Suddenly everything went blindingly bright.
The creature released me.
And there was Max, carved from fire itself, his second eyelids wide open to reveal his black, piercing eyes.
The creature was distracted, now, far more interested in this new opponent. But even as it moved away, in its final touch, I felt as if we were connected in some strange way. And for the first time, I felt something from it:
Pleasure.
“No,” I choked out.
I didn’t know how, but I understood that Max had made a terrible mistake. The world snapped back into focus, and the creature lunged for him. At first, Max slipped into nothingness, lurching to the other side of the room, like a brighter, clumsier, more powerful version of the Syrizen. He reappeared behind the creature. One strike, and fire burst through the room.
The creature flew against the wall. For a few seconds, I thought that could be it. I pushed myself to my feet. My legs were shaking. I grabbed Il’Sahaj.
The edges of the creature shivered, like shadow pierced by unyielding daylight.
But then it drew itself back together, and it surged toward Max.
The two of them collided in a vicious tangle of light and shadow. But it was clear, almost immediately, that the shadow was winning. Through the flames, I saw Max’s face go blank with agony. The creature was surrounding him, all of those spindly wrong-way limbs circling around him. And then there were more — four arms, six arms, ten arms, circling him, smothering light.
On instinct, I tried to call my magic, but it did not answer. The creature looked up at me, and now its face was one that I knew so intimately even though I had never met it — a young girl with sheets of black hair. Kira.
It would kill him. The certainty of it hit me like a rock to my chest.
I had to stop myself from rushing to him.
I had no magic.
Il’Sahaj would do nothing against this thing.
And I had no time.
So instead, I turned and ran.
I only just saw the creature’s face snap up as I tore out the door, around the corner, down the hall. I didn’t look back. I ran until I reached the guest room — the room that had been mine, the last time I lived here — ran around the corner and inside, then threw myself behind the cupboard.
And then I waited, hand pressed to my mouth to still my serrated breath.
I heard no footsteps. But I didn’t hear a fight, either. Had it abandoned Max to come search for me?
Slowly, so slowly, my fingers slid down into the partially-open drawer around the corner. Then closed them around a round glass bottle, about the size of my palm.
Please, please, please…
I slid out from behind the wardrobe. This room was neater than Max’s bedroom, and far less cluttered. For the first time I cursed myself for having cleaned it out when I lived here before. With silent steps, I went to the center of the room. In the full-length mirror that leaned against the wall, I could see the red shadows of the lanterns against the walls, the furniture, and my own blood-streaked face.
I turned around, circling the room. Nothing.
And then I turned back to the mirror.
The room was once again reflected back at me, doused in lantern light — everything doused, except for my face, stuck in shadow.
Gods, please work, please work…
I said one final prayer, and then I smashed the bottle in my hand against the ground. I poured absolutely everything I had, every scrap of magic that might have still lived within me, every piece of desperation, every magnified shard of power that lived trapped within this ink — I poured all of it, all of it, all of it, into drawing the final line of my Stratagram.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my reflection lunge towards the glass.
Pain tore through me as I gave magic I didn’t have to this final burst, drawing what I could from the Stratagram ink for one single spell.
One spell, to shatter all of the glass in the house, mirrors and windows, all at once.
The crash tore the air in two.
Sweat plastered my clothing to my skin. My head was spinning. I struggled to my hands and knees and crawled to the mirror. Broken glass bit into my palms — from the mirror and the glass, mixed together in tiny shards on the floor.
Two bony, rotting hands remained, braced on either side of the mirror frame, as if about to vault themselves out of it…now attached to nothing.
“Fucking brilliant.”
I turned to see Max leaning against the doorframe. His second eyelids were closed now, gaze cool and blue and so very tired. He was not wounded, but he looked impossibly weak. My gaze fell to his hands. They were black.
I got to my feet. “We have to leave. I do not know if it’s dead or—”
My words were drowned out by a strange sound. It started low, and then rose louder and louder:
Shshshshshshsh...
Max and I looked to the now-glassless window just in time for birds to pour through it.
Max muttered a curse, but it was drowned out beneath the sound of their wings, a deafening whisper that swelled like a rising tide. We both braced, but the birds simply surrounded us and then moved past, rushing through the bedroom, down the hall, and presumably, disappearing out another window.
The sound slowly faded.
When I opened my eyes again, Max was staring at my hands. “What is that?”
I looked down. Where my hands had been empty, now they held two pieces of parchment.
I unfolded one. At first, it was blank. Then words unfurled over it.
You are in great danger.
There are more coming for you.
And worse, for your people.
Max breathed a confused curse, and I couldn’t help but agree.
Move quickly.
Use the Stratagram on the paper beneath. I will explain.
“Absolutely fucking not,” Max said. And the next words came as if they could hear him:
I cannot make you trust me.
But they will be coming for you in seconds.
And your people need you now to stop something worse.
“I don’t understand,” I murmured, and Max let out a low scoff.
