His gray eyebrows pull together. “I will not.” Fear laces his pale eyes, and I smile. It must be a fearful sight, because he backs farther against the window.
I reach down and jerk him up by his robe, then press his back to the glass. It cracks, webbing with the pressure. “Do it. Or die, sorcerer.”
He shakes his head. “Please.” He glances over his shoulder. “I’ll wither and become nothing—”
A scream unleashes from my mouth, and I smash his back into the shards of glass. Blood drips on to his blue robe. I place my palm on the fragmenting glass and help it along, widening the shattered hole. The wind stirs Fadil’s thin hair.
“Yes, guardian.” He nods shakily. “I’ll bestow my power.”
I release him. He drops to the floor with a grunt.
A hand clasps my shoulder and I freeze. “Don’t do this, Star. I won’t lose you to this. I’ll fight you if I—”
He’s silenced as I thrust out my field of Charge. Phoenix groans as he’s thrown into the corner. A twinge of guilt pulls at my stomach, but I shut it down quickly. “Power. Now, Fadil.”
Shakily, he rises to his feet and presses his palms to my temples, his rigid fingers curling around the crown of my head. I keep my gaze hard on him, ready to strike him down if he attempts to harm me. Pressure followed by a stabbing pain builds against my skull. Within minutes his murmured chant fades away, and my body begins to hum—to vibrate in sync with the ache.
I tremble and gasp. My head fills with too much at once—visions and knowledge too great to process—and I collapse to my knees, swaying. It feels as if hours pass before I can open my eyes, scared I’ve left this realm and have entered some dimension of Hades.
Only Fadil’s voice centers me. “One such as you cannot house the ultimate power,” he says, bitter mockery in his tone. “Kill me now if you must. Without my power, I’m already dead.” He looks down at his cracked and flaking hands. Then his pale, colorless eyes meet mine. “But you won’t be long behind me, slave.”
My body bounds up with ease, as if I simply think of standing and float to my feet—weightless yet embodied with the burden of power. I grab his stick of a neck and squeeze. “What have you done?”
Through my grip, he rasps, “What you asked.” I release him and admire the luminescent white blaze of my skin. Unlike the Leymak, this pure—no silver tinge—radiant. Fadil coughs. “I simply merged what was once whole. An ultimate power achieved by the joining of the two races’ power.” And I know what he speaks is truth. He doesn’t have to continue, because I already understand—the power within me whispers it.
It’s why the sorcerers instructed the Council only to place Kythan of the same race together for bonding. The combined power of the earth with the power of the sky—Flame and Charge, is—
“A violation of the magics,” Fadil finishes my thought. “No slave should wield that much power. It’s only intended for the sorcerers.” His lips spread into a crooked sneer.
“And it’s also the way you’ve kept us in binds,” I say, anger rising in my voice. “No one—not the sorcerers or the pharaohs—could command that powerful a race.”
He shrugs. “Regardless, that time is over. Seems the gods have decided the end of the magics is now.” He looks past the shattered glass of the window to the sky. “My power, the last of the ancients, will die with you—a slave. The only satisfaction that sad fact brings me is knowing you won’t be able to wield it for long before it claims you.”
“So be it.” I backhand the smug sorcerer and he crashes into the wall. “I don’t need long.”
Before I start toward the door, I glimpse a sleeping Phoenix in the corner. A sliver of shame creeps in. But I force it away as my body pulses with power and the need to destroy.
Octavian’s legions swarm the streets of Alexandria, fighting the very allies that helped them win the war just days before. The irony of this causes a small smile to curl on my lips, and I consider leaving them to destroy each other.
Only the wrongness of all that has been done demands justice. They deserve worse than a clean death at the end of a sword, or the absolute finality of burning to ash. No. They’ve earned slow and painful torture before they’re allowed to leave this plane.
My eyes sweep the city for any sign of the Leymak, but now that their leader has been destroyed, they’ve fled. Vanished. But if they’re in this world somewhere, I’ll find them.
Just like I’ll find Lunia.
