by L J Andrews
Jade trapped my face between her overheated palms, smiling in the dim light. With a sigh of satisfaction, she kissed me, holding me tight, and I held her the same throughout the peaceful night. Nothing could break this moment, nothing.
Jade was sleeping when the gray dawn brightened through the mouth of the cave. Despite the late night celebration, I had to check the barrier walls. The morning was calm. Not even daring birds who sometimes ventured up the mountainside made a noise. Inside the cave I was in an ever-present sauna, but when the morning breeze wrapped around my thin shirt, I cursed my arrogance at not bringing something warmer. Nothing seemed out of place. The enormous stone slabs were still grouted with clay, gravel, and dirt from the soil. They were thicker than a small car, and they kept the full brightness of the spring sun out of our sights.
I took a step to go back inside—I had a much more comfortable place to be than in the chill of the north air—but I stopped. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled to life when I heard the gasping, even hissing, sound from just below the cave. My jade swords were back in our cavern, but I carried a small dagger tethered to my thigh at all times. Unsheathing the weapon, I crept toward the edge. One palm was open, ready to call upon the energy of the cliffs in case I needed to strike instantly. The bubble of power wrapping around my hand brought my mind to a deliberate focus.
Peering over the ledge, my heart dropped to my stomach.
“Donovan,” I cried out. The onyx mage was sputtering on his hands and knees. He looked as though he were violently sick. I covered my nose and mouth to keep from being ill myself when I watched him cough up a clot of blood, the burgundy liquid splattering across the gray stones.
Carefully, I reached my hand out for his shoulder. The instant my palm touched his back, Donovan reeled on me. I startled backward. His eyes were wild. They weren’t Donovan’s calm, undeterred, dark eyes. No, they were a color like the blood smeared across the stones. His skin, though normally pale, was pasty, with dark veins bulging beneath his bloody eyes.
Donovan snapped his teeth at me like a feral cat, but I took more concern with the knife he thrust toward my middle. I deflected his strike with my dagger and kicked him away. The onyx mage stumbled—something was wrong. Donovan seemed to have lost all his senses through the night.
“You will not break me,” he hissed. Even his voice was different. Sinister, yet familiar. I eyed him, clutching my dagger in a downward grip.
“Donovan, it’s me, Teagan,” I muttered, reaching out a cautious hand.
Donovan swiped at my wrist. “Do your worst, mage,” he growled. Donovan lunged toward me again, the tip of his knife barely missing my bicep. His strikes were off balance, and he stumbled around the rocks. Donovan’s eyes never left mine. If vampires existed, I would imagine Donovan looked much like the undead. His lips were coated in his own blood, his skin like snow the more he tried to fight me.
“Donovan,” I snapped, holding out one hand. “You are a mage too. You’re not okay. What’s happened?”
Donovan released a guttural scream into the morning sky, his blade slashing toward my heart. I blocked his strike, but his strength increased. I sensed his energy trying to harm me, but my own body took the power without even a flicker of pain.
“Peran!” I shouted into the cave. “Dad, Mitch—anyone!”
Donovan’s muscles throbbed as he pressed the cutting edge of his knife with more desperate passion against my own blade. I didn’t want to strike at the mage—something in his mind was not right—but my foot was inching precariously closer to the ledge.
Lifting one palm off the hilt of my dagger, I cupped the side of Donovan’s face. He hissed and sputtered, some of his blood splattering along my chin, but eventually my surge of power drew his to a calm. Donovan collapsed against my chest at the same moment Raffi and Thane burst into the light.
Thane was at my side in an instant, easing Donovan to his back. “Did you kill him?” he asked. He wasn’t accusing; in fact, he sounded more protective of me.
“No, just stopped him. Something is wrong,” I gasped, unintentionally smearing the hot blood over my cheek. “He didn’t know me, he acted like I was there to hurt him. Even his voice sounded different.”
Others burst through the opening. Gaia and Jade arrived together, Jade rushing to my side nearly as quickly as Thane. I found Prince Ced watching the scene curiously, but behind him was Onyx’s brother, Peran. The new onyx royal lowered slowly to his mage.
