Crystal Caged (Air Awakens: Vortex Chronicles Book 5)

by Elise Kova

  But Vi stood easily. She’d been here before, in this very room, standing in front of this very man. Though he’d admittedly looked somewhat older then. The beard had been thinner in her world. That must be what it was.

  This time there were no children playing in the courtyard to consume his attention. He’d stood when they entered and regarded them as a monarch would. Then, he settled himself on the throne.

  “It is not common for Lightspinners to come demanding me.” He shifted. “Are you from the Queen?”

  “No, we’re not,” Vi said, not so much as glancing at Deneya. The king didn’t need to know there was a member of the Order of Shadows in his throne room. Deneya’s business wasn’t to spy on the Twilight Kingdom, anyway. “We’ve come from the Dark Isle.”

  “The Dark Isle?” Noct tilted his head to the side. “Two elfin and a human, all Lightspinners, from the Dark Isle?”

  Vi had anticipated this skepticism. She’d encountered it before. But this time she knew exactly how to handle it.

  “I am Yargen’s Champion,” Vi said confidently. “I have come from very far to collect that which is my birthright. I know that, deep within your palace, you hold a crystal scythe. It was bestowed on your family to keep safe until the Champion came seeking it.”

  “H-how?” Arwin stuttered, taking a step back.

  “How, indeed.” Noct smiled, his eyes shining. “How could you have come across that information?”

  “I told you, I am the Champion.” Vi put on the air of mystery she used when giving advice or fortune to those on the Dark Isle. Her voice was a deep whisper, her words shrouded in an air of knowing beyond that which mortal minds could comprehend. At least, that was how she hoped it sounded. “I have seen across time and space. I know Yargen’s will and have heard her voice. I have witnessed the red lightning that heralds the end of days. Before this world is torn asunder, you must give me what I seek.”

  “All very impressive.” Noct was unfazed. It’d take more than some lofty words to impress those on Meru, who were accustomed to more fantastical magics existing around them. “But your long-eared friends here could’ve known the truth from ages ago and told you.”

  “Elfin live long lives, but not that long,” Taavin countered for her. “Give her the scythe and you will see that she speaks true.”

  Noct still looked unconvinced.

  Vi chewed on the inside of her cheek, keeping her expression passive. In her time, the tears in the shift had been enough to convince Noct hat she wielded a mighty power. If he didn’t give her the scythe, what proof could she offer him of her abilities?

  Luckily, the scythe wasn’t her only mission here. There were other reasons Vi had sought out the Twilight Kingdom. One of them might just serve her now.

  “Your highness, may we speak in private?”

  “I will not leave your side with these strangers, Father,” Arwin said firmly.

  Noct was clearly intrigued by the request. “Approach me, and whisper what you have to say in my ear.”

  Vi ascended the dais and crossed to the throne. She leaned forward, cupping her lips around the king’s ear. Arwin inched closer, her hands on her spear, ready to attack. Vi didn’t point out how foolish the girl’s protectiveness was. If Vi had wanted to kill Noct, he’d already be dead. Instead, she whispered.

  “Your daughter Arwin favors a boy named Fallor—or will soon, if she does not already. But he will betray the trust of your family. He will gain and take the knowledge of your sacred shift to Adela. They might have already gotten to the boy. Keep us here and I will use my knowledge as Champion to protect your daughter and your throne.”

  Vi straightened away, Noct watching her carefully. She took two steps backward, bowed once more, and stepped off the dais to wait for his verdict.

  The king stroked his beard, eyes settling on his daughter for a long moment.

  “We shall go to the scythe now, and see if your words are true about your powers. If you are who you say, I will trust your other claims, and you and your companions will have rooms in the guest wing to stay in for as long as I see fit to host you,” he said finally.

  Vi bowed once more, a smile creeping onto her face as she did. Her fingertips nearly crackled with the phantom memory of the scythe in her hands.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Noct led them down a series of halls and a familiar winding stair into a council room that Vi knew all too well.

