The Armor of Light

by Karen E. Hoover

  With agonizing slowness, the spine in her neck eased out and pulled free. She heard it fall to the ground behind her and almost sagged with relief and pain. She kept herself still to avoid Jihong’s notice, but it was horrible watching Brant suffer. She would do him no good if she were frozen again. She had to be careful and proceed with a plan—if she could only keep her emotions out of it.

  Jihong had continued to speak all this time, but she had ignored him, focused solely on getting the flute to remove the spine. As Jihong paused, awaiting an answer he knew she could not provide, she came to a realization.

  Jihong didn’t intend to leave either one of them alive.

  And here was her chance. He didn’t know she was free. She had to surprise and disable him, then force the antidote away from him to save Brant. If that didn’t work, she would use the flute to save her love, but Brant would not die this day.

  Using all her strength, she called the flute to her. One second it was in her satchel, and the next, it was out of the case and glowing in her hands, a cyclone of energy surrounding her. Her hair crackled and stood out with static electricity, her entire body glowing blue as she trembled and pulled the flute to her lips, a single note echoing across the glade.

  Lowering the flute slightly, she answered him. “Choose the flute or my love? I say neither! I will keep them both!” Jihong’s face fell, his brows drawn down in fury.

  He raced toward her across the field, his dart gun at his mouth as he ran. He blew, and a spine shot toward Kayla. The cyclone around her cast it aside. He blew again, and the spine stopped inches before her. She spun it around and shot it back, hoping to strike Jihong as he had Brant, but he deflected it with his blow gun, still running.

  Remembering the electric bolts he shot at her under the sea, she put up a shield of ice, somehow knowing that was his next step, and sure enough, he dropped the blow gun and threw bolt after bolt of electricity. Kayla played the flute and strengthened the shield, then using the power of air, she reached around it with the power of the flute, pulled the antidote from Jihong’s hand, and threw it across the glade to Brant. It landed directly on his chest. Barely able to move, he picked it up with trembling hands, uncorked the top. and drank it in one swallow.

  Jihong stopped, glancing down at his empty hand, then at her. Then he did the very last thing she expected him to do.

  He laughed.

  Hands on his hips, he leaned back and sent his laughter to the sky, then bent forward and laughed toward the ground, looking as if his knees were about to collapse beneath him, he laughed so hard.

  Kayla hated this man. Hated him more than she’d hated anyone in her life. More than those aristocrats who had mocked her. More than the evahn people who would not let her father come when she needed him so much. She hated Jihong more than she hated her grandfather. The fury built and built until it was a huge, tornado-like whirlwind of emotion, filled with jagged shards of ice.

  She sent that whirlwind toward him and let the cold and wind sweep him from his feet and twist him into the sky. All she wanted to do was hurt this man who had hurt her so much. She wanted to stab him for every wound she had ever received. It was as if he became every pain, every taunt, every snub, every hurt, all rolled into one man, and she wanted to batter him with it.

  The power. Oh, the power. No longer helpless and weak, Kayla held Jihong immersed in the whirlwind, about to crush this being who had caused her so much pain.

  And then he screamed. That single sound was so full of fear and pain that it brought her to her senses, and she at last heard Brant beg her to let him go. “It isn’t worth it! Don’t destroy your soul for him,” he pled, his voice a mere whisper.

  Brant was right—but she couldn’t let Jihong just walk away.

  She gathered up the power of the cold and the wind and pinned him against a tree, then wound ice around him in huge sheets that bound him in place, leaving only his head free. She knew he would be all right—she’d bound him in ice before.

  For an instant, she wanted to throw the flute away, sickened by what she had done, but she didn’t. She clung to it. She would make this right somehow. Jihong had to pay for what he’d done, but it was not her job to kill him for justice.

  And what she had wanted to do was nothing like justice.

  Kayla quickly ran to Brant’s side. She reached for the spines to pull them out, but Jihong yelled at her from the tree. “I wouldn’t touch those, if I were ye. Unless ye want the poison yerself.”

