Reign the Earth

by A. C. Gaughen

  I thought of Theron, and how only a few days ago I wouldn’t have known which guard she meant by that. But now the two men were distinguished by their loyalty, a line I wished I’d never made them cross.

  “Then we go,” I told her. “We’re not losing anyone else.”

  We walked for most of the night. We reached the river, and Kata waded into the water and out again a moment later as Zeph slumped down onto the ground.

  “Zeph?” I called. “Zeph?” I touched his cheek—he was still breathing, but he had passed out. “Kata, please hurry.”

  We all waited, watching as she worked on him. Kata looked heartbroken as she said the arm was lost, and she couldn’t heal it, so the men held Zeph down as Galen cut through the rest of it, severing his arm above the elbow. Zeph was so weak he barely fought against the pain, and as it was done, I went to his side, wiping his brow, speaking soft words of comfort to him, trying to protect him from pain as he had always done for me.

  Kata’s power took after the arm was gone, and she grew pale, sweating hard, pouring her power into him as his breathing eased and his heart grew stronger.

  I stayed beside him as Kata went back to the water, pulling her strength from it. Galen sat beside me, tucking his body close to mine, and Rian sighed and sat down near Zeph. The other men of the Resistance came and sat with us.

  Rian leaned his arms on his knees. “He’ll be all right, Shy.”

  Galen grunted. “Please. He’ll never be the same again. He will be lording this over me for years—lost his arm protecting his queen!—I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “Shalia,” Kata said, and I met her eyes. She gestured toward the water.

  With a deep sigh, I stood, going over to her. There was a frown on her face that made me think of Galen, and it was strange to think he was right behind me, right beside me in all things. “What is it?”

  “Do you feel that?” she asked, running her hands in the water.

  I dipped my hand in. “Cold?”

  “No,” she said. “Your power. Does anything feel strange with your power?”

  I felt out along the rocks, along this place that hummed with threads. She was right—there was something there, like a break, like a place where threads had been cut.

  “I think so,” I told her. “What is that?”

  Her eyes met mine heavily. “I’ve felt something like that once before,” she told me. “In the islands. When I was … when they tried to get my powers to show.”

  “It feels stronger here,” I told her, following the river upward. The stream disappeared into rock, and I pulled at it to make the space wider.

  “What are you doing?” Rian asked from behind us.

  But Kata was at my shoulder, and we pressed forward, going to the gap I created. More water was rushing out, and then something fell into the stream. I reached for it, but Kata snatched my hands away. “Rian,” she called. “Grab that!”

  I pulled away from her as he took it from the stream. He held up a glass cage, fused shut with gold, and inside an orb filled with red liquid shimmered, dark and dangerous.

  “Blood?” Galen asked, coming closer. “What is that?”

  I felt along it with my power. The gold was foreign to me, flat and unresponsive. All around the cage, I felt like the threads had been cut, and I couldn’t use my power. Slowly, my fingers covered my mouth. “The elixir?” I breathed. “I think this is what Calix was looking for.”

  “This is the elixir?” Galen asked, taking it from Rian.

  “This was a person,” Kata said, her voice a snarl. “It’s the blood of an Elementa. The blood of an islander.” She shook her head, turning away from me. “It was a person.”

  “Kata,” Rian said, going over to her. I stepped aside, wanting to move closer to Galen, but not wanting to get too close to that thing.

  “Don’t touch me,” she snarled, turning to push Rian away. I saw tears in her eyes, and the sight made something crack inside me.

  But Rian pushed forward, gripping her arms, pressing his forehead to hers. Her breaths were rough and shallow. “I’m here,” he said. “You’re safe. You’ve made yourself safe.”

  I felt totally lost, looking at them. Rian and Kata … meant something to each other that I had never noticed before.

  Her breathing slowed, becoming even and steady. In his arms. I looked to Galen, wondering if he knew that’s what he did for me too. “This whole time, he wasn’t looking for some magic potion. It’s not an object,” Kata said softly, tugging my eyes from Galen. “It’s a person. It’s a fifth type of element.”

