Silver Huntress

by Nia Night

  Right.

  I’d stupidly used up the reserves of my magic to fight off that dark blast of power, and now I had nothing left. I hadn’t eaten or had a drink in Gods knew how long. I’d been forced to evacuate on myself several times, much to the snickers of the students, the pitying distasteful sneers of the other Sisters.

  I hadn’t seen Abri, not since she’d help chain me here.

  Not that these things mattered, either. They didn’t. Not a Gods damned bit. I was more than ready for Devas to come and claim me, to drag me down to the depths of whatever hell awaited people like me.

  But those shadowy figures paused before slipping out of sight near the wall surrounding the fortress that was the Academy.

  Then one began to dart toward me with the precision of a bullet.

  I gritted my teeth as I waited for impact.

  In the small space of time before the shadow reached me, I nearly choked on the rapid pace of my own heartbeat.

  But when it was ten yards away, then ten feet, the blanket of dark peeled away to reveal Vida, and for a few stalled seconds, I was positive that I was imagining her.

  The child came to a panting stop in front of me, her small chest heaving breaths after her sprint toward me.

  “What…” I heard myself mumble.

  Vida blinked up at me with big brown eyes. Her curly brown hair had been braided back like a Sister’s, and she wore the plain black clothes of a student of the Academy. Other than this, she didn’t look any worse than the last time I’d seen her, which felt like it had been years ago now. How many days had passed since that fateful day when I’d left her at the police station? It couldn’t have been more than a couple months, but seemed like another lifetime now.

  Before I could process this, the other shadow I’d glimpsed earlier was standing at Vida’s side. This close, the power radiating off the bearer of that dark magic was intoxicating in a terrible way. I found myself straining against my chains in an effort to get away from it, while the child standing before me only stared up at that dark form in defiance.

  “We take her with us,” Vida said, and raised her chin as if to dare a challenge.

  I could only blink as the shadows peeled away from that towering form, parting like storm clouds in a swift wind. I gaped as this revealed a male of unreasonable beauty.

  With eyes and hair as dark as the night around us, that scent of fresh rain and brimstone filled my senses. A full Demon with Darkness as his magic, and a healthy affinity for it at that. His brow furrowed as he took me in, capturing me with that midnight gaze.

  He looked back to the child, and I could draw air again.

  “We don’t have time for this,” the male snapped.

  To my ultimate surprise, Vida reached up and gripped the front of my jacket, bunching the material in her little hand. “I’m not leaving without her,” she insisted.

  What in the actual fuck?

  I was so tired, so close to losing my grip on consciousness that I couldn’t be entirely sure I wasn’t dreaming this whole thing up. It made more sense as a hallucination.

  Blinking, I tried to push back the darkness creeping in at the edges of my vision and failed. I knew that the male could make Vida come, could knock her out with that toxic dark power radiating from him. The darkness continued to close in as the two stared each other down.

  The male Demon narrowed his eyes at Vida. Vida jutted out her little chin, tightened her hold on my jacket.

  An alarm jolted us all, not enough to clear the blackness closing in on my mind, but enough to be noticed. The occupants of the Academy no doubt began to stir.

  “Shit,” mumbled the male, and those midnight eyes turned on me once again. They darted up to the chains securing my wrists.

  My vision tunneled. I could no longer stave off the exhaustion, the fatigue. The last things I was aware of were the smell of fresh rain and brimstone, and the voice of Vida, urging the male to hurry up.

  Flashes of images slipped through, so brief and elusive that I couldn’t be sure they were real. The deadly forest appeared and disappeared. The sounds of panted breaths and muffled curses buzzed in my ears. I was aware of being jolted, of my body moving, but not of my own volition. The smell of fresh rain and brimstone was strong. Intoxicating. And darkness seemed to hold me as if in a cosmic pocket.

  Or else I was dreaming this whole thing up, imagining something that was already out of my grasp, fully and truly losing my mind just before my inevitable end. I had a sense of the child being near, an awareness of her voice, her running footsteps. And that dark power, the one that reminded me so much of a male from my past, of a drunken son of a bitch who hadn’t deserved the air he’d breathed.

  I tried to swim out of the cloud around my head, tried to break free of it, but every time I thought I might do so I was dragged back under. I caught glimpses of that awful dark magic lashing out, heard the sounds of struggle, of fighting. Pain lanced through my side, but I was gone again before I could cry out at it.

  The next thing I was aware of was a tingling sensation. I was too out of it to connect it to anything familiar. The air changed. I got a gulp of it.

  I was gone once more.

  “Is she going to die?” asked a female voice I couldn’t remember how I knew.

  “Who knows?” came the answer from another unrecognizable voice. This one male.

  My body jolted. I think I did utter a groan this time. Pain sliced through me, and I thought that if this were a dream, or death, it was much more agonizing than I’d hoped.

  “She’s one of them, you know?” said the male.

  “I know,” said the female.

  “Then you should know she wasn’t worth saving. She’ll only slow us down.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Then, why?”

  A moment of silence. “I owed her one.”

