“You made it,” Oktos said, “I’m impressed.”
“No thanks to you,” I said, the electricity falling away from my body like it had somewhere else to be.
“I already told you, I’m your guide, not your chariot. Anyway, you’re here now, and that means you’ve been found worthy.”
“Worthy of what? Don’t tell me you’re about to put another trial in front of me. My friends need my help, I need to go home.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, are we keeping you from prior appointments?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Oktos ruffled his wings. “Sounds to me like you’re being a little ungrateful, and maybe a little entitled.”
“Entitled? If you knew me as well as you say you do—”
“—I know everything about you, Isabella. I know you better than you know yourself, better than anyone ever will, the exception to that being only your Guardian. If I tell you I can sense your entitlement, trust me, it’s because it’s there. I’m not in the business of lying to the people who come through here. I want to help you, but before you can be helped, you must find a little humility. Especially seeing as you’re in the presence of your Guardian.”
I was about to speak, but I held my tongue and stared at him. My heart started to flutter inside of my chest. It was already beating a mile a minute, but now it had started slamming against my ribs. Then I scanned the tower, slowly, searching for my Guardian who was supposed to already be here.
Madly, I thought I would find it clinging to the top of the dome, a monster staring at me from deep inside the darkest parts of the tower, where the light from the fire couldn’t reach. But the dome was empty, the tower was empty, save for Oktos and me. I looked at the skeleton again, confusion on my face.
“Where is it?” I asked.
Oktos turned his eyes on the fire at his feet, that tongue of flame that couldn’t have been larger than a tennis ball. I stepped a little closer to it, my feet shuffling slowly, unsure. The flame flickered and shifted. At any moment, I thought, it was going to gutter out and die. The wind up here was strong, too strong for this thing to survive, but it wasn’t a real flame at all, was it? There was no wood under it to keep it going, no bowl filled with coals. It simply existed.
And then it looked at me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Holy shit, this thing has eyes.
I couldn’t be sure how long I’d stood there, gawking this ball of fire with a breath held in my lungs. Maybe seconds, maybe minutes. It had eyes, and it was looking right at me. Not at me, specifically, but more like through me, into me. I took that breath, my lungs and chest heaving, and finally I could think again.
“Is that… my Guardian?” I asked.
“I think it’s probably a good idea if you were to ask Ifrit yourself, don’t you?” Oktos said.
The little tongue of flame flickered against the wind, but it didn’t keep its eyes off me.
“But, I mean… what happened to it? Where’s the rest of it?”
Oktos suddenly stepped back, shielding himself with his wings. “Ah crap,” he said, “I had a feeling she’d ask—” Ifrit suddenly, and viciously, blew up in size, cutting Oktos off as he spoke.
I jumped back, covering my face with my arms. The heat was so intense, so real, it scorched my skin. But it wasn’t just the light and the heat; the fire roared around me, consuming the bell tower and turning it into an inferno. It climbed along the black columns and into the dome at the top of the tower, gathering there like turbulent water; smokeless, but alive with movement.
Ifrit stood at the center of the tower, no longer a tiny flame but a fully fledged fire demon. It was easily seven feet tall, with long, lanky limbs made entirely of fire, its hands tipped with clearly visible claws. Its face was a cross between a wolf and a bat; all teeth, all flames. It opened its mouth and roared, and its throat was white from the heat inside of it.
Once again, I shielded my face from the hot air streaming toward me, and suddenly, just as quickly as the fire had spread, it was gone. Slowly, I let my hands fall and opened my eyes. There was no smoke around me, no burning embers, the walls and floors weren’t even scorched. Not that I’d have been able to tell—everything was black. But Ifrit had returned to its diminutive size, its large, frowning eyes upon me.
“Better?” it said, a little mouth of fire appearing as it spoke.
I swallowed hard. “I don’t… what? I mean, what do I even say?”
“How about, sorry for keeping you waiting?”
“Yeah, I guess I deserve that.”
