“And what truth is that?”
“That we are Gods living in bodies of flesh and bone.”
I shook my head. “You’re delusional… no, scratch that, you’re messed up.”
“Am I? Tonight, you have proved to the world who you really are. Do you think just anyone could summon the sun like that? Why do you think you were able to do that?”
“I… I don’t know, but that doesn’t matter.”
“Of course, it matters! It should mean everything to you. You summoned the sun with the power inside of yourself. And this isn’t the first time you’ve done it. When I saw that sun rising over the horizon in the middle of the night a few months ago, I almost couldn’t believe it. But now I see it. You and I, Seline; we are Gods, not broken things and outcasts. We were meant to rule.”
Gods.
He’d say anything, wouldn’t he? Anything to get me to listen to him, to agree with him… then again, he hadn’t lied to me yet. I couldn’t fault him on that. The things he’d said about Draven, about me, they were true so far. If he really was an egomaniacal asshole with a totally self-serving agenda, then why include me in his vision?
Why would he care to make me believe him… unless it was true?
No. He’s trying to manipulate me; make me turn on my friends, on Draven. There’s something he wants, I have it, and he wants me to give it to him. He doesn’t want to have to fight for it. He wants me to just… hand it over.
I stared at the stone glowing on my armlet, then looked at Valoel again, shaking my head. “What you’re doing here is wrong.” I said, “Controlling the minds of others is wrong. Killing for your own personal gain is wrong. We all came from the same place, Valoel… we all want to live normal, peaceful lives. We’re all family. Please, stop this. Stop this, and maybe we can all talk.”
“Talk? Doubtful, little sister. I’m afraid the situation is too far gone for that.”
“What situation?”
“I was forced from my home… I was sent to live and grow up with a father who resented me, to a House I didn’t belong to, to a culture that wasn’t mine. I was meant to see the sun. I was meant to enjoy the feel of its rays on my skin. Instead I was cast out like the dirty little secret that I was, and forced to live in the dark. No more. Once I take that stone from you, I’ll be able to go out into the sun—we all will.”
My blood chilled, and a shudder ran through me. “Who… who’s we?” I ventured.
Dots of amber light began to grow in the dark around me. Eyes, pairs of eyes—many of them, all around me. I couldn’t see their bodies, their faces, but I knew there were Serakon here. They were everywhere. All around me. I spun around on the spot, my eyes wide, my dagger clutched tightly in my hand. The warehouse’s walls must have protected them from the trick I’d just pulled with the sunlight, because none of them seemed hurt or fazed.
And I was in here without backup.
Great.
“I don’t want to have to hurt you, Seline,” Valoel said. “I know that’s probably difficult for you to understand, but it’s also the truth. You are my sister, by blood. What runs through my veins, runs in yours. Believe me when I tell you, your safety is important to me.”
“Really? Because it looks like I’m about to get ganged up on by a whole bunch of Serakon if I refuse whatever you’re offering.”
One of the Serakon moved out of the darkness enough that I could see his massive wings curled up behind him. His eyes burned amber, shedding a little light on his cracked, grey skin and the sharp fangs in his mouth. And yet look in his eyes was one of curiosity more than anger or hate. His eyes were wide, his lips parted slightly.
“You called us by our name,” he said, his voice guttural and gruff. “Why?”
My heart was pounding hard inside of my chest, my entire body trembling from the adrenaline. “Because that’s your name. You aren’t fiends—you are Serakon; Aevians like us. Family… a pretty loosely connected, dysfunctional family, but what family isn’t like that?”
“She would call us family,” a female hissed from the dark. “Why?”
“She is not like him,” another said.
“Silence,” Valoel snapped, his voice shooting out like the snap of a gun. The stone in his hand pulsed with power, and the Serakon I’d been looking at grimaced like he’d just been slapped in the face. He shut his eyes and retreated deeper into the darkness again.
He needed the stone to keep them under his control. If I could only get the stone away from him…
The Serakon hiding in the darkness all started to stir, pairs of amber eyes slowly moving closer to me. I could see the shadows around them twisting and writhing as their wings moved. I didn’t know how many there were, maybe ten, maybe fifty. It was hard to tell with so much darkness. Lucky for me, I had a pretty reliable way of changing that.
I didn’t even need to shut my eyes. With a thought, my golden wings burst to life at my back, showering the warehouse with light to make the shadows shift away. I could see them now, the Serakon; large hulking creatures sitting on top of cargo containers. They all backed away from the brilliance of my wings, many of them ducking down behind the containers themselves to get away from the light.
“You’re going to give me that stone,” I said. “Or I’m going to rip it out of your bleeding hand.”
Valoel turned around and pulled a sword from the metal tray he’d been standing in front of. The sword made a ringing sound as he drew it into the open. Light from my wings bounced off of the blade I now saw was covered in etchings and markings, some of which I thought I recognized. Then again, maybe not.
“So be it,” he said.
I lowered my head and charged, dashing toward him with one singular goal—take the stone from his hand. Valoel pulled his sword up to defend himself. I’d never seen him handle a blade, so I didn’t know if I was better than him. What I did know was that he couldn’t look directly into bright light, so I pushed more magic into my wings making them burn like a tiny sun as I reached him.