  My body shifted. Whoever held me grunted in response, clearly not pleased with this answer.

  She wasn’t worth saving.

  They hadn’t spoken my name. They didn’t need to.

  3

  If this was hell, it wasn’t as hot as I’d thought it would be.

  The air was warm, but not unpleasantly so. The patter of gentle rain surrounded me, though I was dry and not uncomfortable. I drew a deep breath, swimming up to consciousness as the clean smell of greenery filled my nose.

  Mild pain followed, and with it, the realization that I was not dead, and not dreaming, either.

  I peeled my eyes open, the world blurry before slowly coming into focus. Above me, a latticework of dark wood created a low ceiling, green vines sprouting heart-shaped leaves snaking in between. I sat up, realizing that I was atop a small, soft bed. The room I was in was more like a nook, with the bed I was on, a nightstand, a simple wooden desk and chair as the only furnishings. The three walls were covered in vines as thick as those on the low ceiling above me.

  The air smelled so green that one deep breath of it made me realize that I’d never breathed truly clean air before, which was a sad thought that got lost in the cascade of others passing through my head. Where there should have been a forth wall, there was only a curtain of those thick vines, shielding part of the world beyond. White flowers with bright violet centers sprouted upon this vine curtain, and one side of it had been tied back, revealing a glimpse of what waited on the other side. There was a courtyard beyond, and once I set eyes on it, my attention was rapt.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the groaning of my limbs. With this, it occurred to me that I was not in as much agony as I should have been. My muscles and body ached, but only as if complaining of disuse. I glanced down at my wrist, checking to see if my last memories of what happened were real or imagined.

  A heart-shaped, green leaf was wrapped around the inside of my wrist. With another deep, clean breath, I peeled back the leaf, and saw only scarred and healing skin there.

  There, where the symbol of the Sisters had been sliced out of me. Where
Warden Valda had used her scalpel to remove the tattoo that had marked me as one of them.

  An unfamiliar and unpleasant feeling curled through my chest. I swallowed and looked back up at the courtyard beyond that missing fourth wall. Standing, I moved toward it. My heart thudded as I slipped out of the nook I’d awoken in and deeper into wherever I was.

  Years of training were the only things that kept the awe from taking over my face. Drawing another breath, I looked up.

  And up and up and up.

  The massive, ancient trees filling the courtyard reached all the way to the arched ceiling—a ceiling that was made entirely of clear windows ten stories above. Despite the light patter of rain, rogue rays of golden sunlight broke through the clouds and filtered through the green leaves and branches, dappling as it made its way to the floor of the courtyard below. The grass was thick and plush, and I realized only then that I was barefoot, as my toes sunk through the silky blades to the soft earth beneath. It was the kind of grass one could sleep soundly upon.

  Winding through it were narrow walkways of smooth stone, as if each had been plucked from the base of an ancient river. A fountain burbled nearby, its gentle gurgle an accompanying melody to the rain striking the windowed-roof. I took another step, my mind racing to keep up with my senses.

  My head tilted as I examined the trees, as I noticed that tucked into the branches were hundreds—no, thousands of books, nestled amongst those fat, heart-shaped leaves. Wrapped around the trunks of the trees were thick vines that spiraled from the tops of the trunks to the feet, creating a natural, corkscrew bookshelf down the bark, where more books were arranged meticulously.

  In examining some of the spines, I saw that there were whole sections in languages I had absolutely no references for, no inkling of their meanings. My hand rose as my fingers brushed the spine of one of the tomes.

  A throat cleared behind me. I turned on my heels to see an old woman with a long silver braid and deep brown eyes. No, not a woman. A female. It took me a moment, but I noted the slightly pointed tips of her ears, the gentle slant to her eyes, the earthly aura radiating off her.

  “Hello, Iliana,” the old Fae female said.

  “Um, hi,” I replied.

  Her mouth tugged up just a touch in one corner, an almost imperceptible movement, but I caught a flash of the sharp canines behind her lips. Only then did I notice the other rooms surrounding the large courtyard, the vine-curtains that were mostly drawn shut, but through the ones that were tied open, I could see other older females beyond. They all wore the same simple gray gowns as the female before me, and were mostly bent over worktables before open tomes, or busy with pen or quill in hand while various books lay piled and open around them.

  “Do you know where you are?” asked the Fae.

  I glanced around at the books tucked into the trees. So many of them.

  “I assume I’m in one of the Libraries of the Literati,” I said. “But which of the three, I don’t know.”

  The old Fae gave that almost-smile once more, canines flashing before hiding again behind her lips. “Smart and deadly, my favorite kind of female.”

  I’d heard stories about the three secret libraries from my mother when I was younger. She’d loved to read. Had said that if she could visit one place before she died, it would be one of the three Libraries of the Literati. For a long time, I couldn’t see a book without thinking of her. But there’d been only one kind of book at the Academy, and it was the one that held the story of the Original Sisters. It had been all I’d been allowed to read growing up. As a result, I hated the activity. Was sure I was born without the bones of a bookworm, one of the many ways my mother and I differed.