“Yes, you do. Do you have any idea what it’s like to sit in this tower, calling, and calling, and calling. And I know you’re out there, I know you can hear me—I know you’re ghosting me.”
Both my eyebrows went up. “Ghosting?” I asked.
“You don’t know what ghosting is?”
“No, I know, I’m just surprised you know… I mean, you’re a fire demon from the Tempest.”
“Demons wish,” Ifrit snapped, “I’m a fire Godling. There’s a difference, but you’ll learn that soon enough… that is if I decide to go with you.”
“If?”
“What, you think I don’t have a choice?”
“But I made it all the way here. I survived the fall, I swam so hard it almost killed me, I even flew up the stairs. Literally flew. You saw it, right?” I asked Oktos.
Oktos put its hands up. “Hey, don’t look at me, my part in this is finished.”
“So, why are you still here?”
The skeleton bird shrugged. “Nothing else better to do for now. Besides, this is fun.”
“Fun?”
“Let’s get back to me, now,” Ifrit said. Despite being small, it had no trouble projecting its strangely nasal voice loud enough for everyone to hear it. “You’ve made it this far, but you kept me waiting, and I don’t know if you’re strong enough to deserve this.”
A light grew inside of the little ball of fire. It was cold and blue, maybe the size of a marble, but bright enough that it could be easily seen. My heart gave a powerful thud, and the world seemed to fall away to darkness. I felt something inside of my chest, then; something a little like pain, a little like longing, a little like heartache.
I didn’t realize it at first, but tears had started welling up inside of my eyes. I blinked, and the tears streamed down my cheeks. It was beautiful. More than beautiful. Beautiful wasn’t even the right word to describe this tiny, pulsing ball of blue light. It was like a star, one I thought I could reach out and touch if I wanted to, and I wanted to.
I needed to, because without it, I wasn’t me. I wasn’t whole. I was broken, half of a thing. Staring at this tiny blue ball was shattering my world. I could almost hear it breaking around me. Like taking a hammer to a glass ceiling and hearing the shards fall and smash. All my life I’d lived not knowing just how incomplete, how less than I truly was.
I fell to my knees, sobbing, now. As if my very essence had started bleeding. Dimly I wondered what would’ve happened if I’d never set eyes on this little blue dot. Would I have gone through the rest of my life living in ignorance? And when I died, what then? What would have become of me if I was only half of what I was meant to be?
Oblivion.
I tried hard to swallow, but my throat was dry and hoarse. With one hand I wiped the tears from my face, trying somehow to regain some of my composure. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, to grab hold of myself and string together a conscious thought in the face of… this. In the face of—not mortality itself—but immortality.
I felt like I only had a single sentence I could give before I… I don’t know, died? How much more of this could my heart take?
“I…” I started to say, the muscles in my throat barely working. “I’m… worthy,” I choked out.
My vision was starting to close around me, the edges of the world darkening, darkening. “Prove it,” Ifrit said, “Take it, if you can.”
I fel
t my arms give, and I fell to the floor, flat on my chest. It was like the ceiling was slowly falling onto my back, pushing me into the ground. But I crawled, dammit. One hand after the other, one leg after the other, I dragged myself across that floor, digging my nails into the dips and cracks in the black stone underneath me and pulling myself along.
I could see Ifrit ahead of me, the ball of light inside of its chest, and Oktos behind it… but they were falling away, falling out of reach. As if with each push I made toward them, they were stepping back. Teasing me. Like schoolyard bullies playing keep-away with my notebook. Only it wasn’t my notebook they had, but my soul.
My damned soul.
I had to reach it, because if I didn’t, I’d never leave this place. I’d never see Danvers again. I’d never get to tell her just how amazing she is. She’s a strong woman; independent and fierce. A lioness at nineteen, probably capable of inheriting the Earth, if she wanted it. But she wasn’t used to compliments, and sometimes she needed to hear them, even if she’d never ask; wouldn’t so much as fish.