Valoel’s black eyes filled with light. He narrowed them and turned his head to the side to avoid the brightness, but that made his defense sloppy. Still, he managed to keep my dagger from biting into his collarbone. When he’d deflected my attack, he swung his own sword at me, its razor edge searching for my neck.
I ducked and rolled under the attack, striking out at the back of his leg with my dagger as soon as I recovered. The knife’s teeth sank into his calf muscle, making Valoel groan. This time, when he spun around, his sword came so near the tip of my head the attack sent shavings of my hair flying into the air.
The clumps of hair glowed brightly for an instant, then guttered out as they fell.
Watching my hair fall like that had given Valoel another opening to exploit, and he took it. He thrust his sword toward me, this time throwing the magic of Veshrim behind the attack. Deep purple light glowed out from inside the sword, then shot at me from the tip of the blade.
Instinctively I put my armlet between myself and the tip of that sword, and somehow, neither the sword or the blast of magic hit me. Even Valoel was dumbstruck that his longsword had been stopped by a metal bracer strapped to my wrist.
The golden stone glowed brightly, sending a flash of light into Valoel’s eyes and pushing him back. I attacked him with my knife, throwing cut after cut. Even though he couldn’t see with the light in his eyes, he was still able to deflect my dagger and keep it from touching his skin. This guy was no joke with a sword, but I was beating him.
Beating him until a blast of dark, Serakon magic slammed me in the back. I went forward, staggering a few steps and then losing my footing entirely. My dagger also spun out of my hand, stopping at Valoel’s feet.
He stepped on it and pointed the tip of his sword at my face. Behind me, the Serakon that had attacked loomed, his giant wings dwarfing my golden ones.
“You fought valiantly,” Valoel said, the stone in his hand pulsing with magic. “I’ll offer you one more chan
ce to join us. Join us and find your place, learn the truth, discover who you really are.”
I swallowed hard, then I spat at his feet. “You’re gonna have to kill me,” I snarled.
Valoel angled his head to the side. “Shame… together we could’ve worked miracles.”
“Just answer me one thing… do you really have another stone?”
He seemed to be thinking about whether or not he wanted to answer my question. Then, having decided, he reached into his pocket and produced a second singing stone. This one was small, and seemed to be filled with throbbing, purple light. I stared at it paired with the other stone in Valoel’s hand. When one stone pulsed with light, the other mirrored it.
Like they’re siblings.
Valoel raised his sword, ready to plunge it into the back of my neck when I saw something moving high above him. At first, I didn’t know what it was, but then the thing took shape. Wings. Huge and feathery, moving as silently as an owl at night.
It was Draven.
He dropped in on Valoel like an anvil, feet first, sending him crumbling to the ground. The Serakon behind me roared at him. I made my wings blaze with light and forced him to move away from me.
“We need to leave!” he yelled, and he grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and pulled me to my feet.
I grabbed hold of him, and with a bounding leap and a powerful beat of his wings, we took to the air and punched a hole in the warehouse’s already shattered glass ceiling. The feel of the cold wind against my hot cheeks was totally welcomed, but as I stared down at what I’d left behind, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d lost this fight.
Valoel had two stones in his possession. The mages were gone. I had no idea where Aaryn and the others were, or if they were even still alive. And to make things even worse, I could now confirm Valoel had an army of Serakon fighting for him.
I didn’t know how this could get any worse, but I just knew that it would.
I tried Felice’s cell, but I couldn’t get through to her. I had no way of knowing if she was alright, if she’d caught up to the SUV’s, or if they’d somehow caught up to her. Even as we flew away from the area, I couldn’t help get the feeling Valoel and his Serakon were following us, waiting to jump out of the darkness as soon as we landed.
What if I’d made a mistake in following Valoel into the warehouse? What if Felice and the others had been captured while I was busy talking? I didn’t want to think about that possibility, but as the seconds ticked away, it quickly became all I could think about; especially since I had no idea where Draven was taking me.
New York glittered underneath us, a sea of lights, all twinkling, and blinking, and fighting for attention. It was beautiful. Awe-inspiring. I couldn’t understand how humans had created something so massive and wonderous as the city without access to magic.
The wind whooshed around me, howling as it went past my ears. Draven’s wings seemed to beat with a rhythm to match my heart, thumping hard to keep us both afloat. He was calm and collected, his expression stoic. Stone. That was good. I needed that if I wanted a shot at keeping my own emotions in check.
“Hold on,” he said, and I wrapped my arms around his neck just as his wings curled slightly; enough for us to start slipping toward the earth. Occasionally his wings would pump hard, slowing our descent, but we were still moving fast. I knew we wouldn’t die from falling; that didn’t mean my stomach didn’t flip every time we dipped closer to the ground.
The rooftop of a blinking skyscraper was our target. The red light on top of the antenna gave Draven a spot to focus on as he came down, and when he landed it was perfect and soft. I let go of him and moved away as soon as I was able to, hugging myself to protect against the cold. With a hurried pace I moved to the other side of the rooftop and looked over the edge, and New York winked back up at me.