  “You said you felt it before?” I asked.

  She nodded. “When he came to the islands. After he broke our numbers, they spent two days rounding people up and trying to get us to show our powers, and I tried, but I felt like this, almost as if it was severed. Like the power didn’t even exist.” She pulled away from Rian, wiping her face, shaking her head. “No. It couldn’t have been the same. I know he used something like this to take the islands, but they wouldn’t have tried to make us use our powers with it nearby. They would have known I couldn’t.”

  “Us?” I asked softly, looking to Rian. He shook his head. “Who were the others?” I asked.

  She nodded. “At least two more. I didn’t know them.”

  “Kata,” I said softly. “One of them was probably this fifth element, some kind of void that can cancel out the other elements. And they didn’t know it anymore than you did.”

  “How could it be?” she asked me. “I’ve never even heard of a fifth element. There are no more priestesses, my family is dead, and there is so much I don’t know about my own heritage. About these powers.”

  “Your family is here,” I told her fiercely, taking her hand.

  “So we should destroy this,” Galen suggested, holding it up over the river. “It doesn’t look hard to break.”

  “Don’t,” I told him. “We don’t know how that works, but it’s like my power feels disrupted around it. Crumbled, a little. I think if that blood spills, it will be far worse.”

  Kata nodded.

  “How did it get here?” Zeph asked, still sitting against the wall.

  I pointed to the river. “That leads straight from the lake Calix was searching. It must have shifted.”

  “We’re lucky it didn’t break,” Kata said. She took a deep breath, stepping closer to Rian and kissing him briefly. “We’re going to have to hide it until we can figure out how to destroy it properly.”

  “Not here,” Rian said.

  “Definitely not. If Calix ever figures out a way across, this tunnel will lead him straight to it,” Galen said.

  “We’ll bring it to Jitra for now. How are we going to carry him?” Kata asked, nodding to Zeph’s limp body. “It’s a long walk still.”

  “I can do it,” I said, calling the flat rock we had used in the tunnel to me. The other men helped lift Zeph onto it, and I used my power to float him up.

  “Do you—” Galen started, holding out the cage to Rian.

  “You hold it,” Rian said, a small smile on his face. “That way you’ll keep your hands off my sister for a little while.”

  Galen’s face soured. “You will have to accept this eventually, Rian.”

  “Yes,” he said, moving ahead of Galen and me in the tunnel. “But not today.”

  With a sigh, I leaned forward and kissed Galen gently. “That’s progress, at least,” I whispered to him.

  He nodded, chasing my lips for a moment before pulling back. “Go,” he said. “I don’t want this thing to do anything to you.” His nose rubbed over mine, and in a soft, secret voice, he reminded me, “I love you.”

  I kissed him once more. “I love you too.”

  When the passage opened out onto the road, I saw that I had lost all sense of time. It was so dark it was nearly impossible to see. Rian and I didn’t need light, sure of our steps back to Jitra, while the others stumbled along, and I found myself walking beside my brother, r
eaching for his hand as our weary steps grew faster, eager to go home.

  The entrance to the carved city was cracked, the stone threatening to fall. Galen kept the blood out of range so I could use my power, lifting my arms to seal the rock back together, unbroken. Unharmed.

  Inside the entrance more rock had tumbled down to block the narrow passages. Slowly, carefully, I pulled it all up, Kata close behind me. With the last stone moved, a path cleared into the center of Jitra, and I halted, unable to go farther.

  “I can’t,” I breathed. “Not without him. Not without all of them.”

  Rian drew a ragged breath, tugging both of my hands. “Shy,” he said softly. “What does your power feel like? When you use it?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Kata’s told me it’s like strings, isn’t it? Isn’t that what it feels like?”

  Sucking in a breath, I nodded. “Yes,” I said, when I wasn’t sure if he could see me in the dark.

  “For wealth,” he said. “For secrets. For ferocity. For a full stomach.” His hands squeezed mine. “But most importantly, there is a thread because you’re desert born, and you will never be alone.”

  I swore I could see them in the dark, my siblings and family coming forward to bless me just as they had the day I married.

