by K. A. Linde
“Earn what?”
He shook his head and glanced off. “What did I say?”
Cyrene sighed. He was too out of it to remember anything yet. Avoca was right. They needed to get back to Fen and figure all of this out with Matilde and Vera. Maybe Avoca could even convince Ceis’f to come with them. If he was from here, he had to know something about the Mirror of Truth. She’d be happy to have as much information as she could at this point.
Cyrene and Cal eventually hoisted Dean up between the two of them. Not an easy feat, considering he was a huge military captain and they were two relatively small women. Cyrene would have liked to use her magic to help him walk, but she hadn’t used any since she detoxed from her blood magic. She wasn’t about to start unless they ran into trouble.
By the time that they got Dean out of the room with the sacred tree and down the steps into the ballroom, Avoca and Ahlvie were storming back up toward them.
“What happened?” Cyrene asked.
“Ceis’f is being himself,” Avoca spat.
“Bastard,” Ahlvie growled as he went to take Cal’s place holding up Dean.
“No, I’ve got him. Cyrene is smaller. No offense,” Cal said with a grimace.
“None taken. I am.”
Ahlvie ducked his head under Dean’s arm, and Cyrene took a breath of relief. She didn’t mind that she was smaller, weaker, or more vulnerable than the others. She was always feminine and dainty but fierce and wild in personality. Her magic matched her personality at least.
“So, he won’t help us?” Cyrene asked.
“He won’t leave,” Avoca said. “And he won’t talk further about the Nokkin. He wants us all out of his city by nightfall.”
“Great,” Cyrene said. “We should probably go back then.”
Avoca crisply nodded once. Her eyes said she was ready to go find Ceis’f and beat him to a bloody pulp. But she held herself back and tugged on her bond with Cyrene.
Cyrene responded with a soft touch, as if to say, I understand.
“Did he at least give any more useful information?” Cyrene asked as they exited the building.
Dean had his legs under him, but he was stumbling and still slightly incoherent. She didn’t know how they were going to make it all the way through the forest with him like this.
“If you consider taunting and thinly veiled threats useful,” Ahlvie said.
“He did say that the Nokkin has no interest in him,” Avoca said. “Though why, I have no idea. He has as much magic as the rest of us.”
“Did he say why he’s actually here?” Cyrene asked. “You know it’s not because he isn’t welcome in Eldora.”
Avoca tensed. “He said he came to look in the Mirror.”
“What?” Cyrene asked. “He seemed fine!”
“He said that Dean is lucky that it drove him insane,” Avoca muttered, glancing back at Dean. “Because, when Ceis’f looked to his future in the Mirror, he saw nothing.”
Cyrene clamped her mouth shut at that. She could feel the pain through the bond. Avoca wasn’t usually the one of them who blasted her emotions so wildly. But, if Ceis’f looked into the Mirror of Truth and saw nothing, it likely meant…he had no future to behold.
“Why does this feel so much farther than the way there?” Cal asked.
“Because we’re hauling dead weight,” Ahlvie groaned. “Creator, I have to stop. I need a break.”
The sun had already gone down long ago, and it was nearly pitch-black in the trees. Thankfully, Avoca had created some torches for them to see in the darkness, but the whole situation was blinding. They would never have made it back had Ahlvie and Cal not known the area so well.
“We’ll stop right up ahead. I can feel the stream,” Avoca told them.
And she was right. Only a dozen feet ahead of them, the stream they had crossed earlier that day was finally visible. Ahlvie and Cal dropped Dean onto the ground where he moaned and leaned forward.
“I am sorry about this,” Dean said. “You don’t have to keep helping me. I can walk.”
“Thank the Creator!” Ahlvie said.
“Are you sure?” Cyrene asked.
Dean nodded. “I feel disoriented, like I have vertigo.”
“It’ll pass,” Cyrene assured him. Though she had no clue if that was true.
“It’d better have been worth it,” Ahlvie said, nudging Dean. “Carrying you around is not my idea of a good time.”
“You should have known better,” Avoca chided.