“Seline, wait,” he said.
Did he think I was going to jump? The fall wouldn’t kill me, but I wasn’t in a rush to experience that again anytime soon.
I turned around to look at him. “What?” I asked, “Are you expecting me to thank you for pulling me out of the warehouse?”
“I’m not expecting anything, except for you to listen to me.”
“See? That’s already presuming too much. I don’t know what you think you have to say.”
“So, let me talk, and then decide.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Fine… not like we’re going anywhere anytime soon.”
Draven walked a little closer to me, but when he got close enough, I stretched my hand out at him. I didn’t want him getting too near me. I couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t punch him square in the jaw, or stab—damn, my knife. I’d dropped it in the warehouse.
“I know how you must feel right now,” Draven said.
“Really? I don’t think you do. In case you haven’t noticed, we lost that fight back there. Valoel escaped, he has two stones, an army of Serakon, and I have no idea where Aaryn, Felice, or Six are. That’s on top of all the other bullshit that’s already happened today. I’m not sure you really do know how I feel, Draven.”
“What happened to you…” he shook his head. “You’re right, I have no idea what that’s like. Every time I think about that moment, it feels more and more like I’m watching somebody else’s dream. That couldn’t have been me. I couldn’t have just stood there and done nothing while that happened to you.”
“But it was, and you did.”
“I know, and I’m deeply, truly sorry. The word… it’s just not enough. It’s never going to be enough. But I need to say it, and you need to know that I mean it with everything that I am.”
I angled my head to the side as if to shield my mind from the incoming train of memory about to strike me. It was like I could feel my kithe being cut off again. I felt sick. My stomach turned inside out, and for a moment I thought I’d have to hang over the edge of the skyscraper and ruin someone’s day with my throw-up.
I didn’t.
“I don’t expect you to understand what happened,” he said, “I was lied to, manipulated, they told me your father had done the same thing to my brothers, and I believed them.”
“So, you took it out on me? Our houses were at war. Bad things happen in wartime.”
“Yes, but not desecration.”
“Correction, desecration does happen during wartime because your people did it to me. My father didn’t do it to your family.”
“I know that now. It took me a long time to come to grips with the fact that I’d been tricked, but I did. Honestly, I never thought I’d see you again after I fell through the rifts. I thought you were dead.”
“And then I showed up on your radar one day… did you always know it was me?”
He shook his head. “No. Not at first.”
“When did you find out who I was? Who I really was?”
“I didn’t know when I was trailing you and Abvat. I didn’t know when I brought you to the fortress… I first started to suspect when you made the sun rise, but it wasn’t until after you returned from your first trial, when I heard about your fall, how your kithe hadn’t come like they should’ve… that’s when the memories started coming back.”
I stared at him, my mouth slipping open slightly. “Draven… that was a lifetime ago… two lifetimes. How could you have known for so long and not said anything?”
“Because I was a coward.” His words hung in the air for a beat. A gust of wind pushed up and along the side of the skyscraper, picking my hair up and tossing it around. The pause gave his words a moment to land, a moment to embed themselves into the fabric of reality. He’d said them, now; he’d never be able to escape them.
“How could I have told you what I had to tell you?” Draven asked, “You quickly became an important person in my life. Not just in my life, but for the Order. For a short moment, I thought I had you back, I thought we could start again.”
“And you were just going to go my whole life not telling me you were responsible for
me losing my family and my wings?”
He shook his head. “I’m not an idiot. The truth always finds a way to come to the surface because that’s what the truth wants, what it needs. It’s why the truth exists. Sooner or later I would have had to face the reality of what I’d done, what I’d allowed to happen to you. I just thought…”
“You just thought we’d be so entangled in each other’s lives that we’d be able to get past it… tell me, would that have been for the good of the Order, or for your own personal good? No, let me answer that question for you—both of those things are selfish.”
“Yes, they are, and I know that.” He sighed. “I’m probably the farthest thing from perfect that you’re ever going to find. I make mistakes and I don’t own up to them. I let down the people I love. I care more about my own goals and pain than I do about the lives of other people. You have every right to want to stay the hell away from me.”
What he was saying was breaking my heart. I didn’t want to hear him talk like that about himself, but I was still angry. “Please, I don’t have time for a pity party.”
“That isn’t what this is, Seline. What I’m trying to say is… I remember a time before the rifts, you made me want to be a better man. You brought the sun back to my dark days. Then I thought I’d lost you, and everything was dark again, until you came back… and you brought the sun back with you…”
I swallowed hard. Tears were forming in Draven’s eyes. I could see them glistening against the ambient light of the city, tiny droplets being picked up by the wind and hurled into the air.
“I have seen the worst parts of myself,” he continued, “And I know I want to be rid of them. You have made me remember what’s truly important in this life and in all lives. Family, compassion, selflessness… love.”
Another pause. I didn’t know what the hell to say. I didn’t even know if I would be able to say anything for the catch in my throat.
“I’ll never be able to give you your wings back,” he said, “When I go to my grave, that will be the biggest, most painful regret of my entire life. I will never be able to give you back what I took from you… but I am going to spend the rest of my life trying.”
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