  Rian had been first, with his thread full of foreign coins that I now knew the cost of far too well. For wealth, little sister. That you never want for anything.

  Then Cael. You won’t stand alone, he told me. He gave me a white-and-black thread woven together. You are desert born, and you will never be alone.

  Aiden was next, with a blue thread knotted around a mountain cat tooth. For ferocity, he said, and I could feel the ghost of his fingers pinching my nose. Show them what the heart of the desert truly is.

  And then Kairos. Sly as ever, and as I remembered his words, they chilled me and gave me a thrill of hope. Keep your secrets, he had told me with a flash of his bright smile.

  And then, last, the spirits of two small figures who would be together in death as they always were in life. Catryn and Gavan presented one thread, tied around a small purse. I made the thread, and he made the purse, Cat explained. She put it around my neck.

  It’s full of seeds, Gavan said. In case they don’t feed you.

  So you never go hungry, Catryn corrected.

  Gavan shrugged. Same thing.

  Their spirits stepped back and faded, but I still felt them all around me, felt the warmth of the clan, heard the women keening their low song to send me on from the desert with blessings and love.

  I was not poor. I was not alone, or broken, or hungry. Their blessings had carried me through every challenge and horror I had faced; in truth, I had never left the desert at all, and my child would know the light, the warmth, and the love of her ancestors.

  And yet. Passing through this doorway without Kairos and his secrets made my whole body ache, reminded me of the threat that was looming just beyond the desert, the hate of my husband gathering like a storm. I hugged Rian tight and hard, and I felt his chest shiver with grief against me.

  “We must do this,” he said. “Our feet will never fail to carry us home.”

  “But Kairos,” I whispered.

  “He’s safe,” Kata murmured, not far from us in the dark.

  “You don’t know that,” I heard Galen tell her gruffly. “Don’t give them false hope.”

  “I do know,” Kata told him. “The world has been broken and hurt, lying shattered in pieces for years. And now the powers have all returned, and everyone here has a role to play. Kairos has a role to play. We’ll find Kairos because not one of us can escape our fate.”

  I leaned away from my brother, remembering the last night I was here, when Kairos wished I would find someone who moved the heavens and stars for me. I looked up, knowing I had, knowing that those star spirits were the most eternal of all.

  I prayed my family had found their places up there.

  I prayed no more of my family would have to anytime soon.

  “Maybe,” I told Kata softly, “fate has only begun to play her hand.”

  Acknowledgments

  This is my fight song.

  So this book sold in March 2015; April 1 of the same year, I found out that because of a long and tumultuous history with diabetes, my retinas were bleeding into my vitreous fluid and blocking my vision. I spent almost a year with extremely compromised vision, getting laser treatments, injections, and surgeries in both eyes—I spent a year not knowing if I would be completely blind within a few years (I guess I still don’t really know that, so keep your fingers crossed). I spent a month not lifting my head because to do so would disrupt a gas bubble that was keeping my retina attached.

  Let me repeat—I looked at the floor for a month.

  And all this while desperately trying to get my diabetes under control, and deal with an insidious sense of my own guilt and shame—I had done this to myself.

  Through this all, I had this book. I worked on edits while I was facedown, making notes on Post-its since I couldn’t even use a computer because of the angle of the screen. Thinking constantly about this book, primed for the day I could raise my head—ready for the chance to heal.

  It’s virtually impossible to, in a few public paragraphs, explain what a dark time that was for me, and the kinds of fear and depression I wrestled with. But in writing my acknowledgments, I somehow need to acknowledge what this book really became for me—it wasn’t escapism. It was proof that I was still capable. It was my ability to function. It was my measure of worth for myself.

  This is my fight song.

  And yet, there’s so much more to the story of this book, and this series. I wrote the first draft of Shalia’s story when I was sixteen. It took me fourteen more years to learn how to tell her story the way it needed to be told—and I can’t even express how many false starts and dead novels lie strewn in the wake of this final version. I mean, the first draft was handwritten across two composition notebooks. COMPOSITION NOTEBOOKS. I think one has my history notes from high school and plans to go to a party in my freshman year of college in the margins.

