Rain of Ash: Skydancer Book 1 (The Zyne Legacy)

by Gwen Mitchell

Bri decided to change tactics. “It’s the same demon that tortured and burned Vivianne.”

  The flame she thought she saw in his eyes flared brighter. “Then I vow I will bring you his head. Where do I find him?”

  Now they were getting somewhere. “We need to get to Astrid and Kean. He’ll go after them first.”

  “I can’t take you out of this room.”

  She stopped her pacing near the door and gave him a desperate look. “Do you really expect me to believe that?”

  “You haven’t really looked at me yet, have you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He slumped in his seat. “Use your Second Sight.”

  “I’m…not sure I know how.” For some reason, she felt ashamed admitting that to him.

  “Try.”

  Bri sighed and humored him. She closed her eyes and focused on that tingling magic she felt like effervescent bubbles on her skin whenever she got close to Lucas. She opened her eyes, trying to see the bubbles. She saw a mist of sparkling silver magic covering her arm. From there, the sparkles trailed through the air between them. She focused harder, and saw his silhouette shrouded in white sparkles, but there was a dark pulsing red across his throat. “What am I seeing?”

  He waived his hand in the air. “The magic that connects us, and most likely, my collar.”

  “Collar?”

  “It siphons my magic. It’s how the Synod keeps us under their thumb. Do you think the witches feed the Hohlwen themselves? It’s our energy that keeps this place fortified.”

  Bri paused, and studied him again. “So, you’re a slave?”

  The expensive suit, the shades, the close-cropped haircut. He looked more like a soldier. Or hired muscle.

  He rubbed his face. “It’s more complicated than that, but I am bound to their will. I cannot defy them. I cannot take you from this room. I’m sorry, Briana.”

  She bowed her head. “Fine. I understand. I’ll just have to leave by myself.”

  She deviated from her course to walk directly at the hidden passage. Lucas made no move to stop her. Hope for escape left in a cold trickle as she crossed the room. She ran face-first into a rock-solid ward, which erupted in purple sparkles. Bri slapped her hand against the ward in frustration. She slid down what seemed like an empty stone passage, the mirage of freedom. Fresh tears prickled her eyes.

  “Please,” she said in a voice so hoarse she could barely hear herself. “You don’t know them, and I know you don’t care, but they’re all I have left.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lucas shook his head. He reclined back in his chair, as if he planned on staying awhile. “But I will help you as much as I can.”

  A harsh bark of laughter burst from her chest. “You’ll go find this demon and kill it, right? Easier said than done. I’ve just told you where he’ll be next. He’s going to kill my friends. He’ll save me for last.”

  Lucas sat forward, elbows resting on his knees. “When I leave here, I will go to check on your friends.”

  She wiped at her cheeks as she stood. “Really?”

  “Yes. If you agree to do something for me.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, telling him with a look that even though he was three times her size and she was desperate, she would not be bullied or taken advantage of. “What?”

  “Admit you remember what we shared together, acknowledge the bond between us.”

  Why did it even matter? Could he really have been holding on to the memory of Vivianne for all these years? Four centuries? Bri wanted to balk, but the swirling storm in Lucas’s eyes stopped her. I will find you again, my heart.

  Okay, so maybe he had. She groaned and scrubbed her face. “I know that she — Vivianne — loved you.”

  Lucas stood, and the room seemed to shrink. His wide shoulders blocked out the light from the fire. His shadow enfolded her like the giant wings of a predator swooping in. Two abrupt strides, and he was right in front of her, the heat of him pressing close, his spicy scent tickling her palate. The hair on her body stood on end. Her skin tightened from the electric charge of his presence. She held her ground, tilted her face up to meet his gaze. His hands slid around her shoulders, and every cell in her body screamed with laser-sharpened awareness. She trembled, a wave of fine vibrations, like the pluck of a harp string. And — Fate help her — it resonated.

