I exhaled deeply. Once again, Rey had left me with more questions than answers. I hated that he could do that. I hated even more the thought that he could do something about my situation, and wouldn’t. What the hell were those rules he kept talking about? Whose rules?
Shaking my head, I returned to my room to find Ness still awake. Fate was gone, most likely off to get some sleep.
“Are you okay?” Ness asked when she saw me enter. “You’re pale.”
“I’m fine, just really tired now,” I said, kicking my boots off. I sat down on the bed and ran my fingers through my hair. Bastet had said nobody would notice the little lock of it she’d snipped out, but somehow, I noticed it now. A rough space where she’d made her snip. It was subtle, but it was there.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
I looked up at her and sighed. “No…” I trailed off. “But I’m gonna get there.”
I had to wait until Ness was asleep before I could do what I wanted to do. I could’ve gone and found a quiet place in the fortress to go on my trip, but I decided doing it in the safety of my own bed was probably a better idea. There was every chance something could go wrong, especially now that I wouldn’t be able to rely on Ness’s anti-crazy drink.
I waited almost an hour after she’d started lightly snoring before sitting up and getting started. I had the bowl on my lap, the one filled with leaves and twigs and pieces of paper. In my hand I held the small bag Romeo had given me. There was only half the amount of powder in there than I’d started with, but I knew it would be enough to get me to where I needed to go.
I opened the bag and readied myself. “Kyro,” I whispered at the bowl, and a small spark ignited inside, catching on the paper. It went up in only a manner of seconds, the soft orange ember becoming a full-on flame. I set the bowl down on the end-table now, positioned the bag over the flame, and emptied its contents inside.
The flame changed color, and I breathed the smoke in like I had the first time; only this time, things got weird, fast.
Sharp pain stabbed the side of my head, and I went down hard on the bed. Groaning, I pressed my hand against my head and waited for it to pass. It didn’t. I opened my eyes, immediately regretting my decision to do this and hoping I could wake Ness up before this pain ended up killing me, only I wasn’t in my room anymore.
I was in the secret tunnel Draven and I used to meet in.
It was dark, quiet. I couldn’t see myself standing there. Draven wasn’t there either. What the hell? I couldn’t understand what I was looking at, what I was supposed to see. Then I heard footsteps, someone hurrying toward me. Guards? Shit. There was nowhere to hide, and if I got caught…
I made a run for the door leading out of the castle thinking it would be easier to jump out and hide outside than face whoever was coming, but I couldn’t move. It was like being trapped inside a nightmare where you want your limbs to work, you want your throat to work, but nothing happens. You’re trapped, helpless, waiting for the monster to come.
Only it wasn’t a monster. It was a woman running down the stairs, entering the secret corridor. A woman with bright, white hair hidden under a black hood. Mom? I stared at her as she approached. She couldn’t see me, didn’t register my presence. Instead she kept her head down and kept running. She was carrying something—a small package, swaddled in a golden blanket.
A child.
I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. She moved right through me like I was a ghost, invisible, not present. When she reached the door, she pulled it open and let the cold, outside air in. I watched her wait for a moment, her cloak billowing behind her, until a dark shape arrived in front of her; a shadow with wings.
She handed the small package to the shadow, and the shadow swallowed it up before racing away into the night, never to be seen again.
For the third time I tried calling out, this time I reached for her too, but the world around me turned to color and light, and everything changed. I was in a garden, bathed in warm sunlight and surrounded by tall flowers and plants. Above me, the crystal dome loomed, its glass panels shining against the sun’s brilliance.
I spun around on the spot looking for my mother, but she wasn’t there. I was lost in the flowers, flowers that were taller than I was and densely packed. I started moving, picking my way between them, searching for an exit, when I heard a voice.
“Ready or not! Here I come!”
Another child.
A girl.
I moved quickly toward the source, trying to find it between the flowers, when something large and almost too fast to see pushed right past me. Stunned, terrified, I stopped dead in my tracks, trying to see where the thing had gone. All I saw was a shadow, maybe a tail, slipping off to the right and going out of view. A moment later, a little girl came running after it.
She couldn’t have been older than five. Her hair was white, the brightest I’d seen. Her cheeks were plump, her lips full and pink, and her eyes… I recognized those eyes anywhere. They were blue, as blue as the sky itself, and almost glowing from inside. She was me. I was her. I watched her run in her little yellow dress, innocently giggling as she chased the thing that had easily been four times her size through the maze of flowers.
I took a step to follow her, but again everything changed. Bright lights flooded my senses, I couldn’t handle it. I staggered shielding my eyes from the light until it settled. When the light fell away, I found myself in a large room with marble walls and a huge skylight above me. Rain was falling and hammering against the glass. Thunder flashed, and beneath it, a woman was reading to her daughter.
I circled around the marble bed and saw myself, still age five or so, laying in bed half asleep while my mom read to me. She was in the middle of a story about dragons and knights, only the hero in this story was a woman; a woman wearing shining golden armor, with wings as white as snow and a sword that gleamed like fire.
