Lunav

by Jenn Polish

  “This is soul keeping magic, Sadie. The Controller’s a soul keeper. She’s trying to save your brother.”

  Dull recognition courses through me. Her Healing magic is that same golden, soul keeping color. She’d spoken so kindly, but so warningly, to Blaze and Aon, when Aon told her they wanted to learn to be soul keepers.

  Heat swirls through my core as I stare at her, openmouthed.

  She’s a soul keeper. I can Dream.

  The glow is filling her now, and I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.

  Evelyn smiles softly, like she can feel me watching her, feel me understanding. Her eyes roll into the back of her head and she licks her lips absently, arching her chest up toward the sky. Her arms float up, seemingly of their own accord. For a bizarre moment, I imagine that she is about to take flight.

  Silence. Only breathing.

  And then a small, high-pitched moan comes from her lips, and the golden glow leaves her, undulating ethereally toward the other side of the Plains, where Banion, Aon’s hatchling tree, is rooted. The reddish glow Evelyn coaxed from Aon’s still body swims soundlessly through the destruction-ridden Plains until it reaches Banion’s roots. It seeps into the ground and weaves through each root up into the ropelike tendrils of Banion’s trunk. The reddish hue of Aon’s glow—of Aon’s soul, I realize numbly—melts effortlessly into the golden-brown, green-tinged waves of Banion’s.

  Close by me, Evelyn gasps, and she’s sweating, glowing golden, one arm out toward Banion, one toward Aon’s limp body, her head lolled back, guiding the flow of their souls. She looks like she’s unconscious, like she’ll crumple at any moment. I start forward to touch her, but Jax holds out his hands to stop me.

  I pause only a flutter from her, ready to catch her if she wavers.

  She doesn’t. A low roar reaches us from Banion, and the dragon bulb that hangs, never to hatch, on his branches glows so bright for a moment that we all have to turn away. But it only lasts for a moment. When I look back, each one of Banion’s spiney leaves is the wildest, most brilliant green I have ever seen, ever could have imagined. They’re greener than the healthiest grass on the sunniest day; richer than the sight of entire communities of vibrant coral under the Flowing on the purest Highland beaches. I didn’t know colors could be that bright, didn’t know anything could be so full; Banion’s canopy looks ready to lift his entire body, roots and all, into flight, into the depths of the bluest sky.

  Until abruptly, it stops. All that green; the golden-brown tint of Banion’s soul; everything fades back into Aon’s red one, and their waves seep back down Banion’s trunk, back through his roots, back through the air.

  Back to this side of the Plains. Back into Aon’s dead body.

  The Plains seem extremely dark, even though by now, the sun is starting to peek over the treetops.

  More silence.

  “Come on, Aon.”

  My brother gasps loudly, his chest rising for the first time in too long. His face bathes in a deep golden glow inflected with green that’s started to shine out through the haze across the Plains. A sob wracks through my chest.

  Five pairs of hands swarm forward to hold Aon steady as he tries to sit, struggling to haul himself up onto his elbows.

  “What… did I die?” His voice is creaky and both my moms draw him into their embrace, heads buried on his chest. My hands are all over his wings, his hair, and Jax’s hands are covering his own face as he rocks back and forth softly. Evelyn leans back on her haunches, a small smile on her lips, tears streaking her face, back to its regular, smooth brown.

  “You said you wanted to be a soul keeper,” she whispers to him. “I’m afraid this doesn’t make you one, but it does mean you and your hatchling tree were brought back to life by one.”

  Aon blinks rapidly, staring at Evelyn like she just sprouted a third arm and a pair of dragon wings.

  “You…you’re a…”

  She nods, that smile growing bigger, and I wonder if she’s ever told anyone before, ever shown anyone what she could do.

  “I’ve known since I was a young one. Kept it very hidden, of course. I’ve never soul kept for someone with a hatchling mate, so when I realized you’d… I’m sorry, that you’d…”

  “Died,” Aon supplies, and he sounds excited now. Mom and Mama laugh until they’re sobbing again into his side.

  “Right. I reached out to your hatchling tree—Sadie pointed him out last night—and of course he gave consent. I facilitated the melding of your souls, in my body and in his, to help me heal your body. To bring you back with your body. You… you’re both fine now, I think. I mean, you seem to be. Do you feel all right?”

