The power within him was clearly immense, and he was wasting it like this? Using it for tricks?
“You’re not going to be able to answer me, are you? I forgot we sort of gagged you.” He let out a dramatic sigh, and it reminded me for a moment of the pirate king, only this man was nothing like Slavik. Slavik had had a sense of good in him, even if it hadn’t made much sense to anyone but him. There was clearly nothing good about this man.
“Your friend…Wyn is it? She’s a decently strong Earth Wielder. Yet nothing. All of the Obscurité are nothing. Their king is nothing. He’ll be dead soon, and then the Lumière will take their rightful place at the helm. And we can stop talking about this fracturing.” He rolled his eyes, and I did my best not to look at Easton. Somehow, the glamour still held over him. No one knew that they were talking near the King of Obscurité himself.
“But, as for your friend, Wyn,” the man continued, “Air Wielders can do so much. It’s not just creating little puffs of air and moving things around. Yes, we can walk on air. We can use it to do many things. But as you know, your body needs oxygen to survive. But did you know that with a snap of a finger, we can pull it from someone’s body? Molecule by molecule, gasp by gasp.”
He snapped his fingers, and Wyn let out a large gasp as her body folded in on itself, and she struggled to keep breathing.
Tears fell down my cheeks, and I wrenched against my restraints.
I could feel Easton doing the same by my side, but I could only focus on Wyn.
I couldn’t reach her.
She was being tortured. The air literally being sucked from her body, and there was nothing I could do.
The man let out a sigh and snapped his fingers again. Wyn stopped panting, stopped struggling. Instead, her chest puffed out, and her eyes widened, and I knew he was hurting her again only in a different way.
And there was nothing I could do.
I thrashed against my restraints, and then two more Air Wielders came up from behind the other man, glowering at me.
“I don’t like her in restraints. Make sure she’s standing so she can see everything. But don’t let her go. Keep the gag in. It’ll help.”
I kicked out and tried to use my Air Wielding or any of my Wielding to get free, but they had somehow put a block around me, using just Air to press on me so tightly that I couldn’t even reach my own Wielding.
I was supposed to have all this power, yet I didn’t know how to use it.
I felt useless. Depleted. And I was going to die after I watched my friends die.
I couldn’t let this happen.
“Yes, I like this much better.” The Air Wielder’s gaze raked over me, and I felt like I needed a shower. “Turn her to the other man. Let her watch this.”
They turned me to Arwin, and tears once again fell down my face.
The boy was upside down, hanging from what looked like nothing, except it had to be Air Wielding holding him aloft.
He was unconscious and looked as if he had been thrown against the bow of the ship, but now, he was hovering over the side of the vessel as if he might be dropped to his death at any moment.
I could see his chest moving, and I knew he was breathing. At least he wasn’t in pain at the moment. I hoped to God we would find a way to wake him up and get us all out of this. Because I didn’t want him to get hurt.
I didn’t want any of us to get hurt.
All because some of those in power liked what they held and didn’t want the crystals to find their way back to wholeness. They didn’t want the prophecy, whatever it truly was, to come to pass.
They liked their individual power, but they were scared of change.
So, they were lashing out.
“This one sort of bored me. Someone hit him in the head a little too early, and he passed out far too quickly for me. But when he wakes up, we’ll figure out what else to do with him. Because you see, dear Spirit Priestess, Air Wielders are much more than just the pretty ones with the puffs of air. Turn her to the next one,” he barked out.
And then they turned me, and I swallowed a scream.
“Do you see this one? He’s strong. So this is worth it. You see, those same air molecules that are in your body are right beneath the skin. With just a small bit of energy and precision, Air Wielding’s so technical, you can actually peel the flesh from someone’s bones.”
Teagan looked at me then, and small strips of flesh and skin peeled from his arms and his chest, but he didn’t scream.
Instead, his jaw clenched, and he narrowed his eyes at me.
He didn’t say anything, but I knew he was telling me the same thing Easton was. To stay strong. Because we were going to get out of this.
Because there was a prophecy for a reason.
I just needed to unlock the rest of my elements. But how could I unlock them when I didn’t even know how. How could I do anything when I couldn’t get through this Air shield that they had put around me?
They turned me again, and I let out a choked sob around the rope in my mouth.
Rhodes was bloodied, bruised, and also gagged.
I wanted to reach out and make sure he was alive, but I could barely see his chest moving.
“You see, we can also use the air within you to blow you up from the inside out. But that ends things far too quickly. For this one, and the weak one next to you, what we did was throw them up as high as we could into the air just to see what our Wielding could do. And as they landed, we tried to test the precision of our Air Wielding to ensure that we could catch them.”
He shook his head as he came into my line of sight. “Sometimes, we threw a little too hard or missed when they came down. That’s why this one’s so bruised.”
He snapped his fingers, and Easton was moved towards me, two more Air Wielders pulling him. “Now, let’s see what happens with this one.”