  The walls were stone, with vertical tapestries running from floor-to-ceiling depicting morphi champions standing victorious in battles. Weapons hung between the tapestries, the low light of the glowing stones above the center table gleaming off their polished edges. Taavin inspected one of the hanging pieces.

  “Is this the battle of Marthas?” he asked, breaking the silence with genuine curiosity.

  Noct paused, clearly startled, but a sincere smile spread across his lips. “Why, yes it is.”

  “Marthas… when the elfin’ra finally surrendered?” Deneya had joined Taavin at the wall.

  “Just so.”

  “I didn’t realize there were morphi there.”

  “Many don’t.” Noct chuckled, but the sound wasn’t warm or amused. It was sad. “Much of the morphi’s contributions to and alignment with the Kingdom of Meru has been expunged from common memory.”

  The battle of Marthas, Vi silently repeated to herself. For a moment, her vision was hazed as what felt like memories played before her eyes. Memories Vi wasn’t supposed to have but found bubbling to the surface all the same.

  The elfin’ra gathered on the large island in the watery center of Meru’s great lagoon. She could see the men and women surrounding them as if she’d stood there as well, the queen banishing them off to a distant isle and beseeching Yargen for the strength to seal them away. Vi felt her words as much as heard them—no, she didn’t feel it, someone else within her did.

  Help came in the form of the last Champion.

  “That’s Arnoch, isn’t it?” Vi said faintly. The attention was now on her. “The warrior depicted,” she clarified.

  “It is.” Noct’s smile widened. “Impressive that you know your morphi history. Now, excuse me a moment.” He stepped around the table and disappeared through the door in the back of the room. Arwin lingered, eyes on Vi and hands glued to her spear.

  “How did you know that?” Deneya asked.

  “Yes, how?” Taavin repeated, much less amused than Deneya.

  “I read it in the Archives when I was there, long ago,” Vi lied. She knew she hadn’t read it. But she couldn’t describe the imagery she’d seen. She didn’t even know where it’d come from. Just laying eyes on the carefully stitched picture sparked something in her that wasn’t entirely her own. Luckily, she didn’t have to elaborate further. Noct returned with the scythe, tightly wrapped in familiar purple velvet.

  Arwin looked between them, but unlike the last time, the girl wasn’t bold enough to question her father.

  The king placed the weapon on the table and undid the knots on the ropes holding the velvet closed. Even knowing what she was about to see, Vi’s heart raced in anticipation. She was ready for the familiar shining crystal, glowing with the power of the gods. It wasn’t until that moment that Vi realized she still carried the loss of the crown with her. She needed to feel a fresh surge of Yargen’s essence in her veins.

  Without hesitation, she reached out a hand to the blade.

  The hazy light that surrounded the weapon drifted over her hand and up her arm, before fading completely into her skin. The magic consumed her vision as though a tide of power was rising from within. Vi drew on it further, allowing herself to drown in this now familiar sensation.

  The world came back into focus washed in darkness. She recognized the feeling of standing in another place and time. The future sight hadn’t entirely been expected, but she welcomed it; Vi wasted no time in looking at her surroundings. She was on a cliff-side, a quaint town in the distance.

  She squinted,
looking at the town, specifically. Mosant? Her eyes fell on what was certainly the bell tower for the goddess’s chapel there.

  Vi turned her head to her right, where people stood. As usual, she couldn’t hear what was being said. A group on horseback were mounted before a windmill. Vi watched as an old woman stepped out to greet them and was rewarded with a sword through her eye.

  Vi’s attention shifted to the vaguely familiar, mustachioed man holding the sword.

  The world continued to oscillate in and out of focus. The next person to gain clarity was a young woman, hunched over in her saddle. The men were untying ropes around her and they hoisted her down. Her head was hung, but Vi didn’t need to see her face. She knew that brown mass of unruly hair anywhere.

  The Knights of Jadar had Vhalla Yarl in their clutches.

