Dawn of Ash

by Rebecca Ethington

  That insatiable quest for perfection, while valiant, was sometimes fruitless, which was what he was stuck in now—a search for perfection that was focused on a wrist flick not required for the task I had set him.

  I recognized what he was trying to do. That particular movement was one I had done since I was ten when my father had broken my wrist in a fight and demanded I heal it, breaking it repeatedly until I mastered healing every mutilation of the bone he could think of.

  And you whined like a baby the whole time.

  I should have broken both your wrists just to teach you a lesson.

  How I could have been stuck with such a—

  I cut the voices out with a cringe, something that wasn’t easy to do considering the strength of the memory. It was hard to forget the full year of constant bone breakage and pain he had inflicted on me. I guessed it was a good way to teach a task if you were a sadistic monster, which my father was.

  What is your guide for sadism, son?

  How do you know you aren’t exactly like me?

  I’m not.

  You are more like me than you think.

  In the end, I did master healing. I was also left with a few ticks within my magic, something that was bound to happen when you performed magic with nothing more than splinters of bone and tendons instead of a working hand.

  You could always break his wrist. Then he would be able to master it.

  Then he could be like you.

  And you like me.

  “That movement isn’t required, Jaromir.”

  “What do you mean it isn’t required?” the little boy asked, the greasy mop of dirty brown hair quivering a bit as he shook his head. “That’s how you do it.”

  “Yes.” I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice, but it leaked out, anyway. Jaromir wrinkled his bulbous nose in response. “But that’s because it’s how I was trained.”

  Jaromir narrowed his eyes at me in defiance, and I fought the need to roll mine. I wasn’t going to tell him all of what my father was capable of, not yet. Right now, magic was still new and amazing to him, and I didn’t want to be the one to destroy that.

  It was like Santa Claus—no one wanted to be the one to ruin the secret.

  Then let me.

  “So train me that way.” He was insistent, defiant even, and this time, I couldn’t help laughing, the reaction affecting him as deeply as a smack in the face.

  Let me ruin the magic.

  Let me train him.

  “Not going to happen, kid.”

  You can’t stop it, son.

  You know it is the best way.

  “What do you mean ‘it’s not going to happen’? It’s how you were trained, and I want to be trained like you. I want to be as good as you.”

  Even he knows what you are capable of, what you were made for.

  He sees it, and he wants it for himself.

  No.

  “You will be as good as me,” I said with a laugh, the forced sound resounding back to me with the same awkward ripple the barrier always gave. “But that doesn’t mean you have to do everything exactly like me.”

  Why not, Ryland?

  “But I want to,” he said, half-shocked, half annoyed, his little eyes squinting together as he wrinkled his nose.

  I once again found myself fighting the need to smile, to laugh.

  It was an odd feeling to be looked at by someone that way, like I was Santa Claus instead of the magic.

  An unfamiliar knot formed in my gut with the realization I could be that to someone. With scars all over my body and a brain that was addled and frightening, I was baffled anyone could look at me and still want to be like me.

  Jaromir still looked at me like that: eager, waiting, his eyes full of so much life it was infectious.

  I really didn’t want to deflate that magic from him, deflate the fantasy into a twisted and frightening reality.

  But it was more than that.

  Jaromir was a child. He was an innocent.

  That was what I didn’t want to destroy. That was the reality I didn’t want to taint.

  And yet, hadn’t it already been?

  He was a child, yes, but he was also a child who had been pulled away from his dead mother’s arms. He had watched his family being destroyed by mysterious, winged bats, only to be cursed with immense pain. He was a child who had chosen to survive, to live, even through all that pain.

  He had something to fight for, too.

  Just like I did.

  Just like we all did.

  Maybe, I thought with a cringe, it is a bad thing I am trying to sugarcoat it the way I am.

  Yes.

  Be more like your father, Ryland.

  I couldn’t keep the disgusting truth of what was coming from him forever. Besides, I didn’t have to tell him all of it right now.

  “I twist my wrist that way because of how my father trained me,” I said with a sigh, keeping Jaromir’s focus on me, despite wanting to look away. “He broke my wrist every day to teach me how to heal while still teaching me other abilities, so things like the wrist flick are because I couldn’t move my body the right way and had to make do.”

  That’s a good boy, Ryland.

  Jaromir’s smile faded little by little with each word I spoke. This tiny, little fact about my father and what he was capable of seeped into him and replaced his awe with worry.

  I groaned a bit at the shocked look he had now fixed me with, instantly grateful I had elected not to say anything more. I wasn’t sure what it would do to the kid.

  “Your father broke your wrist?”

  “My father is not a very nice man, Jaromir.”

  He doesn’t seem to think so.

  Look at him, Ryland.

  “Every day for a year?” He continued speaking as though I hadn’t said anything, like he hadn’t heard the little asterisk mark that I was attaching to that or, worse, like he didn’t care.

  “That is not a good thing, kid,” I reiterated as I turned back to him, my heart dropping to see the awe seeping back into Jaromir’s eyes. Please don’t let it be for what I think it is.

