Tiana frowned. “I could cancel the arrangement, if you wish. There’s something about Biaxin and the Counties, anyhow. Lisette would know.”
Cinai gave her a strange little smile. “Could you? But no. There are too many benefits. Especially now, with the Blight.” She turned her gaze to her brother again, still engaged in a soft conversation with Lisette. “He encouraged me to run away, and now I have to tell him I’m going back. Come with me? I’m not strong like you are. I’m afraid he’ll talk me into changing my mind.”
Jozua cracked his knuckles. “Oh, we can’t be having with that.”
Cinai addressed him for the first time in Tiana’s hearing, her voice flat. “If you hurt him, I will do everything in my power to destroy you. And he will want to fight you, so maybe you should just go back to your camp.”
Jozua laughed. “No. Go on, say your goodbyes. I’ll watch from here.”
Cinai hunched her shoulders and walked toward her brother, radiating dread. Tiana bit her lip and then caught up with her. She wished the green light would stop flickering so madly, and the sleeping red light wasn’t complicating matters. She even longed for the ignorance she had at the Citadel of the Sky—had the blue light flickered before Jinriki’s rebellion had given it an opportunity to pour itself into her? Was it a good thing or a bad thing?
Fai looked up in time to see Cinai approaching him, and froze, Lisette’s hand in his own. Then he raised Lisette’s hand to show it to Cinai. “It’s amazing, Cinai. You were right.”
Cinai whispered, “I’m going home, Fai.” The words carried, despite the rain, despite the noise of the campsite. Lisette looked down, and pulled her hand away.
All the same, Fai stared at her. “What? What was that?” Cinai didn’t answer, instead lowering her gaze.
Fai said, “You can’t! We’re dedicated to the Firstborn now, that’s what you wanted! You can’t go back.”
Panic flared in Cinai’s eyes. Tiana wanted to help her, but didn’t know how to defend Cinai’s decision. It’s her choice was the easy cry—but she was returning to do something she didn’t want to do, bind herself to other people’s ambitions. It’s her choice was an argument that cut both ways. And the Firstborn they followed was unfamiliar to Tiana, and very different from the gentle flower lady who watched over her from ceiling frescoes.
Cinai swallowed and found her own words. “I’ve been thinking and listening, Fai. And I think I can. I think I should. Going home is the right thing to do. It’s my duty.”
Fai only had eyes for his sister as he crossed the space between them. “It’s a sacrifice. It’s capture. You know that’s not right.”
Cinai put her hand up, as if to hold him away. “I don’t know! I don’t know that anything in this forest is right. You’ve seen what the Voice did to that girl. How can that be right? How does that match with all these ideals of freedom?”
“But you’ve felt her here, the same as I have! You know here She is a huntress, that outside this forest they follow a false Atalya.”
“How can she be false when studying Her stories led us here?” Cinai’s voice trembled, and Tiana touched her arm in encouragement.
When she did, Tiana’s breath hissed through her teeth and her gentle touch became a clenched fist. The green light gathered around Cinai, roiling like a stormy sea. But it was still beyond her reach, on the other side of a veil.
Slowly, she flexed her fingers and muttered, “Atalya is with her, even now.” She raised her gaze to see both siblings staring at her from identical green eyes. “I can feel it.”
Fai cried, “You don’t know anything. How can you feel it? I feel Atalya. She whispers in my ear. She wakes me at night.” He stepped forward, and Tiana moved between them, planting a hand on his chest to stop him.
And stopped herself. Once again, she could sense the green light gathering, this time around Fai, rushing and roaring. “How can that be? It’s in both of you....” She shook her head, dizzied.
**Perhaps you have to cut them open.**
Tiana glanced at Jozua, who watched the argument with an amused unconcern, the crimson light still and quiet. Then emerald vertigo swirled around her and she stumbled to one side. Both siblings stared at her.
“Work it out,” she demanded. “How can she be with the dutiful daughter and the wild son?” The air pressed down on her, as if the rain hadn’t already started. “What is the common thread? What is she?”
