Kingdoms of Ether (Kingdoms of Ether Series Book 1)

by Ryan Muree

  “It’s a lot of money. We could start looking for a plot up on top-side with what we have.”

  “Screw top-side.” Cayn put both hands on her shoulders. “You want a house with that kid, Mack, in Nilkham?” She glared at him. “You have to spend money to make money. What we got now is only halfway to a down payment. Not even a house. There is much more to be had if we got something like this.”

  Says the gunner who claims to hate shooting. But she couldn’t tell Cayn no.

  “Okay,” she said as Cayn’s eyes lifted with his wide, toothy smile. “We’ll take it.”

  Chapter 20

  Spare cabin — Zephyr Airship

  Emeryss strained to open her eyes to the hazy blue room. The non-stop casting practice and the guilt of what she’d put the Zephyrs through had taken its toll.

  Despite it being two days since Avrist’s attempt to crash the Zephyr, two days since Sonora had nearly fallen to her death, Avrist had left them alone.

  Vaughn had been forced to return the Zephyr to normal size almost immediately after the attack, so they could land and repair as fast as possible, and Avrist hadn’t followed. That meant he was either reconsidering his tactics, or he was waiting for the best opportunity to come for her again.

  She clumsily slid out of bed and went for the empty cup beside the sink. She filled it with water, took several gulps, and looked in the mirror. The bags under her eyes were still there, but less so. Her dark hair was limp, her skin was pallid, and both were dry.

  Over her shoulder in the reflection, Grier’s bunk was empty. He’d been getting up early and training somewhere on the ship. In the off chance the two of them had run into each other, he’d been quieter than normal, telling her she could take the bottom bunk to get more rest between training sessions. It was impossible to tell if he was angry at her, angry at himself, or angry at the world.

  Probably all of it.

  She’d wished he would stay behind just once, so they could talk about what happened, what he was thinking, how right he was about her putting the Zephyrs in danger. Even discussing Avrist, her casting, going to Neeria… anything would have been helpful. But their training schedules didn’t allow for it. She was asleep before he came to bed, and he was gone before she woke.

  He was probably avoiding her on purpose.

  Or she was paranoid. Overthinking his zipper stunt, overthinking his reaction, overthinking casting…

  She groaned and rubbed her sore temples. The headaches that had come with all her practice were unbearable, chipping away at her resolve. For hours daily, she’d been working until she collapsed or nearly vomited from the pain and sense of drowning. Sleep seemed to be the only thing she could do to stave off the headaches that even Kayson couldn’t fix.

  She also couldn’t help the dread building within her. That all the danger she’d put the Zephyrs and Grier in wouldn’t be worth it. That if she didn’t figure it out now, she’d never get it. And while she couldn’t wait to be home, the wedding was in two days, which meant soon she’d have to face her family’s questions and disappointment of her escaping the library. Then she’d have to face the library…

  If she’d learned to cast already, things would be different. But no matter what she’d tried, the ether never went into her hand during practice. She’d ended up suffocating the sigils on the page and squishing them beneath her palm. She couldn’t even let herself call it progress anymore. Something about it was all wrong, evident by the charred sigil carcasses left behind in the grimoires.

  Her eyes fell to her bedside, where books were piled in two stacks knee-high. Empty books.

  She returned to the bed, sat on the edge, and opened the most recent grimoire she’d tried to scribe in. It looked like a child’s drawing, a scribble at best, and it’d taken her half an hour to get that much.

  The crew had been asking for the grimoires. They’d ask before the wedding, too.

  And what would she tell them? That scribing was becoming too hard?

  That wasn’t even a real thing. Too hard was not in her vocabulary. She could feel the whiff of her mother’s hand across the back of her head all the way from Neeria just for thinking it. Nothing in this world worth having was easy, but it definitely wasn’t too hard.

  You either want it, or you don’t, her father had said during their hardest year. She was a child. The water spider pots had been empty or the catch too small. The fish had spawned everywhere else in the world, leaving them nothing, and the seagrass had all but rolled up and died before harvest.

