Dawn of Ash

by Rebecca Ethington

  “Rosy?” I asked, but she didn’t so much as move.

  “She’s fighting his control,” Cail supplied, his voice awed as he leaned over to me, his hand soft as he ran his hand over the crown of her head. “She’s disrupting his connection.”

  I looked between the two of them in confusion when a sharp pain shot through my hand. I gasped at it, lifting the culprit to eye-level, expecting to see some kind of bug or snake, but there was nothing there, not even blood, something I was sure I would feel running over my palm, over my arm.

  “You can feel it, can’t you? Where the blade is?” Cail asked as he snapped another twig into smoke.

  I nodded, confusion still rampaging over what exactly I was going through.

  “That’s how he controlled Ryland. You know this. I was the one who impaled you with the blade the first time, after all.” Another snap of a twig, his fists tight around the two pieces in his hand. I didn’t need to look at his face, at the way his brow furrowed, to see his temper rising.

  Hundreds of years ago, I would have calmed him. I would have shielded his heart. Right then, I sat, not convinced of what I was looking at or even which Cail I was dealing with.

  The thought slapped me in the chest, the similarities painful. He had broken his mind when he bound the curse, just as mine was bound. Each of us, essentially two different people trapped inside a whole, every part fighting for space.

  Even Rosy, in a way, was shattered into many: a child, a woman, an immortal trapped in a forever, having to live with what had been done to her.

  My hold on her tightened again at the thought, but this time, she grunted, the stress finally getting to her.

  “So he’s controlling me the same way.”

  “Well…” Cail answered, a small smile playing around his lips, all sign of his agony lifting, “he can try. As we said, Rosy is very good at stopping him. He is not a fan of her.”

  “It’s my soul,” she answered, her voice the same exhausted sigh as before. “He used my soul to make the blade. It’s all of me. Everyone else is part of me—my soul, my blood. He can control it because he is my grandfather, because a tiny part of him is here, too. But I can stop him. Stop him from hurting my family—Uncle Cail, Uncle Ryland, Aunt Joclyn. All but Sain. Sain controls me. I don’t like him here. That’s why I couldn’t see you before. But now you are here!” she finished happily before she collapsed on me again, her weight comforting against me.

  “Now I am here,” I whispered, the palm of my hand running over the crown of her head with a comforting weight that even she seemed to respond to. I was kind of enjoying having her against me, enjoying the ability to run my fingers through her hair. To smell her.

  “Where did you find the blade?” Cail asked after a moment, his voice tender as he pulled me away from the partial nirvana I had found.

  “Inside of Ryland,” I whispered, my heart tensing with the fear that inhibited the memory. “I could hear Rosy call for me.”

  “So one of the five…” He sounded like he was talking to himself.

  “Five?” I asked, not following what he was saying.

  “Yes.” His dark eyes pierced mine as I met his gaze, the intensity of them frightening me for a moment.

  I inhaled sharply out of habit, glad when his lip twitched enough to remind me of the brother I knew and loved.

  “I’m assuming you want to release us,” he finally said, his calm voice putting words to my unanswered questions.

  “Well, that’s the plan, yes.”

  “Then you will need all of the fragments of the Souls Blade. You have to put it back together.”

  “You sound like you are sending me on some epic video game quest.” I could barely keep the laugh in.

  He couldn’t.

  “Maybe I am.” His deep chuckle bounced around the smoke trees that surrounded us, sending the distorted trunks into some kind of belly dance.

  “Well, if that’s the case, I am going to need a better weapon. Maybe I can find one in a cave that’s guarded by a dragon.”

  “He’s inside,” Rosy whispered from where she lay on top of me, her tiny proclamation pulling me out of my musing. “I’m trying to find Ilyan or Ryland so they can help.”

  “How long do we have?” Cail asked, his body rising above us as the trees distorted and swayed with the movement.

