“It was never personal, Scorch. Not until Vivid killed our Holy One.” She watched him watch her. “Her divine work was left unfinished, and I needed test subjects. And why would I capture just any elemental for study, when I already knew of two who deserved punishment?”
He wanted to scream, wanted to, at the very least, splash her, and it galled him that he couldn’t.
“Vivid was easier to attain than I anticipated. He seemed distracted. Do you want to know how I snared him?” Scorch prayed for a stare that would kill. “I told him I had captured you. He offered a trade, which I graciously accepted. Of course, you weren’t here. Why were you separated, Scorch, when all either of you ever thought of was each other?”
He moved his head defiantly and stared up at the ceiling, the water from the shallow pool lapping at his ears.
Kio walked slowly around the pool’s edge. “It took longer for you to get here than I expected,” she continued. “And I’m ashamed to say I grew bored waiting. I had tests to run and Vivid was incredibly useful, though I’ll admit, I may have been overzealous in my last experiment. Scorch, look at me, please.”
He looked.
“Vivid is dead.”
No.
No.
Scorch’s fire flared in his chest and his eyes burned. He thrashed his head and water filled his mouth, making him choke. Lies, lies, lies. She was lying. She was a liar.
“It wasn’t my intention to kill him. I misjudged my formula. But now that he’s dead, I’m not sorry. And now I have you to help me finish the High Priestess’ work, may she rest in eternal light.”
Scorch’s fingers began to sting, and he formed a weak fist beneath the water, which escaped Kio’s notice. He tightened it as hard as he could while his insides seethed with rage. He could feel his blood burning in his veins. The water may have been keeping him from directing his power outward, but his inner fire was cleansing the paralytic powder from his system, and he would soon be able to move. Then he would make Kio tell him the truth.
“I can see in your eyes you don’t believe me. You were always so easy to read. Would it help if you saw the body?” She snapped her fingers and a door opened. A monk walked in with something in his arms. “The potion administered was meant to stunt elemental exertion, but Vivid had too strong a dose. Bring him closer. Show him,” she told the monk.
The robed figure approached the edge of the water and knelt. And then suddenly, Scorch was looking at Vivid.
His lips were blue and his skin was grey. His eyes were shut, his brow lax. The lock of hair that always fell across his eyes was chopped short. He hardly looked like himself, but Scorch would know him anywhere, in shadow or in death.
He wasn’t breathing.
Tears spilled from Scorch’s eyes. Kio bid the monk to remove the body.
The body. Vivid.
No.
“He was hallucinating before he died,” Kio informed Scorch, cheery-voiced. Evil. He hated her. He was going to kill her. “He said your name a few times.”
He watched the monk carry Vivid from the room. For all its breaking, his heart was a reckoning force in his chest, pumping and painful and spreading untainted blood throughout his body. Within his boots, he wiggled his toes.
“Don’t be upset,” Kio sighed. “I’ll be more careful with you. And I’d like to test the elemental stabilizer on you now, if you don’t mind. With the right dose, it should block the access to your core and render your power utterly useless.” She snapped her fingers for another monk to enter.
None did.
Kio called out patiently for assistance. When there was no response, she laughed. “Sometimes it can be hard to hear when our hoods are up.”
A series of thuds sounded from beyond the door, and a second later, it swung open.
“It’s even harder to hear without a head.” Audrey stood in the doorway, a bloody dagger in one hand and a monk’s head in the other. She threw the head at Kio and it rolled at her feet.
What followed were the longest seconds of Scorch’s life, as Kio and Audrey stared one another down. Then, chaos.
Kio jumped as Audrey threw one of her knives. It spiraled and caught Kio in the arm. She lunged, pulling the knife from her arm and colliding with the assassin in a flutter of slicing, spinning steel.
Scorch tested his mobility as they fought. He could tense his shoulders and lift his wrists, and he rolled himself to his side with a splash. He forced his knees to bend, but it was slow work. If only he could get out of the water, he could summon his fire.
