“What about two trackers?” asked an idle voice, again, behind and above me.
My heart stopped. I’d know the silky undertones of that voice anywhere.
Sethos.
I could imagine his dark wings, massive and wide, as he descended. His dark eyes, squinting as they focused on me.
Maker! Raniero! Help us! Sethos is here!
I could hear the crack of branches and cones as both dark beings alighted.
“She communicates with our enemy,” Sethos sneered. “Stop her from doing so again, would you, my brother? I will address the emperor.”
“Get back,” Keallach said. “I am no longer one with you. I will not return!”
“Silly boy,” Sethos said, clearly advancing upon him from the front. “I ought to kill you for betraying me.”
A hand snaked out and grabbed my wrist, wrenching me away from Keallach. It was the other dark one. I screamed. Such frigid cold entered my arms where he gripped me. This was the source of my shivers … not terror, not my blindness! The Maker had been trying to warn me, sending my arm cuff into warning chills. The power in Sethos’s companion was lethal. I felt as if I was choking, my very insides turning to ice, my lungs crystallizing bit by bit …
Dimly, I heard the whoosh and thunk of a big arrow, then another, and felt my adversary shudder. He’d been hit. But still he held me. Black rage flooded from him, engulfing us both, further choking me. And yet in that moment, I felt the old doorway open. That space that held so much curiosity for me. The space I’d come close to before. Could I dominate it now? Conquer it? I felt dizzy with the rush of promise the thought brought to me.
In my mind, I edged closer to the doorway, feeling the flutter of wings entering and exiting. The darkness was pulling at me, enticing me, wrapping tendrils around my neck, my arms, my back.
I needed no breath. I was beyond breath. Above breath.
I needed no warmth. In this space before me, in the cold, was peace and security. Constancy. Had we had it wrong all this time?
Whispers filled my ears. From far away, I felt my body lurch, hold, and lurch again, but it was as if it was happening to someone else.
This way, this way, this way …
Come inside. Come with us. Come. Come. Come.
No, Andriana! Break free. Break free of him! You are nearing the door of death! Turn away, sister. Dig deep. Remember the truth. The truth, Andriana!
Come … sister. You are so weary. You’ve fought for so long. Lay down your sword. Know the security we can offer you.
Truth. Niero’s word came back to me. I circled it in my mind, as if it was spelled out in giant, stone letters, and I could run my hands over the T, the R, the U …
That is not the way, said the voices, so soothing, so welcoming. Filling my ears. Blocking Niero’s. This way …
But my mind kept turning back to the word that gripped me, as if I were a ship chained to an anchor that both held me captive and kept me safely moored in the harbor. I ran my hands over the next letter in the word I needed … desperately needed for some reason. The final T. The H … I envisioned truth engraved upon rock. Rock. Stone. So much like … what? Memory tugged at me and then eluded me, over and over. What was it that I was supposed to remember?
This way. Enter in, sister. This is where you belong. This is where you all belong …
It came to me then.
Stone … like the Citadel’s granite.
The Citadel.
The Community.
The Way.
The Maker.
Power surged through me. I turned, took hold of the tracker’s wrists, got a foot up against his thigh, then the other against his belly. I bent him in half and then launched him backward, away from me, cutting off his foul, dark funnel and his link to my soul.
I gasped, feeling as if I’d just narrowly escaped drowning and crawling across the forest floor, anxious to put any inch of space I could between me and the dark angel who had almost conquered me. Pinpricks of heat began to poke across the skin of my arms, bringing life back to limbs that felt dead.
Andriana, Niero’s thoughts fairly screamed at me. Chaza’el has seen. Vidar knows. We are coming.
CHAPTER
26
KEALLACH
I watched with some amazement as the tracker fell to the ground, away from Dri, and she turned and crawled away, her face horribly pale. But she was alive and away from him, which brought me a huge measure of relief.