RJ… if I never got to see RJ again, I’d never get to tell him how, more than anyone else I knew in my life, he was the one I cherished the most. His trust, his loyalty, his patience with me. I couldn’t understand why he cared about me the way he did. He was the big brother I never had. He was family. Never seeing him again would be the deepest regret that I’d take with me into oblivion.
Then there was Karim, that smart-mouthed Brit I could barely stand at the best of times. It had been my fault he’d been taken, and I had a responsibility to see him safely returned. I couldn’t stand what I’d done to him. We didn’t often get along, but I respected the hell out of him because he was the smartest guy I knew. Hands down.
And Axel… never in a million years did I think I’d end up where I was with him, life had a funny way of bringing people together who probably shouldn’t be together. He was everything I wasn’t, and everything I was. We shared a childhood trauma, both of us having lost our mothers and having been raised by fathers who… didn’t do a good job with us.
We stood on opposite sides of the same spectrum. He was water to my fire, cool to my hot, and infuriating at times. He wanted to be in control as much as I did, and we often had to wrestle with each other because of it. But damn if there wasn’t something there. That kiss we’d shared, the night we’d spent together in my bed, the way he always came to check on me when perhaps I wasn’t having the best of times.
So, I crawled, and I pushed, my muscles aching from the effort, my vision blackening, my heart thundering against my temples. Ifrit wasn’t going to make this easier for me, it wasn’t going to come closer to me. I had to reach it all on my own, or succumb, and then die.
Stretching with my fingertips, now, I could just about feel the warmth of Ifrit’s flames. Without hesitating, I plunged my hand into the heart of the fire and wrapped my fingers around the little ball of light at its core. I didn’t feel any pain, but that could’ve been because all the nerves in my hand had been burned off. For all I knew, my entire arm had already melted off.
But then I felt it; a soft, cool, tingling at the edge of my fingertips. The tingles spread all the way up my arm and into my chest in a manner of seconds, invigorating me, filling me with life once again. The darkness at the edge of my vision pushed away, and the world around me became bright again. I’m not sure how I did it, but I rolled onto my back and allowed myself to breathe, staring into the dome at the top of the tower.
Vaguely I was aware of lightning strikes dancing around outside, somewhere, but I couldn’t hear the thunder that came after. There was only my heartbeat, and that cold feeling spreading through me as if there was ice in my veins. I wanted to rub my chest, but I couldn’t move. I’d completely surrendered to whatever power had taken hold of me.
And there I rested, for I don’t know how long, watching the flashing light at the edge of my senses and waiting for my heart to relax. Something was different inside of me, I could feel it, but I wasn’t sure exactly what was different. Was this it? Had my half-a-soul joined with my Guardian’s? What did that mean?
Oktos reared his head, staring at me from above. “Are you still alive?” he asked.
I coughed to clear my throat. “I think so,” I said, but my voice was hoarse. Glancing upwards, I couldn’t see Ifrit. “Where’s…?”
The skeleton bird pointed a bony finger at my chest. “Where he needs to be.”
Once the feeling in my body returned, I slowly got back on my feet. My whole body was tingling, now—from the tip of my nose to the tips of my feet. “What… what happens now?”
Oktos cocked his head to one side. “This is the part where we say goodbye.”
“Goodbye? Forever?”
“I don’t expect a human to be able to wrap its head around forever, but yes. Forever.”
I shook my head. “What do I even say to that?”
Oktos shrugged. “Just goodbye is usually appropriate. If you could leave a positive comment in the ledger, too, that’d be great.” He pointed across my shoulder.
I turned around, and saw only the edge of the tower and the darkness beneath it. No ledger. Then Oktos shoved me, and I was falling, breathless through the air. My stomach surged into my chest, into my throat. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t find the breath to do it with. The wind howled between my ears, my arms and legs flapping wildly. I tried to summon magic to slow the fall, but I couldn’t think, let alone bend the elements to my will.