  With her Inner Eye wide open, Bri recognized Lucas for what he was: a soul bonded to hers by a force as irrefutable as gravity. They orbited each other, in space and time. It was heady, and terrifying, and so…familiar.

  But, as he bent closer, and their breath mingled, she thought of the one person who had kept her grounded in this life. The person who had scraped her off rock-bottom and lifted her back into the real world, time and again. She stiffened, and whispered against Lucas’s imminent lips, “I am not her.”

  “No more games, Ana.” Lucas’s eyes had gone a smoldering charcoal, and his coaxing smile had been carved by centuries of wanting.

  She was not unmoved, but Bri took hold of his wrist and held him off before his caress reached the bare skin of her neck. She shook her head sadly. “Bri. My name is Bri. I’m not Vivianne. I love someone else. And he needs me to get out of here.”

  That gave him enough pause that she was able to put some space between them as her words soaked in.

  “I’ve admitted what I can. Now, will you hold up your end?” She let her desperation seep into her voice. If the Council ruled against her, this could be her only chance. She would never save Kean and Astrid if her powers and memory were stripped. Not to mention the Legacy relic entrusted to her keeping. How could this man, who claimed to care for her, desert her in her hour of greatest need? She swallowed thickly, lashes fluttering. “Please.”

  Lucas took on a ponderous mien, his lips pursed together as he looked her up and down. Then he tilted his head and went absolutely still. Bri almost leapt out of her shoes when he spoke. “They’re coming for you now.”

  He was back at her side before she could formulate a response, and — as if he had every right to — he looped his arm around her waist and lifted her for the kiss she’d denied him.

  She didn’t have time to react. To think. To breathe.

  Hot lightning raced through her veins, and her heart thundered when their lips met. He tasted spicy, but cool and wet, a jolt on the tongue. Thrilling, and yet soothing. Infuriating, and yet she yearned for more. Like a tornado bound to tear all of her illusions about herself to shreds, Lucas whirled her around and dropped her onto unsteady feet.

  With a sigh that carried the weight of everything unspoken between them, he stepped back through the ward. He studied her from the other side, as if re-adjusting some previous calculation. When he finally spoke, his voice was a little deeper, with more rumble to it. “You loved me once. Regardless of what the Council has decided, I will make sure you remember that.”

  Bri watched in a dazed stupor as the wood panel slid between them and locked into place.

  He left her flushed with a sickening mixture of guilt and desire. Wondering where he had gone, if he would keep his word and check on Kean and Astrid, and if she would ever see him again. He left her to face the Council’s judgment.

  He left her… all alone.

  Chapter Thirty

  The battered door of her prison creaked open. Her father crossed the room in quick, silent strides. Both his expression and emotions were completely shielded from her, but Bri took his offered hand. It was smooth and cold, but his grip was firm and reassuring in its strength. He wrapped his other arm around her shoulders and pulled her into the folds of his billowing Council robes. She let him hold her long enough to gather her wits. A silence laden with regret weighed down on them, making it hard to take a full breath. Was this farewell? She stared into his eyes, searching for answers locked behind impenetrable blue steel.

  “Father?”

  His hold on her loosened, and his chest inflated with a deep breath.

  Bri clenched he
r teeth, waiting.

  “The Council has decided to release you.”

  She fell against him this time, burying her face in his chest and trying not to hyperventilate as gratitude swirled through her like a gust of hard wind.

  “Into my keeping,” Aldric added, his voice somber. “Until the demon is apprehended and banished, you will be warded to the highest degree possible.”

  Bri blinked at the crisp efficiency of his words. “I…” She swallowed and eased out of his half-hearted embrace, then straightened her shoulders. “What about my friends?”

  He folded his hands into his sleeves. “As your coven mates, of course the Synod’s protection extends to them as well. You will all be kept safe.”

  “Thank you.” Bri bit her trembling lip. “Father, I’m so sorry—”

  His gaze dropped to the floor. The fine lines around his mouth tightened. “As am I, my dear. It should never have come to this. I told you I wanted to help.”