The Air Wielder bowed to me, and I wanted to kill him. I wanted to use every single Wielding technique I knew, and everything that I had learned in the human realm to kill him.
He was torturing my friends just because he could. Because he wanted to show what an Air Wielder could do.
But the thing was, I knew that every type of Wielding had its darkness. That was why there was light, because there couldn’t be darkness without light and vice versa.
There was good and there was bad in everything, and there were people that lived in the gray.
But this man was nothing in between.
This man was darkness. Even if he called himself Lumière.
Easton looked at me, his eyes dark, and I wanted to reach out, wanted to tell him that I’d find a way to help him. To save us.
But then two Air Wielders flipped up their hands, and Easton flew into the air.
I looked up, holding back a scream as he became just a dark dot so high in the sky that I knew if he fell from that distance, or any height even close to that, he would die. It didn’t matter that he was one of the strongest Wielders I had ever met.
He would die, and it would be my fault.
And then the Air Wielders let their hands go, and Easton fell. I didn’t hear a scream, but Easton wouldn’t yell out. Of course, he wouldn’t.
Easton came closer and closer to the ship, the black dot creating a form. Soon, I could see him, but I couldn’t hear him.
I screamed then, reaching out, and the leader laughed, flicking his hand so Easton stopped about two feet from the top of the bridge of the ship.
“Ah, this one’s important to you. As is the other we’ve bruised. That’s good to know.”
“You’re nothing,” Easton growled out. “And you’ll learn that you are nothing.”
“You’re boring me. We are the assassins. Usually, we kill quickly, but when we want information, we do have interesting ways of getting it.”
But they weren’t asking us anything. They were doing these things just because they liked it. I wanted them dead.
“However, getting rid of the Spirit Priestess now wou
ld do us all some good. Did you know that there’s a weapon we can make of Air? A blade that can pierce your heart just as precisely as anything metal or any other kind of tool. Only those that are pure with Air can make it so, though. But all of us have trained. You cannot be a Creed of Wings without it.”
And then I looked up at him, and I knew this was the end.
They were holding me down, not even letting me fight back.
This was how I was going to die.
Stabbed. Again.
And there weren’t going to be any Spirit Wielders to protect me this time.
Then the Air Wielder threw his hand forward, and I swore I could see the glint of light on a blade, even though it was made of air.
I screamed, not because I was going to die, but because I knew what was going to happen next.
Easton threw out his arms, his Wielding finally overpowering what was holding him back, and then he jumped, though he didn’t push me out of the way. No, he would never do anything like that.
Instead, the King of Obscurité jumped in front of the blade of air and shouted. And I knew.
I knew as soon as the blade hit his body, as soon as it sliced through his heart, that it had hit home.
And that was when my own Wielding broke through. Finally.
I threw back my head, and all the Wielding I had been trying to push through moved past me like a wave. Water and Earth and Air slammed into the others around me. It missed my friends, only hitting the Air Wielders. They shouted and screamed, but were tossed over the sides of the ship.
I knew some would come back, but others wouldn’t. Because I had heard the bones in their necks snap as the wind hit them hard.
My friends moved around me, each finally free. Teagan grabbed Arwin, but Wyn and Rhodes were fighting, using their powers to get free.
I was on the deck, my hand over Easton’s chest as he smiled at me.
Smiled.
“I’ll be fine. Missed the heart,” he said, coughing up blood.
Still, tears fell down my cheeks.
Because I couldn’t heal him. I wasn’t a healer.
And I didn’t know if he was lying.
The others fought around me, and I let them.
I had led the first strike, but if I let go of Easton just then, if I didn’t stop the bleeding, he was going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it. I closed my eyes, not willing to look at him in death, not knowing what to do. My Wielding surged within me, pushing up from under my skin. It seeped out of me, bit by bit, moment by moment.
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but soon, Rhodes was at my side, looking between Easton and me.
“Easton will be fine,” he muttered under his breath. I looked up at him, my whole body drained.
“You saved him.”
I blinked. “What? How?”
Easton was asleep in front of me, his dark lashes looking stark against the pale of his skin. He never looked fair. But right then, he looked pale as death.
“Apparently, a Spirit Priestess can heal.”
I sat down, unaware that I’d been kneeling the whole time. My knees ached, but I ignored the pain. “Heal? I can heal?”
“You can. It wasn’t a mortal wound, so I think that’s how you could heal him so quickly.”
If it had been a mortal wound, and I had healed him, that would have meant that I was his soulmate. But I knew that wasn’t the case. Though I didn’t say that.
And Rhodes didn’t either.
I finally looked around at the ship and noticed that all of my friends were standing around me. Somehow, we were still in the air, but there were no Air Wielders around us anymore. I didn’t know if the Creed would be back, or if they were all dead.
All I knew was that I was exhausted, and this was only one step.
Another battle, and we weren’t even where we needed to be. I wasn’t where I needed to be.
“The Air sentries are coming,” Rhodes whispered. I looked up at him, frowning.
“What?”
