It crept into my soul with the same agitated fury I had felt in Spain, the pressure and fear seeming to grow within me until I reached the forest that surrounded the sprawling city along with the surges of magic that grew and swelled amongst the trees and farms that were clustered there.
I knew I was close. I could feel the faint throb of Edmund’s power now. I could feel his hatred. I could feel the black tar of his magic where it had leeched into the soil and poisoned it.
I continued to push, letting my magic trail after the ripples of power that I felt, but the farther I stretched, the weaker the fingers of my power became, until it was only wispy shadows that retreated back into me like a tape measure. I panted as I fell to my knees.
My vision snapped back to the cave with a heave of breath, my inhales shaking as I desperately tried to fill my lungs with air that seemed foreign and forgotten.
Wyn’s hands were on my back before I even had a chance to focus on the uneven floor my fingers were spread against. Ilyan’s magic flooded every inch of me as his shoes tapped loudly against the floor in a desperate need to reach me.
He sunk to the ground before me, his hands shaking as he reached toward me. Even though his face was stoic and calm, I could feel his worry leech through our connection, my injury from Spain still weighing heavily on his mind.
“Was it a sight?” Dramin said from beside me, his voice weak as it echoed around the cave.
“No,” I gasped, my eyes still not leaving the concern in Ilyan’s face. “I found him.”
“Where?” The concern on Ilyan’s face vanished almost instantly, albeit I could still feel it tense through his body.
“There is a forest that begins near the farms that surround the towns…” I began, hoping it was enough to explain. I wasn’t familiar enough with the city to know how to begin, and I had a feeling saying, ‘In the mud by a farm with tomatoes and funny looking cows,’ wasn’t going to cut it.
Thankfully, Ilyan seemed to understand. He released a tense breath with a sigh, his hand wrapping around my elbow as he helped me back to standing.
I’m fine, Ilyan, I added silently, grateful when the tension in his shoulders lessened a bit.
I know, he said with a laugh, the joy on his voice disappearing with the next question. What else did you see? What did you feel?
I wasn’t foolish enough to hide anything from him, despite being uncertain what the dread that filled the city was. Besides, his magic had been there right alongside mine. I was sure he had felt it, too.
Fear, I said, hoping it would be enough yet knowing it wouldn’t. Not in the mortals, but in something else that was inside the city, something that was hiding.
He shot me a look that had as much question as I felt. Yes, fear hiding in the city did sound a bit crazy … but with everything we had gone through?
I only shrugged my shoulders in response, a fact that he seemed to find quite humorous. His loud laugh echoed around the tension in the cave like a broken cymbal, the sound loud as it broke the fear with its beautiful sound.
“Ugh,” Thom growled from behind me, the first word he had spoken in a while ringing with his typical irritation. “I’m going to start laughing randomly and answering questions from nowhere if you guys don’t knock it off. Why, yes, peanut butter is delicious, thank you for asking.” Thom rolled his eyes in frustration, but everyone else stared at him in utter disbelief.
It wasn’t until Wyn’s high pitched squeal broke against the stone that everyone else began to laugh, the sheer misplaced nature of his comment breaking through the tension.
“Yep, I’m hilarious,” Thom growled, oblivious to his own absurdity. “Is it at least safe to leave the cave? I would really like a shower…”
Ilyan looked at me in question as the laughter faded to nothing, his hand winding around my waist as he pulled me into him. I could hear the question on his mind without him having to even put voice to it.
“I didn’t feel Edmund or any of his men inside the city,” I said, my voice sounding far too loud against the silence of the cave.
“Right.” Ilyan moved away from me and back to the door, looking through the gap once again before turning back to us. “You will need to be under a shield if we wish to make it through the court without attracting too much attention.”
I nodded with all the others, no one daring to second guess his proclamation. If we went out as we were, I was sure some kind of riot would break out. My shirt was still covered in dried blood; Ilyan was prickled in small cuts that, although they had healed, had left trail of dirt and blood behind; Dramin could barely walk on his own; and Ryland … One look at Ryland sent nerves into an electrified storm. The darkness that had taken over his eyes was back, a panicked fear rumbling through him and setting my desperate need to attack back into motion.
I looked away before it took hold, but not before Ilyan caught the whisper of my thoughts in his own mind, his head turning toward his brother before a panic washed over him.
Ryland had told me he was fine, because his father was too far away, because some blade was too far away. He should be fine, since I couldn’t feel Edmund anywhere close. Regardless, he wasn’t. Something was digging into him.
It rooted at the pit of my own stomach, and my magic flew away from me again, soaring through the city as it searched for whatever I had missed. Sure I had missed something.
There was nothing, however.
“The closest safe house is above the clock about ten kilometers to the north. Stay close, but if you get separated…” Ilyan paused, the tension in the cave swallowing the temporary joy as if it had been waiting in the shadows the whole time. “Just make it to the clock.”
Everyone nodded once as they began to break into groups. Wyn moved to Ryland, Thom to Dramin and Sain. It was the same grouping they had adopted for most of our trek through the dark, the bonds forged in hundreds of years or months of surviving that had driven them together.