“Because this is insane,” he said, beneath his breath. “Utterly insane.”
He was right. It was insane.
But then we heard a dull thump, and both of our heads snapped up.
There was a shuddering sound, like the wind through the trees. And slowly, it grew louder, fuller. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I knew what we were hearing. Could feel more of them, coming.
“We have to go,” I said.
I dropped the other parchment to the ground and grabbed the one below it. On it was a delicate Stratagram.
“Can you do it?” I said, knowing how weak he still was.
“Of course I can,” he grumbled. He grabbed my hand in his.
Black, long fingers reached around the doorframe. A faceless head began to peer around it. The fire was overtaking the cottage. Across the hall, a fiery beam fell to the ground.
That was the last thing I saw before we were gone.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Aefe
We needed to move fast, so I drank Ishqa’s blood again. It was a little easier, now. This time, I transformed fully into a bird, which was slightly less challenging than the partial shift I completed in the House of Reeds. I was much smaller than Ishqa, and at first I despised the sensation of flying. If there was anything, after all, that a Sidnee was not built for, it would be the air — we spent our entire lives living beneath the stone.
Still, there was a certain freedom to it that I began to appreciate after I got used to it. Sometimes, when the sun hit me just right, when my wings were stable and the air cooperative, I felt so free, so weightless, that I could forget about the dying faces of Caduan and Siobhan and Ashraia. I could forget about my father’s betrayal, my shameful bloodline, even the fact that I very
well might be journeying to my death.
Ishqa barely spoke during this journey, even in between our stretches of travel. I could not blame him for this, and I wasn’t about to complain. What good were words, anyway?
The meeting was to take place on a small island, farther away from the Fey lands than I had ever been before. It was so far south that we would be flying squarely into the territory of the human nations. When we were about two days away from the island, we flew over nothing but sea for the entire day, a prospect that made a knot sit in my stomach when combined with my uncertainty of flying and my sheer exhaustion. I didn’t know how to swim — and certainly wouldn’t be able to shift fast enough to do so, anyway, even if I did. If I fell, I would drown.
But thankfully, we made it to land shortly before sundown. We watched the ground below us carefully, and Ishqa did several laps around the area, scanning for life with his superior eyesight and confirming we were alone before we landed.
When we did, and I scraped myself up off the ground after shifting back into Fey form, I stood and looked around in stunned silence.
“It’s unfair,” I said, quietly.
“What?”
“That the human world is this beautiful.”
It was so beautiful that it hurt. We stood in the middle of a sea of gold, tall grass that reached my waist rolling out in all directions, bright as fire beneath the setting sun. The sky was bright red, like human blood had painted the clouds, and the reflection and the heat of the sun rolled over the landscape like dripping paint. It all shuddered beneath the breeze, as if the grass itself were breathing.
I wasn’t sure why I began to cry. But once the tears started coming, they would not stop. As I walked, I held my hand above the grass, letting the tips of gold tickle my palms and fingers in little gentle caresses.
I wished Caduan could have seen it. I remembered how he had looked at the city of Niraja, when we first arrived — the way his eyes went bright with wonder, even if everything else about his face remained subdued. I didn’t realize how much I had loved that look until now, when it was painfully absent. I wished I had savored it more.
We stopped for the night there, in that field. We hunted and set up camp. As dusk fell, the plains fell into silver shadow, a mournful inversion of their earlier intensity. It was just as beautiful, but eerily silent. I imagined the afterlife would look like this.
“Do the Wyshraj believe in life beyond death?” I asked Ishqa, as we ate.
“Life is, perhaps, a weak way to say it,” he replied, softly. “Our dead rise to the sky. They send us the winds and the sun. And they watch.” His gaze, golden even under the moonlight, flicked to me. “And the Sidnee?”
“We believe in a limitless place, where you are reunited with all you have lost. But to get there, your mark upon the world is judged. There is nothing more important to the Sidnee than the weight of our stories.” I looked down at my forearms. One covered in lines of tattoos. The other in stark black X’s. A wave of fear settled over me.
It was likely that I would die tomorrow. If I did, would this ink tip the scale? How would I be judged?
“Aefe,” Ishqa said, softly.
I met his gaze. It was rawer than I had ever seen it. It was a strange shade on his face.
“You have earned your place in any afterlife,” he murmured. “Sidnee or Wyshraj. Any god worth worshipping would grant it to you. And if there’s an afterlife that would deny you entry, I do not want to be there, either.”
A lump rose in my throat. “If we die tomorrow, it was an honor to fight next to you, Ishqa.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Likewise, Aefe, Teirness of the House of Obsidian. It has been an honor.”
After that, our conversation settled with the embers of the fire. I lay down, but I could not sleep. Instead I looked up at the stars, and thought about the passed Wyshraj who lived among them, Ashraia included. I thought of the stone beneath my feet, and Siobhan. And I thought of the House of Stone, and the sudden, devastating realization that I did not know where Caduan had gone.
