From Flame and Ash

by Carrie Ann Ryan

  So, I closed my eyes and tried to think about what Ridley was telling me. I wasn’t one to meditate or sit down and be silent for long.

  It wasn’t that I thought it wasn’t helpful, it just wasn’t something I’d done yet.

  But I knew that when I actually focused within myself, that was when I could use my Wielding the best.

  If I followed Ridley’s advice and tried to center my mind, maybe I could get stronger. Perhaps I could actually do something with what I had.

  So, I closed my eyes and tried to think about my Wielding as an onion, something I could peel slowly, layer by layer. I held back a smile, remembering a movie I had seen when I was a kid about something very similar to that. Because an onion wasn’t the most pretty. Wasn’t the most decadent thing you could have and think about.

  I focused again, thinking about the Air sliding through my body. That was always the easiest to pull forth. Maybe it was because it was the one that I had first unlocked, or perhaps it was because it was the element I had first seen Rhodes use. It was the first element I had seen Wielded at all.

  Maybe that was why I was so close to it.

  It reminded me of Rhodes.

  I ignored the pain in my heart at that thought. I hadn’t seen him in so long, and I missed him and his family. I missed them all, though I knew I would see them soon. It was only a matter of when.

  “You’re doing great, there,” Ridley said softly.

  I just nodded, focused again on what was inside me. The Wielding seemed to swirl around me, large clouds of Air and Earth mixing together.

  It didn’t make any sense, but somehow, it was like I could visualize the Air Wielding moving inside my body, pulsing beneath my skin, trying to get out. It could be rough, it could be like a full-force tornado. But it was also gentle. A soft caress, a sweet breeze.

  It was nothing like the Earth Wielding that also surged within my system.

  That was like a rough earthquake, jagged and fierce.

  I knew I could make it soft, delicate with how I used it. But it was also brutal. Jagged-edged.

  Then again, so was Air. So were all of the elements. They could all be used to help, but they could also be used to take away.

  I didn’t know how long I had sat there, thinking about what was inside of me, but then I heard Ridley’s voice seemingly from far away. I moved towards it, slowly coming out of whatever trance I had accidentally put myself in. When I opened my eyes, the healer was looking at me with a smile on his face, and pure admiration in his gaze.

  “You’re doing wonderfully, Lyric.”

  I blinked, slowly rolling my shoulders back as I tried to figure out exactly how long I had been out.

  “Did I fall asleep?”

  “No, but you were in a deep meditative state.”

  That was weird. “Really? Did you help me with that?”

  I didn’t really know what a healer did, but that sounded like something they’d do. Maybe.

  “No, I could’ve helped if you needed it, but I think you have been on your journey for so long, that sometimes you just need to focus on what’s inside before you can move forward. Maybe next time I’ll have to ease you into it, but this time, you fell right in. Now, you’re probably wondering what this all means, and that’s something you’re going to have to figure out for yourself. But once you know what’s inside you, you’ll be able to use it. The others will help you with combat training. But I want to make sure that you’re mentally settled and emotionally secure before you take any next steps.”

  I nodded, even though I knew I would probably never be mentally and emotionally secure and stable. There was no way I could be when everything was faltering and changing around me. Sometimes, I felt like I was running as fast as I could yet standing in place. It was hard enough being a teenager on the cusp of adulthood in the human realm, let alone in this realm.

  Ridley helped me to my feet, and I stretched and grinned at him. And then Easton came up to us, a placid smile on his face, and I resisted the urge to punch him. I had no idea why I wanted to hit him. It just felt like it’d be so easy. Like he had a very punchable face—at least when he smirked.

  But as soon as Easton looked at Ridley, he stopped smiling. In fact, he started to look much like his other uncle, his grumpy expression mirroring Justise’s.

  “Are you almost done? I need your help, Ridley. One of the sentries tripped and hurt himself, and they could use you. I’m sure Lyric is just fine on her own, and one of the other babysitters will be around to help.”

  I hated him. “Seriously? I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “You need what I tell you you need.”

  And with that, Easton stomped off. I just glared at him, wondering how the hell he could be so sweet sometimes yet so disastrously annoying at others.

  “Don’t worry about him, Lyric. They grow out of it. Eventually. So I hear.”

  I looked up at Ridley, my eyes wide. “Why would I care?” I knew that was a little rude, but honestly, Easton just sent me over the edge, and now it seemed I was lashing out at everybody. “I’m sorry. Forget I said that. He just gets under my skin.”

  Ridley gave me a weird look much like Easton had. And then he shook his head. “Never mind, Lyric.” A pause. “I guess we’ll figure that out, too.”

  I still had no idea what either of them was talking about, but as I walked away from Ridley, headed back to my room as people started to stare and whisper, I wondered once again why I was here.

  Why couldn’t I be with people I knew? People I had fought beside.

  Because I didn’t know these people, I didn’t know this court. But now I needed to learn it. I’d never felt more alone, even surrounded by so many others.

  Sure, I had been alone before. And I knew I would be alone again.

