Vortex Chronicles: The Complete Series (Air Awakens: Vortex Chronicles)

by Elise Kova

  How cute and how fleeting she is.

  “How did you do that?” Taavin grabbed her hand, jarring Vi from the thought. He slowed his steps, allowing them to fall behind so Deneya and Arwin didn’t hear his whispers.

  “I didn’t do anything. It just… happened.”

  “That’s exactly my point. You’ve always shifted the crystal’s power willingly. It’s never just happened, and you’ve never absorbed it.”

  “I’ve never worked with them to such an extent before. I understand their power and their will.” Their will… The will of Yargen. Yes, that’s what it was. Yargen was alive in each and every weapon, as she was in the Caverns, and the flame, and in Vi herself. All Vi had to do was listen. “It sought me out. It… lives in me.”

  “That shouldn’t be possible.”

  “Why?” Vi asked him sincerely. “I am of Yargen’s make, as are you.” She held his hand tightly. “Can’t you feel it?”

  When they touched, magic darted back and forth between them. A connection deeper than the love that had traversed the ages spanned their physical forms. They were one and the same—each given physical shapes by the will of Yargen.

  “I don’t absorb power from the crystals.” He pulled his hand away.

  “But you could.”

  “I won’t.” Taavin looked forward.

  “Why are you so unsettled?”

  “Because I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?” Vi hadn’t felt better in weeks. For the first time, she felt absolutely confident she could take on Raspian if she collected enough of Yargen’s essence.

  “Of not knowing what you’re becoming.” Taavin stopped walking, turning to her. Vi stopped as well and melted under the warmth of his viridian gaze.

  “Taavin, I’m me.” Vi took both of his hands in a firm but gentle grasp. “I’ve always been, and always will be.”

  He searched her face and opened his mouth after a moment’s hesitation.

  “Are you both coming?” Arwin called. She and Deneya had stopped ahead.

  “Yes, of course!” Vi squeezed Taavin’s hands. “Let’s go.”

  The man remained rooted, staring at her for one more long breath. Finally, he nodded. Vi kept his hand clasped tightly in hers.

  Part of her held on to the man who made her feel human, the man who was home.

  The other part was governed by the essence of the goddess that was always just beneath her skin. Vi had to fight against uncomfortable urges all the way to their rooms. If she hadn’t, she may have given into temptation and unraveled Taavin’s magic to satiate the ravenous hunger waking in her—a hunger that needed to be fed with Yargen’s essence alone.

  “You want me to do… what?” Arwin asked, looking at the crown Vi had handed her.

  “I need you to make it look like the scythe did.”

  “The shift can’t make a crown into a scythe.” Arwin’s brow furrowed. They sat across a table from each other in a lounge that Vi had declared her own. After the incident of her absorbing the scythe’s magic, no one seemed to question her much.

  “No, not a scythe.” Vi paused, thinking a moment. “Hold a moment.”

  She held out her hands and felt magic rush to her fingertips. Yargen’s power pooled in her palms. Her stomach felt gutted by the mere notion of giving up the scythe’s power. It had only been a part of her for a month while Deneya had worked to fashion a crown for them to work with, but it had felt like a lifetime.

  Just like she had in the Caverns, Vi drew the power into a single location and condensed it down. However, unlike the Caverns, the well of power Vi leeched from was herself. As Yargen’s magic collected in the air around her fingers, sparks of Vi’s magic tethered it together. With a soft pop, a crystal appeared.

  Reaching upward, Vi grabbed the stone and it writhed underneath her fingertips. Spikes of crystal grew from the “seed” of magic, then arced around and rose to points. Even though she had only seen the actual crystal crown from a glance, Vi knew its every detail, and she created an exact replica in crystal.

  “I need you to make that crown—” Vi pointed to the one Deneya had made “—look like this one.”

  Arwin gawked at the crystal crown in Vi’s fingers. The whites of her wide eyes nearly devoured the gray irises in the center. “How?” she said with a quivering lip. “How do you make something from nothing?”

