by Elise Kova
“Surrounding this place, keeping us hidden. Now they can sense me, and with that burst of magic—”
“Fallor,” Vi finished.
“Fallor?” Taavin looked to her. “Adela’s right-hand man?”
“He’s after me,” Vi answered hastily. “Wait… Who did you think it was?”
“The Swords.”
“The what?” As soon as the question left her lips, Vi remembered a brief conversation they’d had in her tent when she’d first begun to demand information from him. “The Swords of Light? The Faithful’s militia?”
“They’re after me.”
The door rattled again, preventing Vi from asking the thousand questions swirling in her mind about the Swords of Light.
“Get ready to run.” Taavin grabbed her hand. “Durroe sallvas tempre dupot. Durroe watt radia dupot.”
Light spiraled out from him. Vi recognized the chants to deceive ears and eyes. Radia, to hide. Tempre, to mask? Dupot… she’d never heard that word before. Had she? Her mind was in a haze, still sluggish from her injuries and whatever magic was still making her ears ring.
Glyphs surrounded Taavin, condensing onto his left wrist like bracelets. She knew what he was doing, and yet… Vi was struck with awe.
He commanded the magic with a deftness she’d never seen before—not from any sorcerer from any discipline. It put even the poetic nature by which her parents could command the elements to shame. It was more than sorcery, it was art—as breathtaking as a virtuoso musician or master dancer. The magic wasn’t just an extension of Taavin.
It was Taavin.
The door to the shack was kicked in. Two men stood framed at the threshold, ice crackling around them, reaching inside of the shack. The remnants of the dying fire were snuffled and Vi’s eyes worked to adjust to moonlight only.
One man was unknown to her, a nameless and bloodthirsty face. Her focus remained locked on the other: Fallor. The red of his hair and shimmering dots that lined his brow were unmistakable to her now. She’d know them by daylight, moonlight, and nightmare.
His eyes narrowed slightly, sweeping across the shack and past where Vi and Taavin were hidden.
“Search it,” Fallor commanded. The nameless man stepped forward into the small space as Fallor remained in the doorway.
Vi bit back a shout of pain as she was tugged into motion. Taavin seized the opportunity, sprinting past Fallor in the doorway. Unfortunately, he misjudged the distance.
Taavin twisted to slip through, but Vi was caught-off balance. She tripped over her own feet; there was still a disconnect between her body’s movements and her brain. Taavin pulled at her arm as Vi tried to convince her limbs to move properly.
Barely, just barely, her side brushed against Fallor’s giant arm.
The man turned his head, moving on instinct—there could be no other description for how fast he lashed out. She’d touched him, and that meant the magic that had extended from Taavin to her, now extended to Fallor. He could see them.
Fallor’s arm slammed against her middle, knocking the air from her lungs. It pressed further into Vi’s abdomen as he pulled with bone-crushing might.
Vi looked to Taavin, watching his eyes widen slightly as she was ripped from his grasp. He was still moving in the other direction, hand around her wrist. But Fallor was too strong. She felt weightless as she was hoisted into the air. Taavin’s fingers slipped from Vi’s and she watched as he disappeared, the magic now concealing him from her without their contact.
“Found you,” Fallor growled into her ear, a stomach-churning glee making the words all the more terrifying.
Chapter Two
“Juth—” A large hand clamped around Vi’s mouth before she could finish the chant.
“I think not.” Fallor turned to his comrade. “There’s another, get him.”
“Adela only wanted her.”
“She’ll want this one,” Fallor assured him with a confidence that shook Vi to her core.
They knew who Taavin was. That was the only explanation. Otherwise Fallor would’ve focused only on her.
Vi stared out into the rainy field surrounding the shack, looking for any sign of Taavin. Her stomach and jaw ached from Fallor’s unrelenting hold. She hoped Taavin was still running as fast and far as he could get. She’d tangled with the pirates once and survived—she could do it again. She would never forgive herself if he was taken captive, too.
Yet for all she wanted Taavin to look after himself, Vi knew he wouldn’t.