  They thought they’d starve that year until they’d found other sources of meat in dangerous, deeper waters.

  You either want it, or you don’t.

  There was no telling the Zephyrs it was getting difficult.

  She was not… She wasn’t losing her ability to scribe. She had to be overextended, stressed, tired.

  She dropped her face into her palms.

  Everything felt like it was spinning out of control, just out of her grasp.

  Had she asked for too much? Had she been greedy to want more than just to scribe? Tears bubbled up. She hated that her destiny had been decided for her, that destinies weren’t left up to the person living them. It made her feel lost, waiting for the tide to take her to her destination, instead of letting her carve her own path through the ether.

  The room was still dark, and last she’d checked, she still couldn’t open a stupid window.

  They were supposedly outside of Marana where the wedding was to be held. She’d probably slept too long, and Adalai wouldn’t be happy that she’d wasted that much time.

  The script on the cover of the grimoire in her lap sparkled indigo.

  Sonora’s book.

  Tully had dropped off the most in the last week. It was apparent now that it was only a reminder to keep her in her place. The fact remained, however, once they knew she was awake, they’d be asking for them again.

  She picked up the quill she’d brought with her an eternity ago.

  Deep breaths in and out. Visualize nothingness.

  She had to meditate like normal and calm her heart. It was beating so strongly she could hear it in her ears. There was no reason to be this anxious over scribing. The ethereal plane would come back to her.

  She closed her eyes and fell back into the…

  There was nothing there.

  She cleared her throat and swallowed. Eyes closed, she fell back… She fell back…

  There was a tiny space, but it was nearly closed. In her mind, she wedged herself within the crack until she was between space and time, and ether danced and thrummed around her.

  She took a deep, cleansing breath. She knew she’d get there eventually. She’d just needed to rest.

  The ether was beautiful, bending and fanning out with her hands. It twirled and slid along her fingers. She lifted her quill to record the sigils for Sonora, but the ether bent away. She waited, and the clouds of ethereal ink slid farther back. Each cloud, each tuft of vibrant ether, repelled from her quill, and the whispers became echoes, dark and slow like a nightmare.

  She tried to calm her pulse. She couldn’t back away. She had to scribe. There was no choice.

  But the echoes—their words—weren’t forming properly; it was too difficult to decipher.

  Was it a right triangle? Turn sixty degrees? No. Flip back fifty pages, over and around three—no, two—concentric circles...

  She jotted down as much as she could, slower than she’d ever scribed before, even as a trainee.

  Her hands trembled. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

  It was all wrong. Everything was wrong. She knew it, and it was like the whole of her had sunk down to her feet. Every piece of her spirit, her drive, her wisps of hopes and dreams had sunk to the lowest part of her where she couldn’t reach.

  Out. I want out.

  She couldn’t scribe, couldn’t cast. She wasn’t anything. She was nothing.

  Bile rose, and the quill bobbed in her hand, nearl
y falling.

  She stepped back to slide between the cracks of space and time and to return to the real world. She wasn’t drowning or choking. She was terribly alone in a growing dark plane, sinking into the abyss of the Endov Sea.

  “I am not ready for my blessed night. I welcome it when it’s my time, but this is not my time,” she managed with a tremor.

  Her words bounced around the plane. The dark and harrowing whispers slithered over her skin and into the recesses of her mind, and the illuminated clouds of ether were nearly gone, leaving her in a void of nothing.

  Her breath wouldn’t catch. There wasn’t enough air. She pushed herself farther into the crack, squeezing herself through and following the tug leading her out.

  The cold metallic room came into view around her as if she’d been unswallowed. It was dark, save for the blue light above the sink.

  She panted and blinked until the bed beneath her felt cold and soft. She coughed, and with it, a sob escaped. Tears streamed down her face and onto the book in her lap. There was nothing on it. A tiny scratch on the paper, but nothing else.