  “As Yargen wills,” Vi said airily, smiling at the child. She set the crystal crown gently on the table. “Now, let’s begin.”

  The girl studied the crown in her hands with a furrowed brow. Her magic shuddered, rose, and thrummed across the surface of the metal crown Deneya had crafted. Vi watched with new eyes. She saw the metal unravel and piece itself back together with every pulse of magic.

  The shift was seeing the between of what something was, and what it could be. That had been how Arwin had explained it in her time. Or perhaps that was knowledge Vi was summoning from an otherworldly part of herself, just like the name of the morphi warrior who had helped fell the elfin’ra.

  Arwin put the crown down on the table next to the one Vi had made. The metal had changed, becoming gnarled in places and smooth in others as it jutted like crystals. But it was still undeniably steel.

  “It’s not right,” she said dejectedly.

  “Try again,” Vi encouraged.

  “You should get one of my sisters to do it.” Arwin slouched in her chair.

  “I don’t want one of your sisters to do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know you can.” And because Vi wanted to endear herself to the girl. She wanted Arwin to trust her with her secrets, just as Arwin once had long ago. She wanted to be there the moment Arwin was ready to open up about any budding romance with Fallor, however long it took. “You will be stronger for it, and you want to be strong, don’t you?”

  “I do.” Arwin ran her finger over the steel points of the crown. “But I don’t even know how to use the royal shift yet.”

  “You will learn soon, I’m certain.”

  “Ruie says she’s going to teach me soon!” Arwin covered her mouth suddenly. “I wasn’t supposed to say that… you’re not supposed to learn until you’re fourteen.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Eleven… But I’ve been told I’m advanced in my magic.”

  “By who?”

  Arwin paused, a blush overcoming her cheeks that instantly made her scowl. “No one.”

  “No one?”

  “A stupid boy.”

  Ah, so Fallor was already present. No wonder Noct was ready to trust Vi.

  “Well, he must be smart and not stupid, because I think you’re advanced in your magic, too.”

  “You do?” Arwin slowly lifted her gaze to meet Vi’s.

  “I do. Which is why I want you to try again.”

  Arwin did as Vi bid. Time and again. That day, the next day, and in the coming weeks.

  The girl worked tirelessly for three months as Vi watched silently.

  She felt every pulse of magic, absorbing it into her as she had the power of the scythe. Cyphers of sorcery had been given to her in a tongue she couldn’t read but somehow understood. Vi saw the glyphs behind her eyelids as she slept. She felt the knowledge they imparted to her in every action.

  Day after day, that knowledge assured her of one thing: You can do this.

  At first Vi thought the resounding confidence related to Arwin, and being patient enough to see the crown made. But day by day that theory waned. Her fingers began to itch as she watched Arwin work. Her magic reached out between Arwin’s pulses. Vi learned the secrets of the shift not through direct teaching, but by watching one day after the next, until, finally…

  “Do it again, but slower.”

  “What?” Arwin’s head jerked up from the crown she held. It was the fourth one Deneya had made. The girl had succeeded in changing the crown from steel to a faint blue glass.

  “Slower, this time,” Vi said again.

&n
bsp; “All right.” Arwin was clearly uncertain, but she wrapped her fingers around the crown anyway. At the first pulse of magic, Vi reached across the table and wrapped her hands around Arwin’s. “Wha—”

  “Keep going,” she said without taking her eyes off the crown.

  Another pulse of magic.

  The first pulse was always connecting with the item. The second was learning it, inside and out. Vi understood what Arwin was doing in the same way she’d come to understand the crystals.

  When she manipulated Yargen’s magic, she first collected the power, learning it. Then, she envisioned what she wanted to be made. The shift was taking the raw essence of something, unraveling it, and then tightening it back in a new shape.

  The thought brought them to the third pulse—unraveling.

  Vi watched with keen eyes as the crown unraveled between fast pulses of magic. They were too quick for normal eyes to see. But Vi’s eyes weren’t normal. They were goddess-given, forged by Yargen between worlds.