She was Yargen’s Champion, and if the elfin’ra got their hands on her they would use her blood to summon their dark god Raspian. But even if that weren’t the case… This was the man who had dared to escape his captivity, come to her, and nursed her back to health—he wasn’t going to leave her behind. Which left Vi with one option before he would do something reckless and expose himself again.
Magic was magic, he’d said once. Every discipline was merely a way to manipulate and channel it. So Fallor could stop her as a Lightspinner by silencing her, but without Adela’s terrible shackles, he’d never stop her as a Firebearer.
Closing her eyes, Vi sought out the spark within her. She imagined it springing forth, just as the light did. The only difference was that this power needed no words.
Heat shimmered against the rain, turning it instantly to mist. Fallor must’ve felt it, but he didn’t react fast enough. Tiny sparks ignited in a blink, forming a wall of flame that hovered a few inches off Vi’s skin and clothes. It pulsed out from her, forcing Fallor away.
She hit the ground. One hand slid out as Vi sought balance, slipping in the mud. It coated her side and she rolled with it. The taste of earth filled her mouth as she shouted, “Juth starys hoolo.”
A glyph formed around the men and the shack as she spoke. Vi squinted at Fallor, rubbing the mud from where it was running in her eyes with her other hand. There was a different shimmer of light surrounding the pirate, but she couldn’t make out what it was before the fire she’d unleashed caught the glyph she wrought, erupting in a white-hot blaze.
Screams from the bloodthirsty man who had been investigating the shack filled the air, solo. There wasn’t a chorus of cries as she’d expected—but then again, had she ever expected Fallor to go down quietly? Vi stared into the blaze, searching for his outline. The flames burned even brighter, and he was nowhere to be found.
Already ash, she hoped.
The cry of a bird of prey echoed off the cliffside as it rose higher on the updraft created by her flames.
“Vi!” Taavin’s voice broke her concentration in tandem with his hand clamping once more around hers. “We have to go.”
Vi remained still, staring at the burning hut with the pirate still inside. The screams were quieting. It was a terrible way to go, yet killing the man didn’t yield even the slightest bit of remorse or guilt, and that fact made her feel terrible.
All around her was darkness—outside, in the stormy night, and in the hollow of her chest, a chasm opened by betrayal. Dawn would come with the morning—but would light ever breach the inky depths that threatened to drown her?
“Fallor is coming.” Taavin yanked at her arm. “We have to go!”
“Fallor? I—”
An eagle’s screech interrupted her. The bird she’d seen take to the skies was in full dive, wings tucked. An odd shimmer of light surrounded it. At first, Vi thought the distortion was merely the firelight catching on the rain, but it was more than that. Reality itself rippled, as if nothing more than a reflection in a shimmering pool.
With a magic Vi had never even imagined, the bird was gone and Fallor was there—as if one had disappeared beneath the shifting waves of reality and the other had surfaced. Momentum propelled him through the air as he plunged both of his feet into Taavin’s chest, using the other man’s body like a springboard. As he pushed away, the same ripple was already beginning to surround him, but Vi didn’t watch this time as bird was substituted for man.
Her
eyes were on Taavin. Agony singed through her, a silent cry caught in her mouth, left agape in shock.
Taavin wheezed, rolling in the mud, coughing and sputtering.
“Taavin!” Vi fell to her knees, sliding to his side.
“We have to go, on foot… They killed the horse.” He barely forced out the words. “More… come.”
Vi looked skyward. She searched the darkness and rain for any sign of the eagle, but there was none. With his strange magic, Fallor could be anywhere. In her mind, he was suddenly everywhere.
At any moment they would be attacked. If Fallor’s magic could transform him into a bird, she shuddered to think what else it could do. She had to fight back, had to think of a glyph combination that could thwart whatever power he was using. But facing a magic so foreign to her, Vi was armed with little but panic.
“Durroe sallvas tempre dupot. Durroe watt radia dupot.” Taavin repeated his earlier words and Vi felt the glyphs slip around them both, cocooning them in his magic. “We have to make it to the trees.”
“The trees,” Vi repeated, forcing her mind to continue to function. She couldn’t freeze up. Not now. Not after all she’d done to get here.
