Warriors of Wing and Flame

by Sara B. Larson

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “You said you wished you could help me—well, you did. So, thank you.”

  A small, hesitant smile curved his lips. “That helped?”

  “More than you know,” I assured him.

  His smile grew wider. “Me too,” he said softly. “More than you know.”

  I smiled back.

  “Inara!” Mother’s voice was closer now.

  “I better go.”

  He nodded, but squeezed my hand before releasing it.

  As I hurried back the way I’d come, the memory of Halvor’s kiss burned brightly in my chest, holding the darkness at bay—at least for now.

  NINE

  ZUHRA

  Eventually I found myself in the kitchen with Sami, craving calm—familiarity. We cleaned and cooked, side by side, not speaking, but the silence was uncomplicated. Just being there, the aroma of spices and smoke from the fire wafting around us, melding together with the clink of dishes and Sami’s comforting presence, brought much-needed peace.

  As I was chopping some vegetables to put in the stew for supper, Sami finally spoke up.

  “Was it very frightening? In Visimperum?”

  My knife stilled over the carrot in front of me. “Only at the very beginning, when the rakasa had me. But my father’s battalion was patrolling nearby and they saved me. I wasn’t frightened after that … except that I’d never make it back home—that Inara and the rest of you might have all been killed by the rakasa that got into the citadel.”

  Sami nodded. “She should have died. And poor Halvor too. Her gift saved them both.” There was a wistfulness in her voice that made the ache inside of me break open again.

  “I wish I’d listened to my grandmother and left the gateway shut. I should have stayed in Visimperum.” The carrot blurred on the cutting board. “I never would have seen my sister again—or any of you. But then none of this would have ever happened.”

  Sami paused from washing a pot in the large sink. “Zuhra, what’s happened is done, and wishing for it to be different will only keep you trapped in the past. And who’s to say what would have happened if you hadn’t come back? Barloc was convinced Inara had enough power to open the gateway on her own. He would have attacked her eventually, I’m sure of it. And if you and that young man hadn’t been there, she would have died.”

  I made myself resume cutting, even though the vegetables wavered in front of me.

  When I didn’t respond, Sami continued washing the pot. I thought perhaps she would remain silent, but after a few moments, she asked, “What was she like? Your grandmother?”

  I must have grimaced, because Sami said, “That bad?”

  After a pause to gather my thoughts, I said, “She was … hurt. And angry. And she didn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “Oh, Zuhra,” Sami murmured.

  “I think she changed her mind in the end, but it was too late.” I wondered if she had survived whatever Barloc had done to her. Loukas had said she was injured, that she took the brunt of a blast of Barloc’s power when he’d found himself surrounded by hundreds of Paladin. But there had been many healers there—surely they had saved her. Though my feelings toward her were complicated at best, she was still my father’s mother, and he’d already lost his father. He hadn’t said a word about Grandmother, but I knew he was worried. I truly hoped she lived.

  And that we would somehow see her again.

  “I think that should be plenty.” Sami eyed the pile of vegetables I’d amassed on the cutting board. “Why don’t you go see if your mother needs any help with the preparations for your grandfather’s burial.”

  I nodded, though I would have rather stayed with Sami. Did Mother even remember we were burying him tonight? It was hard to know; she’d been so focused on Inara. I wiped my hands off and handed Sami the knife to wash.

  “Thank you for your help,” she said.

  “Thank you for always being there for me.”

  “I always will be.” Sami reached for me with her free arm, pulling me into a brief hug. Before I could react, she’d released me and turned back to the sink.

  * * *

  Grandfather’s body had been laid in an empty room, wrapped in sheets yellowed with age. It was all we had to offer, meager as it was. The plan was to bury him at sunset, after supper, as was the Paladin tradition. They believed the soul of the deceased would be caught up in the rays of the setting sun and carried with them to the Light in the afterlife.

  I couldn’t find my mother, so I slowly made my way to the room where he lay, not sure where else to look. Part of me hoped to run into Raidyn, to ask him what had happened with Loukas. But as I was walking through the hallways, I caught a glimpse of two gryphons taking off from the courtyard out the window next to me. I immediately recognized one of them as Naiki, with Raidyn on her back—and the other was Keko.

  Sharmaine’s gryphon.

  A cold wave of dismay washed away the warmth from our earlier conversation. He wanted me to trust him, he wanted me to believe he cared for me—and I thought I’d felt his emotions. I thought, perhaps, there was a chance he felt the same way I did.

  Then why had he gone to Sharmaine after talking to Loukas instead of me?

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, willing myself to stay calm. Maybe she asked him to go for a ride with her and he didn’t want to be rude.

  I forced myself to turn away from the window and the view of the gryphons shrinking into the distance. The air was somehow heavier, pressing in on me as I walked on leaden feet to the room where my grandfather lay. Humidity had slowly built all day, until the citadel seemed less of a home and more of an oven, baking discontent and fear instead of food.

  The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open to find someone else sitting beside the bed, his head in his hands, shoulders shaking.

  “Loukas?” I was so startled to find him there, his name came out before I had a chance to think through whether I wished to speak with him or not.