“I did,” Dean said. “But I had to know.”
“And?” Ahlvie pushed.
“The capital city of Eleysia is gone,” Dean told them. “I saw…I saw Byern battleships traveling through our reefs and rocks as effortlessly as our own naval captains. It should have been impossible, but they did it. Then, I saw fire and explosions. The entire island was burned to the ground, and it’s all my fault.”
Everyone shifted uncomfortably in the wan light. The only person who knew exactly what Dean was feeling right now had refused to come back to Fen with them. It was impossible to feel the depth of Dean’s grief in his words.
“I believe I can share some of that blame,” Cyrene said in horror.
“I spared Edric’s life, and he did this,” Dean said with a shake of his head. “He used Kael’s magic as a weapon and bombed my entire home.”
“He was working with Kael?” Cyrene gasped.
Dean looked up at her with hollow eyes. “Yes.”
“Creator…”
“We’ve rested long enough,” Avoca said softly. “Perhaps we should keep moving.”
Dean had just risen to his feet when Cyrene felt it.
“Nokkin,” she gasped.
Instantly, everyone was on high alert.
“Cyrene, to me!” Avoca cried. “Link up, and trust me. Trust yourself.”
Cyrene gulped and then nodded, feeling the brush of Avoca’s magic for the first time in months. It was cool and refreshing. Nothing like the fire and darkness that she had felt when linking with Kael.
Dean and Ahlvie removed their swords while Cyrene hastily pushed Cal and her strung bow and arrow into the middle of their circle. She was not going to risk the life of a fourteen-year-old girl for this monster. She had become much too fond of her already.
The Nokkin blended into the darkness, like shadow and smoke, swooping into their group and trying to reach out for them. The feeling of wrongness…of a contamination reverberated through the group. It was so intense that Cyrene could practically feel its forked tongue slithering up her cheek once more. But she couldn’t allow that to happen.
When the thing reached for her, Ahlvie sliced forward with his blade. It seemed to go straight through the wraith before the thing coalesced into substance once more a few feet away.
“We don’t have to play cat and mouse like this,” it said with its abused and inhuman voice.
“Leave us alone, and never bother this village again, or we will destroy you,” Cyrene said with more confidence than she felt.
But she was crackling with magic and holding on to Avoca like a tether. She had her friends with her and a girl with more inner strength than Cyrene had seen in a long time.
A strange laughed seemed to emanate from the Nokkin. “You cannot hope to defeat me. I will have you. I will.”
Then, it disappeared. Cyrene took a breath and waited. Cal shrieked behind her and let loose an arrow.
Cyrene flipped around and saw the Nokkin reaching out for Cal. The arrow hit it in its shoulder, and it screeched and moaned, as if it had not felt any pain in a long time.
Avoca shot a blast of fire toward the creature’s face. It choked on the smoke as it dissipated all around the thing. For a second, its eyes had been illuminated in the darkness. All white, all seeing yet unseeing. Disturbing and terrifying.
The Nokkin disappeared again, and this time, Dean and Ahlvie tried to slice through its flesh. But found none there. The Nokkin put its hand on Ahlvie’s chest.
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“No!” Cyrene and Avoca screamed at the same time.
But the Nokkin hesitated. And then laughed. “You are of my world, I see.”
Ahlvie took that opportunity to slice his sword through the Nokkin’s neck. It was about as effective as trying to cut through water.
The Nokkin appeared again, reaching for Cyrene. “Let me have my prize, and you can keep your friends.”
“Never,” Avoca said. “Now!”
Cyrene and Avoca launched an attack at the same time, blasting the Nokkin with a burst of energy that they’d been slowly gathering together. They used the energy to slice through the hurt shoulder Cal had pierced. It shrieked again. And, just when Cyrene thought it was going to blink out and reappear again, something tore out of the trees with a battle cry and sent a fire bolt directly into the Nokkin’s chest.
Ceis’f landed in a whirl of long silver-white hair in the exact spot where the Nokkin had just been. It had vanished into thin air, and in its place was the battle-hardened Leif warrior.