“Over there.” He pointed with his free arm as Vi lifted his other and placed it around her shoulders. “We have to get to the Twilight Forest.”
Twilight Forest. Her mental atlas flipped through its archives but came up empty. Not because she was panicked, but because she was now in a land she knew almost nothing about, running blindly into the night.
“Let’s go.” Vi pushed off from the ground.
Taavin was heavier than he looked and Vi hadn’t felt so weak in a long time. She ignored the signs of fatigue, pushing her feet into a run over the tall grasses that covered the cliffside.
The flames from the burning shack had been smothered by the torrential rain, and a heavy mist clouded above the quickly cooling remains. Fallor wouldn’t give up. And he wouldn’t make it easy.
As the thought crossed her mind, a pulse of magic rippled out across the ground, tangling her ankles. Vi felt herself falling, clasping her hand as tightly as possible to Taavin’s so as not to break the magicks that were hiding them. But it was Taavin who let go.
The power that had been concealing them shattered under the second pulse of magic that swept over the grassy cliff. Fragments of light swirled in the ripple before blinking unnaturally from existence. It was as if Taavin’s power had never been there at all.
“Loft Dorh Dupot,” Taavin snarled. Vi had never heard such a vicious tone from the man’s mouth before and was taken aback by it.
Taavin held out one arm, fist clenched around the center of a spinning circle, as though he was holding an invisible tether. She followed his focused gaze to Fallor. Vi remembered when Taavin had used the same immobilization rune on her.
He’d said it was no easy feat, even if he made it look otherwise.
Which meant Vi had to act fast.
“Mysst Soto Larrk!” She sprang into motion, feeling light condense under her palm into the hilt of a sword. She didn’t want to risk juth interfering with Taavin’s magic. She’d take the fight to Fallor.
Vi was nearly to him when Fallor broke free of Taavin’s magic with a roar. She shifted her grip on the sword, swinging it with all her might. Fallor dodged, the point of the blade missing his neck by a hair’s breadth. She let out a scream of frustration.
“A sword?” Fallor caught her wrist. His fingers looped entirely around and then some, compressing her bones. “Did you learn how to use this from your friend?”
Jayme.
Vi’s hand released the hilt under Fallor’s crushing grip. The magic blade fell to the ground, unraveling into formless strands of light that faded quickly into the night.
“What was the poor wench’s name who lived under your boot again?” he sneered.
The narrowing of her eyes was his only warning before magic exploded from her, unfettered. It was light and fire. Both and neither. It was every inch of agony she felt and had not even had a breath to properly address since waking.
Fallor jumped back from the flames. In the same movement, he unsheathed a dagger, nearly the length of a short sword, from his thigh. He reared back, driving it right toward her chest.
“Mysst Soto Xieh!” Vi proclaimed, staring up at Fallor, unflinching, as his weapon drove harmlessly into a spinning circle of slight. “Don’t you dare mention that traitor’s name in my presence.”
Fallor stepped back, spun, and launched another attack.
“Loft Dorh Hoolo,” Vi seethed. She poured every ounce of hate for the man—and Jayme’s betrayal—into the words. Fallor was stopped instantly, frozen in time.
Even under the influence of her own word of power from the goddess, Fallor was barely tethered. Rain poured over her shoulders. Mud dripped into her eyes. But Vi ignored the burning sensation, staring at Fallor as she waited for Taavin’s words.
Waiting for him to finish the job.
A crack of lightning arced overhead, dancing through the clouds, splitting toward the earth. Her attention wavered as red illuminated the entire bluff.
Red lighting.
Vi found herself flooded by a profound sense of foreboding. The watch at her neck felt hot and whispers tickled the edge of her hearing. She’d seen the phenomenon in the distance on the Dawn Skipper. Up close, the lightning was profoundly unnerving. In its wake, Vi felt surrounded by an enemy she couldn’t see but could sense lurking, ready to attack.
Unfortunately, it distracted her from the enemy right before her.
