Sisters of Wind and Flame

by Jennifer Ellision

  “You don’t like it?” I ask incredulously. “It’s not your choice, it’s mine. It’s the first one that’s really been mine. You don’t have to like it.”

  There’s a ball of ire in my chest. I force myself to calm down. To rationalize with her. “Don’t you see? This is a guarantee, Elena. Of our security and station. We don’t need to be simple soldiers. If I am in the king’s good graces, and you, as my sister—there can be a place for both of us. People will bow to us. No more scrounging for scraps, not ever.”

  “I don’t want them to bow!”

  I falter.

  Somehow it never occurred to me that once I figured out a way to become more, that Elena would not come with me.

  “You still see me as this weak girl, Ekaterina,” she says, hands fisted at her sides. “As the sickly thing that couldn’t get out of bed. But I’m strong now, even if it’s a different sort of strength than yours. I’m my own woman. I take care of myself. I don’t need you anymore.”

  I reel back like she’s struck me.

  “That’s—I didn’t mean--” She huffs, frustrated. Her hands knot themselves in her hair. “I just meant that you don’t need to take care of me anymore. I like it here. I like the camaraderie and I’m good at being a soldier. My instructors tell me that I have a precision in Torching that’s rarely seen.”

  “Of course.” My voice is smooth and I feel like I am somewhere very far away as my mouth continues the debate. “I understand perfectly. You’re a soldier. Then you must see how foolish it is for you to criticize my training. You’ll be taking lives just the same.”

  “Not the same. I’ll face my enemies on the battlefield, honestly, the way that it should be. You will deal in double-talk and lies. Spy work. Do you know what the rest of the camp says about you?”

  “At least they say something about me,” I snap. “I’ll be someone. History will know me. You’ll be lost in a crowd, unmentioned in an army of thousands.”

  She deflates and sighs. “Why can’t you understand? I’ve never cared about that. All I’ve ever wanted was for the people I love to be healthy and safe. And with my squad, the other soldiers… the people I love is a much longer list than it once was.”

  “Enough.”

  I turn, intending to walk away, but a gust of wind—my wind, pushes me back to her. I’m flabbergasted. If I didn’t command the air—and I certainly did not—then who?

  “Don’t walk away from me. This conversation isn’t over.” Elena’s features are set and stubborn. She raises her chin, looks down her nose at me.

  She controlled the air. How did she do that? Furious, I look to her for an explanation and she shrugs, knowing what’s in my mind. “It’s just started to happen. I suspect if you tried you’d have my ability to Torch.”

  My fingers are hot again. Perhaps she’s right. I consider my hands, so adept with cool air.

  I am done talking. I concentrate on the heat.

  Fire streams across the space between us. It lights across the ground, sending tendrils of smoke curling into the air. I’m left panting, staring through a sheet of fire at a woman who wears my face, but looks as if she does not recognize me.

  I laugh breathlessly and thrust my palm into the flames.

  It tickles. Nothing more. “You’re right, Elena. Neither of us needs the other anymore.”

  Lady Katerine

  I leave camp in a fortnight, without a farewell to my sister. The trainees will be sent to the front in a few months. I’ll contact her before then. For now, my anger is too fresh.

  It’s not long before I take the king as a lover. Or he takes me. We take each other, I suppose. It’s an easy arrangement, free from messy emotions. I find his strength and station arousing, but there’s no love between us.

  He marries, and I leave the new queen be. A mutual desire for power is all we truly share. His wife is no threat to me. My usefulness to the king is in my abilities, and I become more valuable to him with them every day.

  My life bears no resemblance to what I left behind. Thanks to the king’s Shakers, the grounds here are lush; nothing like the dry city I worked in or the desert where I trained. I’m given everything I could wish for in the Egrian capital. Fine jewels and gowns. Rich foods and a place in court as one of the queen’s ladies. The respect that I’ve longed for for years.

  All that’s missing is my sister.

  I send Elena letter after letter at the front. I wish her well. I apologize. I ask for her forgiveness.

  I receive no response.

  I learn to listen. I’m a favorite at court once I suggest that we implement the healer’s ventilation system and send my breezes spinning through the castle. When I have a spare moment, I sit in my rooms, sifting through the whispers on the wind to see what they have caught. I hear about indiscretions, affairs, a few piddling jewels stolen by servants and I file the information away until it’s useful to me.

  Ardin is distant, retreating to his lands. During trips to court, he clings to his wife, a petite freckled thing that twinkles up at him when he makes her laugh. When I catch him in a contemplative moment at a ball, he has a token in hand, running his thumb over it. He quickly tucks in into his doublet when he sees me watching.