I hit the ground suddenly, and unexpectedly, the impact driving all the air out of my lungs. Groaning, coughing, I stretched my hands out and grabbed the soft earth I’d fallen into, feeling grass and dirt under my fingernails. Crickets chirped somewhere nearby. Distantly, I heard the soft press of the ocean against rocks. When the wind, real wind, touched my face, I knew, I’d made it back home—back to the real world, my world.
Then pain, sharp as fire, ripped through my scalp. I struggled, but my limbs felt like jelly, and my brain still hadn’t quite kicked in. The world started swimming. Someone grabbed me by the neck and hoisted me up and off my feet. Despite the fact that my eyes hadn’t yet adjusted, I knew the shape of the man who’d picked me up by the roundness of it, the baldness of it.
It was Karkov. I’d fallen out of the sky, and right into the hands of the crows.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Look,” Karkov said, “Little girl fall like bird from sky. Maybe she want also to be crow.”
“Too bad,” came Delia’s soft, almost melodic voice, “I’m afraid this is an invite only kind of club.”
I tried to struggle, but it was like I’d just woken up from a three-day long bender. Consciousness itself was hard enough to hold onto; fighting for my freedom was totally out of the question. Still, I squirmed, doing whatever I could to make my body move. I wanted to grab Karkov’s hand, to try and take some of the pressure off my throat, but I could only make my arms twitch.
“You shouldn’t have flown the coop,” Delia said, “Didn’t you know we’d be there, ready to snap you and your little boyfriend up?”
“Ax…” I struggled with the word. Was that right? Did they have Axel? I was still having trouble seeing things properly. I knew Karkov was the one holding me, and I could see Delia’s form as she moved around him, but there was a glaringly bright light behind them both. It was tough to see them as little more than featureless shadows.
“That’s right,” Delia said, “We have him. He’s right over there. Do you want him?”
“Ax—Axel!” I croaked, but Axel wouldn’t respond. If he really was there, then he was unconscious, or possibly stunned… and watching.
“Axel can’t hear you, right now. No one can. We’re in the middle of nowhere, and we’re going to have a little fun with you.”
Karkov tossed me to the earth like I was weightless, though I slammed into it pretty hard. I struggled to pick myself up, but my arms were weak, and flaccid. I turned my head just in time to
catch the tip of his foot square in the cheek. A starfield exploded in front of my eyes, pain shooting through me an instant after, like a delayed reaction.
Onto my back I went, tasting blood in my mouth and feeling the hell out of that kick. Tiny dots of light danced in front of me, spinning and twirling in front of my very eyes. But the kick hadn’t been all bad—it had switched my brain back on again. I shook my head and my cheek screamed with pain, but the world righted itself.
And there, flying overhead, hovering above me… was Ifrit.
I stared at the little mote of orange light, watching its light twinkle and shift amidst the sea of blackness beyond it. “Time to get up,” it said, like it was speaking directly into my brain.
“I can’t,” I said, although I couldn’t be sure whether I’d spoken or thought the words.
“You can. Karkov is the weaker one of the two. Concentrate on him.”
“Why are you telling me that?”
“Because you already know this. You’ve taken him down once before, now do it again.”
I balled my hand into a fist, feeling the joints pop as if they’d been stiff for hours. Karkov’s massive form came between me and Ifrit, his bald head catching the moonlight. I saw him reach for my neck with one of his large hands, his gigantic fingers splayed. When I reached for the Tempest this time, it was like nothing I’d ever felt before.
It was like a moment of breathlessness before a big fall. My stomach flipped inside out, my body hummed with magic, electricity coursing through me, igniting my veins. I didn’t want to stun Karkov, I also didn’t want to just hurt him; I wanted to cripple him. So, I grabbed his hand with mine and delivered the mother of all stunning spells directly into his body.
Karkov convulsed like he’d been hit with several thousand volts of electricity. His eyes rolled into the back of his skull, his body flopped like a fish out of water, and then he went down to one knee smelling like burned leather… and also urine. Like a freshly chopped tree, he started to topple over, and I was just quick enough to get out from under him when he went down.
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