  He immediately straightened, rubbing one arm over his face before twisting in his chair to face me. The curtains were drawn, leaving only the impression of sunlight in the room; it was too dim for me to be able to tell if he’d truly been crying or not. His eyes flared bright green in the shadows, his jaw lined with stubble and his thick, dark hair in disarray, as if he’d been pulling it by the roots.

  “So, apparently you told Raidyn about our conversation.” His voice was as cold as the blood in my veins.

  I flinched back from the icy rage billowing off of him. “He asked me why I didn’t trust him. I wasn’t going to lie. He would have known if I had.”

  “Ah, yes, because of the sanaulus. How convenient.”

  “Can we not do this here?” I glanced to the shrouded form of my grandfather’s body and swallowed hard, once.

  Loukas had the decency to look ashamed. He, too, glanced at the bed and his shoulders caved forward. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  He sounded sincere, but I didn’t have the luxury—or burden—of sanaulus with him to know for certain. If trying to decipher someone else’s feelings could ever be certain, which I wasn’t positive it could.

  “You’ll be happy to know he’s furious with me now.”

  I cringed. “Why would that make me happy?”

  His green-fire gaze burned into mine, making me unaccountably nervous. “He seems to think you don’t know why my eyes are different.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” he scoffed. “No one told you to stay away from me? Not one person you met warned you of what I could do?”

  “No.” The sudden realization that we were completely alone in a room far from anyone else in the citadel, with only my deceased grandfather as a witness, struck me silent. I’d never been nervous around Loukas—until now.

  “You’re afraid,” he commented as if he were remarking on the weather. “That’s good. You should be.�
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  I crossed my arms, shoving my hands underneath them to hide their trembling from him. “Stop it, Loukas. You don’t scare me.”

  He lifted one brow. “As an enhancer, you have a very rare gift. Your eyes don’t glow because your power only works when you use it in conjunction with another Paladin’s. If you’d been born in my world—with two Paladin parents, instead of a human mother to confuse things—everyone would have immediately known what you were. Just as everyone immediately knew what I was because of my green eyes. My gift is even rarer than yours—and far more feared. I’m a mentirum. I can control minds.”

  My mouth formed an O of shock. I hadn’t even known such a thing was possible.

  “So you see the problem. Raidyn, one of the only friends I’ve ever had, now believes I used my gift to control your mind—to force you not to trust him.”

  “Did you?” I managed to ask, though my throat was so tight, the words escaped as little more than a raspy whisper.

  “Of course not, Zuhra! Don’t you think you would know if I had forced you to believe something?”

  I shook my head, my heart throbbing a terrified cadence beneath the cage of my ribs. “I—I don’t know.”

  “I swear on my life, I didn’t. I learned to control it a long time ago, and I almost never use it—not even on patrol. But most Paladin still avoid me, for fear of what I could do. All except for your father, Raidyn, and Sharmaine.” His gaze dropped to the ground. “Until now.”

  Part of me ached for him, for the hurt he obviously held so close; but his revelation also terrified me. What exactly did it mean—that he could control minds? Could he only manipulate feelings? Or could he force anyone to do anything he wanted? No wonder Raidyn had been so upset by what I’d told him.

  But when I thought back on that final day in Visimperum when he’d found me by the luxem magnam and warned me about his suspicions, I hadn’t felt anything other than uncertainty that eventually evolved into suspicion. Surely, if he’d used his power, I would have felt an immediate, strong aversion to Raidyn—a certainty that Loukas was right.

  A certainty that I still didn’t have. About anything.

  “I believe you.”

  He looked up, eyebrows lifted. “You do?”

  I nodded. “You didn’t force me to feel anything. I’ll talk to Raidyn.”

  His jaw clenched, a muscle ticking in his cheek. After a long moment, he said, “Thank you,” the words soft and low. The realization that he was trying to hold back his emotions—that Loukas, who seemed as indifferent as a person could be, was near tears simply because I believed him—hit me like a punch to the gut.

  I finally walked into the room and took a seat across from him, in the empty chair.

  I’d never really thought about it before, but what he said about the other Paladin avoiding him did seem to be true, when I searched through my memories with him in Visimperum. He was almost always alone, or with Raidyn and Sharmaine. I’d rarely ever seen him speaking with any other Paladin.

  “Raidyn is even luckier than I thought,” Loukas finally said, after several long minutes of weighted silence.

  I glanced up.

  “I’ve known you were something special since I first met you, that day in the stables, when you were determined to find a way back to your sister.” He stared at his hands. “But no one has ever believed me so easily before—or been willing to stay near me—once they learned the truth.”

  Compassion, sharp and unexpected, twisted in my chest. “I’m sorry, Louk.”

  He shrugged and visibly summoned his normal apathetic guise, which I realized was just that—a front, hiding his true self, and his very real pain. “It’s probably because they can’t handle this level of handsome.”

  “Or that level of conceit,” I teased, understanding his need for me to pretend with him, letting the heavier truths drop for now.

  “Can you blame me?” He flashed me his most endearing grin and I shook my head.

