“So that’s it!” I said. “You’re not going to do anything?”
“Of course that’s not what we’re saying,” replied Alek. “Please remember this has all just been brought before us.”
“My people are dying,” I said. “They’re being used as slaves. They’re being brain-washed. How long will you leave them there?”
“You can’t expect us to attack Akadia,” the bearded man laughed.
“You’re the Warriors of Cirali—of course I expect that of you! You’re supposed to be brave. You have the chimera. Who will stop the Akadians if you don’t?”
The entire room grew very quiet. Alek seemed… uncomfortable. Lodan just kept studying me intently. Almost all the other faces were less promising than these. I glanced back at Estrid, just to see if Minstrel had awoken yet, and in hopes that he hadn’t fainted again when I’d made my hand disappear. But before my eyes could find them, they fell upon a new figure that had entered the room. He wore a green tunic with leather shoulder-pads, and a weapon attached to his belt—as few others in the room possessed. All of this, though, was of little consequence once I saw his face.
I pointed my finger loosely at him. “You’re…”
He cleared his throat and regarded the Warriors. “I heard there was an emergency meeting,” he explained. Then he looked back at me.
Before another word was spoken, I felt myself tipping over.
My first meeting with the Warriors of Cirali was over.
I fainted the moment I realized that I was looking at Tobias.
~ ~ ~
PART THREE
Building up, inside of me
A place so dark, so cold, I had to set me free
Don’t mourn for me
You’re not the one to place the blame
As bottles call my name
I won’t see you tonight
—I Won’t See You Tonight Part 1, Avenged Sevenfold
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER ONE
ELLIA:
*
I felt the sun’s warmth on my face in time with a distant bird call. And then I heard the sound of waves breaking. I blinked my eyes open to see my modest surroundings filling up with yellow light. The bed I was laying in was small, with thin white sheets for covers. The rest of the room was decorated with hanging sea-shells and chimes. Its walls were made of thin slats of wood that allowed rays of light to peek through.
A seagull landed and walked across the sill of my nearest window. I got off the bed and went to see him, but he flew away the moment I came close. With the flap of his wings another creature rushed by, letting out a loud roar instead of any sound a bird would make. I barely got a look at it before it flew out of sight behind the leaves above me. The rest of the view was a spectacle of color and sound.
The ground was far below, trees were all around and above. The platforms, balconies, ladders, and bridges that I had only imagined seeing last night were more intricate and numerous than I ever could have guessed. They crossed in all directions, hidden by leafy branches in one place, open to the sky in another. There were people everywhere, dressed in leather, cloth, and brass armor. Some of them carried swords and sparred against each other on platforms. A group of woman carried bundles of wood, baskets of food, and clothes. Children pulled up buckets of water by rope pulleys from wells far below. Talking and laughter was everywhere.
Another roar sounded, and with a rush of leaves two creatures rose from behind the trees into the open blue sky. I knew they were chimera straight off, though they were little more than colorful silhouettes. They dived in sweeping arcs across the sky, one following the other; and then they would split up and swerve in opposite formations.
It wasn’t until they came closer that I could even tell they bore riders. One of them swept over my building with a loud roar, its tail came whipping very close. I ducked backwards, knocking into a pillar.
It was then that I noticed I was no longer alone in the room. A woman had entered.
Looking at her was like being in a dream—I felt like I knew her and that I should even know her name, yet I could not tell who she was. Her hair was light. She was as old as most of the Cirali Warriors of the first order, somewhere between forty-five and sixty. Her dress was tight and flowing, pale green and very fine.
“Ellia Solidor,” she greeted. Her eyes were liquid silver; they studied my reaction sharply. “That is what they’ve said you call yourself. I see you’re finally awake.”
“Where are my friends?” I asked, rather rudely, but I was anxious. “The Katellian and the gnome?”
She seemed bothered to so quickly pass over the subject of my name, but conceded. “They are well. They’re awake now. They slept nearly as long as you, two days. The three of you must have had quite a voyage.”
Two days? This didn’t surprise me. I’d woken up a couple of times in a daze—though it had always been dark. “Where is Tobias?” I asked.
The woman’s brows knit. She didn’t reply.
“The man with the green tunic,” I explained. “He was at my meeting with the Warriors. He has brown hair—”
“I know of whom you speak,” the lady interrupted. She folded her hands. “He is not Tobias.”
I felt impatience build inside my chest. I thought it was probably directed at the fact that I wasn’t sure I hadn’t been imagining it. But I couldn’t accept for that to be true. Because that meant he really was gone. “You may know him as something else, but when I met him—”
“He was a captain of Akadia?” she interrupted. I froze. “Do you not recognize me, Ellia—we’ve been introduced before.”
Someone laughed outside my window, but my mind was in another time and place. “You… were in Akadia,” I realized, wide-eyed. “Your name is Amalia. You knew Tobias.”
This made her scoff darkly.