  Aon flexes his wings and his eyes well up. Evelyn looks concerned, but he shakes his head. “I wish Blaze was here,” he says, and I squeeze his shoulder before standing up and crossing over him to get to Evelyn.

  She takes my hand and rises too, backing a little away from the others.

  “That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. A soul keeper.”

  “You can imagine why I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “You saved his life, Evelyn, I… I can never repay you for that.”

  She turns toward my growns, toward Aon. That smile comes back to her face. “That’s all I’ll ever need.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “There was a lightning storm in Izla, when I was a young one. I was outside alone, and one of the trees was struck, and she spoke to me, with her soul… I’ve never known how to describe it. And I hosted her.” She meets my eyes, licks her lips.

  “That’s not what you wanted to ask me about.”

  I shift uncomfortably. Now that Aon’s alive and safe, the battle has returned to the front of my mind. The battle, the arrow in my flesh, Zaylam’s screams… Reve’s voice.

  “Evelyn.” I take her hands. “Reve called you Your Majesty. Why?”

  “Sadie…”

  “What did he mean, Evelyn?”

  “Sadie, I can’t. Aon’s safe, I need to leave, and I can’t, I won’t… It won’t matter if they wipe Reve’s memories successfully. Xavier cast a spell over them both, so that he Dreams whatever Reve sees. The perfect spy. I felt the Energies twist—didn’t you?—the taste of Dreaming, whenever he was close to me.”

  I scratch roughly at my ear. “So the king Dreams what Reve sees? And he doesn’t think that’s a bit hypocritical, that he’s gonna bring the plague down on everyone? But wait, Reve’s a spy? Like me? Or like, for the king? And you’re not answering me, Evelyn, he called you…”

  “Shush, I’m getting to it, but there isn’t a lot of time. Sadie, Xavier sent him here to test me, and he did, when they tried to attack the Underland. And Xavier didn’t like what he saw, so they had Blaze killed, they attacked tonight…” She starts rocking, and her voice cracks with guilt. I put my hands on her shoulders. “And whatever Reve sees, Xavier sees in those controlled Dreams, so by now Xavier must know…”

  “Whose side you were fighting on, yeah. But—” I shiver slightly, my mind spinning, as even in her own panic, she reaches over to my side and soothes my hastily sealed wound with golden threads twirling out of her fingertips. “But why did he call you Your Majesty, Evelyn? And the king! Why would the king spy on you, why are you suddenly calling him Xavier like you’re on first-name basis with him?”

  She looks up at me, and the tears in her eyes make my heart stop.

  “Because I am his wife.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I’VE BEEN HOVERING in front of her and unceremoniously fall out of the air, my foot collapsing beneath me as it touches down first. I feel her try to catch me, but I don’t want to be caught. My face hits the parched, hard dirt of the Plains, but I don’t lift my head. Until I hear the soft crack of her knees as she squats next to me, her hand stroking my wing tentatively. I drag my head up.

  “You’re…the queen.”

  “I never meant to deceive you,” she breathes. I blink, and I’m dimly away of
my eyes hardening, my lips slightly parted in disbelief.

  “Never meant to deceive me? A soul keeper, the…the queen, Evelyn, and you never meant to—”

  “Oh, spare me, Sadie, we’re not in one of your ethics learning pods. It’s not as if you wouldn’t have built a relationship with me that wasn’t built on lies.”

  “Evelyn, I—”

  “Were you going to meet me for dinner the night after you saved Iema, if I hadn’t turned up in the Gathering the next sunup as Controller?” Her eyes are blazing, and I gulp.

  “Evelyn, what—”

  “Were you planning on meeting me at the Lethean Inn for a date—”

  “So it was a date—” She’s not amused.

  “Sadie—”

  I toss up my hands. “Yes, all right, yes.”

  “And I imagine you wouldn’t have let me see these beautiful wings of yours, would you? You would have kept them hidden away, lying about your entire life, your history, your people—” She’s almost crying now, her eyes wide and not matching the anger of her voice.