  Fourth pulse—remaking.

  She tightened her fingers over Arwin’s and pushed her magic through the girl. Vi’s brows knotted with focus. The blue glass hardened further and reshaped slightly. When they pulled their hands away, there was a nearly identical replica of the crown Vi had made in shape. All it lacked was the glow and swirl of magic crystals held.

  “You just…” Arwin pushed her chair away from the table, but didn’t seem to trust herself to stand. “You’re a human. You can’t use the shift.”

  “I am the Champion, and magic is magic,” Vi said with unfounded confidence. “If it doesn’t obliterate, it is of Yargen. And it’s merely a matter of learning how to use a new set of powers.”

  Arwin bit her lip, clearly debating the accuracy of this. Vi couldn’t blame her. She knew what Taavin had said about the morphi and how their power was viewed as deriving from Raspian.

  Mortals and their misinformation. Vi’s heart ached at the sentiment.

  “Will you teach me?” Vi said.

  “Teach you what?”

  “Everything you know about the shift.”

  Arwin stared at her and gripped her seat with white knuckles. Vi feared if the girl let her chair go, she might topple over.

  Despite her rigidity, Arwin managed a nod.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Time passed effortlessly.

  Vi took her young tutor’s lessons on the shift to heart. She studied Arwin’s hand motions and listened intently to her words. But what the girl didn’t say was the best teacher. Vi felt every pulse, every pull and tug on the threads of magic and life that made up each and every object within the world.

  Taavin had said Yargen’s magic was life. But it was so much more. Yargen’s magic was existence itself. It was the world, cut from the chaos that Raspian sought to reap. Every mortal magic was a different way to understand and interact with the raw essence of life itself.

  Her understanding helped Vi learn the shift—something she was certain she couldn’t have done a world away, or even in this world, a few years ago. But that understanding didn’t replace time, patience, and practice.

  At first, she helped Arwin adjust the shift. Then, the girl began teaching Vi how to do it on her own. How to draw out the power and change an object from what it was to what it could be.

  The weeks pulsed into months without Vi so much as realizing.

  “How much longer do you think it will take?” Taavin asked her from where he sat on the couch in the center of the room. A common space was located between their room and Deneya’s in the guest wing they occupied.

  “Not much longer.” Vi leaned against the arm of one of the chairs opposite. She’d only just returned from working with Arwin and could still feel the magic under her hands. “I’m nearly there.”

  “Good, we’ll need to return to the Dark Isle.”

  “Not before Deneya has uncovered a link to Adela.”

  “We don’t need Adela to get back.” Vi heard the frown in his voice before she even turned to look at him. “We have a vessel.”

  “It’s been a year. Do you really think it’s still in the cove where we left it?” Vi asked with an arch of her eyebrows. Then, before he could speak, “Even if it is, do you think it’ll be seaworthy?”

  “I don’t like the idea of working with Adela.”

  “I know you don’t.” Vi sighed, turning away. She grew more and more weary of this conversation. “But we’ll need the strength and speed of her ship to get the flame… and to get to the isle of the elfin’ra.”

  “That’s if—”

  “It’s happening at sunset,” Deneya interrupted, barging in. “Sorry to interrupt, I know you both usually have your date this evening but—”

  “But it’s important.” Vi straightened away from the chair. “Tell me what you’ve learned.”

  “Fallor will be meeting with an actual member of Adela’s crew at sunset on the southwest ridge just outside of the forest.”

  Vi and Taavin shared a look. They’d been tracking Fallor’s movements in secret. Messages had moved in and out of the city through merchants Fallor was working with as a page in the city guard. The Stormfrost had been spotted not far from Toris—confirmed through scouting done by Noct’s eldest daughter.

  “I’ll go ahead and let you both know how it goes.” Vi held up her right hand. She wore a silver ring on her middle finger that matched an identical one on Deneya’s hand. The woman had given the token to Vi as a gift, imprinted with her communication mark should they ever be separated.

  “You’ll go alone?” Taavin was on his feet as well.