“I don’t understand.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” she said. “You’ve become wrapped up in many things beyond your scope…”
“Tobias was—”
She held a firm hand up to stop me from interrupting. “I will explain everything to you. But first you must tell me what you know.”
“What do you mean what I know?” I asked.
“You’ve referred to Tobias in the past tense,” she said. “This means you know of his fate?”
I kept very still. I shook my head fervently. “I was wrong. He’s not gone. I saw him.”
“If you weren’t wrong…,” she countered. Then she paused. “Do you know who was responsible?”
If not for the shaking in her throat, I wouldn’t have known how affected she was by her question. I was beginning to have suspicions about her relation to Tobias, and it made answering all the more difficult.
“It was… Commander Lox,” I said, pushing away thoughts of any others.
Her eyes closed. “I knew this,” she whispered through tight lips.
I took a brave gulp, then started slowly. “We were—”
“Please,” she interrupted, lifting a hand up. “Don’t. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know how it happened.”
I swallowed back my words.
Amalia turned her head away as she wiped tears from her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was clear, her chin was raised high; she held as much nobility as I’d sensed the first time I’d met her. “The man you saw in the Warriors’ chamber two nights ago is Tobias’s brother. His name is Lucian. He is a Warrior of the second order of Cirali….”
“Twins?” I followed, though I didn’t want to believe it. “But how?”
She gestured for me to be silent. “To understand how they came to be apart. I must tell you of another woman.”
Amalia turned from me. She walked a few paces to the other side of the room, her dress swaying behind her. “She was born in Yanartas, and became a Cirali Warrior when she was impressively young, fifteen. By the age of twenty she was sent to visit Akadia with a dozen other Warriors. Akadia was different then. They wer
e to be honored guests at a banquet. They met the king. He was young, handsome, and very different from anyone the woman had ever met. He had a queen, but…”
“When it came time for the Warriors to leave, the woman remained in Akadia. The Cirali would not allow her chimera to stay—it couldn’t—it would not have survived long away from the Isle of Yanartas. Before very long she became pregnant. She birthed twins—two sons. Though the king would not claim them as his own, she would not leave him. She sent one of her sons to her homeland, to save him from a hard life. But she could not bear to part with both. She raised the other in Akadia. When he grew to a man he became a captain of the Akadian army.”
Amalia looked back at me.
If I’d had any doubts that the woman in the story was her, her expression confirmed her identity. Amalia was Tobias’s mother—and his father was…
“Tobias was a prince?” I exclaimed.
“He and his brother are the sons of the reigning king, Molec,” Amalia answered. “Both of them are the only living heirs of the throne of Akadia.”
I stepped backwards. My legs hit the edge of my bed and I dropped into it. “Did Tobias know this?” I asked.
“He knew who his father was and he knew of my origins.” Amalia’s gaze went distant, then she cleared it. “But he did not know he had a brother.”
I felt my eyes squeeze tight. I wished a hundred times over that I had done something, anything, to stop what had happened in the temple. I did not have the right to be here before this woman. I had had as much part in her son’s death as anyone.
“Why did you come back?” I asked.
Amalia hesitated. “To be with my son—the only son that I have left. He does not know me, but…” Her brows knit slightly, forming a crease between them. “He is my only hope.”
She took a breath, then leveled a sharp gaze on me. “I also came to tell my people what was happening in Akadia. I am no longer loyal to Molec. If I hadn’t come before you, the Warriors would have known nothing of what was happening.”
“Why hadn’t you warned them about any of it before now?” I asked.
Amalia didn’t answer, instead she walked past me to the window. “My son told me things about you before he died. He told me who he thought you were. He trusted you, you know.” She grew quiet.
“Does this mean that you believe I’m the princess?” I asked.
After a moment she turned around; sunlight gave her hair a golden lining and it was easy to imagine that she had once been beautiful enough to captivate a king. “It doesn’t matter what I believe. As you were told by the other Warriors, unless you can prove yourself, your claim means nothing.”
I looked away. After everything that had been said…. I’d thought perhaps—when I’d seen Tobias and had hoped he was alive—that he could confirm my identity. Now I realized that it wouldn’t have mattered. They would have doubted an Akadian as much as anyone. I was powerless in a thousand ways.
“All the same,” Amalia went on, “There are some that believe you are the princess. Have you heard of the Right of Vartus?” she asked.
My brow dipped. I shook my head.
“Vartus was a prince of Democedes, one of the eastern countries. Decades ago he came to Yanartas seeking to become a Cirali Warrior. Being that no chimera had ever accepted a foreigner, this was forbidden. But Vartus went to find the chimera himself. He succeeded in bonding with one. He was of course given the title of Warrior and it was decided henceforth that any of royal bloodline could be trained to the end of winning their own chimera. They believed it was his royal origins that allowed him to bond with the chimera. Do you understand this?”
I nodded. “I understand, but—”
“Will you follow me outside, Ellia?” she interrupted.