  She couldn’t scribe.

  She couldn’t do anything. She’d become nothing again.

  This wasn’t what she’d meant when she said she wanted to become a Caster. She’d wanted to trade in scribing but not at this price.

  Her heart ached until it broke and fell away, and she was empty.

  This… this was like floating between the ethereal plane and the real world. She used to get stuck there as a trainee. Dolan would have to shout her back out of it.

  Not a Scribe anymore, not a Caster. And she’d nearly killed Grier and the Zephyrs trying.

  Nothing.

  She was a regular Neerian again.

  She let out another sob and pressed the book against her forehead. Trying to pursue what she’d desired, she’d ruined everything. Is that why she was being punished? Was this her destiny all along? To want something so much, to work harder than she ever had to for it, and then lose everything as a result?

  The door opened.

  She straightened as quickly as she could, slammed the book closed, and turned her head to hide her face.

  “Are you okay?” Grier lingered in the doorway. “Are you ill?”

  She shook her head, keeping her face away from him to wipe her eyes as discreetly as possible. She’d have to speak eventually, but right then the words weren’t there. They were stuck in the empty cavity that was her body, where her heart and spirit should have been.

  “Emeryss, what’s wrong?” The door closed behind him, putting them in a silent darkness. His weight on the bed beside her sunk her deeper into the mattress.

  She didn’t dare look at him. She didn’t want to hear how wrong she was, or that he was right. But she couldn’t stop the tears.

  Everything was wrong; everything was out of reach. She’d lost the one thing she had, and it was her greed for true happiness that had done it. If everything she’d wanted—freedom, casting, pride from her people, Grier—had been impossible from the beginning, it wouldn’t have been so bad. Knowing—no, thinking—it was within reach had been the worst part.

  She’d fooled herself her whole life. The sea oracle had been right. Neerians, for whatever reason, weren’t meant for anything more. And she had to get the truth of that into her head.

  Grier’s warm, heavy hand reached around her shoulder. “Talk to me… Please,” he whispered.

  She wiped more tears.

  Why did he have to care so much? She understood it was his job to worry about her safety, but he cared more than that, and shouldn’t. He was one of the many things she couldn’t have—someone she had no business wanting—and this time together proved how much she did care for him.

  Another sob nearly escaped, but he’d pulled her closer into his chest before it could. “Emeryss, what can I do?” His voice deep and soft sounded as pained as she was.

  He had to know she couldn’t scribe anymore. Why else would she be clutching a blank book and crying? But where was there to go from this? She had…

  Nothing. I have nothing, I am nothing.

  “Nothing.” Her voice broke. “Time is nearly up. I’ve tried everything, and now… I was so wrong. You were so right, and my heart is just… I can’t do anything—”

  He pulled her into him, against him.

  She couldn’t take it, floating alone in the deepest trenches of her mind. His gesture undid her, and she curled into his warmth, put her forehead against his neck, and cried.

  He held her there, rubbing her arm with his chin against her head.

  As good as it felt not to cry alone, she couldn’t stay there like that. He was all strength, all well-formed muscle, yet pliable to her. She tried to pull back, but he held her tighter, bending around her to cradle her with both arms.

  “I’m so sorry, Emeryss,” he whispered.

  She shook her head slightly. “I failed. I failed everything.”

  “Are you sure you’re not tired? Or stressed? Are you sure it’s not because you’re becoming a Caster?” His breath was hot and moist against her forehead.

  Why did she feel fuller in his arms like she was always meant to be there? It was the most natural place in the world for her to be, and yet, couldn’t.

  “I slept the whole day. It’s none of those things. It’s me. I can’t do it, and now…” Her fingers sought the edges of the book, and tears bubbled up again. “What am I going to tell them, Grier? What am I going to say? They’ve been so helpful, and all I’ve done is put them in danger. They expect books. At least that was the agreement, and I can’t even do that. I can’t even tell them.”