Helplessly, Fai said, “I wanted to save her. I wanted her to be free to live her own life, not sold like a horse.”
Cinai whispered, “I was so afraid. I didn’t want to go. But I can make a difference. I can save everybody.”
“Thank you,” said Tiana and stepped between them again. This time she placed a hand on each sibling’s chest. The light was there, beyond a tissue-thin veil. She wondered if Jinriki spoke the truth, and she had to reach inside them to take it. Was that right? It felt wrong.
Dreamily, she asked, “Fai, you brought her here to save her. But does Atalya need saving?”
He sucked in his breath. Then, slowly, he said, “The true Atalya walks into the forest to escape.”
Cinai said, “She was taken, but she redeemed her captors.”
There was a long, breathless moment. The twins stared at each other, their faces mirror images as they listened to something within them. Fai whispered, “Atalya saves herself.”
Cinai nodded at him, saying back, “Atalya saves herself.”
The rain turned to crystal again. Tiana hesitated, thinking about taking and choosing,and then repeated, “Thank you.” She took her hands away and stepped back. “Will you give me what you have?”
Drops of water sang. “Gladly,” said Cinai, her face alight.
Fai said nothing, and his expression darkened. The world itself rippled, as if the siblings were stones dropped into a pool. He pulled his gaze away from Cinai’s face and looked around, to where Lisette stood. “I don’t have to,” he murmured, a struggle playing out across his face. “I don’t want to. Is this how you feel, Cinai? I don’t want to give Her up. But we want them all to be free, like we are. So I will.” He spread his arms.
A green glow gathered around each sibling’s chest, drawing radiance from the verdant trees. Each raindrop was a prism, splitting the shadows of the forest into a viridian rainbow. The glow pulled itself out of each sibling, spectral halves of an orb. For a space of time they hung there, together but separate, as if inviting the siblings to take them back again. Then Cinai made a little shooing gesture with her hand, and wiped tears from her eyes.
The hemispheres flowed together into a single orb.
Kiar screamed something. As she did, utter darkness fell, roaring, upon them.
Chapter 23
Blood in the Green Wild
DARKNESS FELL, BUT the orb of green light still glowed just beyond Tiana’s fingers. If her eyes were torn out, still she would see that light. She had no chance to claim it, though, before it fled that which stole the twilight. Kiar shouted her name. The fading green light muddied as someone cried out in agony, and a woman screamed.
**We are in an eidolon,** said Jinriki, and Tiana finally understood what Kiar shouted: ambush. Ohedreton had found them. He’d been content to wait as they waited, until the green light appeared. Now, his forces attacked in earnest.
How did you see in a world without light? Tiana remembered Kiar’s description of that other world and wondered if it was the same. But she had no time for daydreams. Something moved near her and her own body moved in response, jerked like a doll by Jinriki in her hand.
“Can you sense them?” The sound of combat thudded around her: soft, organic noises, and the cries of the guards.
**They are hidden by the greater eidolon, but I can hear as you hear. That will be enough.**
“No, not enough,” and she struggled to grasp the idea dancing tantalizingly out of reach. But the green light had been so close, born into an orb she could take inside herself, and now it w
as distant again, and tainted. The hurt of it overwhelmed the rage, and both overwhelmed her thinking.
People fought around her. Lisette was somewhere, Cathay and Twist beside her. She was probably safe, but how long would that last in the dark?
Kiar had used some inner sense to see in the world without light. But Tiana couldn’t see for everybody. She had to attack the darkness.
Tiana, wind and fire.
She held out her arms, and imagined her rage rising through her. Radiance burned down her skin, little flames licking at the darkness. She felt, rather than heard, a deep moan, and so she flung her hands up and the eidolon fire devoured the eidolon darkness.
Sparks chased down the darkness like embers burning paper, revealing chaos. Andani battled humans, but more people fought than she expected, some in furs and paint. Several of the four-legged giants moved among them, swinging great staves. Despite the forest reinforcements, the melee went poorly for Tiana’s side. Cathay stood halfway between Lisette and Tiana, two of his cats fighting at his side while emanations flickered around his sword. Lisette pressed close to Twist, pale but steady. Twist spoke quickly and quietly to the pair of andani menacing them, his hands flickering strangely.
