Asher moved suddenly, taking her into his arms. “I can make no promises. I will do what I can for Kayla, for Michael, for Kiera…and your Jeremy. But you know the score.”
“Za’in by a landslide. I know.” Her laugh was half a sob, and when her tears landed on his shoulder, he could feel warmth flooding his body. “Whatever you can do, you won’t do it alone. I’ll lead the rest of the soldiers away from this place before I try to rescue those poor boys, and you’ll ascend to the monastery after. I can’t sustain this form for long, Asher. The source of my power is gone, and now that I’m exposed, I’m vulnerable to Za’in. Still, when you face him, when you face Tregenne, you’ll have as much Angel in you as I can manage.”
His eyes blurred as the heat within him began to rise, and he thought he heard Kiera singing. He fell into the echo, and when he raised his head again, he had to shield his face from a fierce light. His head throbbed, just as it did on the first day after the end of the world. “Michael?” He stumbled to his feet before his eyes cleared, but soon he could see that it was morning and he was alone on the shore. About this time tomorrow, the sky would be dark.
*
Asher found Velsmere to be in much the same shape as Cormina, but as he neared the rocky, towering hill that supported the monastery, he could see that structure was untouched by the decay that spread over the land below. Still, this was no time to climb those heights. He’d have to wait in the ruins for the sun to fall into the last ordinary night.
He was alone again, for the first time since that day when he battled Saros on the dried-up seabed, that day he first saw Kayla’s face after so many years. The boys joined him then, and it wasn’t long before he stormed Za’in’s compound and claimed the reward of her presence beside him for each day that followed. But now they were separated and it was as if his ten years of isolation never ended. One of his companions was already dead and the rest were captured.
Asher tightened the grip on his kukris and watched the sky. No, this wouldn’t be like before. He wasn’t leading the Resistance this time. He had stopped resisting. This wasn’t the explosive human will to rebel or revolt. Instead, he was simply a vessel of divine retribution, a herald of a needed end.
46
There were swirls of green and blue, tiny explosions of stars and the mysterious inner workings of machines all revealed to Kayla’s consciousness when she closed her eyes. She blinked lazily, enjoying the contrast of the sun’s orange glow against the cool tones of her internal landscape. Other than the temperature of the colors she perceived, there wasn’t much difference between the two realities that existed on opposite sides of her eyelids. Both worlds were hers.
She clutched the book Sebastian had given her. No, that wasn’t quite right. One world was hers and the other would join with her soon, once her light resurrected tomorrow’s black sun. She rested her cheek against the cool marble of the window jamb and looked down at the valley, encircled by purple hills. The surrounding mist made it impossible to tell where the sky ended and the rocky cliffs began, and that soft haze obscured the disorder of the overgrown fields, littered with the ruins of a village of stone and tile. How would she improve this already beautiful world? Her heart swelled at the majesty of her view, but the tears it brought to her eyes were melancholy.
“Lonely, isn’t it?” Sebastian joined her beside the window, and gently wiped a tear from her lower eyelid with the back of his knuckle.
“No, it’s lovely. My ear is to the cool earth below and I can feel all that echoes beneath. My arms are as wide as the fog and my embrace drapes over each tree, each rooftop. My adornments are quartzite, glittering over every surface, each sparkle a blink of my eyes as I survey our kingdom. In everything, I see…” She trailed off, surprised to find herself wiping away fresh tears with trembling fingers.
“Yourself. You see yourself. Yes, that’s beautiful, but a mirror is lonely company. That’s what we shall change. We’ll bring the Earth to life by making its inhabitants worthy of its glory.”
Kayla’s eyes drifted from her view and landed on her abandoned studies. “How?”
“You have been diligent in your training and your reading, but there is no substitute for experience.” Sebastian closed her book and placed it on the ledge of the open window. She quickly slipped it into her pocket before he took her hand and led her away from her perch in the tower, through the warm, open-arched halls that overlooked the inner gardens. Everything that her gaze touched was transformed by his palm pressed to hers. She could see through his eyes, feel through his skin. Each slant of the surrounding architecture existed as two angles simultaneously, with the added perception of eyes that stood a head above and a step ahead of her own.
