Shardless

by Stephanie Fisher

  Kato was quiet as he stared through the hazy fog just outside the window. “Do you actually expect me to believe that you sent that girl to her death? Taly? Your Taly? Don’t play me for a fool, Skye. A blind man could see what she means to you."

  “We are all having to make sacrifices right now,” Skye interjected quietly, letting every ounce of anguish he currently felt leach into his voice. “And this is not one that I made lightly.”

  A pause, barely half a beat, and then, “Of course, I…” Kato shifted his weight, sensing the genuine heartbreak behind his brother’s words. “I’m sorry.” It looked as though he might say something else. His mouth opened, and his eyes took on a faraway look. Then, thinking better of it, he gave a half-hearted jerk of his head as he turned to go.

  Only when the door clicked closed did Skye finally allow himself to breathe again.

  What the hell had he just done? How much would that lie cost him? Sure, he had covered for Taly before… but this? This was a betrayal to his honor, a renouncement of his duty. She had turned against them. She had somehow become a part of something that had taken thousands of lives. Why else would she have just disappeared after Kato questioned her?

  Pulling her note from his pocket, Skye ran his finger along the few lines of script.

  I have to make this right.

  No. There had to be something that he wasn’t seeing. He refused to believe that Taly was willingly complicit in this nightmare. After all, this was the same girl that hadn’t been able to kill a rabbit. There’s no way she’d be able to take an innocent life. And if Kato had been right about the memory alteration spells, who knew what else could have been done to her. She might not have a choice. She might not even know the full extent of what she was doing.

  That day in the training yard, when you discharged the dagger in my hand, that was when I figured out that… that’s when it started. That’s what she had told him earlier that morning in the library.

  What if someone had gotten to her? She had started going into town more often on her own last year, so it was possible. If that was the case, then maybe he hadn’t really hurt her when he discharged the dagger. Maybe he just destabilized the enchantments that had been placed upon her—just enough that she had become partially aware that something had been done to her. Enough to try to run. To spare them—Skye, Ivain, and Sarina—from something she didn’t understand. That sounded more like the girl he knew.

  With a heavy sigh, Skye sunk down into the high-backed desk chair that had been rolled off to the side. The leather creaked, and the casters groaned as he leaned back. It was pure speculation. Without examining her himself, he had no way to prove Taly’s innocence. Nevertheless, he clung to it. He needed whatever small sliver of hope he could find. Taly was his friend. His best friend. But this risk that he was taking went far beyond that. Beyond friendship, beyond a few stolen kisses or some fledgling infatuation.

  Infatuation. That word gave him pause.

  Shards, he thought, his hand coming to rest on his chest, rubbing at the strange aching void that now seemed to linger there. I’m an idiot. How could he have not seen this? How could he have gone this long without figuring it out? This was Taly, and he’d have to be stupid to think that his feelings for her could ever be anything as insignificant and shallow as infatuation.

  Something clicked into place. Something he’d known for a while now but had refused to admit to himself. The lie he had just told made it impossible to continue to overlook this glaringly obvious truth.

  “Holy shit,” Skye muttered as he continued to stare out the window with unseeing eyes. “I’m in love with her.” He had been for a long time.

  He still clutched her note in his hand.

  Don’t come looking for me.

  Her final request. One that he would not honor. Because he was going to find her. And he was going to help her. Then, when he figured out who had dared to lay a hand on what was his to protect, he was going to kill them. With their last dying breath, he would make sure they understood the gravity of the mistake they had made when they had come to his island and brought harm to his Taly.

  Chapter 25

  -A letter from Sir Bryer, Knight of the Crystal Guard, to his son, Aiden Bryer

  The 32nd day of the month Yule, during the 235th year of the Empty Throne

  Son,

  I’m afraid I’ve been called away on a mission of the utmost importance and will be unable to return home as planned. We believe someone connected to the Genesis Shards may be in grave danger, and I’ve been chosen to oversee the escort and protection detail.