  Kayla stopped, then turned and glared at him. “Then how do I get them out?”

  “Give me the flute and I be telling you,” he answered, still not giving up.

  “I can’t. I made a promise, and I won’t break it for you or for anyone.”

  “Not even to save the life of yer love?” he asked.

  She reached for the spines again when he spoke. “If ye pull the spines out, the venom will be drawn into his skin. Pull them out, and ye’ll kill him faster.”

  “What? That’s impossible. There’s got to be a way!” she yelled.

  “There is. Give me the flute,” he said, chattering from the ice, but calm as a summer day.

  Kayla couldn’t help herself. She screamed. She stomped around the fire for a moment, then came upon an idea. Heat drew things out. It had worked when she’d been sick as a child, and then there was that trick of drawing the egg into a bottle that Brant always loved to show the children. It was worth a try.

  Kayla took a stick and burned the end, then ripped off a corner of the ground cloth and went to work. She moved to Brant and knelt down at his side. He was sweating, his face green, and he was foaming at the mouth. Whatever venom these spines held was nasty stuff. She knew it was killing him, and she had to work fast.

  She took the smoldering stick and touched it to the end of the spine. Immediately, liquid boiled up and spilled out the top. She used the cloth scrap to mop it up, then grabbed hold of the spine and pulled it out. Brant gasped and turned a little more green, but she continued the process until all twelve were removed.

  Jihong spoke again. “Ye’ve killed him for sure now, lass. What a shame. If ye’d just given me the flute, we could have avoided this.” He tsked just as Brant groaned, turned on his side, and vomited. That was enough. Kayla faced Jihong, and screaming at him, pushed all the flute’s power at the prince. She wanted to tear off his head and throw it across the world. Wanted to rip his arms from his sockets and pull out his still-beating heart. She wanted to destroy Jihong for what he had done to Brant. All her anger focused on him, the ice pressed, crushing him against the tree. He breathed shallowly then, still alive, but hopefully he would be silent for a while.

  As if he could read her mind, Jihong began to laugh once more. “Yer too late, lass. The choice has been made for ye. It’s not as if he would be surviving anyway. There be no cure for stonefish venom. He just dumped a vial of water into his mouth. That be all.”

  The anger returned like a storm. Kayla pulled the flute to her lips once again and directed it at Jihong. She couldn’t take one more word from him. She only meant to seal his mouth, but her anger and the power of the flute made it so much more.

  The ice crept up Jihong’s neck and he thrashed back and forth, panicking now that he realized the price he would pay. The cold crept up his jaw, into his hair, and then just as he let out a scream of his own, the ice covered his head, his face forever frozen in fear. For a moment his eyes glared at her, still alive, and then they glazed over in death.

  Horrified at what she had done, she ran to the tree where he was frozen and pounded on his bindings, but it was as hard as stone. She picked up a sharp rock and hammered at the ice, but it wouldn’t even chip. The flute had done its job all too well.

  Kayla sank to the ground and wept. She hadn’t meant to kill Jihong. She’d wanted to for a brief moment, but it was in anger. She didn’t mean it—and now it was done.

  What was she going to tell Niefusu? And Sarali? She’d just killed their brothe
r.

  Brant groaned. Kayla wiped her face. She would deal with this later. Right now Brant needed her. She turned back to him, rushing to his side as he hadn’t moved since vomiting.

  Perhaps the flute could heal him like it had her.

  Desperate now, Kayla put the flute to her lips once more and began to play. It was beautiful music, but the magic was absent. The blue glow that usually surrounded her was missing, the feeling of power just—gone.

  “No, no, no, no, no!” she said, speaking to the flute. “Why won’t you work? You healed me before. Why not him? Come on!” She tried again, playing for Brant with all her heart and soul, pouring all the love she had into the song. For a moment, she thought it had worked. She felt the pull of life around her, saw the blue surround him, but then it drifted away, like water through cloth.

