by Elise Kova
“When you’re better…” Vi straightened away from the wall, resting a hand on his thigh. “I’ll show you every edible plant I can find, and how to harvest them. I’ll even show you the ones that I had to taste-test to find out if they’re edible or poisonous.”
“Don’t you go taste-testing possibly poisonous things.” His hand covered hers. “I don’t want anything happening to you.”
“Nothing will.”
Taavin gave a dark chuckle. “You say that, when clearly so much has.” Vi searched his expression as he effortlessly held her gaze. “You’re not the same woman I first met.”
“No one stays the same,” Vi murmured.
“True… Then, you’re not the same woman I stood next to on that balcony.” Taavin’s fingers worked to lace with hers. Vi’s hand remained limp, giving him no encouragement. Yet she couldn’t find it in her to pull away either. He was the only comfort she had in this strange world.
“Maybe you never really had a good measure on me to begin with,” Vi contested as discomfort worked its way underneath her skin like maggots.
“Truly?” He arched his eyebrows. “You think I don’t know you by now? You think I haven’t spent my life learning your mannerisms? Memorizing your face?”
“You memorized a woman in a dream. I am not that woman. It was likely my grandmother, remember?”
“Maybe.” He shifted slightly, sitting straighter. “Or maybe you’re challenging me because you know I’m right.”
Vi shifted, caught between wanting to pour out her soul to him, and bolt from the cave to avoid his scrutiny. She’d spent so much time trying to get to him that Vi hadn’t really thought about what it would be like when they were together… all the time. When she couldn’t dismiss him with a thought or wave of her hand. When his eyes continued to bore into her soul long after she wanted the relief of hiding from things she herself wasn’t yet ready to address.
“Vi—”
“I should get to foraging, while there’s still plenty of good light.” Vi pulled away quickly. Fleeing from her problems would be her choice.
“Wait—” Taavin leaned forward, started to get up, then stopped mid-motion with a wince of pain. His back rested heavily once more on the wall behind him as he grabbed both of his sides. “Vi, I’m just trying—”
Vi ignored him, pretending she couldn’t hear. Once more, she squeezed out into the sunlight, promptly starting upstream.
He was just trying to help. She knew he was. She paused to look back to the rocky entrance of their cave, briefly debating whether or not to return immediately and make amends.
Would it feel good, or terrible, to expose the angry darkness that swirled around in her now? What would he think when he learned of how she’d used juth calt?
Vi turned, continuing on, her back to the cave mouth.
At first, she wasn’t very active in her foraging. It was more of a walk to try to clear her head. But the more time that passed, the less clear-headed she felt. If anything, things got murkier.
Mirroring her mindset, dusk fell.
“Twilight in the Twilight Forest,” Vi muttered. Her feet slowed once more.
The world had certainly taken on an unnatural quality. The ashen trees looked even more devoid of color. Their leaves had become pale—not a fiery red as one might expect with the fading sun. And they cast long shadows on the forest floor, turning it dark gray. It was as though the whole world had been expunged of color and steeped in drab.
The trees in the distance seemed to waver briefly. Vi rubbed her eyes and squinted. Had she only imagined the ruler-straight trunks wobbling?
She stepped away from the rocky stream, scrambling up a large boulder, and started into the trees.
Her first thought was Fallor and his strange magic—the shift. Perhaps he had followed them into the forest despite being exiled? Vi balled her hand into a fist, curling the spark under her fingers.
Taavin had said they couldn’t use Lightspinning without risking detection. Would her fire be all right? It would have to be, because she wasn’t about to fight Fallor bare-handed.
The forest was uncomfortably silent. Nothing but gray sameness as far as the eye could see. She turned, glancing over her shoulder—
The stream was gone.
Her heart raced in earnest now. She couldn’t hear the stream over the deafening stillness of the woods. She couldn’t see it between the countless trees that seemed to close in on her. Vi spun in place. All she had to do was turn right around and go back the way she came.