  “You’ve taken to life at court swimmingly, haven’t you, Katerine?” He tilts a glass of wine to his lips.

  I gesture to my gold gown, overlaid by the black silk robe that marks me as an Adept of the court. If I’d still been a soldier, my black hood would have been the cheapest fabric available. “The silk suits me, don’t you think?” I ask Ardin.

  “Hmm. Just as venom suits a snake.” He empties his glass and walks away.

  Ardin and I are sent on separate missions as the king’s peace ambassadors. We travel to the small holdings—ones that have neglected to pay their taxes, ones that there are whispers of at court, as plotting to rebel against his rule. Some lives I take, some I do not. Ardin and I do our duty, and if his shoulders weigh heavier with the task, mine grow straighter. I am all but unrecognizable from the girl who cleaned Missus Fremont’s fireplace, but I steer clear of the color red, lest it betray me. My occupation often relies on discretion.

  A year trickles away. I collect secrets like rare coins, make myself invaluable to the king as not only an assassin, but an advisor.

  I write Elena every week. She’s the first person I tell when the king arranges my marriage, making good on his promise to make me a titled lady.

  My new husband is a baron, possessing only minor holdings. He’s the bottom tier of the nobility, but he’s a rich baron and the king needs his funds in his quest for an empire.

  He’s not a kind man. From the first blow he lands on my cheek, I long to be given the order for his death.

  And when my husband is foolish enough to believe he can say no, he becomes another name on my growing list of kills. Smiling, I lock the bedroom chamber that night and give the fool his breath back three times— just to listen to him beg.

  I return to court a widowed baroness. A maid finds me distraught and screaming over my husband’s cold body. His heart, the healers determine, simply stopped. There is no wound on his body to indicate otherwise.

  The baron won’t be my last husband, or my last kill.

  Three more years go by in a breath of jewels and corpses and when my twenty-first birthday passes, I’ve had enough of Elena’s silence, of her ignoring me. My station is high enough that I can make demands now. And I demand my sister. I demand Elena. I ask the king to send for her and a messenger rides out that very afternoon, heading for her squad at the front lines.

  It takes a month, but when I’m summoned to the throne room, I race there. Elena must still be angry with me—why else would she have ignored me for so long? But in time, with me in front of her, she’ll forgive me. She has to. We’re all each other has.

  I put up a hand, halting the herald who wishes to announce me before I enter. I stride in, expecting her welcome tones to berate me with an irate “Ekaterina.�
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  I haven’t heard my birth name in years.

  The king sits on his throne and I sweep him a curtsy when I stand before him. My eyes sweep the room eagerly, as expecting to find Elena hiding behind a chair. “Your Majesty.”

  He rises. “Lady Katerine.”

  Something is wrong. His voice is contrite. Why?

  My breath catches. For the first time, I notice a uniformed soldier standing at the edge of the room. The stripes on his shoulder mark him a captain.

  “Where—” I stop and have to begin again. “Where is my sister, Your Majesty?”

  The soldier clears his throat. “Your ladyship, the seventeenth infantry regrets to inform you—“

  No.

  “Stop!” I look to my king, beseeching. “What is this?”

  His eyes on mine, he nods for the soldier to continue. “We regret to inform your ladyship that Lieutenant Elena Ivanova was killed in action three weeks ago.”

  My head is light. I grope blindly for the floor as I sink down. No. We never made amends. This can’t be all there is. I can’t have risen from nothing only to lose the only person who matters to me.

  “Lady Katerine?”

  The king. “How did it happen?” My voice breaks on the question and the pitch is too high. I press my wrists to my eyes, not looking at him. They’re dry. My twin is dead, but the tears still will not come. “The Clavish?”

  “Friendly fire. A rogue arrow.” The captain frowns. “It’s a great loss for all of us. Your sister was an astounding Torcher.”

  My neck jerks up. “Friendly—do they know who?”

  A man is hauled into the room. A watchman. He stands at attention and salutes me. His black eyes are trained on a point past me. “It was an accident, your ladyship.”

  Black eyes. I know those black eyes.

  I think back to the watchman that Elena inadvertently scorched after our Reveal, the one who’d so disdained our Clavish births. I remember how he watched her in camp, how I tried to make him keep his eyes on me, but they always seemed to wander back to my sister.

  I’m surprised it’s taken him this long to make his move.

  “Leave us,” I command.

  The king’s eyebrows shoot up, but he doesn’t protest. “Don’t get carried away, Lady Kat.” He caresses my shoulder as he passes, but I jerk it off. My mind is clear now. I will extract vengeance for my sister.

  The door thuds shut behind him.