  “All right, yeah, but that didn’t happen—”

  “Sadie, I’m sorry. I can’t say anything else. I’m sorry I lied to you. But you can’t insist on taking this so personally when I needed…I needed… you don’t know what it’s like to… Sadie, I never wanted to be his wife.”

  Mom puts her hand on my wing sprouts, and I jump at her presence. But her eyes are soft, on Evelyn.

  “I know what that feels like, Contro—Evelyn. I do. Listen to her, Sadie. Hear her out.” Her voice is soft, and I look over her shoulder at Mama, who nods over Aon’s head, nuzzled into her torso, before turning back to the dragons and trees she’s trying to help Jax heal.

  I take a shaky breath. “All right. Tell me.”

  Evelyn stands as Mom backs away again, nodding her confused thanks. I brace my hands on the ground for leverage and fly up toward Evelyn, but she holds up her hands and steps back like she thinks I’m about to hit her.

  My heart breaks.

  I hold up my hands, palms first, and approach more cautiously. I touch her waist as gently as my shaking hands allow. Her body relaxes and she clears her throat.

  “I was born a duchess in Ilza, and when Xavier’s father began the occupation there, he had my mother killed for insubordination. He brought me back to marry his son as a symbol of what he called the peace between our peoples.” Her voice is soft, steady. Bitter.

  My brow furrows. “But he took over Izla so many harvests ago. You must have been…”

  Evelyn smiles softly as my arm muscles tense under her hands.

  “Young? I was. Xavier, Fiora, and I grew up together.” Her gaze is distant now, and she looks idly at Aon over my shoulder, like she’s seeing her past burn behind me.

  “Does he know you’re a soul keeper?” My voice is cracking.

  There’s gravel in hers. “No. My mother died keeping the secret, and my father never would have… It’s a long story, we don’t have time—” She changes the topic, speaking quickly now. “Fiora had just died and I begged him to let me leave the grounds that were so full of our memories. He was the one who told me the Grovian rebels did it, murdered her through exposing her to a young one who hadn’t been Initiated, and I was broken, Sadie, angry, so I believed him. He sent me to the Grove as Controller to give me a taste of real power, of hurting the people who’d taken Fiora from me. And then I met you, and I—”

  Her voice cracks. Our eyes meet. “But really, he ordered Fiora’s death,” I offer.

  She nods. “Reve saw Fi and I together the night before she fell ill; we weren’t joiners, not exactly, but what we thought of ourselves together wouldn’t have mattered to him, so it’s no coincidence. Nor is it a coincidence that Blaze fell ill right after I denied Reve and the Mach access to the Underlands.” She blinks tears out of her eyes, and I catch them with my lips.

  “They must have chosen quer because a young one would hurt me most and would be easiest to target. If they chose one who was just Initiated—Sliced—they could make it look like it was the rebels’ fault, that you all had sabotaged quer Slicing, but that’s not what happened. Que was murdered like Fi was, and all of it because of me, my fault…”

  Her voice breaks, but she presses on before I can protest. I run my hands up and down her shoulders, shaking my head uselessly.

  “And now you must hate me, you must—”

  “No, no. You can’t help your past.” I stare off at Mom, my brow furrowed, my mind spinning. “You’re not the only one with a secret, Evelyn. I have to—”

  I stop, flinching, when a voice calling her name makes her jump out of my grasp.

  Jealousy flits through my stomach as Evelyn spins and puts her hands all over Iema’s face, sides, shoulders, face again.

  “Iema, where have you been?” The agony in her voice makes my insecurity curl up before it disintegrates into shame.

  “Helping the Grovians defend the Gathering, the Underland. They’ve set up defense perimeters, but Evy—Reve is with them. His seal, the Mach. Evy, if he sees you fighting for them—”

  “He already has.”

  “Then you have to leave.”

  “I will, soon, I promise, never mind that. Did anyone see you?”

  Iema grimaces as she reaches under her uniform, rubbing out a stitch in her side. “Had it out with Richard. Called me a traitor, whore, you name it, and he had a word for it. And a blow.”

  She turns toward me and there’s a nasty gash covering her cheek. Crusted blood streaks her face. I inhale sharply and clench my fists, wanting to pummel the man who hurt her like that, who dealt Blaze a death blow with his smooth words and empty heart. Iema’s eyes sweep my body, like she’s noticing me for the first time, and she breaks out laughing.