  But right then, all I wanted was a place to call home.

  I just didn’t know where that was.

  Chapter Seven

  Sharp pain radiated from my backside as I tried to roll to my knees from where I was currently splayed on the ground. I sneezed as the dust around me settled, and I had a feeling I looked just as embarrassed as I felt.

  “Yeah, you probably shouldn’t have landed on your butt like that. Maybe we need to teach you how to fall.”

  I glowered up at Teagan, who just grinned at me, holding out a hand.

  Reluctantly, I put my palm in his and staggered to my feet, wiping off my leather pants since I was caked in dirt. I had a few scrapes, too, and some blood. But that’s what happened when you were training to be a warrior…or whatever the hell I was doing.

  I didn’t actually know what I was training for. I only knew that I was still very much a novice when it came to elemental Wielding and how to protect myself.

  I had always been a runner. That had been my thing. I ran.

  In retrospect, I could see that I ran from decisions and having to figure out where I fit into the world, too. But I didn’t really want to think about that right then. So I wasn’t going to.

  But I always jogged when I needed to set my mind straight or tried to work through aspects of decisions I needed to make. I also ran when I needed to think about nothing and just focus on breathing.

  I had been good at running when the Negs came after me. And I had run well when Rhodes screamed at me to keep going and try to save myself.

  Not that I had actually done much of that, at least not until the end. Because Rhodes had done his best to save me, and then I had been forced to save myself when everything seemed bleak.

  But I wasn’t going to think about that. I wasn’t going to think about the fact that my stomach churned, and I had that little ache in my belly when I thought about Rhodes and the fact that he wasn’t mine.

  Because I had seen the way he looked at me, like everything he’d thought possible and true had been completely ripped away from him, his steadying force no longer secure.

  I had seen that, and I hadn’t known how to react to it. So, I hadn’t.
/>   I ran.

  “Hey? Are you okay? Did I really hurt you?” Teagan asked. He reached forward as if he were going to touch me but thought better of it at the last moment. No one really touched me here. It was as if they were afraid they’d hurt me.

  Or someone would hurt them if they touched me.

  I didn’t understand it, but I had other things to worry about.

  Teagan cleared his throat and then looked over my shoulder to where Arwin and Wyn were standing.

  “Lyric?” Wyn asked as she walked up to me.

  I shook myself out of whatever thoughts I was having and looked over at the other woman. She had pulled her hair back into a loose braid and stared at me as if worried that Teagan had somehow accidentally broken me.

  “I’m fine. Just got the wind knocked out of me.” Not a lie, but not the complete truth either. I really didn’t want them to know that I was just annoyed with myself. That I felt I wasn’t really good at anything.

  “If you’re sure. We can take a break if you’d like,” Arwin said.

  I looked over at him, and he smiled. Even though I knew he was probably older than I was, he felt much younger. As if he hadn’t had the experiences that age brought even though he was so much older than I.

  But that was just how the Maisons worked. They aged far slower than humans did. That’s why, while Rhodes and even Easton were in their two hundreds, they felt around the same age as me. Rosamond was in her four hundreds, yet sometimes she felt the same age as me. Other times, she felt so much older.

  But that was probably because she was a Seer and held so much of the weight of the world on her shoulders.

  I might have similar burdens, but it felt far different. Maybe because it didn’t feel real. It hadn’t felt real when I was hiding in the human realm, trying to read up on as much as I could and training with Alura on the side.

  But now that I was back in the Maison realm, albeit in the Obscurité Kingdom rather than the Lumiére one like I thought I would be, I was still just trying to catch up. Responsibilities on my shoulders or no.

  “I’m fine. Really. I just wasn’t expecting the floor to come at me like that.”

  Teagan grinned. “That was Wyn. Not me. I’m the Fire Wielder, remember?” He held out his hands, and a little ball of flame danced along his fingertips.

  I stared at it, transfixed.

  I had always loved fire, probably to my detriment. I used to like playing with matches when I was a kid, even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to. I loved sitting next to a campfire. I adored the smell of it, the way you couldn’t control it even if you thought you could. It wasn’t that I wanted to destroy things. No, far from it. I’d always loved the fact that it felt like it was alive unlike anything else.

  It was the one element that I knew I would probably either fear or love once I could Wield it. Others had told me that it was the hardest one to Wield, and that’s why so many Fire Wielders had terrible attitudes or lost control the easiest.

  I was afraid of it, I knew that, but I would learn.

  Just like I was learning Earth and Air.

  “I didn’t make the earth rumble that much,” Wyn said quickly. I looked over at her, and she blushed. She was so strong, so confident, yet sometimes it felt like she was just one of the girls, as if she were my age instead of in her two hundreds like the rest of them.

  Wyn was an Earth Wielder—and a very strong one at that. She was not an Earth shaker like the man I had met in the Earth territory when he tried to kill us. That man had been one of the pirates under Slavik’s command and not a very good man at all.