  It is, Ryland.

  It is exactly what you think it is.

  “My father is … well… He’s not very nice.”

  “I know that.”

  I froze.

  “How do you know?” We had been very careful to shield him from knowing my connection with Edmund, something that had been nearly impossible, all things considered. “You don’t know my father.”

  Jaromir smiled, his lips spreading wide to reveal rows of perfectly straight and white teeth. “Yes I do,” he said through the grin. “It’s Edmund.”

  I felt like I had been punched in the gut. My mouth opened automatically, my brain struggling to catch up, to find something to tell him, some way to respond.

  “I figured it out,” he said, the smug look growing as he rubbed his fingers over the mark on his cheek, as though, if he pressed hard enough, he could make it disappear. “It wasn’t that hard. I knew Ilyan was his son, and you and Ilyan are obviously brothers, what with your weird eyes and the crazy things you both do and everything…” He smiled broadly at that, his hand dragging over his hair before he pinched the bridge of his nose, his smile increasing in mockery.

  He laughed.

  I didn’t.

  “Were you trying to keep it from me?”

  “Well … yeah…” I dragged my hand through my hair in embarrassed frustration again before stopping halfway through and dropping it to my side. Of all the things to give us away …

  Jaromir’s smile stretched to inordinate proportions.

  “There are some things you probably shouldn’t know yet,” I finished in a desperate hope he would let it drop.

  I was a fool to think there was even a chance at that.

  “That’s dumb,” he spat, the quick change in demeanor taking me by surprise.

  The awe had gone; the pity had gone. He was just a lanky boy who stood before me
in angry defiance.

  I didn’t miss those mood swings.

  You were always more powerful with them, just like him.

  Whoever said only girls got those during puberty had never tried to control the magical rage of a boy trying to figure himself out.

  Just standing here, I could feel the heat of his magic begin to grow, my own magic reacting in warning.

  “How so?” I was careful to keep the hesitancy out of my voice.

  “You’re training everyone for war, right?” He already knew the answer to this, but I nodded my head in acceptance, anyway. “Which means you are training me for war, too, so why hide things? Why lie and say things are different than they are?”

  So that it’s easier for me to defeat you.

  “So we can protect you.”

  “That’s dumb,” he repeated, a smug, little smile springing over his face, his nose turning up at me as if he smelled something disgusting.

  In any other circumstance, I would have laughed at the look, but I couldn’t. Not right then when the tense ball in my gut made it impossible.

  “Why is that dumb, Jaromir?”

  His smile grew. “Because isn’t that what you are training me to do? To protect myself?”

  To die for me, you mean.

  No, Father.

  “Well … yes…” The words broke out awkwardly, my heart thundering as even I began to question who I was responding to.

  “So why keep stuff like that from me? You are already training me to protect myself, but I can’t protect myself if you aren’t going to tell me everything. Just saying it’s for protection when I can’t protect myself without it … It doesn’t make any sense.”

  He had spoken in circles the way he always did when he was agitated, the way I used to when I was his age. Despite the circles, however, I knew he had a point, one I was foolish for missing.

  I stared at him, the obviously blank look on my face causing him to smile even more.

  I know how to wipe that grin off his face.

  He was smug. He had won. He knew he had gotten me. I didn’t know why, but that made me uncomfortable—being upped by a kid.

  I had been rattling over everything for days. Risha and I had gotten in far too many conversations about what to tell him when he had figured it out all on his own, understanding the ins and outs of it enough to make what I thought had been sound, simple logic seem fickle.

  I groaned a bit and turned away, my hand moving toward my curls, ready to drag its way through. I pulled it away quickly, not really wanting to be compared to Ilyan by an eight-year-old again.

  It’s pathetic that you have picked up so much from your brother.

  You are better than him.

  You were supposed to destroy him.

  No.

  Kill him, Ryland.

  Stop waiting.

  Do this.

  For me.

  “Don’t worry; you don’t have to say it. My dad didn’t like it much when I was right, either.” The words came out so easily, the certainty of truth behind them, spoken with a grin and a flip of his hand.

  Like it was nothing.

  Yet, I felt responsible, felt so … parental?

  My stomach flipped.

  Is that what this was? This weird feeling of uncomfortable failure and of failed responsibility? I had never really had a parental figure to know. In fact, the closest I had ever had to a dad was Sain, and I was currently plotting to kill my biological father with him.

  Even though I had watched plenty of TV shows, I had missed my own father in so much of my life I had never once contemplated how a parent felt in this type of situation. I was too busy sticking myself in the kid’s shoes, too busy trying to imagine what it would be like to have a father who cared and wanted to be in their kids’ lives, not just destroy them.

  Now, somehow, I was standing where that TV dad had been, staring down at some kid with this weird feeling of sorrow and disappointment. A feeling I had somehow wronged this kid, that I hadn’t given him what he needed.

  I had failed him.

  You have failed me.

  Be a good son, Ryland.