“The wonder in you is dizzying,” he murmured, laughter in his voice.
He opened a door into a darkened chamber and she followed, ascending a staircase, holding tight to the arm he crossed behind his back. She could see the spiraling steps echoing before a piercing light shot through the patterns beneath her. He lifted her through the opening in the ceiling, and her feet landed lightly on a ridge of roof tiles. The wind stirred her hair. She turned her head left and right, noticing the crisp, geometric shapes that composed the inner gardens and the unpredictable rhythms that formed the wilds on the opposite side of the monastery’s gates.
“But you do have someone to share it with,” Sebastian said, suddenly.
Kayla turned to face him, her question dying on her lips as she saw his eyes, merging with her own in his gaze.
“You don’t have to say it aloud.” He squeezed their palms more tightly together. “I feel it. For the first time, you can really see the beauty around you, but even as it fills you, there is a place of emptiness that it can’t touch. If you want to light the world again tomorrow, you must be without the darkness of grief and doubt.”
Her brows drew together as she searched his face. “Was there someone? Someone who was a part of me…someone I lost?”
He turned his head. “Tomorrow, so many brothers and sisters will be born—”
“It’s my emptiness then, my sorrow. Even with that tiny void, I am still Nephilim. Let me keep it. A tribute to what I left behind.” She squeezed his hand, defiant in the face of his avoidance, determined to find answers through their Angelic senses. A painful shiver crawled up her arm and for a brief moment she was confronted with a pair of glowering blue eyes.
There was a loud smack and she tasted blood. She didn’t know if the illusion was shattered at the moment that he broke contact with her palm or the instant his hand struck her cheek.
“If you are not ready for the new Earth, it would be a mercy for me to just end this now.” Sebastian’s dark eyes were clouded with some unfamiliar emotion.
Kayla looked to his right hand and calmly took it again into her grasp. In the heavy throb of blood in his fingers she could feel his desire to bruise her arm and force her beyond the roof’s edge. She slowed her heartbeat and allowed herself to be helpless in his fantasy so that he might be unable to detect how clearly she sensed this intention. She closed her eyes and breathed in the autumn breeze as it whipped nervously near her face. “Is your wound graver than my own?” she whispered, pity driving out her fear.
“My burden is.” His pulse slowed and her violent visions dissolved as he walked her a short distance to the opening of a shallow dome. He motioned towards it with his usual assurance that answers would be revealed if she only stepped closer.
Kayla crawled towards the oculus and peered down into the chapel. There was an empty altar below her, surrounded by a stone floor inlaid with designs like bright sunbursts. She held the back of her hand to her nose. There were corpses below. “How awful. Why are you showing me this?”
“Use your true senses.”
She gripped the edges of the dome’s eye and allowed her awareness to drop down into the cold, stone chamber. The broken bodies of these humans were like petals, fallen from withered blossoms. It was a sad fate, but their d
estiny nonetheless. A little tremor loosened the hold of her fingers. Her light would go out too, someday. She would be a felled tree amongst these tiny flowers, but she wouldn’t pass peacefully into the soil. She would be reclaimed, her power no longer hers, chained sleeplessly to the earth.
Kayla understood this now, as she looked deeper. The stench of death wasn’t coming from the humans. A few were separated from their souls, but most were still alive. The chained creatures below, all of them without fail, were fitted with fragments of divine bone, whether they were embedded beneath the skin or clamped tightly around their flesh. It was grotesque. Each human was the captor and prisoner of the Angel he donned, blind to the spiritual rewards and dangers at his fingertips.
“But what if the Angel conquered?” Sebastian’s voice was very near.
