I brushed one hand over her forehead, getting little response. Her face was bathed in sweat, her lips dry and eyes closed, tiny tears seeping from the corners. Wet gurgles replaced soft breath.
There was zero remorse in my body as I let go of Dayne’s golden charm. It had once been all I felt like I had in the world. In that moment, it was nothing more than a piece of metal. A symbol at best. Giving it to Anyi gave it a purpose, gave it greatness. I brushed my thumb over its intricate scroll work one last time as I slid it into place on her tiny wrist.
A gift to the gods. Asking them to take sweet Anyi to their home in the heavens.
The uncertainty that had stolen my waking thoughts crept back to the forefront of my mind.
Why would I offer this gift to gods I had insisted didn’t exist? The answer was simple. I still doubted I had the power to save her. If I failed, I hoped there was still some way for Chassan to make her death beautiful, as he had promised.
An ear splitting cry echoed over the Andes and behind me I heard the awkward shuffles of the soldiers falling to the ground. Chassan had arrived. His condor god’s body circling overhead to take this beautiful little soul before the fire was even lit. That had to be the stuff of great legends. Had to.
I wiped my cheek with the back of the hand that clasped Anyi’s, leaning over her quivering little body as I placed a delicate kiss on her forehead. Her eyes opened.
“Faye,” she said in the tiniest voice I had ever heard, like a baby bird whispering to its mother.
“Anyi,” I answered. Her eyes danced one last time, a weak hand raised to my cheek and then fell. Her body went limp.
My brain screamed so loudly it could’ve shaken the mountains to their knees. But I held it in. Her chest labored with breath and I knew there was no time to waste.
Retaking my place by an impatient shaman and a group of prostrate soldiers, I turned my eyes to the heavens.
Chassan circled slowly in the air, as if hanging on a breeze, waiting for the smoke to rise.
The shaman stepped forward with his bundles of burning sage.
My eyes darted nervously around the mountain side, my breath coming faster and shallower at the same time. I couldn’t take her back to the trail, they would catch me. A cliff jutted into the air to my right, into a valley I had never laid eyes on before. That’s where I would have to go. Leap into the air with little Anyi and let the witnesses assume we had fallen to our death. No one knew that my body was strong enough to withstand a fall like that. With Anyi carefully protected in my arms, she would make it too.
At least, I hoped she would.
Chassan could certainly catch me. He was faster in condor form than he was as a human. The only thing I had going for me was the element of surprise.
Newly emboldened blood sizzled in my veins, each second feeling like an hour as the shaman approached Anyi with slow, halting steps. I narrowed my eyes triumphantly. Had he finally realized how barbaric his actions were?
The mountain top ceased to exist to my human senses. The heavy breathing and restless movements of the soldiers were muted. The musty smell of the ground and sickening scent of sage vanished from my nostrils. The shaman’s endless chanting faded from my consciousness.
It was just me and Anyi. Tunnel like vision took over my eyes, I could feel her heartbeats like a bass drum in my chest. Hear the strong, steady sound of my lungs drawing more air to supply the muscles that were getting ready to pounce like a hungry lioness.
As if in slow motion, the embered tip of sage touched the dry grass and the shaman all but somersaulted away.
A great inferno of flames erupted from the base of the stone where Anyi lay, bursting high into the air. Chassan called overhead, signaling his descent into the smoke.
Anyi coughed and it sounded like thunder in my ears. A helpless whine escaped her lips and that was all I needed. The flames were raging now, leaping into the air and making her body all but invisible.
I closed my eyes, gathered my thoughts, and my feet began to move before my brain told them too. Instincts I didn’t know I possessed took over.
Pushing off the ground with so much power it would’ve broken human legs, I crossed the gap between me and Anyi with two steps. The shaman yelled behind me, but I didn’t care.
I launched my body from the ground in a graceful leap, my toes thrusting away from the earth as if I would never need it again. In mid air, I rearranged my body so that I could wrap myself around Anyi, covering as much of her as possible, on contact.
At least that’s what I thought I would do.
I wasn’t prepared for what the fire would do.
On impact, the roaring flames let out a thunderous belch, groaning as if my body were the only food they needed to live. A collective gasp circled the men and they fell prostrate on the ground, even the ones who had moved to restrain me.
I was standing over Anyi, legs protectively placed on either side of her. The fire ceased to burn the remaining straw but began to climb up my length instead, the blue caftan dripping like candle wax as it melted away in flaming red droplets.
The commotion woke little Anyi, and she curled into a ball at my feet, her hands reaching up for me. Dayne’s bracelet caught my eye.
I was naked now, clothed only in the flames that would have killed her. On me they found a new source of life, rising high into the sky, sucking every hot ember from the pyre to me like a magnet.
My skin never charred. My hair never singed. And never once, did the fire that ravaged me feel anything but right.
My chest opened, letting the fire wash down my throat, hot and parching, but feeling as if it were the nectar of the gods. In their sockets, my eyeballs simmered, but not in a way that brought pain. No, the simmering only burned away what weak human vision had hidden my true sight for eighteen years. The world came into focus, brighter, clearer, suddenly seen with eyes that were brand new, and razor sharp.