“What happened?” he asked softly.
“His energy seemed warped, Peran,” I said, watching Gaia and Ced inspect Donovan’s clammy face. “Has he been acting strange at all?”
Peran shook his head, though I sensed there was something more he wanted to say.
“What are you not telling us?” Thane asked. Having parents who were empaths had its perks.
Peran swallowed hard, standing with Raffi, Ced, and Thane as they lifted Donovan’s unmoving body and eased toward the growing crowd at the mouth of the cave.
“Peran, tell them,” Shiv, the youngest of the onyx royals, said. Shiv might be the youngest, but he was by far the broadest of the three brothers. His chestnut hair was long over his shoulders. Shiv had more of Onyx’s strong jaw, but Peran’s lighter eyes. He didn’t speak much before Onyx died, but even less after the loss of his brother.
Jade stopped, tugging on my arm. Her emerald eyes peered deep into Peran’s gaze. “Peran, what is he talking about?”
Peran sighed and glared at his younger brother. “I don’t know what it means.”
“Well, if you noticed something, it might help us heal Donovan,” I insisted.
Clearing his throat, Peran nodded and stepped closer to me and Jade. “A few nights ago, Donovan was muttering in his sleep. I swear upon the elemental stones I thought Onyx had returned. His voice sounded so much like my brother.”
“Peran,” Jade began sympathetically.
“No, my queen, I know what you’re thinking. That grief is causing my delusion. That is not the way of it. And that is not…everything.” Shiv stood near Peran, offering silent support when the royal seemed visibly shaken the longer he waited to speak. Thane and the others waited patiently, holding a limp Donovan as though he were weightless. Peran finally raised his eyes, looking to the sky for comfort. “I know you think my delay to ascend as the onyx royal is due to my grief from losing my brother. But, in truth, that isn’t the problem. The problem is—I have not bonded with the royal bloodline.”
I furrowed my brow. Nothing he said made any sense, but Jade’s breath hitched in her throat. “You don’t feel the shift?” she asked.
“What shift?” was the question I needed answered.
“The direct bloodline royal,” she whispered, “will feel the power in their heart. If the bloodline passes to another, there will be a physical shift of power. Peran is saying the bloodline hasn’t passed on to him.”
“What about you, Shiv?” Raffi asked.
Shiv just shook his head, but Peran spoke. “It hasn’t shifted to either of us. Even Donovan was beginning to worry. He told me not long ago that he felt a strange connection to someplace outside the walls. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact area, only that there was an energy connected to him.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, glancing first to Jade, who was stunned, then looking to Thane.
My father seemed just as troubled as Jade. I wanted to ask what Ced and Gaia were muttering about as they drew their hands along Donovan’s arms and face. Turning back to Peran, I gripped my blade tighter. “What does it mean?” I asked again, though my voice was sharper.
Peran’s lips pressed together, and he met my eye with painful understanding. “What I believe is the reason there has been no shift is because the bloodline royal has not surrendered the energy.”
“Speak normal,” I snapped. “What are you saying?”
“He believes Onyx isn’t dead,” Jade muttered for Peran. Her fingers tightened in my grasp, and the force
of her words sent my heart to the ground.
“Alive?” I whispered.
Peran cleared his throat, his eyes murderous when he stared at me again. “Yes. That is what I believe. If I’m right, then I presume it’s safe to say Onyx is in the clutches of the dark High Priest. Onyx is surely being tortured by the violence of energy Donovan has been sensing, and it would mean Bron possibly has the onyx stone.” Peran hunched over, his voice dangerously low when he spoke next to my face. “I also tell you this: if my brother is alive, there is nothing that would keep me from him. I will save him, and I will slaughter the dark High Priest for any pain he’s caused my family.”
Chapter 3
Gaia clutched the sides of Donovan’s head, while I pressed my hands over his heart. Ced sauntered around the bed, eyeing Gaia sometimes, but mostly staring at Donovan’s unmoving body.