“Audrey,” he tried to call out, but his voice was still weak from the nocturne powder. “The water!” he rasped. And then, because he could hardly control his body, he tumbled forward and landed face-first in the water.
Only Scorch would find a way to drown himself in six inches of water. He turned his head to suck in air, but he sucked water in, too, and then he was panicking, choking. He splashed his hands desperately and tried to rock himself back over. Then, all at once, the water disappeared.
He gasped in the empty pool and saw Audrey in the corner of his eye, one hand lifted up while the other fended off Kio with her dagger. Scorch coughed up the water he’d breathed in and immediately began to heat up. The hotter his skin became, the more strength he gained in his muscles, until he was able to roll onto his back and sit up.
Audrey had manipulated the pool water, and it was suspended in a million droplets above their heads. Kio’s form was as precise and elegant as Scorch remembered, but Audrey was brutal, her attacks merciless, and after Kio managed to cut a slice across her cheek, she roared and slammed her hand down on the ground, and the water droplets in the air formed a wall between herself and Kio. She pushed her hand out and the waterwall rushed forward, hitting Kio with such strength, she went flying back, her head cracking against the wall. She slid to the floor in a daze.
Audrey was at Scorch’s side in seconds, pulling him to his feet. He wobbled, but he didn’t fall. “I found another way inside,” she said. “We can use it to escape once we find Vivid.”
Fire sparked from Scorch’s fingers. “You didn’t see.”
“See what?”
“The monk carrying his body.” His voice broke, and tears may have been rolling down his cheeks, but he felt nothing but fury.
Audrey’s face remained blank as she processed Scorch’s words. “We’re still getting him back. And we will kill every monk in here on our way out.” She looked him up and down. “Are you able?”
He glared at Kio’s unconscious body across the room and held up a fist. A burst of flame ignited from his knuckles. “I’m able.”
He walked to Kio, the floor beneath his boots wet from the collapsed waterwall. Blood seeped from her temple, where she’d struck her head against the stone.
“Scorch, we have to hurry,” Audrey said.
He stared down at the woman who used to be his friend, the woman whose mantle it was to eliminate elementals. The woman who killed Vivid.
“Scorch,” Audrey pleaded. He could hear footsteps running toward the door.
Kio’s eyes fluttered open, and she looked up at him. “Are you going to kill me?” she whispered.
Maybe a Guardian of the Guild would have let her live, or at least given her a humane death, but Scorch wasn’t with the Guild anymore, and she had killed Vivid.
“Yes.”
He looked her in the eyes and set her robes on fire.
She didn’t scream, and he didn’t stick around to watch her burn. He turned to Audrey as Kio was enveloped by flames, power sparking from his fingers. “Let’s find him,” he growled. Audrey twirled her daggers and let Scorch take the lead.
He strode through the open door as the first of the monks arrived. He didn’t stop, just kicked the first of the monks in the chest as he barreled through. Behind him, he heard the hacking of blades into flesh as Audrey finished the job. They were shortly in the main hall Scorch had imagined upon first entering the fortress. Surrounding the wide fl
oor was a plethora of doors and a plethora of monks coming through them, streaming into the hall from a dozen directions. Scorch stationed himself in the center of the hall, Audrey at his side. They were surrounded by thirty monks, the greatest fighters in Viridor. The last time Scorch was confronted with their skill, he’d been running in the opposite direction with Vivid’s hand in his. But last time was different. Scorch didn’t have any control last time
He had it now.
As the Priestess’ Monks charged them, he let loose his element. It was just like lighting a row of candles, just like a torch, just like a campfire. He waved his hand and a dozen hoods combusted. A monk grabbed him around the waist and he turned, laid fiery hands on him, and sent him up in flames. Heat shot from his fingertips and scalded three monks in a row.
Meanwhile, Audrey flowed around him, cutting down the weakened monks. It sent a thrill through Scorch to watch bad people drop beneath the same power they’d tried to stifle. It was satisfying, but it wasn’t enough. His heart still ached, still felt like it was being ripped from his chest. He needed to decimate them.
“Audrey, I’m changing!” he yelled over the grating violence.