Kiar stood at the forest’s edge, an aegis shimmering among the wall of trees. Beyond, more andani seethed. Minex perched in a tree, watching Kiar as if her magic was the most interesting thing in the clearing.
Tiana only noticed the slender blade a creature thrust toward her after Jinriki had dragged her into a roll to avoid it. She let him guide her hand while looking around wildly. The guards and forest children gathered into little knots around the wounded and the fallen, and none of them were Cinai and Fai.
**Pay attention! You must start fighting back or they will fall!** The frustration in Jinriki’s voice mirrored her own.
“Where are they? Fai and Cinai and the light, where did they go?” She knew he was right, though. Searching now would leave her companions to fight alone. She reached for focus.
But the phantasmagory was gone. She had to collect her thoughts without it. She lashed out wildly with an emanation, and a four-legged giant barely had to duck to avoid the blow. The monster squealed laughter and said something incomprehensible. That laugh gave her the focus of rage and she struck true the second time.
She looked away as the head of the eidolon bounced by, just as Twist failed to dodge the blade of an andani. It took him in the arm and he fell to one side, leaving Lisette standing alone, her back against a tree. Kiar shouted again, and the aegis she was maintaining vanished, to be replaced by a flurry of swords. But the andani just kept coming. Cathay cried out as the andani destroyed two of his cats. He stumbled, losing his footing.
Then Lisette glowed like stained glass, and reality poured off her. The guards became more substantial, while the aliens faded like a pencil sketch. She stood over Twist, a mother wolf, and with two sharp gestures she tore apart the andani with a hand of fire.
They all looked to the light, every human and alien in the clearing. Strange shadows moved independently, though their owners were frozen in shock. Something danced in the air before Lisette, wavering like a heat mirage. Then the mirage vanished, and it was only Lisette. She shrieked, “Don’t just stand there, fight them!”
But the andani and the giants turned to flee, every one of them at the same time. They were harried to the edge of the clearing, driven back into the darkness beyond Kiar’s aegis. Then the men turned their attention to the wounded, and Tiana turned her attention to the missing.
A moment’s concentration told her they were not among the casualties, or at least that the green light had moved off to the east. She took a breath and turned her gaze on Lisette, who knelt with Kiar next to Twist, her cloak pulled tight around her. Then she found Slater, bleeding from shallow cuts. “Break the camp. Do what you can for the wounded, leave them with the forest children if you have to, but we must move on, out of the forest, before they return. I have to finish what I came here for, but as soon as I return, we must leave.”
On the edge of the forest, she found Jozua, speaking with some of his own rough men. He held his axe in one hand and a hunting horn in the other, and Tiana recalled the golden belling of the horn in the eidolon darkness. He noticed her and waved his men away. “I think the brother took the opportunity of cover to spirit off the sister, eh?”
Tiana remembered the muddying of the green light and said, “No.”
He fell into step beside her. “No? What, then?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You only think he did that because that’s what you would do.”
“Oh ho? And what would you do?”
She remembered an alley, and blood. “I wouldn’t run.” She shook her head. “But it doesn’t matter. We’re not them.”
“We’re going to find them, yes? Do you have any idea of where to search?”
“I can find them.” She frowned. Jozua’s presence, with the red light sleeping within him, overpowered the coalesced green light. “But not with you here.”
“Ah? Why is that? What was the theology lesson before your enemies attacked?”
She whirled on him. “My enemies? Ceria’s enemies! Your enemies! Or do you think you would be safe, as the forest children did?”
His hazel eyes glinted. “A slip of the tongue. My apologies, Your Highness.”
Tiana let her feathers smooth back down. “I’m collecting the Light of the Firstborn to use against the Blight. Fai and Cinai were the vessels for the light of Atalya. They still have it. I can find them.”
“Ah,” Jozua said, as if he understood perfectly.