“Oh my Creator, did we kill it?” Cal gasped.
Avoca shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. We ran it off.”
“Can you not even walk home without getting ambushed and needing me to save you?” Ceis’f demanded.
“We were doing fine,” Avoca said.
Cyrene was doubled over. Her breath was coming out wild and irregular. She couldn’t believe how much energy they’d had to use together. But, with Avoca linked, she hadn’t even had to think about it. It had just come. Still, it had been intense.
Ahlvie was crouching on the ground.
Cyrene reached for him. “It touched you?”
“Yeah,” he said with a shake of his head. “But…I’m fine.”
“Well, I’m not fine!” Cal cried. “I’m awesome! Did you see me hit its shoulder?”
Cyrene burst into laughter. “Our savior.”
“No need for the thanks,” Ceis’f muttered.
“Thank you,” Avoca said softly. “I knew you wouldn’t abandon us.”
Ceis’f muttered something nasty under his breath before marching into the woods and yelling, “Hurry up!”
They stumbled back into Fen, exhausted, hungry, and full of questions.
But they were greeted with unparalleled fury and despair.
“Caldreva Anamarya!” a woman cried, rushing through their group to grasp her daughter in her arms. She hugged her tight. “You’re alive. Oh Creator, you’re alive!”
“Mom!” Cal grumbled. “Of course I’m alive.”
“You told me you would be gone for fifteen minutes!” she shrieked. “You have been gone for hours! Hours! Do you know what I thought? What your nana thought? What the whole village thought?”
“Yeah,” she said, shuffling her feet.
“That you were dead! That a wraith had attacked and killed you. All of you,” she said, looking up at their group. “You should be ashamed, taking a fourteen-year-old girl into the woods without letting anyone know where she was or how long you would be gone. At times like this!”
“Mom, I’m fine!” Cal said. She pushed her off of her. “I was gone for half a day! The wolves go out for a whole week! I was with the bravest, smartest, most Creator-blessed group of people I’d ever seen. You should have had faith in me.”
“I will hear none of this. Go home right this instant. You’re grounded.”
Cal opened her mouth to argue, but her mother gave her the look, and she dragged her feet back to the house. Her mother followed at her heels.
“I hope our reception is a bit less…exciting,” Ahlvie said.
Cyrene watched Cal the entire time, feeling bad that she’d gotten her in trouble. She didn’t regret it though. Even though they had been attacked by a wraith. Creator forbid she ever told her mother that!
When Cyrene finally ducked back into Avniella’s home, she found their reception not much better than Cal’s. Avniella and Lace berated them for leaving without warning and for taking Cal with them.
Ahlvie finally kissed them each on the cheeks and said, “We picked up a stray.” He nodded his head at Ceis’f.
“Oh, dear. We’ll get you an extra bed for the night,” Lace said.
Ceis’f stood tall and proud in the corner, completely uncomfortable with being in human dwellings. Matilde and Vera curiously eyed him when they came out of the bedroom but just grinned.
“Welcome back, Ceis’f,” Vera said.
He grunted.
Then, Reeve and Aubron burst into the room.
Reeve grabbed Cyrene around the middle and held her to him. “I thought something had happened to you. I can’t lose you, too.”
Cyrene patted his shoulder and sighed. “I know. I love you.”
Dean collapsed into the corner and promptly passed out, drawing everyone’s attention once more.
Vera put her hand on his forehead for a few minutes and then frowned. “I feel as if you all have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Start talking,” Matilde said, taking a seat of her own.
And so, they did. They told them of tracking the wraith to Aonia and finding Ceis’f, only to discover that the wraith was a Nokkin.
“Impossible,” Matilde said.
Vera shrugged. “I believed they were dead.”
“Do you know how to kill them?” Avoca asked.
Matilde frowned. “There were very few Nokkin. It was never clear exactly who they worked for, so information on them was scarce. Let us look into it.”