She closed her eyes. Kayla could see slivers and knots of bone burrowing deep into organs, bursting forth from flesh. When the entire figure was consumed, it shone brightly. It was a body no longer, but a vessel for divinity. The eternal spirit was the focus, the driving force, and the form was just an expression of the soul. The fragility was gone, the fear was gone, and every division was lifted. Even she would be whole, without the emptiness that troubled every moment of peace she grasped. She could feel her roots digging into the earth again, her trunk straightening and her branches climbing to the light. She wasn’t in a forest, but there was contentment in existing as a sentinel in this garden, safe in the shadow of a great banyan. All that came before was buried beneath the soil and served the purpose of fueling them all.
“What must I do?” she whispered.
“Spend the remainder of the day in meditation and the night alone in the presence of the stars. You will stay within the walls of the monastery. Although you will not see me, I will be very near. Sleep will come to you before dawn and there will be a few hours of oblivion before the sun wakes you. When it does, you will find me in the innermost courtyard.”
Kayla turned from the dome and gazed down at the ruined village in the valley. The beauty she had witnessed there, just moments before looking into the chapel, was now obscured by an overwhelming sense of decay. “And then?”
Sebastian tapped the book that protruded from her pocket. “ ‘When you give rise to that which is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not give rise to it, what you do not have will destroy you.’ ”
*
Kayla’s toes dragged along the purple stone walkways that glittered in the light of the moon. Her bones felt restless. She had practiced her breathing exercises, taking in bits of the universe with the cool air. It filled her, but also made more room within her body as she expanded. Her exhalation was warm, blessing all of existence with her hopeful intentions, her invisible kiss received by the plants and the sky. She practiced the movements Sebastian taught her, the sequence of postures that reflected her internal motion. She felt weightless then, her body simply following the flow of her spirit.
Still, she was unable to quiet her mind. The spaces between her thoughts were filled with the image of those cold eyes she glimpsed in Sebastian’s memory. Kayla touched her cheek. He never meant for her to draw that vision out — it was private, it was painful, and he didn’t expect her ability to reveal it. Was that enough explanation for his violence? Did he realize that she saw the other thoughts that lay beneath? Kayla looked up at the stars. She had to admit the true cause of her unrest. She needed to see those eyes again.
She allowed her feet to drift without her consciousness leading them, and she found herself at the entrance to the domed chapel. The doors were locked and she could hear the altered humans stirring uneasily within. She let her forehead fall against the marble. The bones and blood of her kind were trapped on the other side of the wall. Could that explain the flash of recognition she felt the night before? No. That bright burst of divinity was unlike these perverted relics. Sebastian felt it too. He had run to her then and found her safe, but he left troubled.
Her feet were moving again, pulled towards the opposite end of the monastery. She pressed through a set of double doors and held her hands out as she groped in the darkness. She continued to step forward, her legs more certain than her apprehensive arms. Soon she could see faces emerge from the shadows, in the warm tones of inlaid wood portraits. Kayla turned, looking for the source of the light, and then realized that the symbols on her back were aglow. There was something waiting for her here.
She fell onto her hands and knees, her palms sliding over the little trompe l’oeil boxes on the painted tiles. The sets of white, gray, and black diamonds created the illusion of stacked cubes. Her fingernails found a deep groove and she pulled up a chunk of the floor. Jumping down below, she noticed the darkness was thicker and her sigils blazed brighter. Kayla stepped softly through the underground tunnel until she reached a heavy, metal door, but it wouldn’t open for her. She closed her eyes. The stench of death that wafted up from the chapel was mild compared to what she sensed on the other side of this barrier. Still, her hands ached and her back burned. There was something here she was searching for. She pressed her palm against the keyhole and willed a fragment of her Intercessor to enter and spring the lock.
As she stepped into the cold chamber she could barely breathe, a heavy shiver coursing through her when the door closed at her back. Her gaze swept over the room, landing on tables strewn with books and papers, and other more ordered surfaces topped with shiny instruments, and vials of thick, dark fluid. Some of the glass containers felt familiar and she shuddered, remembering that forgotten vision of Sebastian collecting the essence of his kiss with Kiera. She stepped deeper into this lair of science and magic until she saw a limp figure slumped against the wall, his arms and bare torso chained to the stone behind him, while his legs sprawled helplessly along the floor. She stared in horror at the fetters that bound his arms and head — bones blackened by more hatred and pain than anything she witnessed in the chapel. She didn’t recognize this creature, but she was certain she sensed traces of herself, twisted and mangled, running through his bonds.