With Dri a safe distance away, Aravander arrows rained down from the branches above, piercing the tracker’s chest again and again, driving him backward, farther away from Dri. But he still managed to keep his feet. And no arrow came in Sethos’s direction. Because of me? Was I in the way? Or had Sethos erected some sort of shield of protection around himself that he hadn’t thought to offer his companion?
We circled, my old trainer and I. The one who had taught me to wield a sword for the first time. To feint and strike, pierce and block. I’d long been a decent sparring partner for him. But I’d never bested him. We’d parried and practiced for years. We’d even practiced this particular play, preparing to accomplish what we both wanted. And yet … now … I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted at all.
The first arrow struck near him, sticking into a huge pine, bouncing from the reverberation of impact.
Sethos lifted a hand without looking, closed all five fingers around a single point in the air, and then flicked his fingers to one side. An Aravander cried out, rotating several times in the air before landing just steps away from Andriana.
“Come now, Majesty,” Sethos said soothingly, playing the part, doing nothing but protecting himself from my wavering sword. “This folly is over,” he said. “You tried to join the Remnants and found out what I told you all along—they won’t accept you. They left you in chains, vulnerable, even as we swept in, did they not? We can make amends after we put down this Union rebellion together. Look. Andriana is within reach even now. We’ll take her with us.”
I shivered, feeling the pull of his promises, promises that preyed upon my own desperate hopes. My sister, I reminded myself. My sister. What would I do for my true sister? What might I have done for my twin? What would that relationship be like now, if I’d chosen a different path long ago and not listened to Sethos? I struck out with renewed vigor, irritated that this rehearsed play now felt desperately wrong. “I am done with you! Done with Pacifica! I am where I belong! I will prove myself to them in time.” The words came easily … as if I meant them.
His eyes narrowed, and he blocked my fourth strike and turned, easily avoiding my fifth. “Look,” he said, nodding over to Andriana, who scrambled through the drifts of rust-colored needles, as if looking for something. “Just say the word, and I shall pick her up and get you both back to safety. All can be as we imagined. With you two united, the entire country is ours. These battles, these deaths, and those to come? They will be over. You can save your precious Remnants—and more.”
His words infiltrated my mind, and my heart swayed again, to the other side. Andriana. Together with me. Safety for the rest. Peace. That had been the plan all along. Why must this cursed Call confuse me so much? I wanted to drop my sword and press my hands to the sides of my head.
“I am not going anywhere with you,” Andriana said, lifting a bow, one lone arrow nocked across the string. She was trembling, her eyes clearly still blinded, but she cannily pointed it directly at Sethos.
His eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “I thought you could not see,” he sniffed.
“My earthly eyes are blinded,” she said, “but I can clearly see those of the light … as well as those of the dark.”
She let loose the arrow.
I agreed with her. We wouldn’t go with him. We belonged here. Here.
But neither could I let Sethos die.
I lifted a hand and shoved the arrow from its track through the air, and it swerved to sail beside my trainer’s head and past us.
A tiny smile edged the corners of his lips, his thanks silent.
My savage anger returned, and I heaved my sword and struck at him three times in quick succession, driving him backward.
He held my last strike, our blades crossed above our heads. “Are you becoming confused, Majesty?” he whispered, concern knitting his brow. “It was bound to happen, spending time with so many of the enemy these last hours.”
His fatherly tone grated against me like tiny pebbles biting into my skin. “Stop it!” I hissed, whirling and striking again, this time with an edge. “Quit working your spell upon me.”
“Spell?” he said, pushing away my blade and striking back at me for the first time, squinting at me. “There is nothing happening here that you do not want,” he growled so that only I could hear.
“What I want? Or what you want?” I whispered back.
He paused. “Remember our plan, Keallach. Stay true. It is for you that I do this. It is you I serve.” There was pain, now, in his eyes. That edge of betrayal again, making me falter. Was I born to disappoint everyone around me?
I pushed Dri’s next arrow aside as well.