“Don’t burn me!” she answered, in the midst of snapping a monk’s neck.
Scorch concentrated. He was not thirteen and coming into his power for the first time, he was not saving his friends, he was not jumping off a mountaintop. He was changing, because he wanted to change, and within a heartbeat of making that decision, scales rippled over his skin and his body stretched and bent. His shoulder blades shot through his back and unfurled leathery wings that spanned the hall. He stood, strong and full of vengeful fire, and then he let it out in a spray so hot it was as blue as Elias’ eyes.
He was mindful of Audrey’s whirring figure, but everyone and everything else, he devastated. The stench of burning bodies filled his nose, but he spared no thoughts for his parents. He thought only of Vivid’s closed eyes and grey skin, and he was happy to destroy the monks who had taken his life. They stood no chance.
When the fortress hall was nothing but a chamber of charred bodies, he tucked the heart of his power away and let his body shrink and lessen, until his claws and teeth and skin were human. He sank to the floor amongst the carnage, his boots destroyed, his clothes ripped from his body. With ash on his tongue and clinging to his eyelashes and coating his hair, he sobbed into his hands.
Seconds, or minutes, or a lifetime later, Audrey knelt before him, and he looked at her through sweaty lanks of hair and sooty fingers. She, too, was covered with a film of filth, and her expression was hard. She held out a hand, and he accepted it.
They walked over the blackened monks on light feet, Audrey holding his hand. He wasn’t weak like he had been after changing the other times. He felt tired in his bones, but he wasn’t overwhelmed with sensation. Tears still streamed from his eyes, but his sobbing had stopped; that, at least, he no longer had the strength for.
When they came to one of the many doors branching off the main hall, Audrey gave it a push and it opened with a squeak. Scorch stared at its innards, wide-eyed. The room was full of stoppered glasses, shelves upon shelves of colorful vials, powders, and potions. A table was the only other furniture in the room, and spread across its surface were drying herbs, pestle and mortars, and a chopping knife. Kio must have done her work at that table. Uninterested in her morbid concoctions, Scorch let go of Audrey’s hand and walked to the neighboring door.
Before he opened it, he knew. Grief washed over him, but he made himself open the door. Like a punch to the gut, he saw him there, laid out on a tabletop, small and motionless in the dark. Scorch set the wall torches alight with a flick of his wrist and went to his side. He touched his hair. It was soft and shining, none of its luster lost in death.
Audrey joined him. “I found this for you,” she said, slipping a monk’s robe over Scorch’s naked shoulders.
His breath hitched as he let his fingers trail down Vivid’s cheek, barely touching. He stopped his hand over Vivid’s heart and closed his eyes.
“We should bury him,” Audrey said.
He nodded vaguely, and then he was leaning down and pressing his head against Vivid’s chest. It wasn’t right. It didn’t make sense. Vivid wasn’t supposed to die. He’d escaped the Circle and killed a lake monster. Scorch had seen him turn into a vortex, and now he was just lying there, gone.
The black leather felt rough beneath his cheek as he nuzzled Vivid’s chest with a shuddering sigh, Audrey waiting silently beside him. “We shouldn’t bury him,” he whispered, his voice ragged. “If we build him a pyre, we can send his ashes into the wind.”
Silence.
And then, a sound.
It was a small sound, weak and easy to miss, and maybe Scorch had already missed it, while heaving broken sighs into leather, but he didn’t miss it now. His eyes widened, his body stiffened, and he listened, listened, listened.
The same sound, again. Barely there, so faint it hardly registered, but it was there and he heard it.
A heartbeat.
“Audrey.” He lifted his head from Vivid’s chest, and she was peering down at him worriedly. “He’s alive.”
“What?” Her fingers flew to Vivid’s neck, pressing into his pulse points. Scorch watched her and waited, and then her eye met his, wonderstruck. “He’s alive.”