  And now you’re reading this in the back of a published novel. So for writers everywhere, never give up on a story that you want to tell. You may not know how to tell it just yet, but don’t ever believe that you don’t know how to tell it period. We learn craft and practice our skills to get better at this.

  For myself, for many reasons and in many ways, I will always need reminding that my pen—and my heart—will never fail me. And this book is a testament to that.

  But I didn’t get here through force of will alone. So here is a paltry list:

  To Mary Kate, thank you for never once making me feel like I was taking too long. Thank you for sending Word docs so that I could zoom in on the font and actually see things. Thank you for continuing to ask for excellence when it would have been so much easier to settle for less—not only did it, of course, serve the story, but it also reminded me what I was capable of producing. Thank you for believing in this book, but more than that, thank you for believing in me.

  To Minju, thank you for being my incredible, dedicated agent—you are a tough-as-nails champion and a badass crusader, but you’re also a loving and supportive friend. Your thoughtfulness and care have meant so much to me—thank you.

  To the whole team at Bloomsbury that has had my back from day one, I can’t believe the level of love and support you’ve shown for me and this book. Lizzy Mason, Courtney Griffin, Emily Ritter, Erica Barmash, Beth Eller, Melissa Kavonic, Oona Patrick, Pat McHugh, Christine Ma, Claire Stetzer, Charlotte Davis, Cristina Gilbert, Cindy Loh, and Donna Mark—you are the ultimate dream team. Thank you for making this beautiful baby a reality.

  To the fans and bloggers who have been so excited for this book despite the long wait, your cheerleading helped me every step of the way. I’m looking at you, What Sarah Read, Melissa Lee, Andi’s ABCs, Gail Yates, Mundie Moms, Gab
y Salpeter, Jenuine Cupcakes, the Irish Banana Review … there are so many, many more. Thank you.

  The funny thing about grappling with debilitating illness is that, while making me feel the most incredibly vulnerable I’ve ever felt—because I really do not like accepting help from others, and the need to do so was problematic at best and humiliating at worst—it also taught me how many people love and care for me. It’s no coincidence that this book is all about the families you’re born into and the families you make and choose.

  To Annie Cardi, Tara Sullivan, and Katie Slivensky, you guys are just supposed to be my critique group. Where do you get off being some of the truest friends, confidantes, secret-keepers, and bitchfest arbiters I’ve ever met? Thank you for all the rides, all the love, and especially for my stuffed dragon to keep the other dragons out of my eyes. And of course, for getting this book shipshape. I literally don’t know how I did this stuff before you guys came along.

  To the Apocalypsies, the Class of 2k12, and the other authors, writers, and bookish people I have met along the way whom I now have the extreme privilege of calling dear friends, thank you for being excellent and inspiring more beautiful stories in your wake. Tiffany Schmidt; Diana Renn; Erin Cashman, Bowman, and Dionne (dude, there are a LOT of Erins I like); Gina Rosati; Sarah Aronson; Elly Swartz; Emery Lord; Trish Doller; and Cristin Bishara—thank you all for keeping my hope and my heart up.

  To Nacie and Renee, my sisters from other misters (hi, Mr. C and Mr. D!), thank you for sitting with me and checking up on me and agreeing to eat no more ice cream with me when I gave up all sugar for eight months—it is so not easy to change up a friendship routine (especially involving sugar), but you never missed a beat. Seriously, that’s love.

  To Leah, Iggy, Ashley, Alex, Jenna, Emily, Nora, Robin, Andrea, and Beth, illness makes me a bad friend, and none of you cared. Thank you—that kindness and generosity is such a gift.

  Holly, thank you for being my sounding board. Caitlin, Tyme, Leigh, Jo, Emily, thank you for the special brand of AIE love.

  To Steve, Aysha, and Juliet, I was such a crappy employee for several months, and instead you made me feel like a fighter. Thank you for teaching me the meaning of a team—and thank you for reminding me that art is in fact the language of hope.