“Keallach!” she cried. “Did you do that?”
“I will take care of him,” I grunted, driving Sethos backward. His red cape got tangled between his legs, and he narrowly kept from falling by dodging right, pushing off a tree, and wheeling to my other side.
“She can be your bride,” Sethos said lowly, his soothing tone back in place. “Isn’t that what you’ve wanted most? One of the Remnants at your side, forever?”
How many times had he placated me, persuaded me, with that tone?
“She is Ronan’s bride.” I said half-heartedly. But in saying it, I found a bit of strength. And as I moved forward, against him, more strength welled up within me. Surged within me. This was the right way.
He had confused me. Mastered me. But the Maker was fighting back … reclaiming me. Power ran through every muscle and sinew of my body. I was faster than ever before. Stronger.
“Majesty,” Sethos bit out when I nicked his neck. His eyes narrowed. “Majesty …”
But never had my feet felt more grounded. Never had my energy remained true. Never had my eyes been more quick, my movements more fluid. Was this what it felt like to fight for the One who had created me?
“She is not to be mine, Sethos,” I said, striking again and again. “She is my Remnant sister, nothing more.”
Sethos let out an unearthly screech, breaking up my holy rhythm. He seized upon my momentary confusion to leap forward, pressing me backward until my boot heel caught on a log and I stumbled. He leaped and sent me sprawling, my sword flying from my hand. He grabbed hold of my collar and twisted it until I couldn’t breathe. “You fool,” he said. “She is handfasted, not bound by forever vows. I doubt they’ve even—”
An arrow thrust through his back, the bloody tip exiting his chest. Then another. His face turned into a frightening grimace, then pure rage, and he flung me back to the ground and straightened, breaking the tip off the first arrow as he did so, then wrenching it through as he turned. I gaped at his strength, his tenacity, even wounded. And I faltered, wondering if I’d ever escape him, ever be free of the many bindings he had around my mind and my heart.
He was heading toward Dri. And while she should have turned and run, she kept drawing one arrow after another, driving them into Sethos.
But then I saw the others had arrived. Raniero, fully revealed in angelic form, landed to Dri’s left, sword in hand. Another man, equally as strong and regal, stood on her right. Still others appeared, and interspersed between them all were the Remnants and their Knights of the Last Order.
Sneering, Sethos turned slowly, still on his feet with more than eight arrows through his chest. I looked for the other tracker, suddenly terrified that he neared me or one of my Ailith kin, but he’d disappeared.
When Sethos completed his turn, he stared straight at Raniero.
“This is not over.”
“No!” Niero cried, racing toward him, all sinew and bulging muscle and wide wing.
But by the time he reached the center of the circle, Sethos was gone, leaving only his red robe behind.
CHAPTER
27
ANDRIANA
I could feel the collective awe among my fellow Ailith as we watched one of Raniero’s angelic companions shoot into the sky, chasing after Sethos. I could see both as streaks above me, flying faster than any bird or drone or even the helicopter.
“Whoa,” Vidar said beside me, “if you could’ve seen that …”
“I did,” I said, turning toward him. He was but a light silhouette to me, but I knew him, clearly.
“You saw that?” he said. “Two streaks in the sky?”
“Yes! It’s all I can see right now. Is that the kind of thing you see all the time?”
“All the time. Lately, it seems like whenever I close my eyes, I see everyone as either light or dark.”
“Vidar,” I said, reaching out to touch his arm. Knowing he wasn’t understanding yet. “That’s what I see too.”
“You do?”
I nodded.
He quieted as the others gathered, all talking at once. “So tell me, Dri,” he said. “What do you see when you look toward Keallach?”
I turned and gazed in Keallach’s direction, where he was facing off with Killian and Ronan. “His silhouette is light but not nearly as bright as yours, or any of the Ailith.”