He looked off into the distance, pale, bloody, and broken like the rest of us. “I can sense them. My grandparents must have sent them. The Creed is gone, but they’re not dead. Not all of them anyway. They vacated the ship because I think they were a little scared. Good on you. Let’s get Easton ready to go. Because I have a feeling it’s only going to get worse from here.”
And with that prophetic announcement, I looked down at Easton, and at the blood on my hands, and wondered what the hell had just happened.
And why I felt like everything had changed.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Everything moved quickly from that point on, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to remember exactly what had happened. Mostly because I didn’t know if what I saw had happened at all. I had been so focused on Easton and keeping him alive, I’d missed it.
The Air sentries had indeed come aboard the ship. Their Wielding felt different. It was as if it weren’t tainted with evil or greed.
Considering that it had been a while since I had felt anything as fresh as that from people that weren’t lying destitute, or in a small town that had nothing to do with power, it was almost refreshing.
The sentries had shown up in light gray, almost cream robes and smiled at us, telling us that they’d been looking for us. Then said we should go. So, here we were, entering the Air territory, finally traveling to where Rhodes needed to go…and to where, hopefully, we could heal.
The Air territory was like something out of a dream. As someone who tried to run from her dreams, it sounded like a most apt description.
Everything was tall and high up in the air. There were large canopies everywhere, and the homes were built into the cliff faces as if anybody who needed to get anywhere could just fly, as if they had wings to go from one area to another.
I knew that the ground and water and all of the other elements were below, but everything in the inner sanctum was just higher, it’s elevation grander.
There were flags and billowy canopies everywhere, the wind harsh in some respects. But this high up, you would have thought it would have been even worse.
I knew it had something to do with the Air Wielders themselves because they controlled the element.
And they wouldn’t let it hurt their people.
Rhodes had explained as we came in that some of the Wielders could actually fly from area to area, though I had only been half listening because my attention had been on Easton. Others used rope bridges or different ways of getting around. Not everybody had the strength to use their Air Wielding in such a manner, of course, and he’d said that it was becoming even rarer as time passed because of the crystals failing.
I knew I needed to get to the court of the Lumière at some point, to see the crystal for myself.
I was drawn to it, much like I had been drawn to the Obscurité crystal.
I knew that once I figured out my five elements, I was going to have to figure out what to do with those crystals, too.
Or at least help someone else figure it out.
Because even though I had met some strong Wielders, the fact that so many were losing their Wielding and becoming weak as time passed, meant that the realm was indeed fractured. That people were dying.
But I was so exhausted right then, I couldn’t care. I couldn’t help.
I just had to focus on what was happening in front of me and take it one step at a time.
We had taken another airship, this one not as pirate-like as the Creed of Wings had. It had gone over the Air territory itself to get to the estate.
We had moved quickly, all of the Air Wielders using their Wielding in such a dramatic fashion that it didn’t feel as if we had been on the ship that long at all.
Though I knew the land mass must’ve been the same distance away as any of the other territories.
Everyone was in a hurry, and I had a feeling that things were going to get worse.
“We’re here,” Rhodes whispered. I lo
oked up at the estate in front of us and sucked in a breath.
It was all white with large turrets and billowing flags and silks everywhere.
It was gorgeous and looked like a princess castle out of a fairy tale.
“It’s beautiful,” I replied.
“My grandfather may be the Lord of Air, but my grandmother is the Lady of Air and helped design it. She wanted something welcoming, something pure so others knew that they could come for safety even as they came for hope. But it was so long ago, that I don’t know if anyone actually remembers that message anymore.”
I gave him a strange look, but I couldn’t really ask him more because we were landing at the edge of the estate, and everyone was moving around quickly.
We were all bruised, and even I had some cuts and scrapes and blood on me.
Although Teagan, Arwin, and Wyn were bleeding, as well, they wouldn’t let anyone else take Easton from them. Instead, they used the gurney that the others had provided and carried their king out towards where the infirmary must be.
I wanted to go after them, but Rhodes held my arm. I blinked.
He was hurt as well, one eye sealed shut, and blood all over him, but he just shook his head.
“We’ll go to them soon. But first, you need to meet my grandparents. And I need to go, too.” He swallowed hard, and I watched the long, lean line of his throat work.
Yes, it was probably protocol for the Lord and Lady of Air to meet the Spirit Priestess, but I knew that was only part of it.
Rhodes didn’t want to be alone.
He was going to his grandparents to tell them that his mother, their child, was dying.
And he didn’t want to be alone.
I would be here for him for that. After all, that was why I was here. At least part of it.
Rhodes took my hand and kissed it, and I looked at him, frowning. My hands were covered in blood, except for the very tops, where he had placed his lips.
It didn’t feel romantic. If anything, it felt like a thank you. My head hurt, and I didn’t want to think about anything so difficult—more than I already was anyway—so I rolled my shoulders back and gave him a nod.
From Flame and Ash: An Elements of Five Romance Page 24