  I felt like I had been kicked in the groin.

  It was a sensation I was used to thanks to Rugby. Nevertheless, I didn’t think I would feel it quite so perfectly again, especially when no groin kicking had actually happened.

  I was way too young to be dealing with this stuff.

  Too late now.

  “You’re right.” Those two words were so much harder to say than I would have thought.

  Who would have guessed that accepting defeat to a kid would be so hard?

  “Whoa,” Jaromir gasped, his eyes widening exponentially. “My dad never did that.”

  “Did what?”

  “Admitted it.”

  It’s because you are weak.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. It seemed like such the logical thing to do. If you made a mistake, you owned up to it. Then you made it better. Wasn’t that how this stuff went? I could already tell this was going to be a lot harder than I had thought.

  Thank goodness I wasn’t his real father.

  “Well, I made a mistake, didn’t I?” My voice was much harder than I wanted it to be. It was more with frustration from trying to figure this out than from anger. Jaromir didn’t really see that, though.

  He looked at me with worry before shrugging his shoulders. “I guess.”

  This whole thing was getting much too complicated.

  “Well then, I’m sorry for it.” While I paused awkwardly, he gaped at me uncomfortably, and I did the only thing I could think of. “Now try it again.”

  “Try what again?”

  “The inverted flame.”

  “But I thought—”

  “You already seem to know more than your fair share. I promise no more secrets. And anything else you want to know, we will talk about it later. I promise.” And preferably not when I was still trying to figure out what in the world had happened and what role I had taken on.

  Besides, I knew he had been dying to talk about what he had seen with Joclyn all afternoon. It was not something I wished to reiterate quite yet. I still needed to talk to Sain and figure out what in the world he had been thinking.

  What he was doing.

  I supposed it was a good thing we had already scheduled dinner tonight, even though we had planned on card games and trying to figure out where the rest of the Soul’s Blade was. I would have to add a Q&A to the schedule.

  Jaromir caught my meaning quickly enough and grinned widely before running back to the center of the courtyard, leaving me trying to catch my breath while the space filled with streams of smoke and fireless flame.

  “Why do I feel like I have just run a marathon?” I asked the question to the empty courtyard then jumped when someone responded.

  “I didn’t think we had the space to run a marathon.”

  I spun toward the voice, toward Risha who was walking through the dim red light toward me, her arms full of what looked like sandwiches and who knew what else.

  I simultaneously smiled and cringed, something she did not miss.

  “Are you okay, Ryland?” Her voice was sweet, and the disgust that had filled me at seeing the food left quickly. “Is it okay that I am here?”

  “More than okay.”

  I thought I had done a fairly decent job of keeping Joclyn clueless of my affection for her for all those years. I had done everything right: the right gifts, the right words, the right amount of touch. It had taken all my instincts not to go all caveman on her and claim my prize, and in the end, I had done it, anyway.

  But Risha…

  Risha brought out a whole new, awkward side of me I hadn’t even known existed, one that stammered and blushed for dumb reasons and somehow forgot to be suave. It was something no guy should ever be, especially over a girl. It drove me crazy, though she seemed to find it adorable.

  “Good,” she said with one of her wide grins that twist
ed through my stomach, “because, with the look you were giving me, I was sure I had grown a lizard head out of my shoulders.”

  She laughed at that, but I gawked at her, trying to get my mind to pick up the pace and form coherent sentences.

  “No!” That was too loud. “It’s just that you smell … I mean the food smells … I mean the food…” I let whatever mumbo jumbo I had been trying to say fade away as she laughed, her green eyes sparkling as the bell-like chime of her amusement made my stomach flip around a few more times. All thought was slowly draining from my mind like goo.

  There was something about her—about Risha—that had been troubling for me. Considering the way she always appeared with food when I was training Jaromir, despite having all of the responsibilities to tend to as Ilyan’s second, she had still managed to seek me out. I would venture a guess that I wasn’t the only one fighting off an overly strong attachment.

  That and the way she looked at me pretty much sealed it for me.

  “What is it, Ryland? Don’t you like food?” She could barely get the words out with how much she was laughing. Her eyes danced as the loose curls of her strawberry-blonde hair bobbed and swayed over her back.

  “Something like that.” I tried my hand at subtly again, this time keeping my voice low, something that was made easier by the deep Czech we spoke.

  My stomach flipped as her cheeks tinged with red, her eyes piercing mine while she took a step closer, her head held high as she offered one of the disgusting sandwiches to me.

  “Or was it this supposed marathon you were running?”

  My mind went blank. “What marathon?”

  “When I came in … You were talking about a marathon.” She smiled, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear as she looked at me.

  “Oh.” I could barely think.

  It took me a full minute to catch on. Apparently, she had drained my mind of thought more than I had assumed.

  “It wasn’t a real marathon.”

  “I didn’t think so.” Her eyes glittered even more, staring at me with some message I couldn’t quite decipher before she looked away, toward Jaromir who was still shooting smoke away from himself, still trying to accomplish that darned wrist flick.