The flames licked my muscles, strengthening them, steeling them, making me feel as if I could crumbled the mountains to dust with a single blow.
Gingerly, I lifted Anyi into my arms and carried her off the altar. Even though my body was still consumed by flames, not a single one touched her. Instead, they clung to my body or simply disappeared where our skin met.
The shaman—even though being a man who supposedly talked to the gods on a regular basis—was shocked into mannequin stillness by my revelation. He stood, eyes wide as buckets, shrinking away as I approached. Robotically, his arms shot out when I offered Anyi to him. He took her and then fell to his knees at my feet.
“This ends here!” I barked and turned back to the altar. With confident strides, I strode around behind it, balled both fists, and raised them into the air. Fixing the shaman with a hard gaze, I lowered my fists on the stone altar, shattering it to dust in one easy blow. An ear splitting crack peeled over the Andes and rang all the way to the sea. Its echo so forceful, the forest trembled.
Through the cloud of dust and flames, my eyes fluttered to Anyi—whose bright black black gaze danced. Then up to Chassan—who watched me from high above with angry ochre eyes.
His beak curled into a vicious looking snarl. The flames consuming my body flared and crackled against my skin, stoked by the anger his look awakened within me.
But I knew it wasn’t time to pick that fight. Not yet.
I leapt into the air, my muscles so strong I was halfway to the cliff when I landed on ground again. The flames followed me, leaving the pile of stone rubble, dried grass—and most importantly Anyi—without a whisper of soot.
As my feet landed on the stone outcrop I pushed off, leaping into the air and spreading my arms out wide. The muscles rippled in response, straining against fiery skin from fingertip, to bicep, to back.
A collection of gasps and praises followed me as I hovered in the air and then began to free fall to the valley below.
With my arms out to the side and my legs straight behind, I was able to navigate my fall like I
was flying.
The forest swallowed me up when I reached the bottom. I rolled on the thick lush foliage and extinguished my body. My pale skin was covered in soot and the smudge of ashes, but I didn’t have time to stop. I ran like Chassan had taught me, by nothing but my own primal instincts. Down to the forest outside the village. To where I had hidden a pack for Anyi and me.
My original plan had been to pull her from the fire and take her with me. But the fire had other plans. Quickly I dressed, threw my pack on my back and began running again.
My mind raced faster than my body as I tore through the microclimates back to Aguas Calientes. What I had just done made my old life impossible to return to. The Q’ero would keep the secret of what I had done. It wouldn’t make the papers. That wasn’t their way. I didn’t fear mere humans knowing what I was.
I feared Chassan. He knew my secret now, and if he found me, death would follow with him.
Chapter Twenty Five
Disappear
My plan was simple. I had to disappear, vanish just like I had the summer before.
Returning to St. Anne’s or Atlanta would put my family and friends at unnecessary risk. Chassan would ceaselessly hunt me down. Bound by some archaic duty to extinguish fire when it crawled from its prison beneath the earth. It was only a matter of time before he found me. Picking up my old life as Faye Kent when I had an angel of death hunting me wasn’t an option.
In my mind, there was only one option. I had to get back to Dayne. I had to find my way back to LisTirna, because I knew, bracelet or not, he would never let Chassan, or anyone else, hurt me.
That much he had promised.
But there were a few major problems with that plan. A) I didn’t have the cash for a plane ticket to Ireland. B) There’s no way I could get past Arabette without her alerting all of LisTirna to my arrival. And C) How would Dayne ever be able to disobey the Queen’s will?
But he was the only hope I had.
I hadn’t slept in 48 hours when my plane landed in San Francisco. Not that it mattered. When my body had entered the fire on Anyi’s pyre any human weaknesses that remained burned away, like the need for sleep or food.
As I pushed my way through the busy terminal, people were staring at me, pausing to whisper to their neighbors behind cupped hands as I passed. I ducked into the first bathroom I found, just to be sure my eyes weren’t glowing, or anything weird like that.
Slinging my heavy backpack onto the worn stone countertop in the crowded bathroom, I gasped and slapped a hand over my mouth.
No wonder people were staring. I barely recognized the reflection myself.
It wasn’t me.
Well, it was me, but it was like I had just left some high fashion photo shoot without washing off the make up or pulling back my impeccably styled hair. The only problem?
I wasn’t wearing any make up and hadn’t touched my hair in days.
Leaning into the mirror so closely it began to fog under my breath, I inspected every infinitesimal detail of my face under the harsh florescent lights.
Once pale and splotchy, my skin now glowed with the airbrushed perfection of porcelain, softly pinked at the apple of my cheeks. The bones under my flawless skin had shifted ever so slightly, but so dramatically that my face was more angular, more refined, more like the painted women who lined Ennishlough’s great hall.
Ruby red lips plumped in a sexy pout where an ordinary mouth once sat, and when I pulled them into a wary smile, my teeth were so dazzlingly white I immediately bit my lip to hide them.
My eyes, until that point hazel and boring, were an alluring swirl of colors. Darkest blue ringed the outer circle of color, which faded from navy to teal to aquamarine before ending in gold near a pupil that was barely there at all. It was beyond startling to stare at eyes that were not my own.