  The mood of our casual family soul picnic was shattered by the sharp reality. Not that it had really gone anywhere, but it was definitely pressing against me painfully now.

  I tried to keep my fear inside, but it wasn’t working. Rosy was tensing, her heart thundering against mine, her tiny fingers gripping my clothes in obvious fear that I would have to go. That was exactly what was about to happen.

  “Where are the blades? Where are the other pieces?” I asked, my heart fracturing with the knowledge of what was about to happen.

  “You have Ryland’s. The other ones I know of are inside Ovailia and Sain. There used to be one in me, but I have no idea what he would have done with it. And there is another that went missing about the same time you and Thom left that compound. So if you don’t know where it is…” He faded off, obviously not wanting to say anything in front of Rosy, not that I blamed him. But it also wasn’t like I could go up and ask Thom if he knew where a shard of our daughter’s soul was.

  I had to find another way.

  I nodded in understanding, trying to ignore the pain steadily building in my chest, when Rosy screamed, her tiny body lifting off mine for the first time to look at me, her eyes mad and horrified.

  “Rosaline?” I asked, too scared to hear the answer.

  “You have to fight him, too, now, Mommy. You have to go.”

  They were simple words, but they cut through me. I had known from the beginning I couldn’t stay there with them, so I wasn’t sure why hearing it repeated back to me was so painful. Why I was fighting against it.

  “But I—”

  “You have to go,” she sobbed, her eyes glistening with so many tears she probably couldn’t see through them. “You have to save Daddy.” Her voice was heavy, the dead panic resonating loudly.

  I could barely breathe.

  Daddy.

  “Thom?” I asked, pushing the long strands of hair out of her face. “What’s wrong, darling?”

  Rosaline bit her lip as she looked at me, her eyes wide in a greater fear than I had ever seen. It reminded me so much of those last moments that I gasped, a sharp pain rocking through my chest as I fought back the horror, fought back the scream, and braced myself for the plea of help that would come from her blood-soaked body.

  But it was just my little girl, my child wrapped in my arms, my child as innocent as Thom and I had tried to keep her until the end.

  “Honey,” I tried again, “what’s wrong with Daddy?”

  “Grandpa is trying to make you kill him,” she gasped, her eyes refocusing on me. “You have to save him. You have to go.”

  I looked from her to Cail in confusion. For once, Cail looked as confused as I was. However, he wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at her, the little girl who clung to me, her hands wrapped around my arms so tightly she was most likely going to leave marks.

  “Can you get her out of here?” Cail asked, his seemingly complicated question directed to the tiny child I held. “Will he stop you?”

  “He can try,” she said, her face turning up in the same mischievous grin Cail always had. I had forgotten how much she had always adored and idolized him until that moment. “No one can stop me anymore.” She smiled at him, a defiance I had never seen in her sparking behind her eyes. It was a look I had seen a million times before, but not in her or Cail. I had seen it in me. It was something that even my brother did not miss.

  “She is your daughter, Wyn.”

  “I know.” I didn’t think I could get any more than those two delighted words out.

  Rosy looked back at me, the power in her eyes mounting as she pressed her hand to my cheek, her lips soft as
she kissed my nose again.

  “You won’t be able to come back here. I’ll keep fighting him, but you have to fight now, too. Just remember what’s real.” It seemed like such an adult thing to say, and it caught me off guard.

  I looked from her to Cail in some hope of answer, but neither said a word. They looked at me with a combination of fear and support.

  “I love you, Mommy.”

  “I love you, too, darling.”

  “Say hello to Daddy for me.”

  And then she was gone.

  The calm of the forest was gone. The comfort of her touch was gone. The companionship of my brother was gone. And I was left staring at the same war torn world as before, when I had walked toward Edmund without control. Except, I couldn’t see straight, everything shifting. Everything faded in and out of focus as though they were bathed in a heavy curtain of smoke.