  Brant looked up at her, sadness in his eyes, though he did not cry. “I’m dying, Kayla,” he said. Then he went into a spasm, his entire body contorting in a seizure the likes of which Kayla had never seen. She didn’t know what to do but hold his hand and be there. The poison worked within her, but the flute seemed to be taking care of it. So if it would help her, why not him?

  And now she was angry at the flute as well. Why wouldn’t it work? She picked it up and threw it against a rock, expecting it to shatter into a million pieces, but it didn’t. It bounced off the stone as if it were made of rubber. Furious, Kayla picked up the instrument and smashed it against the stone over and over again, screaming her fury, but it would not break.

  Exhausted, she sank to the ground next to Brant and cried. The tears flowed out of her like they never had, as if a dam had broken behind her eyes and just wouldn’t stop. Brant reached over with a shaking hand and touched her fingers, as if that was all he had the strength to do. Kayla gripped his hands and kissed them, her tears washing the fingers that blood and venom had stained. She looked into his face and saw that he, too, had tears making tracks into his hair.

  He looked at Kayla, exhausted from fighting the venom. “It’s about time, love. Will you tell my parents that I love them and it wasn’t your fault? Tell my brothers to lead well in my absence, and do me and Father both proud.” His breathing grew more shallow. “I love you, Kayla. I’ve always loved you. I would have married you even without a title,” he said, his words more laborious with each breath.

  Kayla began to sob. “Don’t leave me, love! Please don’t leave me!”

  “I love you,” he repeated, then expelled a breath and never took another. His eyes glazed and the foam at his mouth bubbled. Kayla threw back her head and screamed her anger and despair. Brant was gone. It seemed impossible, but he was gone. All because of greed.

  She took the flute and laid it on his torso, begging it to heal him, to bring him back. But nothing happened. It hadn’t worked when she played, and it didn’t work with his touch. Why? What had gone so wrong? Was it her fault? Had she misused the power of the flute?

  She knew the answer to that without even asking. She knelt at Brant’s side and rocked back and forth, sobbing. What would she do without him? Who would she be? T’Kato couldn’t be her protector forever, and if she continued to play the flute, eventually someone would find her, someone stronger, and they would take it from her.

  The one thing she knew was she needed help.

  She glanced at the flute still sitting on Brant’s torso. It began to glow blue-white, then turned deep blue and made Brant’s body glow. Something of himself was pulled upward and looked around.

  Kayla gasped. It was Brant’s spirit. The flute gathered it up out of his body and then sucked it into itself like a strawberry through a straw. And looking at Brant’s body then, Kayla knew it was truly empty. What did it mean?

  With shaking hands, Kayla took the flute from Brant’s body and brought it to her chest. The instrument was warm and seemed to pulse with a rhythm that sounded strangely like a heartbeat.

  Almost as if her hands were guided, she brought the flute to her lips and played a song she had written for Brant. She’d been saving it for their wedding day, but that was no longer to be. It was the song of their memories together, of the time they spent in the hay barn and watching grand balls through the slats on the stairs. It was of their hours together staring at the stars and talking—always talking. And the newer memories, of Brant’s becoming the duke’s heir and Kayla receiving her own duchy—and of course, Brant’s proposal. That had been the happiest day of her life. She trailed off with a single low note, now full of sadness, before a voice spoke out of the darkness, echoing and full of light.

  “That was beautiful, Kayla. Play it again?” Brant’s glowing blue spirit asked from in front of her. Kayla wasn’t sure whether to scream or faint, so she did neither. She put the instrument to her lips and played again, tears streaming down her face as she stared into Brant’s spirit eyes throughout the entire song.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  The travel through stone was much quicker this time around. Ember and the prisoner burst through the wall into the spherical room and rolled across the floor to collapse at Mahal’s feet. The shadow weaver slammed into the crystal wall, crashing into it hard enough to make the breath explode from his lungs with an “Oooof,” and he lay still.