“Mysst Soto Xieh!” Taavin spoke so hastily the words were barely distinguishable. A shield of light was before her once more, this time shattering under Fallor’s blade.
Vi jumped and slid back, putting distance between her and the pirate. “Mysst Soto Larrk.”
In her right hand, a bow appeared; in her left, an arrow. Vi brought them together, hands moving with expertise born from years of training. She drew back the bowstring, feeling the aches in her shoulders that accompanied it. Vi ignored every protest her body made—every reminder that she wasn’t operating at full health.
She loosed the arrow point blank; it moved only inches to sink into Fallor’s shoulder. The arrow exploded into light as Vi reached back to where a quiver would be. Her fingers condensed around something solid—a new arrow where there had previously been none.
Nocking the second, Vi loosed it just as quickly. Fallor stumbled back, raising his hand up to his shoulder, covering the wounds she inflicted. Rain, tinted red by another burst of lightning, merged with the dark blood pouring from the wounds. Vi expected to find anger, rage, or frustration in Fallor’s gaze when he trained it upon her.
She hadn’t expected the laughter.
“You really think you’re a killer?” Her hands were moving to prove him wrong as he spoke. Fallor narrowed his steely eyes. “Do it then,” he challenged with a whisper. “Show me you’re a killer and not some pampered princess. Kill me, and meet Adela’s true rage.”
Rainwater shook from her quivering hand. Her fingers cramped in their grip, tighter than death, around the bow. She stared down the arrow, looking at the point right over the soft spot in the center of the man’s neck.
Kill him.
It would feel so good to kill him.
She wanted to. But she couldn’t. She was trapped between something dark and twisted that kept trying to snarl her in its thorny embrace, and everything she once thought she knew about herself. All the while, he was right there, waiting.
Was he right? Was this why she hadn’t shattered his heart as she had Jayme’s or Kora’s? She had been able to kill them in a moment of blind rage. But would she be able to kill so easily again?
No, she’d chosen this route because it would be more painful. That was it, a sinister voice uttered within her. It felt like a person Vi had never met had taken residence in the void of her chest.
“I want to kill you slowly,” she whisper
ed. “I will see to it that none of Adela’s pirates enjoy a clean death.”
Vi let the arrow loose, aimed right for his throat. She wanted to watch the blood drain from his neck in a river. But the arrow only had time to knick his flesh before an unfamiliar voice boomed over the pouring rain. “Juth mariy.”
The bow in her hands shattered into harmless light. Vi let out a cry of anguish and readied her magic for her next assault. Enough of letting him off easy. Enough hesitation. She’d end this now.
The familiar grip of Taavin’s fingers closed around her. “Durroe sallvas tempre dupot. Durroe watt radia dupot.” They were concealed once more.
Fallor didn’t look for them. Instead, he turned, squinting in the darkness at the top of the far ridge. There, mounted on white steeds, was a line of men and women illuminated by shining orbs of blue-tinted light cast above their heads.
“Oh, holy Swords,” Fallor cursed. There was the tell-tale ripple of power that made her skin crawl and Vi watched as the man slipped between each pulse of magic, disappearing and reappearing as an eagle where a man once stood.
“We have to go.” Taavin tugged on her hand. He was going to dislocate her shoulder before the night was up. “Quickly, before—”
“Juth mariy.” The man at the head of the group shouted again. Vi could make out little more than his golden armor and dark hair. There was an uncanny similarity between him and the man she’d come all this way to find.
“Father?” Vi said, small and weak.
“Vi, this way!” Taavin pulled on her as his concealment shattered. “We have to make it to the Twilight Forest.”
He broke into an all-out sprint, leaving Vi little choice but to follow.
That man atop the steed wasn’t her father, no matter how much the armor looked like that of Solaris. She was far from that world of white and gold. Far from her home.
And her father was still the captive of the pirate queen.
An eagle’s cry sounded, punctuated by the man shouting, “Archers to the Morphi! Calvary, to them! Loose!”
Vi couldn’t hear the bowstrings over the rain and rolling thunder that followed streaks of red lightning. Neither could she hear the hooves of the large horses in pursuit of them. But she could feel the beasts.