  Wyn, though, she could create waves of soil and dirt and earth to drown and destroy her enemies. Not that she’d told me about it, but it had been in the material that I had read from Rosamond’s book. Wyn was still training to learn how to create full earthquakes and even build mountains out of the land around her. That was something I wanted, as well. Because using what was around you was the best way to fight those who wanted to take something from you.

  It was so odd to think about my life in these contexts, but I wasn’t a human girl anymore. I wasn’t thinking about what college to go to or what I would be when I grew up.

  I was a Spirit Priestess, at least two of the five elements told me so. I might not know how to save the Maison realm or how I would protect those I cared about, but I knew that I needed to train. Hiding from myself and everything around me wasn’t going to help anyone.

  “Okay, want to go again?” Wyn asked, wiping her hand on her pants. “We can start with just focusing on what’s below you. If you can stay steady when the earth shakes, that means you’ll be able to Wield the Earth right under your feet while everything else is being Wielded by the other person. It’s one of the first things they teach us when we’re younger and first learning how to use our Wielding. It helps us maintain at least some semblance of control of what we can physically touch, rather than just what our Wielding can touch from far away.”

  I nodded, remembering reading this in the history book. It had been more about the Lumiére powers than the Obscurité, but I was learning quickly. At least, I hoped I was.

  I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the Wielding inside of me. It was weird to hone in on just Earth and not Air. Today was only about Earth, though, and that was something I was just fine with. There weren’t any other Air Wielders around me, so it wasn’t like I could ask them for help.

  In fact, the three helping me had said they hadn’t really seen Air Wielders at work, other than when they were fighting against them in the small skirmishes that had broken out over the past one hundred years or so.

  The Obscurité and Lumiére weren’t at full-scale war with large and dramatic battles. That had happened when the Fall had occurred.

  Now, it was more like border territory wars while everybody tried to figure out what the next step was. I knew that Teagan and Wyn had fought often on the lines of battle between the Lumiére and Obscurité. Arwin was still learning and had only fought a few times.

  In fact, apparently, I had been in just as many battles as he had, and mine had only been by accident when I was trying to find Rosamond back when I first heard about everything that wasn’t human.

  I had been in this realm for about two weeks, so between training physically with these three, and working mentally with Ridley, I was exhausted. But thriving.

  At least, I thought I was. I hoped I was.

  I could call on my Earth Wielding without thinking too hard. Though even now, I still wasn’t great at the offensive. Defensive was good though, and that meant I could at least protect myself and anyone close to me. At least for short periods of time.

  Wyn pushed again, using her Earth Wielding to come at me. I threw up my hands, pushing outward so I could create a wall.

  I remembered that Lore, Cameo’s knight, had created a wall of Earth so thin that I could see him through it. He had used almost minuscule particles of sand rather than the dirt itself to protect him. I didn’t know how that power could come about, other than through pure evil. He had literally sucked the energy from the crystal itself, using those connected to it and their powers against us. I never wanted to be that powerful. Not if it meant sacrificing others.

  I wasn’t even sure I wanted that power if it came to me naturally. They’d said I was going to be the most powerful Wielder of all, or at least the one who could use my powers the best to save others. Though no one knew what that meant.

  It was starting to get under my skin because it was like they all expected me to just…know.

  How was I supposed to know when, only a year ago, I hadn’t known that any of this existed?

  Wyn pushed again, and I kept steady this time, keeping my hands up so the barrier could stay between us.

  Sweat dripped from my brow and down my spine, and I clenched my jaw, my teeth practically rattling.

  The Air moving within me pushed, wanting to help, but I tamped it down. In my training the day before, I had
used both elements and had been able to push Wyn out of the way and win our round. But Teagan had come with Fire, and only because of his strength and knowing where to aim it, did I escape and avoid being burned.

  I still remembered the way Easton had come out of nowhere. How he’d screamed at the top of his lungs at Teagan because he’d dared to almost burn me.

  It was kind of funny considering that Easton had only come down to observe a rare few times. I hadn’t even known he was there. Suddenly, he was standing near me, watching. And apparently angry that training had gone too far.

  The thing was, it hadn’t gotten too far. Teagan had never been out of control, and I had known that he was coming at me. I just didn’t know how to fight against it yet. But we were learning. They were training me.

  Apparently, Easton didn’t understand.

  But I didn’t understand him.

  Though it wasn’t like I really needed to.

  We worked on my Earth walls more and more until I was finally exhausted and had to call it quits.

  “Okay, I think I’m done for the day.”

  “You’re not going to be able to just call it quits for the day when you’re in a real battle,” Easton said, growling.

  I looked over at him, once again surprised that he was there. He had an excellent knack for just coming out of nowhere and surprising all of us. He tossed his black hair back from his face, his dark eyes narrowed. His jaw looked so tight and clenched that I was afraid he would break a molar.

  “It’s just training, Easton. Lighten up.” Teagan started packing up our supplies and refreshments that we’d used throughout the day. Wyn just shook her head and went to help him. Arwin stared between us before going to help the others.