  I was surrounded by it, surrounded by this uncomfortable heaviness that made it hard to think. Everything fluctuated before me as though I had drunk far too much Slivovica. It was too much.

  It was darkness and confusion and a screaming that never stopped.

  I didn’t know where it was coming from or why. For all I knew, it was coming from me, that the haunting, somewhat musical, sounds of terror were mine.

  The disorientation of that was terrifying.

  I tried to focus, tried to make sense of it as my shifting vision turned to a door I knew all too well, a door that swung open to reveal a man I had hovered over for month, a man I had been forced to watch slowly die.

  “You have to save Daddy!” her shout echoed through me as if she was standing right beside me, something I couldn’t completely discount. “Fight him!”

  The walls shivered as I took a step forward, my motions uncontrolled, the forceful movements jutting through me as my hand rose toward Thom.

  “You have to save Daddy!”

  No!

  The word was a tiny spark inside my head as the magic grew, the powerful heat of it triggering a knowledge and a control that surprised me. My magic, my soul, they were connected.

  I felt the power grow as my consciousness did, raging through me as the black void flashed before me. The spot of black was gone before the room came again, the walls and surroundings vibrating so badly that, for all I knew, the earth had begun to shake, the earth had turned to liquid.

  No!

  The call was a shout inside my mind, a determination to keep fighting. It was then that I realized the desperate call was not mine, but that of another. One who was very quickly losing control.

  Edmund.

  No! It came again.

  This time, I laughed.

  I laughed as the shaking surrounded me, as the world came into focus, as I ran from Thom, everything drifting from black to grey until there was only black.

  The burn was more than I could fathom.

  I had spent the last thousand years avoiding this never-ending pain, since the night the black water had licked against my chest, creating long, red lashes that never healed. The pain had gotten worse with each burn, with each drop the black water had littered against my body. The palm I had burned getting the water into Joclyn in a moment of life or death, the welt on my arm from trying to save her, each one had branded me. Now they burned with a deeper agony than I had ever felt, an acute pain that was ripping me apart as I willingly followed it, as I let it devour me.

  I followed the burn as I held Joclyn against me, her panic moving through me, her heart beating against mine. A burning force spread to every inch of me, tensing my muscles, tightening in my stomach. It grew until all I could feel was the heat that had encompassed my body, the intensity of it not just mine, but hers, as well.

  The pain was us.

  The magic was us.

  It was everywhere.

  I couldn’t stop screaming. I couldn’t escape it.

  And then it was gone.

  Gone in one numbing blast, leaving me with the shadow of the Black Water and the familiar warmth of Joclyn’s magic against my soul.

  There was nothing else. No screams. No panic from my brother. I couldn’t even physically feel Joclyn where I held her against me.

  Heart thundering in my chest, I opened my eyes, expecting to see the calm silver of hers, expecting this nightmare she had been trapped in for the last few hours to be gone, for everything to be okay.

  However, she wasn’t there. Nothing was there, nothing except a different nightmare, one I hadn’t expected and couldn’t understand.

  I wasn’t even sure where I was.

  I was surrounded by white, my consciousness thrust into a void, a rip in time where nothing existed except me.

  Everything intensified in unrequited panic as I spun on the spot, desperate to find her, to find anything that would clue me in to what had happened. Nothing was there.

  Simply air and space.

  “Joclyn!” I yelled, dread growing as I searched for my mate. My magic stretched away from me in a frantic need to find her, my hands grasping through the white space before me as though her sleeping body would be hidden beyond what I could see.

  Nothing.

  “Joclyn!”

  No answer.

  Thinking from beginning to end over everything that had happened, my mind ran on overdrive as my heart thundered in my ears, the sound slowing down as it faded to a low buzzing that echoed around me like a hive of bees.

  “Joclyn?” I said again as her magic filled me, the slow burn so familiar my agitation calmed with the knowledge she was there. She was close.