“You could help us heal him, unless you’d rather just stare at us,” I quipped.
The prince shook his head, his face contorted slightly. “You don’t need my help. It will not take long to break whatever bond has him locked in this state. This is so strange. His energy is not his own. It’s like I feel night energy—dangerous night energy. Do you recognize it, High Priestess?”
Gaia wiped her brow from the exertion of the healing and nodded. “It seems like what is in my heart, but it worries me. It doesn’t bring me a sense of balance like mine does.”
“Exactly,” Ced muttered like a strict tutor. “That is night energy when it is being used for ill, not for what it was designed. It warps and distorts until it is so manipulated that the one who controls such power is cursed in darkness.”
Beneath my hands, I felt something. I sensed Donovan’s strong elemental power, but it seemed as though I could physically touch the agony in his heart. There was a strangeness there, the biting darkness I’d absorbed several times. When the dark mages keeping my mother locked in Bron’s prison used their energy against me, the searing burn filled my veins. The power I absorbed from Donovan was similar, on a small scale. Like it didn’t really belong to him.
“It’s like I’m taking away the energy from a distance,” I whispered.
Gaia nodded, slowly removing her hands from the mage’s face. My palms shifted from the biting ache of the darkness to the warmth and swirling energy that existed in the water element. Donovan’s chest heaved and released in a peaceful sigh. Tension evaporated through his broad shoulders, and finally it seemed as though the mage was only sleeping.
Gaia inched off her bed where they’d taken the mage and stood at my side. “What you described is how it felt for me too. Perhaps…perhaps there is truth to what Peran believes.”
My throat tightened, and I jolted to my feet. “You think Onyx is alive?”
Hopeful? That didn’t describe the half of it.
Gaia signaled both Ced and me with her finger. “Come, we should discuss this with everyone.”
The fire in the pit wasn’t roaring like usual. The heat from everyone’s tension supplied enough to last us into next winter. The crags and crevices let in enough spring light, combined with the torches on the walls, the cave was actually somewhat bright.
More mages surrounded the glowing embers burning in the long gravel pit, but many warriors stood at the ready, should they be asked to go after a royal who I prayed really was alive. Jade scooted closer toward Eisha, allowing me a place next to her. My apprehension and worry faded when her gentle hand rested on my knee. I found, after a few moments, I was absently tracing the seal on her forearm. The motions soothed my cares for a few moments. Sapphire was huddled close with Ruby, and Amber was already digging any information from Ced when he walked out of Gaia and Thane’s room.
“What do you think?” Thane’s rumbling voice broke through the thick tension when he went to Gaia’s side.
Gaia looked at the crowd, taking a moment to gather her thoughts it seemed before she spoke. “Donovan’s attack of Teagan today was not his fault. He was clearly filled with warped night energy.”
“How did it happen?” Shiv asked, but I noticed the way his eyes traveled toward Ced.
Gaia ran her fingers through her long hair and paced. Her brow furrowed, and it seemed as though she were trying to work through the problem. “I’ve seen such things—long ago when King Nag attacked the night of the queen’s birth. The king took a bonded earth mage. Common bonds with mage and wyverns happen at times outside of the royal bloodlines, as you know. We never saw the mage again, but the wyvern who had bonded to the mage—he changed. At times, he would have eyes like a lindworm. Russet scales would seem black. After he attacked against his own people, King Lux had him locked away, determining his mind unstable.”
“What does all this mean?” Peran rasped, looking up from the corner he’d slumped against.
“The dragon in the story had energy that wasn’t his own. Like he was corrupted, but we didn’t know how to help or cure him. We didn’t know that it was likely the bond between him and the taken earth mage still flowing power between them.”
“So, the dark energy was coming from the mage?” Mitch piped up.
Gaia nodded. Peran shot to his feet, his shoulders rising in swells. “So, you do believe Onyx is alive. That the bond between Donovan and my brother is connecting the mage to wherever Onyx is being kept.”