Scorch, weary and wasted only a moment before, felt like he’d been doused with ice-cold water and struck by lightning. His hands flew to Vivid’s face. “He doesn’t look alive,” he muttered hastily, lifting an eyelid and checking Vivid’s pupils. They didn’t respond to the light, but neither did his eyes retain the dullness of death. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked Audrey, panicked. Vivid was alive, but barely. “What do we do? What do we do?”
“I don’t know,” she exclaimed, wringing her hands.
Scorch picked Vivid gently up from the table, scooping him into his arms. He shoved his nose into Vivid’s hair and breathed him in. “Kio told me she was testing something on him,” he rambled, heading out of the room and into the main hall, Audrey hurrying after him. “A suppressant for elementals. She told me she used too much on him.”
“Did she know he was alive?”
“We’ll never know now, and it doesn’t matter,” Scorch said, rushing through the door Audrey held open for him. The moon was nearly full and the night was bright. Vivid’s skin almost resembled its normal shade in the moonglow. “Can we take him to the Hollow? Axum has healed him before.”
Audrey shook her head. “Axum began suspecting Vivid when he never returned. If we bring Vivid to the Hollow, he’s as good as dead, and so are you.”
“Gods,” Scorch cursed. Vivid’s body was feather-light in his arms. They made a quick return to their horses, who were still chomping away at the grass, happy and oblivious. “Do you know any healers? Herbalists?”
“None who aren’t under Axum’s thumb.”
She accepted Vivid into her arms while Scorch mounted his horse, then they worked together to set him in the saddle. Vivid’s head fell limply forward and Scorch wrapped an arm around him, holding him against his chest. It wasn’t ideal, but it would do for the time. It was a blessing they had the horses at all.
“I know of an herbalist,” Scorch admitted, the image of a garden springing forth. “But I don’t know for sure if she’ll help me.”
Audrey mounted her horse and cast him a dangerous gaze. “Make her help you.”
He nodded.
“I can’t go with you,” she announced as she picked up her horse’s reins. “If I miss my briefing with Axum, he will begin to suspect me.”
Scorch couldn’t blame her for leaving. She had done so much already. “I can ride faster alone anyway,” he said.
“Tell me where you’re taking him, so I can contact you again.”
He huffed a miserable laugh that ruffled Vivid’s hair. “There is a woman named Etheridge that I know,” he said, “at the Guardians’ Guild.”
>
Audrey maneuvered her horse to his side and clasped his shoulder. “You really are a fool,” she said, but there was warmth in her eye. “Ride like the wind.” She touched Vivid’s cheek fondly. “Save him.”
A lump formed in Scorch’s throat and all he could do was nod. For Audrey, it was enough. She clicked her tongue at her horse and cantered away, westward, toward the Hollow.
Scorch tightened his grip on Vivid and searched for the pulse at his neck. When he found it, he sighed with temporary relief. Upsettingly temporary. The Guild was south of the Hollow by miles and miles. The journey would take days.
“Don’t worry, Vivid. I’ve got you.”
He tutted at his horse and began their trek at a gallop, his robe fluttering out behind them like cloth wings. Vivid jostled in the saddle, despite Scorch’s best attempts to keep him sturdy. When they reached the main road, he knew the first thing he would have to do.
Luckily, like so many other things, Vivid had already taught Scorch how to steal.
Familiar Faces
19
Through the night, every time Scorch’s paranoia took over, he stopped the horse, pressed his head against Vivid’s chest, and waited until he could hear his heartbeat. It remained weak and far between, but it hadn’t worsened.
Now, he lay in the middle of the road, clad in a monk’s robe, waiting for someone to come along and run him over. He’d hidden Vivid safely among the cover of trees and posed himself as a monk in need of help, like last time. Granted, last time Vivid wasn’t unconscious, and they were only stealing a horse, not an entire wagon, but Scorch would make it work.
The hour was early, the sun freshly raised. The southward road was heavily traversed by traders, and it was only a matter of time before Scorch heard hooves clopping and wheels spinning. He shut his eyes and waited.
“Stop! Stop! There’s someone in the road!”
A horse whinnied and wood screeched. Scorch smelled the road dust as it was kicked up by hooves.
The Sun Guardian Page 29