  I know this news couldn’t have come at a worse time. I too am feeling the loss of your aunt and baby cousin, and I’m sorry that I’m not able to be there to comfort you. Given how close you and Aimee were with little Rin, I’m sure this must be devastating. However, as you well know, members of the Crystal Guard carry a heavy burden. It is our sole duty to serve and protect the Genesis Lords, and I am honor-bound to uphold my oath. I hope that one day, you’ll understand.

  I cannot say how long I will be gone this time. A year at the very least. Look after your mother and your sister and be sure to practice your magic. I know you’ve always been disappointed that you didn’t attune to water, but I’m still very proud of you. Earth magic is a powerful discipline, and I know that with time and training, you will excel.

  For what it’s worth, I still take Aki with me everywhere I go. Although it’s been many years since you gave me your beloved teddy bear, he’s kept me company on many a long night. I imagine he’ll have more than a few stories to tell when I return. Stories that I hope you are willing to hear.

  Always know that wherever I go, I carry you, your mother, and your sister in my heart. There is not a day, not a single hour, that goes by that you are not in my thoughts.

  With all my love, always until the end,

  Your father

  Night had finally fallen, and with it came the screams.

  Although he tried, Aiden couldn’t completely stop the trembling in his hands as he stood atop the walls of Ryme. The sea of rustling treetops stretched out for as far as his eyes could see, kissing the inky blackness of the horizon in a haze of starlight, and the silvery light of the first rising moon bathed the land below in a soft glow. On any other night, the view would have been intensely beautiful, even serene. But tonight, the descending blanket of darkness only carried with it the promise of fear.

  “Help me!” came another cry. A woman this time. “Somebody! Please! They’ve taken my child!”

  It’s not real, Aiden thought. A muscle in his jaw began to feather. They’re just shades, not people.

  His hand tightened on the hilt of the sword strapped to his waist. The design for the blade was simple, almost austere. A single shadow crystal had been set into the base of the pommel, and three luminous water crystals, each inscribed with a different spell, had been embedded in the hilt. Originally a part of his father’s collection, the crystals had been a gift from his mother before his household had given her, as well as all of his father’s possessions, to the man that would become his stepfather—Lord Thorn.

  Now there was someone that Aiden would love nothing more than to throw off the side of the wall to the creatures that prowled down below. Lord Thorn was constantly belittling Aiden’s father, a Knight of the Crystal Guard that had selflessly given up his life in the line of duty. After all, as his stepfather liked to point out, how could a man that had absconded with his Feseraa only to, of all things, marry her, have honor? How could a man that had tried to teach his children to be kind even to those below their station have integrity? How could a man that had loved and sacrificed for his family be worthy of remembrance or celebration? No, in the eyes of fey society, the scandal of marrying a human was the only thing that mattered now that Sir Bryer, one of the greatest water mages of his time, was only a memory.

  Aiden held on to that spark of anger. Anger was better than fear. Anger would keep him from brea
king.

  “Help!” A child—his wailing sobs echoed out over the treetops. “Mommy!” Terror, pure and primal, laced the desperate cry.

  “No.” Ivain placed a hand on Aiden’s shoulder when he unknowingly started to move down the ramparts. “Remember, it’s just a trick. They’re trying to lure us out from behind the wall.”

  The older shadow mage looked beaten down as he leaned against the parapet, his practical-yet-stately leather armor streaked with pieces of ooze and viscera. His white-blonde hair was slicked back with sweat, and his hands had been bathed in blackened blood. A rapier that looked to have been forged from starlight itself was strapped to his waist, and the grip peeking out of the worn leather scabbard bore such an intricately carved relief of two foxes playing in a glen that the shadows and moonlight almost seemed to breathe life into the motionless creatures.