  Vi tried to step forward. Moving through the vision was like trying to swim through a thick jelly. Yet she wanted to keep up with the men as they carried Vhalla into the open windmill. Shackles with embedded crystals were around her wrists and she put up no fight as she was thrown onto sacks of grain.

  The door closed behind them, and ended what limited view Vi had been given.

  No one said anything. But when Vi’s consciousness returned to the Twilight Kingdom, just the breathing of her companions seemed loud.

  “What did she do?” Arwin squeaked. Vi lowered her gaze to the pool of velvet on the table. A pile of obsidian shards and black dust was cradled in its luxe embrace. “She just touched it, and… now it’s gone.” Arwin inched closer to her father. The heel of her spear tapped on the floor with her shaking hand.

  Vi lifted her eyes, looking to Noct, then to Taavin and Deneya. They all stared at her with wide eyes and soundless, slightly agape mouths. She curled and uncurled the fingers that had touched the scythe. The feelings there were muted, as if the appendage was no longer her own. However, pins and needles raced down from her elbow, and sensation returned as her head cleared.

  “The power is within me now,” Vi declared.

  “How did she do that?” Arwin tugged on Noct’s sleeve, looking up at him.

  “Our mortal minds aren’t meant to know how she did it, because she is the goddess’s Champion,” Noct said softly. “And we will now do everything we can to help her, because she is here to save us all from an impending age of darkness.”

  “Your help is required.” Her voice didn’t entirely feel her own. Vi’s mind rocked back and forth with the tide of power that swirled in her. “I need you to make something for me, using the shift.” Her eyes fell on Arwin.

  “Me?” she squeaked.

  “Yes.”

  “I…” The girl shifted her grip on her staff and took a more relaxed stance. “I will do whatever I can to assist you.”

  “Good. We shall begin after my companion makes a crown for us to work with. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we are weary from our journey.” Vi wasn’t tired in the slightest, but she didn’t want to be in the room a moment longer. She needed to sit down for a minute and try to get her racing mind under control.

  “Yes, of course. Arwin, show them to their rooms in the guest tower.”

  Arwin nodded and led them with confidence. But Vi didn’t miss her wary eyes looking back toward her now and then.

  How cute and how fleeting she is.

  “How did you do that?” Taavin grabbed her hand, jarring Vi from the thought. He slowed his steps, allowing them to fall behind so Deneya and Arwin didn’t hear his whispers.

  “I didn’t do anything. It just… happened.”

  “That’s exactly my point. You’ve always shifted the crystal’s power willingly. It’s never just happened, and you’ve never absorbed it.”

  “I’ve never worked with them to such an extent before. I understand their power and their will.” Their will… The will of Yargen. Yes, that’s what it was. Yargen was alive in each and every weapon, as she was in the Caverns, and the flame, and in Vi herself. All Vi had to do was listen. “It sought me out. It… lives in me.”

  “That shouldn’t be possible.”

  “Why?” Vi asked him sincerely. “I am of Yargen’s make, as are you.” She held his hand tightly. “Can’t you feel it?”

  When they touched, magic darted back and forth between them. A connection deeper than the love that had traversed the ages spanned their physical forms. They were one and the same—each given physical shapes by the will of Yargen.

  “I don’t absorb power from the crystals.” He pulled his hand away.

  “But you could.”

  “I won’t.” Taavin looked forward.

  “Why are you so unsettled?”

  “Because I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?” Vi hadn’t felt better in weeks. For the first time, she felt absolutely confident she could take on Raspian if she collected enough of Yargen’s essence.

  “Of not knowing what you’re becoming.” Taavin stopped walking, turning to her. Vi stopped as well and melted under the warmth of his viridian gaze.

  “Taavin, I’m me.” Vi took both of his hands in a firm but gentle grasp. “I’ve always been, and always will be.”

  He searched her face and opened his mouth after a moment’s hesitation.

  “Are you both coming?” Arwin called. She and Deneya had stopped ahead.

  “Yes, of course!” Vi squeezed Taavin’s hands. “Let’s go.”