I listened for a while, watching as things played out. I couldn’t interfere, I couldn’t speak. I knew that now. My mother read to me every night. Even though I’d only seen it happen this once, I knew deep down inside, she always made time for me. Maybe she was making up for my father’s absence. He wasn’t only the King, he was also the War Commander of the House of Dawn.
When there was a battle, he strode into the frontlines with his sword and his shield, leading his men from the front. When there were no battles to fight, he was handling his Kingdom, making sure his city operated the way it should. He wanted to be there for me. I knew that. I could see him standing by the door, watching from a distance. I wasn’t sure if this was actually how things played out, or if my mind was showing me some kind of metaphor, but I got the picture.
I smiled at little me. She’d fallen asleep, and my mother now stood, kissed her, and closed the book. The book snapping shut sent me out of this moment and hurtling into another one. I was twelve, a young woman now, my eyes brimming with intelligence and a desire to find my place in the world. My kithe had bloomed at my back, and I wore them with pride.
My mother was with me. I watched as, ahead of me, she opened a huge, black door that led into a small, dark room. It was the only dark room in the house, in the castle—in the city. I didn’t want to go inside, but I didn’t have another choice. As soon as I entered, the light from my hair bloomed to full radiance, illuminating golden patterns in the walls.
And something else, too.
“You are a young woman now, Seline,” my mother said as we approached the podium. “One day, these will fall under your protection.”
Holy shit… the stones…
There were five of them, each of them glowing, but only slightly. Among them I spotted the gold stone, and the black stone Valoel had stolen. But there were three others. Green, purple, and blue.
“What are they?” the younger version of me asked.
“They are order and chaos. Light and darkness. We are their guardians, Seline. The children in my family have watched them since the
dawn of time. When I am gone, it will be your responsibility to make sure they don’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“What happens if they do?”
The picture shifted again, only this time I screamed. I didn’t want to go, I wanted to know more. I needed to know more. Was any of this even true? Had I gone insane? Was my brain showing me things that just weren’t true? Things I was making up? I couldn’t wake up. There was nothing I could do to stop the cabaret of moving pictures from flooding my mind.
Every time I shut and opened my eyes was something new. This time, it was Draven. I was with him in the secret passageway. Blink. Draven and I were hurrying, hand in hand, across the grass in the dark. He pounced on me and pinned me down. I kissed him and started removing his shirt.
Blink.
My hands scratching his bare skin.
Blink.
His lips on my neck, on my chest, my breasts.
Blink.
Draven’s hands working their way up my thigh. A fire burned in the background. We were on a carpet on the floor.
Blink.
I stared at him from above, his bare-naked chest beneath me, my hands pressed against him. Moaning, our bodies moving in unison. I kissed him. We climaxed, and I felt his body tremble beneath mine.
Blink.
My father went to war one day. I watched him as he took to the skies with his golden shield and his sword, his men at his back—an army of Aevians, all leaving to fight the House of Night. I remember crying that day. My mother cried, too. We all did. None of us knew if they’d be coming back.
Blink.
That night, I went to find Draven in our secret place, only he didn’t come when I’d asked him to. I waited for him, even as the night grew colder and colder, I waited, until finally, the door on the other side of the secret passageway opened.
Draven had finally come, but he wasn’t alone. He was wearing armor, and he held a sword in his hand. Behind him, there were soldiers—all armed and armored. Panicked, I turned around and started running. I had to warn my mother, I had to sound the alarm.
The soldiers gave chase. They hunted me. Even after I broke through the door at the top of the stairs and took flight, they hunted me. I was faster than they were, I could run circles around them, but in the end, Draven knew me too well. He knew where I’d go. By the time I sounded the alarm, it was too late.
Night soldiers were in the city, killing guards, killing people, setting fire to our homes. I didn’t know if word had reached my mother, I didn’t know if she’d be safe, but I couldn’t get to her. I had to fight. I found a sword and took up arms against the soldiers of Night, cutting one of them down, two of them, three of them.
Then it was Draven’s turn, and I couldn’t hurt him. I dropped my sword, begged him to talk to me, but there was venom in his eyes. Anger, and hate, and venom.
“How could he?” Draven asked.
“How could who?!” I screamed. “What are you doing!?”
He pointed his sword at me. “Take her captive. She’ll know where the stones are.”
Two soldiers of Night flanked me. I tried to punch one of them in the throat, where his armor was weakest, but they overpowered me and took me in. I was at the same time watching this all unfold, and living through the experience myself. My chest was tight, there were tears in my eyes, and my heart felt like it could explode at any moment. The worst part was, I was completely powerless to help.
I was a ghost.
Here, I was the memory.
Blink.
I was in a dark room surrounded by soldiers. Many of them had blood on their armor. The room stank of it. I wanted to vomit. Draven entered the room and stood off to the side to watch as his commanding officer interrogated me. They wanted to know how to get to the stones, but I wouldn’t tell them, and I got beaten for it.
I felt every punch to the gut, every slap to the face, as if I was there myself, sitting on that chair. But no matter what they did to me, I wouldn’t talk. The vault was sealed. My mother was the only person who could open it, and I was hoping—hoping against hope—that she had made it out of the city alive.