When I noticed a woman to my right glaring at me as dumbly as I was staring at myself as she washed her hands, I snapped away from the mirror and began to dig in my bag with shaky hands as if I weren’t completely freaked out by the stranger in the mirror.
At the bottom of my bag I found a discarded hair tie. Turning back to the mirror, I marveled over my golden ringlets. Not a single strand stood out of place. It was as if someone had taken one of those tiny curling irons and fretted over every strand of the usually chaotic mess until it cascaded like a wig. No one in the world had hair naturally so polished, especially not people debarking from an eight hour flight. No wonder people were staring.
Wanting to leave without being discovered, I began to tie my hair back, and dug in my bag for the baseball cap I hoped I had packed.
“No way!” The woman to my right exclaimed as if she had suddenly won a Vegas jackpot. “You’re Faye Kent! The girl who disappeared in Ireland last summer!” The woman had whipped out her camera phone while I was transfixed by my new face and began to snap pictures. I raised a hand for cover. “The camera really doesn’t do you justice. Now it makes sense why that Greek god of a man would run away with you!” She laughed, as if the old Faye hadn’t been pretty enough to get a guy like Dayne.
Without even thinking, I slapped the phone from her hand. It flew through the air like a bullet and smacked against the cream tiled wall where it shattered in a million pieces. We stared blankly at each other, me trying to calm the fiery rage that tingled along my spine, her trying to figure out what had just happened. Slowly, she sunk to the floor with wide eyes, and began scooping up the shards of plastic and metal, cursing me under her breath.
Regret and fear curled around my belly when I realized how instinctual—and dangerous—my petulant outburst had been. What had I just done? Breaking people’s cell phones wasn’t keeping a low profile. No doubt this episode would be all over the news sites before I made it back to St. Anne’s. What was even more troubling was the uncontrollable force wielding sway over my actions, something primal and innate that wasn’t tame enough to blend into this world.
“No pictures!” I snapped, digging through my bag for the wads of money my parents had sent me for Christmas.
The woman stood back up, remains of her cell phone in her hand as she stared at me with evil eyes.
“Here!” I barked, and shoved the bills at her as I slung my bag over my shoulder and ducked out of the bathroom.
Back out in the bustle of the terminal I tried to blend in. With my hair tied back, I wasn’t as obvious, but people still stared. Slipping my sunglasses into place, I kept my head down and all but ran from the airport, jumping into a waiting cab that would take me back to the secluded safety of St. Anne’s.
But that was only a temporary stop. I couldn’t stay. Now that Chassan knew what I was, he would hunt me like a wanted fugitive. And no place in this world was safe enough to hide me. I had to find a way to LisTirna. Had to.
The thought of using my parent’s credit card came to mind as the cab made its way through a snarl of traffic to the open roads. It was wrong on so many levels to use it to buy my plane ticket, but it was the only quick access to money I had. They had told me I could use it in case of emergency, and although they would never understand, my life had reached a state of natural disaster.
St. Anne’s was dark and sleepy when the cab dropped me off in front of Hawthorne Hall. Students weren’t due back for several days. There were only a few things I had to get and I would be gone long before they returned. I also wanted to call Rose and Phin, hear there voice one last time before I disappeared for what I was sure would be forever. But what other choice did I have?
If I stayed in this world Chassan would kill me. He had told me that much. Chassan was death, that I was sure of. He may have saved me before, but now that he knew the truth behind my magic he would never save me again. Why my heart ached every time that thought crossed my mind, I didn’t know.
I slipped past the resident assistant’s room, remembering how different my life had been just a few weeks before when she had returned my bracelet and started this whole mess in the first place.
The rest of the hallway was silent and dark, except another swath of light coming under my dorm room door. I must have forgotten to turn it off in my haste to leave for Peru.
Turning the knob ever so slowly, so it wouldn’t make a sound, the door barely creaked on its hinges as it swung open. When my eyes focused in the bright light, I was staring at two angry faces that froze the blood in my veins.
I groaned inwardly at the sight of them. Obviously, they had been waiting for my return which was odd since I hadn’t told them where I was to begin with. Their faces wore a discordant mask of anger and concern, both happy to see me alive and well, but irritated with me at the same time.
“Faye!” Mattie half screamed like I was an intruder coming into her room. She and Sam sat on my bed, reading a magazine and sharing a half eaten cheese pizza. They both stopped mid sentence, Mattie’ hand freezing halfway to her mouth holding a thick slice of cheese pie. I froze too, wishing I could erase people’s minds like Dayne did and make them forget they had ever seen me.
As their eyes studied the new and improved Faye both faces slowly fell slack in shock until they stared wide eyed and open mouthed as if I were a total stranger walking through the door.
I was caught off guard for so many reasons. Students weren’t due back yet. Why were they here? Mattie was supposed to be in Paris and Sam wasn’t coming back from her father’s until the first day of class.
Sam recovered first, rising from the bed, walking trancelike to where I stood and giving me a stiff hug. As she pulled away, she couldn’t take her eyes off me, tugging at the rubber band and ball cap to release my hair. Running her fingers through it, she began to smile.
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