It wasn’t Fallor, anyway—it couldn’t be. Perhaps it was some other morphi. Though Taavin had cautioned her to stay away.
As she spun in place, something caught her eye—another bit of wobbling, this time over the split trunk of a fell tree.
“What is that?” she whispered, slowly drawing near. The leaves crunched under her shuffling footsteps, but Vi could barely hear it. There was a murmuring buzz at the edges of her hearing, the closer she got to the oddity.
It was a tree trunk, split from the inside out. The smell of rot suddenly filled her nose, as though the tree had let out a dying breath. But the aroma was not deep and earthy as one would expect. It was rank and choking, like carrion. She would’ve long fled were it not for an unnerving fascination with the anomaly—as though she were looking at something she shouldn’t.
Tiny sparks of red lightning jumped between each gaping crack in the bark, leaving black spots in their wake. Above it, the air seemed alive, shifting and writhing, distorting the trees beyond. There was a snap, a pop, and Vi could nearly make out lights where there had been none. It was as if the air were tearing open to expose the darkness that existed beyond the veil of her reality. A whole city of darkness, waiting.
Vi squinted and leaned closer in an effort to make out more details before the air shifted again and the city was gone.
She leaned too close.
A tiny bolt of lightning extended upward, striking her fingertip. Though it couldn’t have been more than a pin-prick, it felt as though it darted under her skin, crackling across her muscles from finger to shoulder to brow, all the way down to her toes.
She must’ve let out a scream, but Vi couldn’t be certain, because the murmuring in her ears magnified with the cracks of lightning that struggled to break through her flesh. Suddenly it was as if a thousand people were talking over each other at once, all trying to get to her. They said countless names, rapid fire, over a thousand muttered conversations Vi couldn’t make out.
She gripped the sides of her face, trying to cover her ears and mute the excruciating, deafening noise. Slowly layering atop them all was a terrible rhythm, a singular repeated word, louder by the moment.
Die, die, die.
There was another bolt of lightning, this time jackknifing right for her heart—too quick for her to move away.
Light burst from the watch at her neck, cutting the impending darkness of the forest, keeping the lightning and auditory assault at bay. Vi stumbled backward, fell, scrambled back to her feet. She panted, breathless. But the only sounds in her ears now were that of her frantically beating heart, and every labored breath as she turned and broke into an all-out run.
Chapter Five
“Taavin… Taavin!” Vi pushed herself through the entrance of the cave, not caring for every rough bit of rock that dug into her curves. It barely registered as pain—barely registered at all. “Taavin,” she repeated again as she gasped for air. As though his name was the only thing she could manage.
“Vi, what is it?” Through the pain, he forced himself more upright. Distress, but not for his own state, written across his features. “Are you all right? What’s happened?”
Vi shook her head. The one voice, that terrible, earth-shattering voice demanding her death still lived in her ears. If she opened her mouth, it may come from her lips. That was how deep it now ran in her.
“It’s clearly something.” Taavin’s voice had gone stern. “Don’t shut me o
ut.”
She shook her head again, trying to focus on breathing. Trying to dig her nails into the rough wall behind her to keep her focus grounded in the here and now. She needed something stable. But the whole world felt like it could crumble at once.
“Vi—” A small yelp of pain broke through, yanking her back to the present. Taavin was rolled on his side on the ground, his elbow supporting him. Yet even now, he struggled to get back up.
“Don’t.” She stopped him with a word. “Don’t get up again, you’ll just hurt yourself.” Vi sank down the wall slowly, crouching on the balls of her feet, knees to her chest and arms around her legs.
“Tell me.” He reached out with the hand that wasn’t supporting him, fumbling until he caught her fingers. “Did you run into a morphi?”
She shook her head no.
“The Swords of Light?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
Vi stared at him. Her eyes felt dry, as though they’d been held open too wide for too long. She made an effort to blink them. Somehow, even that hurt. The same sensation she’d had when she’d woken returned: her body was not her own.