  Aiden clenched his jaw, doing his best to tune out the babel of desperate pleas coming from down below. He had been at the clinic when the first explosion hit. Thinking that there had been an accident, he and several of the menders had rushed toward the sound, ready to tend to the wounded, only to find that a veritable nightmare was unfolding. Undead monsters, shades as Ivain had later clarified, were streaming through the gates, ruthlessly cutting down anyone in their way.

  It was pure chaos for a while. As he tried to recall the specifics of those first few moments now from the relative safety of the wall, Aiden’s mind kept going back to how the ground had felt slick beneath his boots as bright rivers of crimson had begun to flow. He kept thinking about how the smoke from the explosions had looked like steam in the chill spring air. Such insignificant details, but ones that he couldn’t seem to make himself forget.

  Aiden jumped when he felt the hand on his shoulder give an encouraging squeeze. “You did well today,” Ivain said quietly, staring out over the darkened forest. “Your father would’ve been proud.”

  “I failed,” Aiden replied, equally quiet. Although he had tried to fight back, assemble those around him, their response was too delayed and disorganized to do anything more than slow down the enemy’s advance. With no one manning the gates, he had managed to partially block off the entrance to the city with earth magic, but the city’s defenses had already been breached before he’d gotten to the main fight. They had already lost.

  Ivain patted him on the back before placing both hands back on the wall. “You did what you could with an impossible situation.”

  Aiden ran a hand over his shorn head, remembering how his mother had teared up when he’d had to cut his hair for his initiation into the Crystal Guard. All that night, when he caught her staring, she had just kept saying that he looked like his father. Without the scars and the beard, of course. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, uncle, but we would’ve lost the city if you and Sarina hadn’t shown up when you did.”

  Aiden eyed the deceptively lanky man standing next to him. He had heard stories of his uncle’s prowess on the battlefield, but he had never seen him use the full extent of his power. A veritable blur, Ivain had effortlessly zigzagged through the throng of creatures, ripping out the crystals in their chests with alarming precision. Sarina had walked behind her brother at a far more sedate pace, her form awash in white-hot flames. Seemingly bored, she had bathed the battlefield with fire as she ignited the bodies falling to the ground. The battle ended very quickly following their arrival. The two siblings worked together with the kind of efficiency and expertise that could only come with years of training together side-by-side.

  “Help!” The familiar cry pierced the night air. What Aiden knew to be the soft, lilting voice of one of the gentlest souls he had ever encountered was now edged with abject terror.

  “That’s one of the menders.” Aiden turned for the stairs, but Ivain caught his arm.

  There was pity in his uncle’s eyes when he said, “It’s not her anymore. They’ve already had more than enough time to convert the captives into shades.”

  Aiden shook his head, refusing to believe it. “Then how can she still speak? The ones that attacked us today couldn’t speak.”

  “Because she’s fresh,” Ivain replied. “When the bodies have not yet had time to decay, they can still speak. Without the proper enchantments, though, their vocal cords will rot out over time. The ones we saw today were old—several centuries, I’d say. Nothing more than shock troops.”

  “So everyone that they took today…?” Aiden asked, dreading the answer. “No,” he spat angrily. “You don’t know that. You can’t know that.”

  “I can, and I do.” Ivain sighed. He was silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his eyes looked far away. “I was conscripted to fight in the Shade Rebellion only a few days after I turned 200. This was when we thought we were still fighting over some stupid piece of land on the other side of the Odyssea Gate. I had only been at the war camp in Amaranthe for a week when we found out that House Myridan had allied with the giants. These creatures were monstrous, or so we thought at the time. Almost 20 feet tall, a single eye. Their warriors had ripped out their teeth and replaced them with spears of sharpened steel. It was the stuff of nightmares.

  “Even though my unit prevailed, we were unprepared for that first battle with House Myridan and the giants. We lost a lot of people—people that we left on the battlefield while we tended to our wounded. Imagine our surprise when our dead walked back into the camp the next morning—a little pale but seemingly whole and alive, if a little confused.” Ivain stopped here, his lips set in a stern line. The muscles in his neck flexed as he swallowed convulsively.