  He pulled away to look in her eyes. Every part of his face looked tender. “And?”

  She wiped her cheeks again. “They’re expecting sigils in case something happens at the wedding, and it was part of the deal—”

  “First, they’ll understand. Most of them. It’s not by choice that you can’t scribe, and maybe, if I had listened to you about the library, this could have been resolved sooner. I practically pushed you out the door, and I didn’t believe you about Avrist. It’s like you said the first night you left—the library was doing this. This hiding and running and being pressed for time is all Avrist’s doing. It shouldn’t be like this. It’s not your fault Avrist has done what he has.”

  “But—”

  “And second,” he continued, “I think Adalai needs you to figure out casting as much as you need her.” His lips were right there, barely moving when he spoke that low.

  She forced her eyes to refocus on the depth in his. “You said that about Avrist, and he’s tried to kill us multiple times now. I’ve ruined everything for you, for me, possibly the Zephyrs. You don’t understand, Grier. I am nothing now.”

  “You…” His gaze dropped to her lips, and he cleared his throat. “You… surprise me all the time. And you have been learning how to cast. You’re nothing short of remarkable, doing the impossible.”

  Her insides melted.

  “Things are unsure, things feel shaky, but I’m just as lost…” He swallowed. “We’re lost… together. We have each other.”

  She inhaled and held it. “Then why have you been avoiding me?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t been avoiding you—not intentionally. Maybe a little.”

  “Why?”

  He inhaled. “It’s not about me. I came in and saw you and wanted to comfort you—”

  “We have each other, right? Tell me. I’ve wanted to talk to you for days.”

  He took a deep breath. “It kills me to watch you strain yourself so much with casting, but I’ve also been trying to sort myself out, sort out this mess. I’m supposed to be strong, but I’m weak. I couldn’t jump to Avrist’s airship—”

  “Grier, you can’t—”

  “I’m not as strong as I thought I was.” He took a deep breath. “The only thing I know how to do is protect you, and I’ve been terrible at it. I’m not even sure of wha
t I am, Emeryss. You were a prisoner. I know that now, but what does that make me? Lerissa won’t answer my messages. Avrist is trying to drag us back even if he kills us in the process.”

  “No one expected you to jump from an airship cruising thousands of feet in the air.” She dared to rest her hands on top of his. “And I know protecting me is second nature to you. I see that it’s as involuntary to you as breathing. What you’ve done for me… You are one of the strongest people I know—”

  His hands were around her face as quickly as his lips were on hers. It happened so fast, her breath caught. But once she tasted him, she gripped his flight suit and pulled him in for more.

  His lips parted for hers over and over again. His warm hands held her there against him.

  Her head swam, her lungs begged for air.

  He finally pulled his lips a mere inch away and rested his forehead against hers.

  They panted.

  She wanted more, running her hands to his neck to pull him in. She didn’t know what had possessed him to do that, and she didn’t care.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, voice breaking. “I shouldn’t have…”

  She shook her head, but he pulled away, dropped his hands from her, and rose to stand against the wall across the room—the farthest point away from her. Unsettled by the separation from him, the sudden vacuum in the space between, she caught herself with her hands on the bed.

  Seconds ticked by.

  “What just happened?” she breathed.

  He rubbed his face with both hands. “I’m sorry…”

  “What was that?” she asked more forcefully.

  “I lost my mind… I—”

  “And why did you stop?” Her eyes lifted to his. Even across the dark-blue haze in the room, his piercing stare met hers. “Stadhold’s rules? Stadhold, the ones who’ve tried to kill us?”

  “Yes… No.” He balled his hands into fists. “I don’t… Not just the rules, but I’m trying to figure it out. It’s the traditions—”

  She let out a small sigh. She wasn’t a Keeper. That’s what he’d meant by it. He was still concerned with a far-off future, and she was a fool to assume otherwise. He had said they had each other, but this was worse. This was something in between she couldn’t stand. She should’ve stayed focused on the only thing left for her to move to—casting.