Kayla was unsure if it was mercy or wrath that pushed her forward, but she knelt at his side, her palms drawing close to the black mass that swallowed his head. She angled her face to his and she could see he was still alive and breathing; his nose, mouth and chin were exposed beneath the heavy hang of his head. Was this the result of a man attempting to steal from an Angel so that he could become more like a god?
“This should not be, even if this is your own doing.” She doubted the last part of her statement when she glanced down to see the set of tubes that protruded from his chest and the dried blood that streaked down his ribs.
His form jerked when she spoke, the small movement seeming to exhaust his weakened body. The fire at her back sputtered, and then burst into two curving, red flares. The light flickered, and tongues of flame issued from her palms, those burning tendrils wrapping around the fetters that bound his head. Kayla grit her teeth. The black mass began to lift from the man, reaching for her wrists, her face, but her fire coiled even more tightly around the corrupted bones. She refused to cry out, even as piercing wails of agony and rage shook her spirit. She wouldn’t let the darkness conquer. The remains of her kind were not meant to exist in this perverted state. The sigils burned white and she focused her will on one thought, straightening her body and aligning her internal passageways of energy. She exhaled and allowed her heat to rise.
Kayla choked on the failed attempt to inhale, her back and palms now cold. Instead of meeting a dark force, her flames disappeared into a void. She fell forward, her cheek colliding against his chest, and she could feel his heart racing. There was something familiar in those savage beats.
“Hey,” she whispered, “are you still in there?”
“Mm.”
“Then help me kill this thing.”
His lips twitched, almost forming a smile. Kayla raised her head and willed her fire to rise again, a growl forming in her throat. She s
traddled his slumped body, now tensed with whatever was left of his defiance, and she pressed her palms directly against his fetters, pushing his head back into the wall.
Kayla held in a scream as the bones threatened to invade her flesh. She willed her flames to wind around her fingers, swelling to form fiery claws, and she tore at the dark mass with wild strokes. Charred lumps splattered against the wall and fell to the floor, but there was still a tight, black net clamped to his face. In the spaces between the web, she could see his eyelids, forced closed, and his tight brow. Her heart leapt. Kayla brought her lips close to his forehead.
“Let him go,” she breathed.
The tangle reached for her and he opened his eyes. Her breath caught in her throat with a strangled cry, thick with tears. That was the same gaze that couldn’t be slapped out of her memory. She laughed, her joy bringing tiny sparks to the edges of her flames. With her fingertips, she lit the black threads like eager fuses, her red light winding along their paths before they fell from his head in clumps of ash.
They stared at each other, the returning flood of memories holding them still. Her hand passed over the burns and scratches that marred his face, tears falling from her eyes for every wound she closed. When she attempted to heal his bruised eyelids, he stopped her, grabbing her wrist with his one unfettered hand.
He swallowed, speaking with effort. “I don’t want to lose sight of you again.”
Kayla pressed her lips to his, one hand stroking the back of his neck, dragging up through his hair, while her other arm trailed down his side. His mouth opened and she felt his tongue seek hers, but soon his body tensed in a painful spasm as he was denied the movement he sought. She took her hands to the wall behind him and released a tremor through the stone. The vibration shattered the bones that attached to the fetters of his upper arms and back, and he was free from what chained him still. Immediately his limbs lifted to hold her, but he froze, close to her skin, and she could feel pain and frustration well up inside him. The sigils at her back flared, curling around his arms and drawing them close to her. The light formed a thin barrier between them, keeping her safe and giving them both the ghost sensation of the other’s touch. He held her tightly, acceptance soothing his torment.
Dominion of the Star (Descendants of the Fallen Book 1) Page 39