  “We let them in,” he continued, his voice strained, “thinking that maybe the Shards had granted us a blessing. But our joy was short-lived. House Myridan attacked us again that night. Not from across the battlefield. From within our own camp. Our soldiers. They had turned our own people against us.

  “We tried to fight back, but you can’t kill something that’s not alive. We slashed and hacked at those that we had welcomed back that morning, but they just got back up, reattaching limbs regardless of whether it had been theirs to begin with. My entire unit was slaughtered that night. The only reason I survived was because I ran. I ran despite the screams at my back. I ran despite the stench of my comrades’ own blood that filled my nose. I and the few others that managed to survive—we’re alive because we ran. We were able to warn the Genesis Council and their commanders because we ran. The war would’ve been lost if not for our cowardice.”

  Aiden felt rooted to the spot. He had never heard his uncle speak more than a few words at a time regarding his involvement in the Shade Rebellion. The flickering light from a nearby lamp cast a long shadow over the older man’s haggard face as he continued his story. “This is not an enemy that you can fight with honor, boy. Anyone that has stooped so low as to create shades, to raise the dead and brutalize their bodies for personal gain, has abandoned integrity. We will do what we can to help those that we lost, but you need to accept right now that we won’t be able to save them all. As much as it pains me to say it, sometimes, it will be better to run. Sometimes, the greater good will require the abandonment of the fallen. And as you will come to learn, sometimes, it will be kinder to kill. For those that have already been captured, a swift death would be a mercy.”

  Not for the first time that day, Aiden’s stomach sank. Straightening his shoulders, he looked out over the crowd of people that stood along the wall. A few shadow mages stalked up and down the walkway behind him, trying to repair the wards that had been damaged in the initial blast. Thankfully, the protective spells woven between the very stones of the towering city walls had absorbed the brunt of the explosion, sparing the main gates. Lazy wisps of smoke still rippled through the air, blotting out the starlit sky, but Ryme’s defenses were intact.

  “Anything?” a new voice asked wearily. “Were you able to find them?”

  Turning, Aiden saw Sarina trudging down the walkway. Her clothes had been singed and her skirts ripped, bu
t she was otherwise unharmed.

  Closing his eyes, Aiden mentally prodded at the two locator spells he currently had active. After having spent most of the afternoon tending to the wounded, his magic was spent, and he barely had enough aether left to pluck at the strings of the enchantments. Thankfully, he’d had the foresight to cast the spells several days ago, just after he returned to the manor only to find that Taly had decided to tag along with Skye.

  “I found them,” he replied, the ardent look of hope that lit up Sarina’s face making his stomach churn. “Skye is in Ebondrift, but Taly’s not with him. I don’t have enough aether left to get an exact location, but I think she’s somewhere just outside of Vale.”

  Sarina smoothed back her auburn hair and wiped at a few stray tears that had streaked her soot-stained cheeks. “I should be angry,” she whispered. “Shards, I should be angry at that girl. And you, for letting her leave,” she said, turning to Aiden, who hung his head.

  Even though Sarina couldn’t know the full extent of his guilt, the reprimand struck at him, wedging open something that had already cracked. He had failed his duty as a Crystal Guardsman. The first link to the Time Shard to surface in over two centuries, and he had lost her. “I’m sorry, Sarina,” he said, looking away. “If I’d known that Taly would immediately up and leave to follow Skye to Ebondrift, I never would’ve cleared her. I would’ve told her she needed to stay in bed.”

  Sarina sighed as she came to stand next to Ivain. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” she amended when she saw the stricken look on Aiden’s face. “It’s not your fault. Even on her best behavior, Taly is difficult and headstrong. And honestly, I can’t help but think that everything worked out for the best. If she had stayed, she very well might’ve been all alone at the manor when those things attacked, and we wouldn’t have been able to get to her. Thank the Shards that Aimee just happened to come into town with you today and that the fighting never reached the clinic.”