For now, I sharpen my vision, locating each Narcolym below. If not for their treachery, the queen’s army wouldn’t have lost the war, and the Shythe wouldn’t be roaming the deserts like exiles. And Xarion—
I force my eyes closed. The memory of his emerald gaze seeking mine right before Candra took his life cuts into me like a dagger. Clutching my chest with a white-illumed hand, I send a jolt into my heart, pushing the ache deeper—fueling my veins with my sorrow.
Later. I can mourn him later. At this moment, all others who played a role in the fall of Egypt must pay.
From my perch on Sekhmet’s shoulder, I watch the soldiers scramble like ants, fleeing the Flame of the Narcos. I brace my blood-soiled sandaled feet on her solid stone and stand tall, my back straight, my skin lit with the celestial ultimate power.
Then I call down on the city. “Traitors!” My voice rumbles, like the goddess herself is speaking from the heavens. “You. Are. Dead.”
Leaping off the statue, I descend to the earth and land with a thunderous boom, the limestone cracking beneath my feet. The combat ceases: swords held mid-swipe; blood halting mid-fall; Flame pausing mid-flicker.
But time has not stopped. I move faster than time.
My fist meets the side of a Narco’s face and his cheek shatters, his bones splintering under the impact. An arc of white light links the tips of my fingers to five torsos. The Narcos convulse, their skin melting from their bones like candlewax. Fitting, I think.
In a flash of blurred movements, I slice through the battle, decimating every Narco along my cut route. I’m not intent on Octavian’s legions, though I feel little pity when their demise is met by my hands. They are dead regardless. This whole city is.
My feet splash through puddles of crimson, and I think back on the Sekhmet feast. Xarion’s arms around me. His warm breath caressing my skin. The chills covering me from his laughter.
I scream.
I unleash my pain on the brawny Narco—the one who slowed my attempt to get to Xarion in the temple.
His bulging arms are lit with his red Flame, the veins beneath his skin thick molten rivers. His eyes widen as I come at him, and he does try to fight. His mass and strength give him false confidence that he may even win.
He should run.
Using the winds to lift me, I meet his flaming eyes straight on, then drive my fist into his chest. The hard muscle gives like papyrus as I tear through his breastbone. His sputtering pleas annoy me, so I rip out his heart to silence him. I toss it to the earth. My foot smashes it into the street before I move toward the next traitor.
The Narcos and soldiers scurry out of my path like cockroaches fleeing the light. My light. I glow with the wrath of the goddess, and I punish all. Just like The Eye of Ra, my bloodlust cannot be sated. Not until every guilty soul has paid.
And as I’m about to end another foolish Narco who thinks herself strong enough to defeat a goddess, a whisper comes to me on the ocean breeze. It stills my hand, my breathing, and my thoughts.
“Xarion . . .?”
The blood and battle and pain fades away as my body hovers toward the silky voice calling my name. My mind blanks at the impossibility, but I don’t care. I’ll gladly welcome the madness if it means I can see him once more—even in death.
Near the harbor, a faint form shimmers into existence, and my heart bangs against the wall of my chest. “Xarion!” And I’m running. I’m to him in a blink, my feet having never touched the ground.
He looks the same, as if he was never taken fro
m me, as if he’s only been away at the palace. “Tell me you’re real,” I plead, reaching my hand toward his smooth face.
“I’m waiting for you.” He presses his palm over my hand, and I shudder at his touch. A hot tear burns a trail down my cheek. “But you can’t meet me yet.”
“No,” I whimper, my body wracked with tremors. Then I can see the difference; his Akh radiates pure light. “Together, forever, remember? I’ll come to you now. I’ll hurl myself into the ocean and be at the gates of the underworld this minute—”
“You must stop, Star.” His hands go to my nape, his fingers sliding into my hair. I imprint his touch. “You can’t become this.” His eyes flicker over the destruction I’ve caused, and a pang hits my chest. “The anger and hatred and vengeance—release it. It will only destroy you, and I need you.”
I nod, over and over. “I’m coming.”
He shakes his head. “I need you to live.” A smile stretches his beautiful lips as his hand moves toward my waist. Then his palm settles on the swell of my belly.