Ilyan pressed me against him once more, the warm palm of his hand running down my bare arm as he stepped back to the crack in the door, toward the light that seemed noticeably darker. The crowd’s noises lessened.
My body already longed for him as he stood a few feet from me, his back tensing for a moment before his hand wrapped around the massive iron loop. The ancient groan of handle and hinge echoed through the cage as if it was a monster that had been roused from its sleep. I almost expected the thing to erupt into a nightmarish creature as the groan only grew. Ilyan’s magic coaxed it along as the door began to swing open, flooding us all with blinding light as the stone itself bent to Ilyan’s will and allowed us enough space to pass.
We stood in the bright bath of warmth and light, the tattered group of survivors mere steps from our next destination, from the next leg of the war we had to win.
Wyn sucked in breath as the door opened, her eyes flashing with panic before she glanced to me. A mischievous grin tried desperately to meet her eyes, but it didn’t quite make it. It stayed on her lips, the two Wyn’s colliding in the middle.
I looked at her, struck by the humor of yet another silent goodbye before she grabbed Ryland’s hand, and her magic surged through the cave. I was sure she was shielding herself from view, even though the simple magic didn’t seem to work on me. It never had, after all. I guessed there wasn’t any reason for it to start now.
Wyn looked stoically forward, her jaw set in that powerful determination she had been trying to hide from me before she ran from the cave and into the courtyard before us. She and Ryland were followed by the already concealed Thom, Dramin, and Sain.
I stared after them all, past the door and into the courtyard that was so bright it could have been the afterlife for all I knew. The haloed shapes that moved and laughed through the stone space could be nothing more than angels.
It was strangely beautiful—the way the sun moved through the clouds and shone brightly over the blissfully ignorant people that moved through the ancient square. I was sure it woul
d have been beautiful no matter what time of day or situation, but seeing it for the first time, combined with the flood of memories that flowed off Ilyan like a river, it actually felt like home.
Like I had known this space all along.
Ilyan said nothing as he grabbed my hand, leading me into the antiquated place. Then the groan of the iron doors closed behind us so loud I was surprised no one turned to look. It was like they hadn’t even heard, something which I was sure was far more than likely.
With my feet slipping on cobblestones as I tried my hardest to take everything in while keeping with Ilyan’s pace, my eyes moved from place to place like little ping-pong balls as Ilyan led me through the ancient square—the old stone houses, the antiquated carvings above each door, the old fountain that stood on the other end of the courtyard. I wished we could get closer to it. I wanted to inspect the medieval animals that spouted streams of water from their mouths, but Ilyan plowed ahead, taking us into a dim alley, following right behind Wyn and Ryland who looked to be running. Not that I blamed them.
Even though I had been so absorbed by the city, by the happiness of Ilyan’s memories, I could still feel the heavy beat of my heart. I could still feel the worry that raged through Ilyan. I could still see the vivid images of my sight.
I picked up my pace as Ilyan did. His hand tightened around mine as we moved farther into the dark and around the corner that Wyn had disappeared behind only moments before.
The alley stopped in an abrupt line of light and dark, the towering buildings falling away as we moved into a wide street with the same cobbles lining the road. Nearly identical rows of apartments grew from the dirty stone street as if they were no more than planted flora. They stretched to the sky, the dimming blue tinged with red from the setting sun. It almost felt claustrophobic, as though the buildings were falling round us, enclosing us away from the golden light of dusk.
It was then, as the light from the setting sun broke in golden flecks over the red shingled eaves of the houses, that the world broke out in screaming.
I stopped running before Ilyan did, my blood flaring in memory and magic as the Drak in me awakened, as the sight replayed itself as though someone was fast forwarding through an old home movie.
Everything seemed frozen to the spot as the screaming increased, the sound coming in ripples from before us, the earth shaking beneath us in what I was sure the mortals were assuming to be an earthquake. I knew better.
The sound of their fear moved down the street toward us in a flood of sound I knew at once we couldn’t escape. My heart raced in a pulse of panic as my muscles tensed in agony at the sounds, the panic, and the exhilarated fear moving over me.
I barely recognized Ilyan moving into protective position, his magic flaring angrily as he tried to figure out what had happened and, more importantly, what he could do.
Nothing.
He could do nothing.
“It’s starting,” I said, but I wasn’t sure if the words were mine or that of my sight. The depth of my voice was entirely dead.
I had barely spoken before the golden light of the sunset, the light that had been seen so clearly in my sight, was sucked from the sky and replaced with a sheet of red. The color was thick and all-encompassing, as though someone had thrown a thin blanket over the world.
I looked toward the sun on instinct, the red tinged orb that was trying to sink behind the skyline. As the earth rattled beneath me, the strength of a distant explosion rumbled through the ground as the red blanket of sky was streaked with pillars of black.
Thousands of winged creatures cut through the sky, through the red veil, descending on the city.
Devouring the city.
Devouring us.
Fourteen
I stared at the tower of Vilỳs in horror, my jaw tightening as I waited for it to end, for the sight to pull me back into reality. However, I knew it wasn’t a sight, that the screams and the pillar of diseased Vilỳs were all terrifyingly real.