  Ember lay sprawled facedown across the floor in the middle of the room, her head aching from exertion, not enough food, despite having stuffed herself silly twice that day, and the crack her head had taken when she landed on the floor. She was sure she would have a goose egg the size of a fist in the middle of her forehead. It was amazing there wasn’t blood pouring from her nose. It wasn’t easy working for one of the Guardians, she decided.

  She groaned and got to her knees, then her feet, her eyes closed as she swayed for a moment. In that state, she was completely unprepared for the explosion that planted in her stomach and threw her across the room.

  Ember collided with the wall, then flowed through it like syrup. She was grateful for the softer landing this time around. She turned around, thrilled she could see through the stone, and was about to dive back through and attack the prisoner when Mahal stepped forward more quickly than she imagined a man his apparent age could and gripped the prisoner’s head with his large hand. The man who had attacked her knelt completely still, frozen by some power Mahal held over him. Curious, Ember watched as the Guardian closed his eyes and seemed to concentrate on the man kneeling at his feet.

  Mahal’s brows knitted together and his eyes snapped open. He stared at the man before him in clear horror before letting go and stepping back, then beckoned to Ember. She slid forward through the stone and stepped into the room. “He . . . that man . . . it’s unbelievable,” Mahal stammered. “I know it to be truth, but I had never thought to see the like again.” He seemed to be rambling. Ember watched him with growing concern.

  He shook himself and put a hand on Ember’s shoulder. “Return the man to the prisons. I must report to my brothers. They need to know the danger he represents.” Ember nodded. She was full of questions, wanted desperately to ask what he had found in the man’s head, but she didn’t dare. Mahal squeezed her shoulder, and suddenly he was gone. Disappeared. Poof. Just like a soap bubble popped against a finger. She looked around the room and scratched her head. She was tired. So very, very tired, and the thought of dragging the man back to the prisons was nearly overwhelming. She turned her back on him and tried to steel herself for the effort ahead. A sharp blow hit the small of her back, throwing her forward against the floor. She hit her head once more, and this time she saw stars. The darkness glazed the edges of her vision and she couldn’t think. She felt herself lifted and tossed through the wall as if she weighed no more than a child. She skipped through the rock and finally came to rest just outside the ring of light that passed through the crystal. For several long moments she floated in the empty space, disoriented, stunned from the pain and in shock. She watched through the wall as the shadow weaver stood in the middle of the room, his arms outstretched. The crystal lining
the walls evaporated, turning to dust that flowed to his hands and ate at the tattoo on his neck. She wasn’t sure what he was doing exactly, but it was obvious it wasn’t good. Stone of any kind shouldn’t turn to dust without a hammer, but for the most powerful magestone in the world to be etched away with this Shadow Weaver’s power, was beyond bad. It was an atrocity. Sacrilege.

  Evidently she had brought him to the wrong place. His power was eating the magestone like it was bread, turning it to dust that flowed into him in a rainbow of colors. Ember was afraid to move. Her first impulse was to run away, but she couldn’t. She’d brought him here, and even though it was at Mahal’s request, she was responsible for him and couldn’t stand the idea of the man doing something so awful to such a sacred place.

  The anger in her built as she saw the pitted magestone continue to erode and flow into the man. The shadow she’d seen when he’d first attacked her began to flicker, and she knew if she had any chance at all, she had to attack him now. She knew what Mahal had said about using her white magic and not her genetics, but her greatest success thus far against the shadow weavers had been when she’d been in wolf form, so she changed, still embedded in stone, and charged the shadow weaver.

  The man had made her same mistake in closing his eyes, so she caught him by surprised as she barreled into him, lunging for his throat. This time he was more prepared and threw up an arm just in time to protect his throat. Ember tore into his flesh before he flung her away. She got her feet under her and bounced off the wall, using her momentum to strike at him like an arrow. She couldn’t get her teeth in him, but she was at least able to knock him into and through the wall. They tumbled through the stone and, much to her surprise, he flickered away from her, moving through the mountain like a fish through water.