“Right,” Vidar muttered, taking me by the hand. “That’s what I’d call spiritual confusion. The guy isn’t fully swayed, one way or another, despite what he says. But maybe he can’t be if we don’t welcome him in? I mean, how can a man join a family if the family keeps him standing outside in the rain?”
I thought about that. “It could be.”
“So what happened to your eyes?”
“The lightning,” I said. “When it struck the helicopter, I was very close and staring right up at it.”
Tressa was there, then, reaching up to touch my face. “Dri?”
“Tressa,” I breathed out in relief, hope rising within me. Vidar stepped aside so Tressa could begin her work. She helped me sit and then tilted my head up, clearly examining me, then she bent her head, as if listening. I felt the quickening of her pulse and the pleasure that shot through her as she heard from her Maker, and I had no choice but to smile along with her. But if she heard something audible from him, I couldn’t make that out.
“So …” I said hesitantly, willing myself not to cry. “How bad is it? Am I to be healed?”
“He’s already begun his good work,” she said, laying gentle fingertips across my eyelids a moment and praying aloud. “Now come back to the Citadel. I’ll see to you further, and you should rest. Come morning, we’ll pray your vision is back to normal.”
“That’s a prayer I’d welcome, again and again,” I said, accepting her hand and rising. She tucked my hand through the crook of her elbow, and Ronan returned to my other side.
“I could carry you,” he half-offered, gruff and irritated. It didn’t take my empathic skills to know that it was Keallach’s presence that agitated him.
“I don’t think you need to bear that particular burden,” I said, taking his hand. “Just go slowly.”
“Ahh, Dri, you know I would if I had to,” he said quietly, pulling me closer for a quick kiss to the side of my head. “I’m so relieved you are all right. That you weren’t hurt more in the fight. Or from that helicopter …”
“Thanks to Keallach,” I said. “He saved me, Ronan.”
I felt the tightening in the muscles of his arm. “I’m aware of that.”
“He could have forced me away, if that was what he was after,” I said. “Between him and Sethos, I wouldn’t have had a chance.” I pulled him closer. “I think this is the real thing. I think he’s been called home at last and he’s turning toward the light. But Ronan, Vidar wondered that if we don’t welcome him, he can onl
y come so far. He’s behind us, in so many ways. Think of what our trainer taught us and showed us over the years. Now think of what Sethos taught Keallach. We need to start training his mind … and his heart. And the only way to do that is to give him a chance.”
“A chance,” Ronan repeated, heaving a breath. “Please, let’s just get you back to the Citadel. We can deal with him tomorrow.” With that, he took my arm and turned, swinging me neatly onto his back with my legs wrapped around his waist and my arms across his shoulders. I shrieked at first but then settled in, feeling the great weariness of our battle settle down upon me at last. I realized that, in carrying me, Ronan felt joy and contentment and pride. Security, in certain measure.
I’d let him carry me, I decided, if it only brought out good feelings like that. After the night we’d had, we needed all the good we could gather.
RONAN
I found him the next night in one of the Citadel lookout alcoves. Usually, these carved balconies in the rock face held armed guards. But tonight it was only Keallach, his arms outstretched along the short wall before him, looking over a moonlit valley.
It irritated me that the elders had agreed to let him in, citing his defense of Andriana and his battle against Sethos as evidence enough of his intent.
He’d been quiet and moody all day as the Community tended their wounded and burned their dead. Even now, the acrid scent of charred flesh filled the air.
We’d lost more than forty brothers and sisters. Two of them had been children. The elders had moved everyone into the Citadel, flooding it with people. Only four bands of Aravanders and Drifters remained along the Valley floor, committed to remaining as forward guards and scouts to sound the alarm if our enemies invaded again.
The halls and corridors were packed with hundreds and hundreds of people. It had made me feel claustrophobic as I made my way through the Citadel looking for Keallach. But somehow now, even when I was outside in the relative quiet, I felt equally as pressed—short of breath, confused. My eyes narrowed at Keallach’s back. Was it him, somehow manipulating me?
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