“I don’t know what it was,” she confessed. “There was red lightning around a fallen tree and—”
“Red lightning around a tree?” Taavin finally seated himself once more, no longer leaned over on his elbow.
“More like… inside the tree. Maybe it was struck during the storm last night? There was a tree that had fallen, and it looked odd. When I got closer, I could see red lightning jumping between its shattered trunk and it reeked. Taavin, it smelled of death.”
His expression darkened. “What else happened?”
“How do you know something else happened?” Vi whispered.
“Because you aren’t a woman reduced to shaking by a tree that smells of death and has red lightning… however darkly unnatural it may be.”
Vi balled her hands into fists, willing her arms to stop trembling. He was right. She wasn’t someone who quaked in fear. She swallowed hard, continuing when her voice was more level.
“The air above seemed… alive. Like it was writhing and ripping. Through it, I saw a city of darkness. Then, a bolt of lightning hit me and… noise. Terrible noise.” Vi’s hands slowly worked their way back up to her ears, as if she still needed to block out the wretched sounds. “Screaming, crying, talking, a thousand people—a whole world of people—all at once.”
She couldn’t put into words the sensation. She’d known the sound of every voice, as though she’d heard them with her own ears earlier in her life. Yet the words were muffled and unfamiliar.
“Is that all?” He pushed himself forward, sliding along the floor, reaching for her. This time, Vi extended a hand, allowing their fingers to knot together tightly.
This was real, she reminded herself. Taavin was real, and good, and safe, and that… what she had seen in the forest had been… had been…
“It was Raspian,” Vi uttered so softly she couldn’t be certain she’d spoken at all. “Above it all, I heard him, calling for my death.” Taavin’s fingers tightened around hers. “He’s getting stronger, isn’t he?” Taavin gave a small nod. “I saw the land of the elfin’ra, I heard their voices. He’s rallying them.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“But—”
“I agree… Raspian is getting stronger. He’s sinking in his dark clutches wherever he can find purchase, as Yargen’s powers weaken. We’ve seen it in the White Death, we’ve seen it in his magic streaking through the sky as red lightning. But I don’t think the city you saw was of the elfin’ra. I think it was the Twilight Kingdom. I suspect his dark energy is distorting the shift around the city, weakening it. Perhaps, as you describe, tearing it.”
“He’s rotting the world from the inside out.” Vi returned to one of her earlier conclusions.
“But this could be a good thing for us,” Taavin mused.
“How so?”
“Because Adela and her like have eluded punishment for years by retreating to her Isle of Frost. The whole of the island is protected by a shift of its own.”
“Adela knew the Faithful wouldn’t rely on the morphi, not even to get to her.” Vi pieced it together aloud, recalling what Taavin had said about the mutual hatred. That made the morphi an easy target for Adela to lure to her cause.
“But if Raspian is breaking down the shift, we may be able to find a way in to the isle. It was something we were going to have to confront, one way or another. This just provides us a simple solution.”
Vi dismissed the fact that Taavin was ignoring the obvious, yet again; they could simply seek help from the morphi. Vi likewise filed the idea away, for now. Getting a morphi on their side appealed to her, loathe as she was to bring an unknown element into her plans. She didn’t want to leave her father’s rescue to the chance of a tear in the shift around the Isle of Frost—she wanted to know for certain she’d be able to get to Adela.
“How is Raspian doing all this without a physical form? Isn’t that what the elfin’ra have been after, what they’re hunting us to achieve?”
“Yes. For Raspian to reap the destruction he so desires and rebuild the world in his image, he will need to be flesh and blood … But as Yargen’s magic continues to fade, Raspian can make bolder plays as he searches for a way to walk among us again.”
“What can we do to stop him?”
“Rekindle the flame and restore it to the blazing beacon of life it’s always been.” Such had been his goal from the start. It had been the one thing he’d sought her out to do all those months ago.