  “Do they know everything now?” After the demon was vanquished, would they take the mirror and strip her mind? Or had Anika kept the secret safe? Could her luck finally be turning?

  “They know enough to track down the Dark One. That is all that matters. Come.” Aldric took her by the elbow and steered her towards the door.

  Bri followed him gladly, anxious to be free of her cage. Her heart lightened at the thought of finding Kean and Astrid and bunkering down until the Synod could hunt down the Soul Eater. After all, they were much better equipped. Maybe swallowing her pride and asking was what she should have done in the first place. She felt as if an anchor had been cut loose. Now, she could kick freely for the surface.

  If only Geri and Eric didn’t have to die for you to get here.

  They exited into another indiscernible hallway of gleaming wood floors and gas sconces. Her father made an immediate right and strode off without waiting to see if she kept up. He led her through a maze of identical, windowless hallways and arching marble passages. It struck her as odd how desolate this wing of the Arcanum was, given the crowd in the Council chamber. Even the feeling of being watched from the shadows lifted away.

  “Are you taking me to Kean and Astrid?” Bri asked, as they climbed a second set of stairs. She was a little winded with the effort to match his pace.

  Aldric slowed a fraction, and cleared his throat. “I must make sure you are safe, first.”

  “Are you sure they’re all right?” Had she done enough to stop her visions from coming true? How could she ever be sure? It’s not like they had a time limit, did they? Only when the Synod assured her the Soul Eater was gone would she be able to stop looking over her shoulder.

  “They have not been harmed.”

  That answer hardly satisfied. “When will I get to see them?” They came to a landing, and he let her rest long enough to catch her breath while he swung a door closed behind them. He whispered something under his breath, and a red ward shimmered into place, before settling into its naturally invisible state.

  Aldric cast her a sideways glance before starting up the next flight of endless spiral stairs. “There are much more pressing concerns, Briana.”

  She stomped up the next few steps. “No, there aren’t. Not for me. Where are we going?”

  “To my private chambers.”

  Bri almost tripped. It hadn’t occurred to her that her father also lived here. She hadn’t been in his personal space for over a decade. Maybe he had more bad news to share. “What else did the Council decide? And why did I feel like the word skydancer was the equivalent of leper? What does it mean?”

  They leveled out at last, into a narrow hallway lined with six-foot high stained-glass windows on either side — one of the upper walkways connecting the towers. Rays of cloud-filtered sunlight streamed through, painting the flagstones with mottled watercolors. She sped up for a few strides to walk beside rather than behind her father, and fixed him with an expectant look.

  He kept his attention fixed on the door at the other end of the hall. His voice sounded scratchy when he finally answered, likely tired from hours of deliberation. She had no idea how long she’d been under.

  “A Skydancer is a Zyne who has bonded their soul to that of an immortal, their Familiar. They are not limited to thirteen lives, but reincarnate forever, as long as the immortal lives. In doing so, they amass a huge amount of power.”

  “And that’s a bad thing?”

  “It disrupts the natural order of Fate, and of course, it breaks one of the Threefold Laws: committing your Karma to the Cosmos. When a Skydancer is bound to their Familiar, they are even stronger, and can live immensely long lives, and they are no longer bound by the rules of Fate or their Karma. You can see how doing this would appeal to the most power-hungry Zyne.”

  Yes, she could. “But I didn’t even know what I was.” Vivianne had known, though. And so had Lucas. Why had they risked so much to do it anyway?

  He made a small gesture, and the door before them swung open. Aldric took hold of her hand as they crossed the threshold. Bri sensed a powerful ward — a biting sting on her skin and the taste of charcoal on the back of her tongue. Candles around the room flickered to life as they entered. The door shut itself behind them, and Aldric strode ahead to stand before a giant beveled window. His chamber looked out over the spires of the lower towers, through the very tops of the cedars, and into the shroud of mist beyond. It felt as though the fortress itself was floating in the ether, far removed from the normal world.