I rolled over, and watched the grass. In the darkness, I could see Ishqa lying there, too, completely still, with his eyes wide open.
In the morning, we packed our things in near-silence. There was a knot in my stomach that I couldn’t untangle, and I feared that if I opened my mouth, nothing but my own fear would come spilling out. Ishqa once again offered me his blood, and we shifted together and took off for the island where the humans were gathering.
I knew little of the human world. A part of me expected this island to look like Niraja, grand and majestic. But for a place that had come to consume all of my thoughts, it was surprisingly small — even if it, too, was beautiful. It was crescent-shaped, and heavily forested, with trees that were bare save for thick clusters of ferns. The beaches were sandy, and so bright they were nearly blinding to look at beneath the midday sun. The eastern side of the island had a collection of boats. Small ones, to my relief — even the largest surely couldn’t hold more than a dozen men. At least we would not have to worry about the humans’ overwhelming numbers here.
We landed on the opposite side of the island, and shifted back our Fey bodies, crouching in the sand. My heart was pounding.
“Where are the Wyshraj?” I whispered to Ishqa.
“They must not have arrived in time.” He shook his head. “It was far to travel. I wasn’t sure that they would.”
I cursed under my breath. But I wasn’t about to let that stop us — not when we had gotten this far. I reached for my knives and shot Ishqa as confident a glance as I could manage.
“Then it’s just us. I hope you’re ready.”
Ishqa looked slightly pale. But he nodded, all the same.
There was only one structure on the island: a stone, circular building, not particularly tall. The windows were high and small, near the top of the roof. Columns surrounded it, carved with a language I didn’t recognize. A single path of large, flat granite led up to the building’s entrance — a set of arched double doors in dark wood.
There was no sign of the humans. Perhaps they were already inside.
“The windows,” I said, jerking my chin up. “They’re small, but we can fit through—”
But Ishqa was already standing and walking towards the door. I caught his wrist. “They could shoot us where we stand,” I hissed.
“It will be fine,” Ishqa said, calmly, though there was a slight twinge to his voice that I couldn’t decipher. He took my hand in his — a strangely intimate movement — and stepped towards the door.
“Ishqa…” I tried to pull my hand away, but his grip was firm.
“There were dissenters,” he said, without looking at me. “Let us talk to them, first.”
I wasn’t convinced. I wasn’t convinced at all. But before I could stop him, Ishqa pushed open one of the doors, and we stepped through.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Max
My knees hit sand.
In any other context, I would have been willing to flop over in that sand and take a nap. It was beautiful. Soft, white, fine. For a moment my mind was stuck on that odd sand appreciation, and then I reordered my thoughts.
The box of hands. The fucking monster. The birds. The Stratagram.
And this.
Tisaanah and I got to our feet. We looked ridiculous, half-dressed and wielding ridiculously fine weapons, spattered with strange grey-purple.
We were on a beach. Actually, perhaps it was an island, because I could see the coastline curving in the distance. Tall trees with tufts of leaves loomed above us. The forest ahead was dense, with lots of ferns. It was bright daylight — jarring after coming from the night of hell at the cottage.
“We must be far away,” I murmured, “for the time to be so different.”
“Look.” Tisaanah pointed down the beach. There were several boats on the shore. “Are there others here?”
“After all that, there’d better b
e someone here who can give us some Ascended-damned answers.”
That, or try to kill us, I thought. At this point, who knows.
Tisaanah looked up, and I followed her gaze.
Ahead of us was a single stone path, leading up to a massive arched doorway set in an eerily imposing stone building. The structure was circular, and surrounded by large columns. As we stepped closer, I could see they were covered in carvings that looked as if they could be writing — though not a language I understood.
Tisaanah approached one and ran her fingertips over it.
“I think this is Old Besrithian,” she murmured. “My mother loved history books. Some had writing that looked like this.”
“So this place is ancient.”
Old Besrithian was a long, long dead language.
She nodded. Then her gaze fell to the door.
I let out a sigh. “I suppose,” I said, “we’re about to walk through that ominous entryway, aren’t we?”
“I think we are.”
Fantastic.
“Well,” I muttered, “might as well keep an exciting day exciting.”
We approached the door. Despite the boats we saw in the distance, it was completely silent. If there were other people here, they didn’t make a sound. I did not find this especially comforting.
The door was large and heavy, and let out a spine-chilling squeal as it swung open. It was dark inside — so dark I had to blink several times to force my eyes to adjust. In those seconds of blindness my hands tightened around my weapon.
The room was a large, circular, open space, with stone benches around its edge. Lines of writing were carved into its walls, in circles on the floor, even into the benches. A perfectly round spot of light fell on the ground through an opening in the roof, and sun spilled through narrow windows.
A single figure stood at the opposite side of the room, back to us. He was tall, with long golden hair that fell down to his waist. As the door squealed open, light fell across his form. He wore odd clothing, swathes of gold fabric that wrapped around his torso and over his shoulder.
Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts Book 2) Page 43