  “There’s no way I’ll be able to get on the Stormfrost if all three of us go together. Adela needs to feel confident that she can overpower me.”

  “What if something goes wrong and she actually does overpower you?”

  “She won’t.” Vi gave him an assured smile.

  “You’ve seen Vi in the training grounds,” Deneya said in her defense. “She can handle herself better than any of us… And has three times the strength,” she mumbled the last part.

  “This is Adela we’re talking about.” Taavin’s face was as stormy as the sea he’d pulled her from all those years ago. Vi stepped over to him and grabbed his shoulder gently. “I do trust you, you know that, right? But I—”

  “Worry,” Vi finished for him with a small smile. “I worry for you too, more than you can know.”

  “Not to break up the moment, but if you’re going to go, you should go now.”

  “I know.” Vi gave a solemn nod to Deneya. “You two should pack up while I’m gone. We’ll be leaving this place once I get Adela to agree to help us.”

  “Leaving?” Taavin repeated with surprise. “I thought you said you were nearly there with the crown. We can’t leave until we have a replica.”

  “No, I just said I was nearly there. Nothing about the crown.” She gave him a somewhat sheepish grin. “We have the replica. It’s in the workshop.”

  “What?”

  Deneya followed her into the hall. “If you’ve had the replica this whole time—”

  “I haven’t had it the whole time,” Vi interjected. “Just for the past ten weeks or so.”

  “Fine. If you’ve had the replica for the past ten weeks,” Deneya rephrased her words with frustration, “what have you been working on?”

  “I’ll show you later,” Vi called over her shoulder with a grin. “Follow behind me and I’ll see you both on the Stormfrost.”

  Down and out the estate, Vi moved quickly in the twilight. She knew Fallor’s rounds, likely better than he knew them himself. She’d long since mapped out the young man’s movements just like she had mapped out the whole city that was the Twilight Kingdom. Even when he thought he was wandering at random to lose any people who might be tracking him, he wandered in consistent circles.

  When she found him, he was finishing up a conversation with a merchant. Vi couldn’t hear what they said, but the merchant gave him a t
oken and disappeared into the shadows of an alleyway.

  Vi ignored the merchant, focusing only on Fallor as he walked up the quiet residential street. He headed right, and Vi followed in parallel through an alley. She twisted between rubbish bins and around opening doors to step back out onto the main street.

  Fallor had pulled his hood. He was trying to lose himself among the crowd. But Vi followed twenty paces behind easily. He looked around nervously from time to time, and Vi would side step—always just beyond the edge of his periphery. He’d recognize her if he got a good look. Fallor had seen her and Arwin working together enough times.

  So she lingered at the edge of the city, leaning in a doorway, watching as he walked up the rise to the gateway of the kingdom. The moment Fallor passed through the swirling, fog-like magic, Vi sprinted up behind him.

  “Champion, would you—” Ruie attempted to say as she passed. The young woman was on guard duty for the night.

  “No time.” Vi gave her a short wave and plunged herself into the haze that surrounded the Twilight Kingdom.

  She pushed magic out around her in a quick pulse. It cocooned and stabilized her in the between space. Another pulse of magic, and Vi felt her powers running like a bridge between the city where she had been, and the forest where she was headed. With a third pulse, Vi pushed herself along the pathway.

  Reemerging in the real world outside of the Twilight Kingdom left her off-balance. Pinwheeling her arms, Vi grabbed onto a tree. It wasn’t exactly a smooth landing, but it worked.

  It worked.

  A grin spread across her face as she sprinted through the trees. When the muscles of her legs began to grow tired, she felt a barely-perceptible shift. Yargen’s magic was in her bones. It was her flesh. The essence of the goddess was woven within her just as the power of the scythe was.

  The trees were a blur and Vi was hardly breathless. She focused solely on heading to the southwest ridge as Deneya described. Vi skidded to a stop before she lurched through the treeline just east of Toris. Pressing herself against one of the tall trees, she crouched low, the leaves of the forest floor settling around her.