortress that first time since the night it all happened. I could still remember the way some people looked at me, the hushed conversations that took place as soon as small groups thought I’d moved out of earshot. I tried to spend as little time here as I could for that reason.
There was none of that, now. No pity, no sadness… only hope, and courage; faith in the woman standing in front of them.
“We’re all obviously gonna fight,” Felice said in her sarcastic way, earning a laugh from the crowd. “Tell us what to do, and we’ll get it done.”
I nodded. “We know where Valoel is, we know where the stones are being kept. The plan is to go down there with everything we’ve got, tear down his castle, and take the stones from his fingers. We don’t know exactly what we’re gonna be dealing with—maybe just him, maybe him and Serakon. He may also have some mages under his spell. Either way, with enough of us attacking from all sides, they shouldn’t be able to react fast enough.”
“Lightning raid,” Ferrum said, stepping up next to Felice. “I like it. Strike like fire from the sky.”
“Exactly. Now, the sooner we do this the better, but I need to make a couple of pit-stops, first.”
“Pit stops?” Draven asked.
“Don’t worry, I won’t be long. Get everybody ready, and in exactly an hour, bring them here.” I set a waypoint marker on the Map app on his phone. “I’ll be there.”
Draven frowned. “I don’t like that we’re splitting up. Where are you going?”
“I’ll be fine, trust me. I’m going to get us some backup.”
“Backup?”
Grinning like I knew a secret no one else knew, I pulled a teleportation orb out of my pocket. “I think I know a few people who could help us tip the scales in our favor.”
“And you’re sure this is a good idea? Moments before we saddle out and ride to war?”
I clasped him on the shoulder. “Do what you do best; make sure they’re ready to fight. Trust me, I’ll be fine.”
I was about to turn away from him and use the teleportation orb, when Draven grabbed my arm, pulled me toward him, and kissed me… in full view of everyone standing in the courtyard. There’d been a mumble of voices moving through the crowd, but now there was silence. Everybody was staring… of course, that didn’t mean the kiss wasn’t a good one.
Draven’s lips were firm, but soft. He’d kissed me with so much intensity, it’d almost taken my breath away. I shut my eyes, forgot all about the people watching this happen, and allowed myself to enjoy the moment—to enjoy him. We still had a long way to go, but already I was starting to feel those old, familiar feelings rising up from inside of me.
The kiss broke off, and I stared into his deep, black eyes. We were going to get through this together. We had to. We just had to.
“I’d tell you both to get a room,” Fate called out from the back, “But we’re a little strapped for time, so, if you could hurry this whole thing up?”
I shot her a look, and with a held breath in my lungs, I tossed the portal orb into the air, waited for it to form, and jumped through it. We had no idea what kind of defenses we’d be dealing with as we got nearer to Valoel. We also didn’t know exactly who would be fighting on his side. I had the Obsidian Order behind me, but w
e needed a little more firepower, and I knew exactly where to get it; even if she’d repeatedly told me she refused to take part in confrontations anymore.
I needed to speak with her, anyway—and what I had to ask her couldn’t wait until after this was over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I found Bastet exactly where I’d left her—in her apartment, surrounded by invisible things that made my skin twitch. Sometimes I couldn’t understand how I’d been able to successfully live at her place or a whole week and still managed to get any sleep. It was like living in a haunted house. All you had to do was walk through the front door, and right away you’d feel like you were being watched.
Of course, I knew the reason why I’d been able to put up with it… it was her. Just by being around, she made me feel safe. We’d had fun this week, watching TV, eating whatever the hell we wanted, and just trying to pretend like our lives were as normal as anyone else’s, and not the dumpster fires they were.
That was probably the reason why going over to her place now had filled with me a sense of dread. I trusted Bastet, I truly did, but Darkshard had planted a seed in my mind, and I couldn’t get away from it. What did she know more about that she wasn’t telling me? Was there really something she’d been keeping from me, or was Darkshard full of shit?
I couldn’t believe after all this time, that Bastet was anything other than genuine with me. We were friends, now. We’d been through enough together that, I liked to think, we at least had each other’s backs. And still… Darkshard’s words rang in the empty spaces of my head like church bells in the night, filling the gaps when my mind fell silent.
“Seline, honey, I don’t think you understood me the last time I told you I’m not getting involved.”
I’d barely said a word, and already she knew why I was here. I wondered if she could also sense the rest of what I was carrying with me. “I wouldn’t be asking you if I thought we didn’t need you,” I said. “But we’ve almost got him. I know where he is, and once we find him, that’s it. It’s over.”
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