  “Look at you, Sadie, all stiff and indignant on behalf of a woman you barely know and probably should hate.”

  A sweaty arm slings over my shoulder above my wing sprouts, and I tug Aon closer—much closer, never close enough now—to me. “Yeah well, my big sister’s chivalrous that way,” he says, and I wonder, out of nowhere, when his voice started to get so deep.

  He could have been dead—he was dead—and I would never have noticed him growing.

  I don’t care what anyone might think. I let my head sink onto his subtly shaking shoulder and shudder until fresh tears quake out of my body. My little brother envelops me in his fleshy arms, and I hear Iema’s confused tone ask what in Lunav she missed. Evelyn is whispering and I’m crying and all that matters is Aon’s steady pulse against my skin.

  “You did what?” Iema’s shout makes both of us jump, and then I’m being wrenched from him and am sprawled flat on my back. Both of my moms yell my name, and pain courses through my wings.

  “What are you doing? Let her go!”

  “Iema, stop it—”

  “Would you die for her, Sadie? Would you? Because you had better be willing to do that rather than spill to anyone—anyone, you hear me?—that she’s a—that she saved your brother the way she did, you understand me? If anyone finds out, I will personally—”

  “Hunt me down and skin me alive. Yeah, got that part,” I wheeze from underneath the tip of her blade. Evelyn and Aon are both yanking and yelling at her still, but she’s impervious to their pleas. She must be more powerfully trained with the Energies too, than I thought she was, because I feel Mom and Mama tugging on the Energies to get her blade away from my windpipe. They’re unsuccessful, and I’m grateful I’ve never been up against Iema. Until now. She lifts me by the front of my tunic and slams me back into the ground.

  “Sadie!” she growls.

  “I’m not gonna give her up, Iema. And if I do, you can kill me all you want.”

  Maybe it’s something in my face, in the way my body is limp, the way I’m not fighting her. Maybe it’s the shredded tone of Mama’s voice when she yells, “You just betrayed your own people! Do you really want to turn on the only ones who’ll protect you now?” Mayb
e it’s that Evelyn’s voice cracks, hard, when she says, “Iema, please. I trust her with my life. All of them. Even Lerian saved my life tonight.”

  Whatever it is, Iema hauls me to my feet, brushes me off and gestures for Evelyn and Mom to heal my cuts and calm my bruises.

  “I’m sorry, Sadie. I just had to be sure. She could be killed for being who she is. For doing what she can do.” She lowers her voice. “Soul keeping. She’d be killed if anyone knew.”

  “I know the feeling,” I mutter as Mom and Evelyn soothe my scrapes and bruises, Evelyn looking askance at Iema all the while, muttering about overzealousness and ruffians.

  “I’m fine, it was just a shove,” I squirm.

  I clear my throat and pull Evelyn away from the others gently, grimacing ruefully at a now bashful-looking Iema as I do.

  “Look, Evelyn. What Iema was saying about having a secret you could die for? You’re…” I swallow and she furrows her brow and takes my hands. My heart warms at the casualness of her gesture, and I so want to get used to it.

  I hope telling her I can Dream won’t utterly destroy any shot we have. But it’s the only lie that I still have between us. And it needs to be done. So we can really begin.

  “Evelyn, I have to tell you something. I can—”

  There’s a rustling, a loud rustling, near the breach in the barrier. With a glance at Evelyn, Iema sprints off toward it.

  We both stare after her as she skids to a halt and dashes back toward us.

  “Reve!” she mouths, speeding toward us. “He’s coming!”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THE QUEEN AND I lock eyes, and when she speaks, her voice is steel.

  “You know he’s coming back for me, Sadie. The king knows that I fought alongside you, because Reve saw.” She looks toward the barrier; we can’t see anything yet, but the rustling through the Forest outside is getting louder.

  “Mom! The Hands are coming back!” Aon is shouting. Jax is swearing and Mom is singing up to Gimla to round up whatever dragons are left flying. The ground is rumbling like the aftershock of an earthquake, and the trees prepare themselves for another battle.