“The watch protected me from one of the bolts of lightning,” she said as she clutched the token. “Taavin, I think somehow, it has Yargen’s magic.”
He hummed in agreement, reaching upward. But rather than going immediately for the watch, his fingertips rested lightly on her cheek. They were almost scalding hot. Vi hadn’t realized how clammy she’d become. He searched her face for a long moment before his hand fell, resting atop hers and the watch.
“You may be right. We don’t know what it contains, yet, and I desperately want to uncover its secrets.”
“How do we do that?”
“I’ll need to use Lightspinning to investigate the magic within. Something I am in no position to do.”
Taavin pushed himself away and settled back against the wall across from her once more. His eyes fluttered closed a moment and Vi watched the shallow rise and fall of his chest. She didn’t know if he meant that he wasn’t in a position to do so because of his current state… or because they were in a place he couldn’t use Lightspinning.
Likely both.
“Well… you’ll just have to get better quickly then.” Vi pushed away from her wall, twisting and settling once more next to him. Their sides were flush and she soaked in his warmth.
“I’m trying,” he murmured over a bite of skullcap.
“Try harder.” Vi nudged him lightly, hoping she’d come off as playful. The emotion was rusty. It felt awkward to her, so she couldn’t imagine how it was received.
A smile broke on his lips. “Yes, my Champion.”
“Thank you, my Voice.”
There was something dangerously endearing to the words. Perhaps their physical proximity added layers of meaning that weren’t really there. Or perhaps it was the panic that still popped under her skin like electric shocks, driving her to seek out any feelings of safety and security she could.
“Taavin…” Vi whispered. His breathing had slowed, and she had yet to look back toward him, instead keeping her focus on the dancing shadows her small, flickering flame cast on the wall opposite them. She almost hoped he had fallen asleep.
“Yes, Vi?”
“You told me once, terrible things happen to those you love.”
“I did.” His voice had grown more lucid, and Vi felt guilty keeping him awake. What was she really trying to ask, anyway?
“Why did you say that?”
He sighed softly. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I’ve only ever loved one person, Vi—” She braced herself for the name of some lover she really didn’t want to know about, instantly regretting her decision. “—my mother.”
“What?” Her eyes were pulled to him in surprise. But Taavin wasn’t looking at her. He stared off at the same wall she had been, seeing something entirely different in the shadows.
“Why is it so surprising I loved my mother?”
“I expected you to have a lover… I wasn’t thinking of familial love.”
He chuckled at that. “How would I find a lover? I was sequestered… The only person who really has unfettered access to me is Ulvarth.”
“Right…” She didn’t know what else to say. Vi had imagined servants coming in and out, attending him as they had her. Another thing she’d been wrong about. “What happened to your mother?” Vi couldn’t imagine a mother condemning their child to such a life willingly. And given all he’d said on the matter, she fully expected the truth to be grim.
“Ulvarth killed her.”
She wasn’t surprised, not really. After everything Taavin had told her… Her lips pursed into a thin line.
“Ulvarth killed her, to get me.” Taavin still wouldn’t look at her. His expression was blank, matching the hollow tone of his voice. “There is always a Voice, Vi… When one dies, Yargen chooses another child to serve her for their lifetime. I always suffered from my visions—that was what ultimately drew Ulvarth to me.”
“But your mother didn’t want to give you up.” Vi’s mind wandered back to her own mother. Vhalla had made that terrible choice to give Vi up for such an excruciatingly long stretch. But if she hadn’t… If the North had attacked during the rise of the Mad King, her mother and father may not have lived long enough to see Vi into the world.
“No, she said they were wrong. That I was merely a troubled boy, not afflicted by words of the goddess.” Taavin raised a hand, running it down the side of his face over the crescent-shaped scar on his cheek. “The struggle wasn’t much. What could a boy and a young woman do against Ulvarth and the Swords of Light?”