Panic engrossed the city as, one after another, more columns began to erupt into the sky. The blasts of the distant explosions, the shaking of the earth underneath our feet, and the blood red hue to the sky only increased the already rapid rate of my heart.
The creatures poured into the sunset on all sides of us, streaking over the blood red sky like bats, flocks of winged monsters encapsulating the city from all sides.
Enclosing us in.
Trapping us.
Even if we wanted to escape the city, there was no chance of that happening now.
Edmund had drawn us here.
To this.
Ilyan had been right. I had been right.
It was a trap, and we had walked right into it.
I looked toward the street I had seen Wyn fleeing through only moments before, but she was nowhere to be seen.
What had been a joyful, European city was now nothing except chaos. People ran blindly as they tried to escape an unknown enemy. Running into buildings, trying to start cars, many frozen as they looked up to the sky, fear keeping them in place. The screams, the chaos only increased as the first of the Vilỳs hit the ground around them like wet rags then came to life with terrifying speed.
Wings unfurled, bodies glistened, teeth gnashed, and their sharp claws attached themselves to the humans like locusts, biting, ripping, and tearing at their flesh as they infected them with their poison. The once revered “kiss” was placed upon them like a disease, infecting them and their newly born magic with the same infection the Vilỳs held.
Edmund was creating his army.
I had seen sight after sight reveal itself before my eyes. I had been amazed and taken back by my own power. But this? This should have stayed hidden in the shadows of the Drak blood I held. This should have never come to pass.
A car zoomed past us, at least twenty of the little things clawing at the metal in an attempt to get inside just as a roar of anger and madness broke through the air beside me. Ilyan’s magic flared in a violent surge that shifted through me, igniting my own power as the two forces blended together in a wave of the same fairy lights I had seen so many times before. Except now, they were not wrought in love and passion. Now, they were bred from the flame of Ilyan’s anger, an anger I had only seen once before. However, then it had been nothing compared to the power I felt move through me, nothing compared to the rolling force of his power that emanated from him.
Now, the lights were dangerous.
Now, he was dangerous.
But he wasn’t the only one.
I was dangerous, too, and I was going to stop this.
We moved from our frozen shock as one, our shields dropping from our bodies as we met the new battle head on, as we ran into the tangled mess of blood and carnage.
Hands moved, magic and light and power surged from our bodies as the Vilỳs left the bloodied and battered people they had dug into writhing on the ground. They flew to attack us, to attack the danger we represented.
The mortals were easy pickings. Even the ones who tried to fight back were felled in seconds.
But Ilyan and I?
It was as if they sensed that we could stop it.
A swarm of heavy leather wings charged at us in a wall of teeth and blood, and my hands moved as my magic flared, erupting around me in an orb of white light that sent the cluster to the ground. It seemed like a good tactic until the light alerted the hundreds of other creatures that still attacked the innocents. As one, the monsters froze to face us, their ugly, deformed, sphinx faces turning into a grin of malice that ran through my body like ice.
I couldn’t have run if I had tried. They moved too fast as they encompassed us, the dimly lit world disappearing, swallowed by the hot wind against my face, the smell of excrement and blood that filled my nostrils.
My head swam at the smell, swam at the feeling of their rancid magic, so heavy in the air that it seeped into me, infecting me the same way it had in the forest outside of Rioseco, heavy and thick. The claustroph
obic pressure was unrelenting against me, against my magic. It was a fight to stay upright, to not fall to my knees in pain then let the Drak magic take me like it was trying so hard to do.
It took all my focus to keep the sight at bay, my ability sagging in energy as my vision continually blacked in and out. The world around me and the fight I was trying so desperately to win felt more like a strobe-filled nightmare I should be escaping.
My skin grew warm as tiny claws dug into me, flashes of fire and light rippling over us from where Wyn now fought not far away. I couldn’t even focus on that. All I felt was what I was sure was my own blood pouring over my skin.
I knew at once I was in trouble. We had attacked the Vilỳs in the forest like cowards, burning the tent they were held in to the ground. However, now—facing them as an enemy that was able to fight, feeling their rotten magic press against my skin and swim in my mind—I knew there was no way we could win this fight.
Not against the rancid power, not against the sheer amount of them that Edmund had unleashed on the city.
I wanted to save the city. I wanted to save the people it held. And I would gladly fight to the death. But I was born to defeat Edmund, and I couldn’t do that like this. Not if we were dead. There had to be another way.
Ilyan, I didn’t even need to call for help. He was already there, ripping the creatures from my body, throwing them into the rough stone buildings around us. Their screams echoed in my ears alongside the mortals, the echo only growing as the world dipped into the ember red color of sight again.
Let it come, mi lasko. His voice was loud in my mind as the red flared through me in heat and power. I will protect you.
Without another word, I let the vision fill me, let the ember-filled light seep into the same city streets we were trapped in. The Vilỳs were running rampant as they moved from human to human, devouring them, marking them, destroying them. Bodies lay battered in the streets as the Vilỳs tried to pry open windows and claw their way under doors. The screams of the humans was all but replaced by the high-pitched squeal of the monsters who had destroyed them.
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