  After a pause, he stood. “I should probably let you have some time alone.” He made it to the door, then stopped once more. “And I’m sorry for … before.”

  I nodded and he left.

  Once I was alone, the reality that my grandfather was lying on the bed hit me—that he was truly gone, forever.

  My fault.

  Because I’d forced the council to open the gateway.

  Even though the curtains blocked most of the sunlight, the room was still too warm. The shadows pulsed with dank summer heat that made my tongue thick and heavy in my mouth. I reached one trembling hand out to place it on my grandfather’s shoulder, covered by the sheets. His body was strange, stiff and heavy and wrong.

  Empty.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, letting my head drop forward onto the bed next to him.

  TEN

  INARA

  I stood at my window, a film of terror cold on my skin, chilled as the windowpane I pressed my fingertips to as I looked to the cliffs where a storm had begun to build. Mother had succeeded in forcing me to bathe, and even got me to drink some tea and lie down. Despite everything churning in my mind, I’d somehow fallen asleep much quicker than I’d believed possible. Until I’d finally woken, my tongue thick in my mouth and my head groggy.

  She’d drugged me.

  But not even that had been strong enough to fight off the demons in my mind for long. Once I’d woken, I’d gone to the window, hoping the cold would help shake the fuzziness from my mind. Outside, I saw the men digging the hole where my grandfather would be buried.

  In a mere day and a half, I’d gone from thinking I’d been abandoned by my father and that my sister was lost to me forever, to having my sister and father returned to me, gaining a grandfather and then losing him, and nearly losing my own life. I wanted to grieve him, but didn’t know how. How did one mourn a person they had never known—had never even thought to wonder about—but who was family by blood if not knowledge?

  Killed by Halvor’s uncle.

  Killed by my power. Stolen by the jakla.

  As I watched, lightning tore across the distant sky, raking across the dark cliffs on the horizon. I wanted to rip myself apart and force the lightning inside me, putting myself back together somehow, someway.

  A miracle, Sachiel had said, and she was right. But I didn’t want to be a miracle. I wanted to be me. The me I’d always been before the last day and a half.

  My cheeks were wet when the darkness slammed into me again, with no warning other than a flash of ice across my already-cold skin. I vaguely heard the skritch of my nails dragging down the windowpane as I tried to grasp something, anything, to keep myself present, but there was no stopping the onslaught.

  A boy lugging a huge book over to the man with the heavy, bearded jowls and glowing eyes. “This is from our true home, Barloc. There are those who believe books have no value, but they don’t realize how many secrets one can hide in plain sight in a book.”

  A young man walked into his office in the library while he was poring over his latest find, a very rare Paladin book that a fellow enthusiast had procured for him. The young man, his nephew, who was as lost and broken as he once had been, came over to him, his hazel eyes dull with grief, his brown hair too long, too unkempt.

  “It’s time I taught you something,” he said to the boy. “Something that was a secret just between your grandfather and me.”

  “A secret?” he asked, looking up, the first inkling of light entering his eyes since his mother had passed on to meet her husband in the Light.

  “You like learning about other places, don’t you, Halvor? You enjoyed sailing with your parents.” Halvor nodded, cautiously interested. “I may not be able to take you sailing, but I can teach you about a whole other world—an entirely different people with power in their very veins. Power like you can’t imagine.”

  “Really?” Halvor’s eyes lit with excitement, and for the first time since being saddled with the unwanted ward, Barloc realized perhaps it had be
en a blessing in disguise. The boy did have an inheritance coming in a handful of years, after all. The means to finally make his dream a reality.

  Wind whipped through the trees, on either side of the river he walked in, chasing him forward, the power in his veins sparking and burning, eager and willing to be summoned—to be used. Not wasted like that girl, making plants grow. And then he felt it. The sensation of being watched—being followed. He should have been afraid; once he would have been. Terrified even. But no longer. Now his lips curled into a smile, his power surging up at his call as he rushed to face whoever had been foolish enough to find him. The two gryphons’ eyes widened a split-second before the glorious fire erupted out of his hands and obliterated the screeches from their beaks before they could escape—

  I crashed back into my own body, my own mind, as though I had been ripped out of myself and then thrust back in again. Dizziness assailed me, dizziness and a violent wave of nausea. I clutched the windowsill so hard, splinters dug into my skin beneath my nailbeds. Painful, but not as painful as the horror of a knowledge I could no longer deny.

  Whatever Barloc had done to me—which I’d miraculously survived—had created a connection between us, just as my power once had with those I healed. But this connection was all wrong. It crawled beneath my skin, like a disease burrowing into me, deeper with every strike. Instead of only seeing snippets of his life one time during the use of my power, it seemed I was struck with his memories every time he used it.

  And a glimpse into wherever he was using his power at that moment.

  Shoving one fist against my riotous stomach and the other against my mouth, I backed away from the window. I had to block him out. I had to.

  It was yet another reason I needed to get my power back.

  There had to be a way.

  A knock at my door startled a scream out of me that I barely managed to muffle behind the knuckles still pressed against my lips and teeth.

  “Dinner, Inara.” Father’s voice came through the door. “Are you up?”