  “Joclyn?” I called again, trying to follow the pull of her magic, trying to find her. Still, nothing. Nothing to follow, just the familiar heat of her, the usual pull coming from somewhere deep inside of me. The immense wall of her power was so strong I couldn’t even feel my own anymore.

  She was all there was.

  “Joclyn,” I gasped as I collapsed to the ground, the demands of her magic so intense I was certain I would be strangled by it.

  “Hello.” A child’s voice blossomed out of the white nothing like a gentle lullaby, jolting me out of my alarm as the weight of Joclyn’s magic restrained me.

  “Joclyn?” I asked hesitantly even though I knew it wasn’t her. It wasn’t her voice, yet I knew it was familiar.

  “Hello.” The warmth of Joclyn’s magic pulled at me as the child spoke, an unfamiliar heat moving alongside it, moving through it like a shadow.

  “Hello?” I looked up, hoping to see the child or some other creature standing before me. But there was nothing.

  “Hello.”

  With a start, I realized the voice was seeping through me from the unfamiliar magic I had felt a moment before, a magic so close to Joclyn’s I couldn’t tell the difference. The two powers spiraled throughout me as if they were somehow connected.

  “Who is there?” I asked, my focus more on the magic as it enveloped me, paying attention to the way it moved, searching for clues as to who was talking or even what was happening.

  “I’m here,” the little girl said with a laugh, the sound similar to Christmas bells.

  “And where is here?” I was tense, the fear and uncertainty coming back, despite the fact I could still feel Joclyn’s magic calming me.

  The lack of control and understanding I was experiencing made the emotions worse. I had been in situations of life or death before. I had been moments away from death. But even in those traumatizing moments, I still had control over my life. I could choose to live, choose to die, choose to fight, choose to give in.

  Here, I had none of those options.

  I could only focus on trying to figure out what had happened, on where I was.

  My gut was telling me that, by following the water into Joclyn’s power, this was a sight, but I had seen her sights before, and they were not like this. I had connected with her mind before, and it was not like this.

  “You know where you are,” the voice came again with a laugh, the childlike game winding
up my spine in agitation. “You were just thinking about it.”

  I cringed at the intonation, and Joclyn’s magic flared within me at what was said, her own fear increasing alongside mine.

  “You can hear…?” It wasn’t possible. Only Joclyn could tap into my mind, and then it was because of the way our souls had fused. This voice, however, was not hers. “Joclyn?” I spun on the spot, searching from end to end of the void to find who was speaking and understand what was going on.

  “Joclyn!” I knew she had to be there because I could feel her magic. I could feel it swell as I said her name, the warmth of it seeping into my bones, wrapping around me in snakes of a comforting weight.

  I gasped at the intimate touch, my eyes closing as my heart rate pulsed in excitement, each throb promising me she was right there, so close I could feel her skin against mine.

  Opening my eyes, I expected the lights that were so common for us to appear among the void of white, but there was nothing. Just a powerful sensation that she was right there, standing beside me, my magic pulling me toward her.

  “I am not Joclyn, but I know her very well.”

  “How do you know her?” I asked, the simple phrase not making any sense. “Where is she? May I see her?” I kept my voice low as I continued to look into the nothing, my heart rate accelerating even as I tried to keep myself calm, to speak to this mysterious thing as I would a child. Regardless, something deep inside whispered to me that whatever I was facing was not the child they were masquerading as.

  “No. She is not here anymore. I took her somewhere else.”

  “Where?” With a start of fear, the word erupted in long, hollow sounds stretching away from me.

  I cringed, tensing as that strange magic increased inside me, the waves of it moving through me, blending with Joclyn’s as the sound of the laugh deepened, heightened.

  “She loved you very much, you know.” All signs of the game she had been playing were lost in the heaviness of her voice, the sound of the echoed laugh running over it.

  “Loved?” Fear and anger erupted with the single word as the laugh continued to resonate, as if someone had bumped a gramophone, the sound coming again and again.