  “But that doesn’t change the fact that you have a dangerous amount of power, Briana. Many people fear that which they cannot control. The Synod spent centuries hunting down and stripping Skydancers of their powers to purge them from our bloodlines.” Her father finished his lecture and turned to face her, his gaze that of the distant scholar.

  A shiver of awareness, followed by a wave of weariness swept over her. Like everything else she’d learned about herself since her initiation into the Zyne, his words echoed like a horn through thick fog. They shook her to the core and realigned jagged, ill-fitting pieces of her self-identity. That explained why she remembered so many deaths — she’d lived many more lives than thirteen. It explained her power. It explained Lucas. Why hadn’t he told her more?

  “So we’re back to my powers being stripped again, only for a different reason.” Was she powerful enough to stop them?

  Aldric turned back to the window, rubbing his hand over his chest absently. “No. Times have changed. There are enough Council members willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for now. One as powerful as you would be an important ally against a greater foe.”

  Bri’s feet went numb. “You mean the Soul Eater.”

  “Yes.” Her father’s voice cracked, and he coughed.

  Bri reached for him, but he angled away, shaking his head. She lowered her hand, her throat tight with the effort not to cry. Was she now anathema, even to her own father? She hugged her arms around herself, wishing they were Kean’s. Wondering if it would make any difference to him what she was.

  With her fists and teeth clenched, Bri stared into the whitewashed sky. “What did Anika mean when she said the Soul Eater covets me?”

  Aldric walked to the nearby sidebar and poured a glass of something potent-smelling from a stoppered carafe. “If a Dark One were to capture the soul of a Skydancer, it would gain a similar freedom from some of the rules binding it. The damage, the destruction could be… unspeakable.” He sipped and stared into his glass thoughtfully. “The Council has yet to decide whether this is a reasonable risk. A Soul Eater takes years to ensnare a Zyne, sometimes decades. But you are untrained, and therefore vulnerable.”

  He took a larger swig and coughed again before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His shoulders seemed hunched, as if the burden of the conversation was taking its toll. Bri felt the same. She didn’t want to hear any more. Her gaze skirted the dim edges of the room for the first time, searching for a change of topic. The large tower-top chamber
was not how she’d imagined her father living, and yet it fit.

  Three steps lead to a second level where the walls were composed of bookcases stuffed full of papers, scrolls, artifacts, and volume upon volume of ancient looking books. A large marble-topped desk sprawled in front of another cold fire.

  At the other end of the room sat an enormous sleigh bed, draped in luxurious midnight blue and gold velvet and damask, with a matching side table. A bear rug stretched across the expanse of stone, jaws gaping at her. But what caught Bri’s attention and held it was perched at the foot of the bed.

  The twin of her grandmother’s cherry wood Essex Grand filled the empty space between the bed and the wall, as if a natural element of the décor. On the polished top sat a single picture frame. Bri took two steps closer before she could make out the image inside.

  Her mother and father sat on a park bench on a sunny day. Bri was balanced on her father’s shoulders, smiling down at them. They were looking into each other’s eyes, their faces glowing with love and happiness. It was one of her most precious memories immortalized.

  Bri’s knees wobbled, and she slipped onto the piano bench. She clutched the picture in her white-knuckled fingers. “I’ve never seen this.”

  “That is the only copy,” Aldric answered in a thick whisper from just behind her.

  Bri traced the elegant line of her mother’s cheek with her thumb. She saw pieces of that woman in herself every day, but never all of those pieces united into the heart-tearing perfection of the whole. Gazing at the photo, the likeness between them disappeared. Though they were the same color, her mother’s eyes glimmered with joy, and her smile came natural and easy.

  “You look so much like Danielle.” Aldric grasped her lightly by the shoulders.

  Bri shook her head and set the frame back down. She was a pale imitation, but she could acknowledge it comforted her father to believe so. Her eyes, though burning, were dry. She had no more tears to shed on the matter. Her heart squeezed when she realized there was no evidence of Tara in the room, but she held her tongue.