Tiana frowned. “It’s harder with you present.” She wondered if explaining would change the situation, and gave Jinriki a chance to pipe in with an opinion. But he was uncharacteristically silent.
**Monitoring Lisette and others.**
Tiana sighed and said, “You’re also a vessel. So you’re interfering with my sense.”
Jozua’s eyebrows vanished into his hair. “Me? I’ve never been a man of faith.”
Impatiently, Tiana said, “We can discuss whether that’s required later, but if, for now, you could please stand away from me, or better yet, stay behind, I’d like to find the green light.”
Silently, he bowed and fell behind her, until he was barely visible among the trees. It wasn’t perfect but she didn’t want to spend more time arguing with him.
The green light was closer than she hoped; they’d stopped running and gone to ground as soon as they could. The glow suffused a massive tangle of fallen trees, but it didn’t show her a path in.
**Pull it apart?**
“I’m not their enemy, Jinriki.” She raised her voice as loud as she dared in the quiet wood, calling, “Cinai, it’s Tiana. The battle’s over.”
Branches rustled within the tangle of trees, and Cinai said something incomprehensible, her voice distorted by sobbing.
Tiana moved closer, climbing up on one of the trunks. “I didn’t hear you.”
“Can you—can you help me carry him? I don’t want to hurt him further.”
Tiana glanced over her shoulder at where Jozua lurked, and then slid down into the wooden cave. Cinai crouched down, her arms around an unconscious Fai. The green glow filled his chest, and only by peering close could Tiana see the raw gash that the light filled.
“A sword came through him—-his eyes got so wide. I pushed the green light into him and he didn’t fall. We ran, and then he fell. I dragged him here. He’s still breathing, do you see?”
Tiana did. More to the point, she saw the edges of the wound fluttering with each breath. Hesitantly, she touched his chest, wondering if she could absorb the green light.
“What are you doing? Don’t take it! It’s all he has!”
Tiana yanked her hand away, but she already knew she couldn’t take it, that it was bound by Cinai’s own desires.
Regretfully, she said, “I’ll help you move him, but both of you have to come wi
th me.”
In the dimness of the tree cave, Cinai’s face was tight and frightened. “Come where? I said I would go home.”
Tiana waved a hand. “Perhaps. We can decide on ‘where’ later. Right now we need to get out of the forest.”
Cinai said, “But Fai needs healing! The Voice—-.”
Tiana clenched her fist, remembering Lisette’s story. “The Voice does not want Atalya to share her power. Do you understand what the light is?”
Cinai shook her head. “It’s a gift of Atalya and it’s keeping Fai from dying. And I know the Voice can heal.”
Something scurried outside the wooden cave and Tiana hunched her shoulders. “The Blighter wants that gift, or wants to destroy it. The light is Atalya’s throne and it’s meant as a weapon, Cinai, Atalya’s weapon. I need it. The Voice will make sure I don’t get it.”
“It gave you Lisette’s gift,” Cinai pointed out. “I don’t want to take Fai out of the forest! Maybe the light will vanish, maybe he’ll die!”
**Knock her out, bring them both along.** Tiana ground her teeth and didn’t answer Jinriki, even though it was dangerously tempting. How far did not taking go? She wondered where the Blighter’s servants had gone. It couldn’t have been far.
Then, as sweetly as she could, she said, “Cinai, I’m a Princess of the Blood and you and your brother are my people, but protecting the country is my responsibility. You will come with me and act with the responsibility befitting your rank.” She extended an emanation, and lifted Fai from Cinai’s arms.
“No!” cried Cinai, but she let Fai be pulled away. Tiana started climbing out of the wooden cave, not looking to see if Cinai was following her. Instead, she concentrated on maneuvering Fai’s drifting body among the tangled branches, and wondered how Cinai had gotten him inside in the first place.
Jozua had moved in from the edge of the trees, and a fine mist of rain fell. Tiana couldn’t see his face in the darkness, for which she was glad. She turned to look at the mass of trees again, staring until finally she saw Cinai’s head emerge from a hole near the ground.
Green Wild (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 2) Page 26