  The man remained rooted, staring at her for one more long breath. Finally, he nodded. Vi kept his hand clasped tightly in hers.

  Part of her held on to the man who made her feel human, the man who was home.

  The other part was governed by the essence of the goddess that was always just beneath her skin. Vi had to fight against uncomfortable urges all the way to their rooms. If she hadn’t, she may have given into temptation and unraveled Taavin’s magic to satiate the ravenous hunger waking in her—a hunger that needed to be fed with Yargen’s essence alone.

  “You want me to do… what?” Arwin asked, looking at the crown Vi had handed her.

  “I need you to make it look like the scythe did.”

  “The shift can’t make a crown into a scythe.” Arwin’s brow furrowed. They sat across a table from each other in a lounge that Vi had declared her own. After the incident of her absorbing the scythe’s magic, no one seemed to question her much.

  “No, not a scythe.” Vi paused, thinking a moment. “Hold a moment.”

  She held out her hands and felt magic rush to her fingertips. Yargen’s power pooled in her palms. Her stomach felt gutted by the mere notion of giving up the scythe’s power. It had only been a part of her for a month while Deneya had worked to fashion a crown for them to work with, but it had felt like a lifetime.

  Just like she had in the Caverns, Vi drew the power into a single location and condensed it down. However, unlike the Caverns, the well of power Vi leeched from was herself. As Yargen’s magic collected in the air around her fingers, sparks of Vi’s magic tethered it together. With a soft pop, a crystal appeared.

  Reaching upward, Vi grabbed the stone and it writhed underneath her fingertips. Spikes of crystal grew from the “seed” of magic, then arced around and rose to points. Even though she had only seen the actual crystal crown from a glance, Vi knew its every detail, and she created an exact replica in crystal.

  “I need you to make that crown—” Vi pointed to the one Deneya had made “—look like this one.”

  Arwin gawked at the crystal crown in Vi’s fingers. The whites of her wide eyes nearly devoured the gray irises in the center. “How?” she said with a quivering lip. “How do you make something from nothing?”

  “As Yargen wills,” Vi said airily, smiling at the child. She set the crystal crown gently on the table. “Now, let’s begin.”

  The girl studied the crown in her hands with a furrowed brow. Her magic shuddered, rose, and thrummed across the surface of the metal crown Deneya had crafted. Vi watched with new eyes. She saw the metal unravel and piece itself back toget
her with every pulse of magic.

  The shift was seeing the between of what something was, and what it could be. That had been how Arwin had explained it in her time. Or perhaps that was knowledge Vi was summoning from an otherworldly part of herself, just like the name of the morphi warrior who had helped fell the elfin’ra.

  Arwin put the crown down on the table next to the one Vi had made. The metal had changed, becoming gnarled in places and smooth in others as it jutted like crystals. But it was still undeniably steel.

  “It’s not right,” she said dejectedly.

  “Try again,” Vi encouraged.

  “You should get one of my sisters to do it.” Arwin slouched in her chair.

  “I don’t want one of your sisters to do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know you can.” And because Vi wanted to endear herself to the girl. She wanted Arwin to trust her with her secrets, just as Arwin once had long ago. She wanted to be there the moment Arwin was ready to open up about any budding romance with Fallor, however long it took. “You will be stronger for it, and you want to be strong, don’t you?”

  “I do.” Arwin ran her finger over the steel points of the crown. “But I don’t even know how to use the royal shift yet.”

  “You will learn soon, I’m certain.”

  “Ruie says she’s going to teach me soon!” Arwin covered her mouth suddenly. “I wasn’t supposed to say that… you’re not supposed to learn until you’re fourteen.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Eleven… But I’ve been told I’m advanced in my magic.”

  “By who?”

  Arwin paused, a blush overcoming her cheeks that instantly made her scowl. “No one.”

  “No one?”

  “A stupid boy.”

  Ah, so Fallor was already present. No wonder Noct was ready to trust Vi.