That probably hadn’t happened, though… because I was still here. She never would’ve left the city if she didn’t know where I was.
I kept asking Draven why he was doing this, why he had done this, but he wouldn’t answer me. In the end, it was the man who was beating me who answered.
“Don’t you know what your father did?” he asked, his voice raspy, like what a crow would sound like if it could talk like a human. “Do you want to know, little girl?”
I spat blood at him.
He wiped it off his face and struck me in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me. “Are you sure we can’t persuade you to talk?” he asked, “Because if you’d just tell us what we want to know, this would all end. We’ll even forgive what your father did.”
“My father? What did my father do?”
He turned to look at Draven. “Do you want to tell her? Or shall I?”
Draven said nothing. His face was stone, hard and expressionless. Empty.
The leader looked at me. “Your father desecrated his father and brother. Do you know what that word means, little girl?”
“My father would never do something like that.”
“I’m afraid he did, many of us watched it. He wanted to prove just how dominant he was over us lowly soldiers of Night. But we got him. Didn’t we boys?”
A cheer went around the room.
“Yes,” he said, “We got him good, and now we have you… and you’re going to tell us what we want to know.”
“I’ll die first,” I snarled.
“Oh no, we won’t kill you.” He nodded behind me, and two soldiers grabbed my arms while a third undid the straps tying me to the chair. They dragged me out of the room, through a door that led into a hallway I intimately recognized.
Our secret passageway. The hidden way into and out of our floating city.
The soldiers dragged me toward the door at the very end and opened it. On the other side there was a tiny ledge, just large enough for a few of people to stand shoulder to shoulder. I was made to stand on the edge and forced to look down. All I could see were shifting clouds beneath me, dark and thick and formless.
“One last chance, girl,” the leader said, “Tell us where the stones are and how to get them.”
I turned around to look at him. “Go fuck yourself,” I said, and I spat at his feet.
He lowered his head. “Very well. We’ll just have to find your mother… meanwhile, I hereby sentence you to die the same way Draven’s father and brother did.”
Finally, Draven’s expression cracked. “What?!” he yelled, “No!”
“Shut up, you,” the leader barked. “One more word and you can join her.”
I grit my teeth and clenched my jaw. “Do you think you scare me?” I asked. “You don’t scare me.”
“You should be scared, girl. It’s a long way down—even longer without wings.”
I didn’t see the face of the man who swung the sword. It all happened so fast. Slice. An instant of numbing cold, then blistering heat. I screamed and fell to my knees. Slice. Before the pain from the first cut could register in my brain, the second cut had come. My wings fell around me like dead, bloody limbs, but all I could see in my mind was the gleam of the sword that had cut them.
It was covered in strange, intricate etchings and blood.
My blood.
I wasn’t sure if it was I who was screaming or Draven. I couldn’t hear anything except for a sharp, high-pitched ringing in my ears. I watched as the leader of the Night soldiers planted his boot against my shoulder and kicked me off the edge of the city, off the edge of the world. Silently I fell into the clouds, down, down, down toward the ground to die from my injuries, or to be forced to live like something less than what I should’ve been.
And Draven watched.
He just watched.
He watched.
Screaming I left this nightmarish dreamscape, and screaming I woke. Ness was there, ready to catch me in her arms. At first, I fought against her, but then I let her hold me. I cried, then. Cried like I’d never cried before. I could still feel the pain at my back, the phantom injuries caused by the man who had stolen my wings.
Wings I would never get back.
My stomach was a knot of living, writhing worms. I couldn’t think straight. I’d tried to string together two conscious lines of thought since I’d left my room, but I couldn’t get past what I’d seen, what I felt. I couldn’t distance myself enough to be able to concentrate on any one thing besides what I knew I needed to do.
In my hand, my dagger burned hot against my skin. I was clutching it so tightly my knuckles were turning white. Draven. That was who I needed to see, that was the person who deserved to feel the end of this blade more than anyone right now.
I rolled my shoulders as I walked, an old reflex coming up from the deep corners of my mind. Back when I had wings, rolling my shoulders was a way of relieving tension in the joints connecting my kithe to my back. It was like stretching or clicking your fingers; satisfying. Now, something was wrong. Very wrong. Without wings, there was no satisfaction… only sadness and remembered pain.
I winced at the memory of what I’d endured. I could almost feel the way the steel cut into my wings one at a time. The rapid swing, the way the blade sung, the moment of heat that instantly turned to cold… and then the thud of the wing as it hit the ground. I couldn’t even begin to describe the pain in a way a human could understand.
The closest thing I could imagine was having a limb cut clean off while you were alive, conscious, and not on any kind of anesthesia.
A shudder worked its way through me as I marched with my head down to where I knew the gold prospects would be gathering. It had been a risky idea, going under the night before my trial was to begin. I’d had to wait until morning to do this here and now, but it was the right time. Draven would be there, as would Aaryn, and just about anyone else who meant a damn in this whole place.
The Obsidian Order Boxed Set Page 52