  Silence settles heavy over the room and permeates the air. “Wine?” I offer, crossing to the decanter beside the throne. “I could certainly use some.”

  “I am so sorry for your loss, your ladyship.” He says the words, but they’re insincere. He is confident. Inexcusably cocky. I don’t know what happened before he killed my sister, but I’m certain that he isn’t sorry.

  The sound of wine filling a glass is my answer. I throw it back like cheap swill. “Here is what I don’t understand, sir. You’re not blind, nor are you dumb. So when they tell me that it was friendly fire that killed my sister, it’s difficult for me to grasp.”

  I pour another glass, pointing to the bottle politely. “You’re sure you don’t want some?”

  My efforts to be a good hostess go unanswered. “It was—smoky,” Jack says. My hand tightens around my drink. There’s a catch in his voice. Good. He’s catching onto his precarious situation. “At the front. Made it difficult to tell one uniform from another and I—”

  I ignore this as I cross to him and press the wine into his hand. “Please,” I bite out softly. “Take it.” His hand is cold as it brushes against mine to grasp the glass.

  I move away from him and settle myself insolently into my king’s throne. “Do you know what they say about me at court—I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t know your name. Terribly rude of me. One should always address someone by name.”

  “Jack,” he says in a voice just above a whisper. His eyes flicker to the door.

  “Jack. Do you know what they say about me at court, Jack?”

  “No.”

  “They say I’m soulless!” I chirp, and run my fingers around the rim of my glass. “Oh, only some of them-- they say it in whispers and gossip—but those who know my true purpose here, what I do for my king, they say that I’m cruel and without a conscience.”

  My glass shatters against the throne and I’m left with a jagged stem. I twirl it in hands and turn my smile on the watchman. On Jack. “I’m not certain they’re wrong.”

  My palm thrusts forward and he’s felled by the gust that surges forward, landing on his knees before me.

  “Wait!” he begs for his life as I storm toward him. “Lady Ekaterina, I truly am sorry.”

  I freeze. My hand, about to seize the air from him, falls to my side. “How,” I ask slowly, “do you know that name?”

  He swallows. “Elena spoke of you to her friends. I— I listened.”

  A cry wrenches itself from me. “How dare you speak of her.” The air alone won’t do, not for him, not after that. I need to feel him crumple beneath me, feel the warmth leave his body.

  I backhand him, putting both weight and wind behind it and he falls backwards. “Please,” he chokes out. “The king promised that if I—“

  My heel goes to his throat. “Don’t you know?” I hiss. I descend upon him with the wine stem. “I am fulfilling the only promise that has ever mattered.”

  ✺✺✺

  “There’s a mess in there,” I tell the guard who stands outside the throne room as I leave. His eyes are wide and more than a little afraid. Jack’s screams were loud and pain-filled. The king must have told him I wasn’t to be disturbed.

  I swipe bloody palms over my gown. “Do clean it up before His Majesty sees.”

  I’ll wear the rubies tonight, I think as I march back to my room. I won’t shy away from what others say about me after this. Red is my color. I am scarlet’s lady and I will declare it proudly.

  If I am cruel, I do not care. They can call me what they will: Murderer. Killer. Evil.

  But I only make sure that life keeps its promise: that it ends.

  The Threats of Sky and Sea series:

  Book 1: Threats of Sky and Sea

  Book 2: Riot of Storm and Smoke

  Book 3: Fall of Thrones and Thorns, coming 2016

  Prequel short stories in the Threats of Sky and Sea world:

  Sisters of Wind and Flame

  Defining Justice

  Breathe In, coming December 2015

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you so much for taking the time to read my work. Word of mouth and readers like you are an author's greatest asset and enable me to keep on keepin' on with this author gig, so if you enjoyed reading Sisters of Wind and Flame, I hope you'll take the time to drop me a short review!

  And thank you very, very sincerely, from the bottom of my heart.

  -Jennifer Ellision

  About the author

  Jennifer Ellision spent a great deal of her childhood staying up past her bedtime with a book and a flashlight. When she couldn't find the stories she wanted to read, she started writing them. She loves words, has a soft spot for fanfiction, and is a master of what she calls “The Fangirl Flail.”

  She lives in South Florida with her family, where she lives in fear of temperatures below 60 Fahrenheit. She makes her internet home at www.jenniferellision.com or you can find her on Twitter @JenEllision. Stay up to date on all of Jennifer’s new releases through her newsletter or like her on Facebook.

  If you love your romance mixed with magic— or fantasy with a smattering of swoon, join Jennifer and other fantasy authors over on Facebook in the Fantasy Romance Fanatics reader group!

 

 

 
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