Thane stiffened and seemed ready to move into warrior mode. Gaia rested her hand on his arm to keep a new war from beginning, but nodded. “Even Teagan said the energy we just cleaned from Donovan’s blood felt like it was distant. That it wasn’t directly pumping through his heart.”
“It reminded me a little of you, Athika,” I said, drawing the ruby mage to find me over the burning embers.
“Me?” Then her eyes widened and she nodded. “When we first met and I had my energy manipulated. I couldn’t recognize the elementals as anything other than lindworms. Bron did it—he poisoned my power.”
Gaia’s lips pulled tight. “It is a strength of his, he was always very skilled with energy manipulation in others. Once, he used it for healing, now…well, it would seem he uses it to create control over his victims.”
“So, do you think whatever is happening to Onyx is manifesting in Donovan?” I asked, shuddering at the way Donovan’s eyes had screamed anguish when he’d tried to fight against me. And the blood—all the blood bursting from his throat when there was no wound, no illness.
Gaia nodded; her expression clear that the idea made her sick too. “Their bond is strong and matured. I believe we are catching glimpses of an open vein between the royal and his mage. I believe it will close when Donovan wakes—it’s quite possible the mage will not know it even happened.”
“So, it’s not Donovan’s energy that’s poisoned…it’s Onyx,” Jade whispered, her fingers rubbing over the bridge of her nose.
“That is what I believe,” Gaia said.
“He’s fighting back then,” I muttered. “If that’s true, Onyx is fighting back. Donovan told me I couldn’t break him.”
“He’s being tortured,” Ruby gasped, her brown skin paling to a shade of green. Sapphire placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder and drew her back.
“We don’t know that for certain,” Sapphire insisted, though everyone in the room seemed to know without a doubt the pain that was wrapped around the lost royal.
“We can’t leave Donovan with Peran and Shiv,” Thane rumbled. “He will need to be watched. What if he attacked them without realizing it?”
“I agree,” Gaia said, though the two brothers didn’t seem satisfied.
“He wouldn’t harm us,” Peran muttered.
“Not intentionally,” Athika snapped. “Trust me, if I’d seen Ruby before I was cleansed of the poisoned energy, I would have tried to kill her. If something is harming Onyx’s energy and, in turn, affecting Donovan, it is potent, Peran.”
“You should stay with him still, but I think there should be warriors placed around you, especially at night when the energy is strongest,”
Thane said, glancing at the two brothers. “Don’t you think Donovan will insist once we tell him what’s happening?”
“Fine,” Peran grumbled with a focused glance at me. “But no one will harm Donovan should this happen again. We appreciate Teagan for realizing he was not acting in his free mind.”
“No one will harm him,” Gaia promised. “A mage can stay with the warriors too and calm his energy should he attack, just as Teagan did.”
“What do we do about…getting Onyx back?” Ruby breathed. A steaming tear trailed her cheek, and I couldn’t remember when I’d seen her eyes so desperate.
“You must find a way to draw the royal away from the dark High Priest,” Ced muttered from the back. All eyes darted to the lindworm prince. Laina followed behind him, nodding at his words.
“Draw him out? What are you talking about?” Raffi snapped.
“Bron is strong at Nag’s manor. Endless power is at his fingertips. He’s manipulating Onyx for a purpose; my best guess is to use him against us. He will bring Onyx out into the open eventually, I’m sure. If we can get Bron away from Onyx before he completely dissolves whatever is left of the royal, we might be able to shred the poisonous hold the dark High Priest has.”
“Why did you say that?” Ruby snapped. “Dissolves what’s left of him?”
“If poisoned long enough, eventually his energy will be forever changed,” Gaia answered for the prince. “Onyx would be alive, but he would not be Onyx. Bron will turn him into an enemy.”
Ruby looked as sick as I felt.
“We will draw his attention then,” Thane growled. “If we gather large numbers of wyverns and mages, it is sure to catch Nag’s and Bron’s attention—they could leave Onyx outside of their protection.”
“There’s more out there?” I whispered, though only to Jade.
She nodded briskly. “The wyvern race isn’t only filled with warriors and royals,” she said, glancing back to Thane.