  “What am I doing here?” I asked, shaking away the thoughts.

  “You were brought here to be healed, as you were on the brink of death. Apparently, a certain child has taken a liking to you.”

  My hand went to my waist, but I remembered that my Calidi chain was not there. Remembered who had it. Who had taken it. If the Fae female noticed this movement, she didn’t comment.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “Where’s Vida?” I replied.

  The Fae female sighed. “Vida!” she called out, and a couple of the females within the rooms around the base of the courtyard grumbled their disapproval at the noise. When I turned back to where the Fae woman was standing, I saw that she was strolling away. I might’ve followed her, but one of the vine curtains across the large space pulled back, and Vida peered out from behind it.

  When she caught sight of me, she smiled tentatively and joined me in the courtyard.

  She looked just as she had when I’d last seen her, too calm and serene for a child of no more than ten years old. Her dark brown, curly hair was parted into two braids, and the jeans and t-shirt she wore looked as though they’d been freshly washed and pressed. She blinked up at me but said nothing.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Her brows rose. “You were tied to a pole outside the Academy. When Ibra came to get me, I demanded he take you, too… Don’t you remember?”

  I nodded. So I hadn’t imagined it.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Vida’s head tilted. “Because I owed you one from when you stopped the Accursed from getting me in the park in Carson City.”

  Yes, I remembered that, too… and some other things that were said.

  Those things didn’t matter, I decided immediately.

  “Who’s Ibra?” I asked, though I thought I might know the answer to that, too.

  Before the child could answer, I felt it. That dark magic that had shot out across the Academy just before Vida and the male Demon had shown up. I scanned the space once more, and caught sight of the male sitting at the base of one of the massive trees, a book open in his lap. He glanced up at me, expression hard, and then back down at the text in obvious dismissal.

  I refrained from asking what the fuck his problem was and turned back to the child. The older Fae from earlier was now standing at her side. The female moved like a damn wraith.

  “Where are my boots?” I asked.

  The Fae and Vida exchanged a glance. “Are you planning to leave?” asked the former.

  “Uh, yeah, probably.”

  “And go where?”

  That was a good question.

  “I don’t know yet… My boots?”

  Another unspoken exchange between the child and the Fae. I ground my teeth together but didn’t comment.

  “Very well,” said the Fae. “But before you go, break bread with the child who deemed you worthy of saving, even with extreme detriment to her own wellbeing.”

  She turned on her heels and began to float away. Vida watched her recede alongside me and then pivoted to face me. “She’s…intense,” she commented.

  “No shit,” I replied, and then chastised myself for cursing in front of her, which was kind of ridiculous, all things considered.

  Vida smiled, then bit her lip. “Eat with us, Iliana,” she said. “I’m sure you have questions.” She gestured around us, at the greenery and the countless books tucked in between. “This is the place that has answers.”

  I sighed and nodded, waving a hand for her to lead the way.

  Vida followed after the Fae, winding through the courtyard along the smooth rock path. I couldn’t help but stare all around me as I took in more of the place, though my features undoubtedly remained stone as a statue. This whole ocean I’d found myself floating in was uncharted territory, and I didn’t know what to expect.

  All I knew was that I didn’t trust these people. Or any people of any kind. The only people I’d been forced to pledge utter loyalty to had chained me to a pole and left me to die. It slammed into me for the first time since I’d awakened that I was utterly and truly alone in the world. No one on my side, no one in my corner.

  I tucked this away for later examination and followed the child. Now was not the time nor the place for such musings.

  I p
assed the place where the Demon male—Ibra—had been reading against the base of a tree, but the male was no longer there. I counted ten more nooks tucked into the walls on the bottom floor, with the nine levels above made up of walls and walls of tomes. Under the scent of green earth was that of parchment and glue, which made for a pleasant mixture that reminded me of my mother.

  I swallowed. Yet another matter that had no place for musing in the current setting.

  We walked until we came to a clearing in the courtyard. A giant wood table stood center, its making a work of true craftsmanship. The wood gleamed, the natural whorls and design like marble. Large chairs sat all around it, each a small throne in its own right. In the center of the table was a big pot of something that smelled like beef stew, a ladle angled along the rim of it.

  Most of the chairs were taken. Vida and the Fae female took a seat at two others. The latter gestured toward a final empty chair in invitation. For whatever reason, my heart thudded heavily as I stepped up behind the chair in acceptance.

  “Let’s eat,” said the old Fae. “And talk.”

  4

  Each of the people at the table served themselves from the pot of stew, so when the ladle was passed to me by Vida, I followed suit, thinking this was all some of the weirdest shit I’d ever experienced.

  Granted, I didn’t have very much experience with people other than killing them, but still. What kind of mess, exactly, had I found myself in the middle of?

  I supposed I was about to find out.

  I watched the others take sips of their stew before taking from mine, and earned a few knowing smirks from the strangers with whom I dined. In the silence, I took note of their singularities, and realized with a bit of a start that they were all older females—save for the smug Demon male at the opposite end of the table, who seemed to be pointedly ignoring my presence—and they were all of various supernatural races.