It wasn’t very much of a question. She waited for me to stand, then headed outside. The door to the cabin was a wood slat that only needed to be pushed aside. The moment I walked onto the balcony I tasted salt and felt warmth and wind. I saw now that the sea lay just beyond the complex of trees. It was not the same side we had come in on. It was a cove, and what water I could see was crystal blue turning quickly navy as it deepened. It was somehow free of the fierce summer waves—like the water by the docks had been.
A couple of Yanartians passed us the moment we exited my small hut, but Amalia ignored them to walk on along the platform which curved tightly to a tree. We had not gone five yards before she stopped in front of a rail and pointed out.
“Do you see?” she asked.
I hardly felt I would be able to know what she met with all the sights there were, until I recognized a familiar green tunic. His shoulder-pads were off, but he held his sword and he was using it to whack at a dummy made of sticks. It was one of a dozen dummies lined in a circle around a large, un-shaded, platform that looked out to the sea.
Lucian turned back away from the dummy, holding his sword out to a young man of eight or so years. The boy copied his attack. Lucian watched with a grin, then stopped him for correction.
The sun beyond them felt too bright to look at.
“He looks so similar,” I said.
“When he smiles, yes. It is… unnerving.” Amalia frowned, then turned to me. “This is the offer of the Warriors, Ellia. Due to the fact that many believe you are who you claim to be, they’ve decided to grant you the Right of Vartus. You may train, you may attempt to pass the trials of Cirali. If you succeed, we will accept it as proof that you are Ellia Solidor of Shaundakul.” She paused, then gestured back to the platform. “My son, Lucian would be the one to train you. He is first ranked among the teachers, that is, those of the second order.”
“This is the best possible opportunity we can give you,” Amalia concluded. “If you do not wish to become a Warrior, we will still grant you the right to remain in Yanartas.”
Though my mind was spinning with this news, I couldn’t ignore my greatest concern. “What of Akadia? Will the Warriors attack?”
She considered this. “For now they will investigate.”
“But the Akadians must be stopped.”
“My suggestion to you would be to prove yourself. Then perhaps you would have voice enough among the Warriors to make such an appeal.”
I stared at her. I thought I might have stayed like that for a very long time—except a gigantic figure drew my attention. It was walking along one of the causeways below us, beside a human as if it couldn’t have been more comfortable. Its four oversized paws found easy footing on the wood, though it shook the entire bridge with its weight. Its dragon-like tail swept back and forth in the air behind it. Speaking from personal experience it was very similar to a real dragon’s tail. It was slick and dark, with ridges running along the top like a spine. Its wings were also more like a dragon’s than I would have guessed. They were supposed to be eagle’s wings, and of course they were covered in feathers, but each one shimmered in a different shade in the sunlight. Something like red, then maroon, then brown, then gold. Dragon wings had the same characteristic, only their iridescent colors were always cooler shades, like purple, blue, or green—never so rustic.
The feathers of the torso blended in well with the fur of the head, shaded in gold and brown, almost exactly resembling the head of a lioness. No mane, but a wide nose, and overtly large teeth.
My breath escaped me. I had just seen my first chimera. It was exactly as I had imagined it would be and I experienced the sharpest pang to have my oldest friend here with me—though he probably just would have made fun of it.
These thoughts drew my attention back to Amalia, to reality, and all that I still had to fight for.
Becoming a Cirali Warrior was something I had only ever dreamt of… yet I did not feel as if it was my choice to make, whether I wanted to or didn’t. My duty was to free my people from Akadia. I had to.
Perhaps this time, though, my duty and desire were the same. If that was true I was going to become a Warrior of Cirali.
~ ~ ~
C
HAPTER TWO
CYRIC:
*
The sun had been down for a while, but I was just riding in from the fields on my ivoronsu. I’d named him Tosch. Tosch was the name I’d given to this bat I’d saved when I was young. Since bats were both nocturnal and easily freaked out, I figured it was fitting for my ivoronsu.
We stopped at the edge of a gorge that ran along the back of Akadia. The soldier at the top of the wall waved to me in acknowledgment, then he let down the gate that doubled as a ramp. I led Tosch up it, and then into the nearby equipment district. This was where the normal horses of Akadia were kept, and because of Tosch’s unusual disposition, it was also where I had taken to keeping him. He didn’t like being underground, he liked the sun; he also didn’t like being around the other ivoronsu.
As soon as I’d led him into his stall, dismounted, and pulled off his saddle, he positioned himself where he could be closest to the courtyard. A single torch stood in its middle, calming the glow Tosch’s eyes emitted whenever he was in darkness. The fresh air ruffled his mane. I rubbed the top of his nose. “We’re pretty different, Tosch,” I told him. I never would have wanted to be where I couldn’t see, but he was always chasing light.
He nuzzled me back until I shrugged him off. Then I fed him and left the stables.
Once I was back on the streets, I could see just fine, and I wasn’t surprised when I saw a pack of handmaidens heading my way. We were in front of the bathhouse. I passed here every time I rode Tosch—which was almost every night—and it seemed the handmaidens were starting to catch on. They abandoned the few soldiers’ they’d been crowding and rushed me.
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