Realization slams my heart, and I press my lips to his—steal this one touch—but he begins to dim. Panic flares as I try to hold on to him. The power demands to take me, and I fade, blackness covering my vision. Xarion’s whispered words of love echo through my mind as I drift away.
Epilogue
“Don’t even think of it, Phoenix.” I eye him sternly.
Flame dances in the center of his palm, the tiny fire curling and swaying. “She has to learn about Narco power eventually.” Ignoring my glare, he moves the little, flickering flame before Caesarie.
Her brilliant blue eyes reflect the flame’s amber glow as they enlarge. She mumbles the word fire, which sounds closer to “pire”, and stretches her tiny, plump digits out to grasp it.
“Don’t touch,” I tell her, capturing her hand. “Only watch, Xarie.”
Her lips spread wide, revealing her little white teeth, as Phoenix casts the flame higher. My heart swells and sinks at once. She looks so much like her father when she smiles, her lips the same full shape, her cheeks bearing his slight dimples. I ache to be with him. But I mourn leaving my daughter.
It’s bittersweet agony.
Pushing my frail frame against the headboard, I try to sit up—to look healthy for Xarie. I don’t want my child’s last memories of me to be filled with my illness. The child, by Kythan law, I shouldn’t have been able to conceive. Whether it was the fact that Xarion was a pharaoh, or the gods chose to bless me, I’ll never be sure. But I choose to believe it was the bond between Xarion and me that made it possible.
Phoenix curls his fingers into his palm, extinguishing his Flame. “Want me to take her out to play?”
I nod. “Please. Just for a little while . . . until it’s time.”
Sadness rims his luminous eyes with deep, dark shadows. “We won’t be long.” After he hoists Xarie onto his back, he clasps my hand and squeezes. Then he races a squealing three-year-old into the desert sun.
It’s so brutal here in the outskirts of Memphis that I almost call after them—remind Phoenix to pull up her hood—but the sound of her small laugh stops me. He takes good care of her. And he always will.
After the ultimate power wreaked much havoc on my body, I collapsed. Fadil did not lie to me; I was not made to house this much power. When Phoenix found me half-dead near the bank of the harbor—guardians and soldiers raving about a slave gone mad and calling for my execution—he shepherded us out of Alexandria and into the desert.
We claimed a small settlement near Memphis as our new home, where Phoenix could easily travel to a populated human city. He offered his servitude to a weapon’s specialist as a blacksmith, his Flame improving the Egyptian’s small iron smelting business. And I offered mine to an old Greek noble woman who adores glass jewelry. She loves it so she comes to my hut to gather it—which alleviated much of the burden of reserving my fading power source.
Word soon came of Octavian boasting his conquest over Egypt. He took monuments and statues from ancient temples and had them restored in Alexandria in honor of himself. He wouldn’t permit the funeral rites to be performed over the royal family. He kept their sarcophaguses in Cleopatra’s mausoleum, showcased as his triumphant conquest over the pharaohs.
Even though Xarion hadn’t appeared to me since that horrid day in Alexandria, I knew his Akh was bound to the earth, roaming, waiting to be welcomed into the underworld. I couldn’t allow Octavian to win this final battle over the Ptolemies.
And I would not tolerate Octavian keeping Xarion as his trophy.
Phoenix and I became grave robbers.
Using the secret access in the Library, we stole one of the scientists carting devices and then broke into Xarion’s sarcophagus and took the inner coffin. With heavy hearts, we left Cleopatra and Antonius, but first performed the rites over them. Then with what conviction I had left, I performed them over Xarion, whispering my temporary goodbyes. I would see him again. Soon.
Now, he’s at rest with his family and the pharaohs of Egypt in the underworld.
And I fade daily. The power took nearly all of my life force, the ink of my Kythan mark barely visible. I only held on for Xarie. After Xarion revealed his line would live on, I fought with everything inside of me to bring her into this world.