“In the meantime,” Vera said, “it might be possible to put a barrier around the town to prevent these attacks. I believe Fen is small enough to endure one, if your ancient ones will assist us.”
“Let me convene with Mana,” Lace said before rising and leaving the room.
“While we were there,” Cyrene said, “Dean looked into what Avoca called the Mirror of Truth.”
Matilde hissed between her teeth. “What truth was he looking for?”
“What actually happened to his home and his family.”
“That is likely only a part of what he saw.”
“Is there anything we can do for him?” Cyrene begged.
“Time,” Vera said. “When I tried to heal him, there was nothing amiss. Whatever he is enduring, he will have to find his own way back.”
Cyrene frowned. She had been afraid of that.
“This is all well and good,” Orden said, finally speaking up, “but I believe we have more pressing matters to consider than the threat against this town.”
“Yes,” Vera said.
“Indeed,” Matilde agreed.
“We almost lost Cyrene, but now that we have her back, we need to figure out where to go next. The Nokkin clearly wants Cyrene for her magic,” Orden said. “It’s the thing no one wants to talk about, but she used blood magic and survived. She needs to train. She needs to figure out what she is capable of.”
Cyrene colored slightly but met Orden’s hardened eyes head-on. Somehow, coming from Orden, the statement felt right. Anyone else might have said it as a joke or tried to lessen the blow, but the truth was, Cyrene was something different, and she couldn’t hide from it.
“You’re right,” she said, pushing off the wall and walking into the center of their circle. “For the last couple of months, I have been anything but myself. Maelia’s death…wrecked me. No, destroyed me. It turned me inside out and made me not want to care about anything. Add Daufina and my parent’s deaths to that toll and I’ve been a shell. I have done some things that I am not proud of, but the only blood magic I ever took was after a Braj slaughtered my parents in front of my brother and sister. I used the power to save the life of the king. It might have been wrong, but I saw no alternative. So, if you want to judge me, then go ahead.”
The room was silent at her declaration. No one even averted their gaze from her.
“I might not be the person that everyone wanted to fulfill the damn prophecy, but I’m all you have. I want to bring back magic
. I want the entire world to be like Fen! No one here shuns anyone for having powers. Everyone is accepted—maybe not exactly for who they want to be, but they are not murdered because they have magic. It is like the world that used to be before Viktor Dremylon. And…I believe I know the next steps to bring it back.”
“Oh?” Vera asked.
Cyrene smiled. “As you know, I have had visions of the Domina Serafina for almost a year. She has shown me glimpses of her past, but when I was unconscious and high on blood magic, she was able to break the barrier between her world and ours. She said that, when I master my spirit magic, I should be able to speak to her myself. That I wouldn’t need to black out to reach her.”
Matilde leaned forward, and Vera placed her hand on her mouth.
“This way, I was able to personally speak with her rather than just getting stuck in her visions. She told me that I needed to use the coin and not be blinded because there were bigger forces at play. She mentioned a woman but could not speak her name.”
“The coin,” Avoca whispered.
“Yes, yes,” Matilde said. “What else?”
“A woman?” Vera asked softly.
“Yes, sometimes, I would get ripped from my dream with Serafina and find myself trapped in a world of darkness where this woman, I have to assume they are one and the same, told me to come to her. I don’t know what it means, but she handed me a coin.” Cyrene held her hand out. “It felt so real. So, even though she may be dangerous, it’s too much of a coincidence. The first step is that we need to find that coin.”
Vera stood and retrieved something from her pocket. “Did it look like this?”
Cyrene gasped. “Where…where did you get that?”
“You were clenching it in your hand,” Avoca said.
“But where had it come from?”
Avoca shook her head. “I’d been holding your hand, and you had nothing. Then, when I left to get a drink of water, I came back, and you were holding it.”
“It truly came from my dream?” Cyrene’s mind reeled. “What is it? How does it work?”
Vera flipped it between her fingers. “It’s a talisman. It is used to harness intense energy. Depending on the talisman, it can be used to store power or amplify power or recall memories or any number of other things. They have many functions.”