I’ve managed to see her grow into a toddler, making sure she was safeguarded from Octavian. He can never discover that a true heir to the Roman throne lives. My time in politics ended that day with Xarion. I only endeavor for our child to live. And to live happily.
After the annexation of Egypt to Rome, Octavian offered the Narcolym servitude within his military legions. Since Cleopatra’s curse ensured the Kythan would never be free of their binds to humans, the Narcos took his offer willingly. Their power helped Octavian found the Roman Empire.
The Shythe, never a race to welcome conflict, scattered to desert towns and cities. They found refuge in serving humans through their glassblowing, making Egyptian glass one of the most sought after luxuries. Some more boisterous Shythe began developing lightings and alternate power sources with Charge, but they were quickly shut down.
The Narcos continue their feuding and warring, searching out Shythe dwellings and annihilating their deemed foes. They refuse for any other race of Kythan to supersede their powers. They develop war machines and devices to power the world. And with these monstrous creations, they travel far, seeking the Leymak; their betrayers.
The Kythan must serve to exist. That was the way of it in the time of the pharaohs, and it will continue to be until one who can wield the ultimate power decides differently.
But that knowledge dies with me.
My head spins with the dizzying thoughts of all our struggles. And as the power has allowed me glimpses into the future, I know there is much more to come. Centuries will pass and races will be wiped out before the curse is broken. I close my eyes and picture the girl’s face who will be the one. The one who will be born from my own bloodline.
When I cross into the underworld and the ultimate power finally releases me, it will travel the aether to find her. An image of her during her Change comes to me—her glowing violet eyes shifting to white with fear, her hands lit with a swirling vortex. In time, she will understand what she must do. This is her legacy.
It’s the reason Xarie must go on where I cannot. Though I know the queen did what she had to during the war as it was not possible to curse just one race—the warring must stop. The Kythan must be freed. Through the descendant of the one who cursed them, will be born one to set them free. I’ve seen it.
Tired of my mind and my aches, I curse my death bed and rise. Slugging toward the open window, I beg the gods for just one cool breeze. I miss the ocean air like I long for Xarion’s sweet touch. Outside my window is nothing but sand and more sand. Though this is the safest place to raise Xarie, I wish I could see the deep blue waters one last time. Show my daughter the wonders of the sea.
From the dunes, the taw
ny sands begin to stir. I hold my breath. The breeze is warm, but I welcome its soft brush. “Thank you,” I whisper. And I know it’s time. I can’t fight the power any longer.
Phoenix’s heavy footfalls sound at the entrance to our hut. “There’s a swell coming off the red land.”
I nod, keeping my gaze on the rising winds.
Xarie wraps her arms around my leg, and I reach down and lift her into my arms. I smooth back her dark locks, look into her gleaming blue eyes. Then unlatching the golden asp necklace from around my neck, I remove it and place it around hers. “Live freely and love bravely, my daughter.”
After I embrace her, Phoenix takes her from my arms and lays her down for a nap. When he returns, I say, “I know she’ll be well guarded, but could you try to keep her ignorant of your whoring ways . . . at least until she’s gone through her Change?”
He chuckles, and my chest tightens. I’m going to miss that sound. “There are no promises where the ladies are concerned.” He winks. “But I do vow to break any boy that tries anything with her. Especially any boy like me.”
I match his smile until his features reveal the tension he’s trying to mask. “I’ll miss you, Star.”
I clear my eyes of the moisture, and repeat the words he once told me. “It doesn’t end here. I’ll miss you until later. Much later.” I smile.
Moving beside Xarion’s coffin, I lie down and settle my hand atop the golden case, my head resting on a silk cushion. As I let go, my soul falling away from my body, Phoenix kneels close, ready to perform the funeral rites.
For a moment, there is nothing. No sound. No color. No coolness or warmth.
Then a lambent light blooms around me, slowly brightening into a brilliance that should hurt my eyes, but it’s as if I’ve waited to experience this real sight my whole life.
My senses flood with feeling, so intense, and then I’m cradled in warmth. The heat stems from my hand and spreads through my body. I look down and lace my fingers through his.
Astarte's Wrath (Kythan Guardians) Page 17