Failed Future (Air Awakens: Vortex Chronicles Book 3)

by Elise Kova

  Closing each of the books, Vi tried to place them exactly as she’d found them on the shelves, giving no indication what she’d been looking for. She returned the way she’d came.

  Vi stopped at the entrance to the walkway that soared atop a giant archway to the Lark’s halls. There was no one in sight—hadn’t been for hours. Still, she waited for Ulvarth, waited for someone to show up. She waited long enough that the sun began to dip, changing the light that streamed through the glass ceiling of the walkway from gold to a deep amber.

  “Very well then.” Vi lifted a hand, Taavin’s voice echoing in her mind. “Uncose.”

  Nothing. No magic sparked. No glyph came to life underneath her fingertips. It was just as Taavin suspected, though Vi didn’t regret trying. With the merest flash of disappointment, she proceeded with the manual route.

  Rapping her fingers along the side of the bookcase that met with the stone of the outer wall of the Archives, Vi listened closely. Her first couple taps sounded dull, with little reverberations. The fifth rang hollow.

  Vi looked up the wide panel of wood. At about chest height, there was a thin line in its surface—one she’d overlooked at first—and another a short distance away. Vi pushed in a few different places before the panel popped loose and swung open. She hoisted herself into the narrow tunnel, closing the door behind her with a fraying leather strap on the inside.

  It had been some time since anyone had come this way, if the cobwebs and bug carcasses were any indication.

  Vi trudged on, determined, until the tunnel opened up into a proper secret passage. Working to rebuild the Archives in her mind as she walked, Vi wound upward once more from the inside. She kept a low flame over her shoulder, just enough to see by, though she extinguished it the moment she heard voices.

  “You will tell me its secrets, and hers,” Ulvarth rasped, as though struggling to keep his voice quiet. Vi crouched low in the darkness, closing her eyes and trying to imagine how high up she was.

  Second walkway from the top? Maybe?

  “Don’t think I will let you see her unsupervised,” he snarled. Taavin, for his part, remained worryingly silent. “You will not make a fool of me again. You are mine.”

  A door slammed so hard that Vi could almost feel the stones of the archives rattling. There was the sound of metal sliding against metal, followed by heavy footsteps. She held her breath, creeping on hands and knees upward—just a little farther.

  A glow stone cast eerie light on the inner wall. She stopped, flattening herself on the ground. Ulvarth stomped across the narrow hall, oblivious to her presence. Vi couldn’t see what he was doing, but she could hear him fumbling with something, footsteps on the other side of her, and… silence.

  Vi kept a hand over her mouth, trying not to breathe. Her fingers trembled. Not from fear, but from loathing she didn’t know if she had ever felt so strongly before. She pushed herself off the ground and continued upward to a four-way intersection. Directly ahead, the passage sloped down into the darkness. At her left was a ladder and at her right, a short ramp up to a flat wooden surface.

  That was when it hit her.

  Each of the landings in the Archives was in the shape of a right triangle, jutting out into the hollow center. The walkway was flat and formed a right angle with the wall, but the hypotenuse sloped down and away. Initially, Vi had thought it merely an aesthetic choice. Now, she realized otherwise.

  The passage to Taavin wasn’t in the bookcases. It was in the floor. Casters invisible to the naked eye slid a trap door underneath the bookcases she’d been looping around, looking for one such secret passage when it had been right under her nose the whole time.

  Cursing herself, Vi turned away from the ramp and toward the final option at the intersection—a ladder upward.

  The passage narrowed slightly as she climbed, and Vi imagined herself in one of the columns above the bookcases—fire from the Flame of Yargen billowing out on either side. Farther on, a faint ambient light glowed.

  Stepping off the ladder and onto a small landing, Vi found the source of the light—or at least, the heavy door around which wisps of light managed to escape past the heavy latch and lock tightly on the outside. Sandalwood incense curled through the door jamb.

  Vi swallowed, working to get rid of the lump trying to form in her throat.

  “Taavin,” she whispered. Nothing. The panic from Ulvarth’s departure returned in full force. “Taavin?” A little louder.

  “Who…” his voice was muffled. But she heard footsteps nearing the door.

  “Taavin?”

  “Vi, is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you—”

  “Given everything that’s happened, I think me figuring out how to get to you should be the least surprising thing,” Vi teased lightly. “There’s a lock on the door. How do I get in?”

  “The lock is new. I think only Ulvarth keeps the key. He says he’ll only let me out at specific times to collect whatever research I need.” Her blood instantly boiled at the words. She had grown up in a beautiful prison as well… but never one with locks on the doors.

  “If I break the lock, he’ll know.” It was still tempting to do it, just to mess with him. But Vi suspected Taavin would be blamed—and punished. She ran her fingers over the rung the heavy padlock was slipped through. Such a delicate-looking piece of iron for a door that was bolted so tightly. “But I have an idea.”

  “There’s no way to fix the lock with Lightspinning,” Taavin cautioned hastily, needlessly.

  “I know. I’m not breaking the lock, and Ulvarth doesn’t need to know.”

  Vi pushed the spark into her fingertips, rubbing the rung again and again. The iron heated slowly. She wanted it hot enough to be malleable, but not so hot it dripped off the door. She’d have to fix it before she left, after all.

  Her left hand held the lock in place as her right worked. Vi dug her nail into the soft metal, pulling back and separating it. She widened it just enough that the padlock could slide out. Vi set it on the floor carefully, giving the metal time to cool before she undid the latch and opened the door to the face of a very shocked Taavin.

  “That’s the problem with metal locks.” Vi gave a small smile. “They’re not really the best at keeping Firebearers out.”

  He stuck his head through the open door. His eyes fell to the still locked padlock on the ground. Vi tapped the rung attached to the door that she modified.

  “You heated the rung.” He went to rest his hand on the now separated metal. Vi stopped him with a touch.

  “It may still be hot.”

  “Fire truly doesn’t burn you.”

  “No, and thank the Goddess for that holdover from my Firebearer training.” Vi looked to her hand, opening and closing her palm for a moment before shifting her attention to him. His eyes were worried and sunken, face pale. He looked more harrowed being around Ulvarth for a few days then he had on the run or while dying in a cave. “May I come in?”

  “What?” Taavin’s attention was jolted from the door. “Oh, yes, of course.”

  He stepped to the side and Vi entered, though Taavin’s eyes remained on the door and the dark ladder that stretched away from his quarters. Vi caught the longing look from the corners of her eyes. It was the look of a man presented with the notion of false freedom. They both knew if Taavin left, Ulvarth would find him—and the consequences would fall on both their heads. Besides, all the answers they needed were here, anyway.

  He’d described his room once to her and Vi had worked to imagine it in her mind’s eye. She’d been right about a few things, wrong about others.

  The whole room was in the shape of an octagon—that much she’d managed to get right. The walls were, indeed, painted in soft grays and whites, but mostly white. The gray was a delicate embellishment in tiny patterns of birds, swords, and suns across the room. It was such a subtle contrast that in certain light, it disappeared completely.

  A single shelf on the w
all to the left of the door held a handful of texts. The bookend on one side was a bunch of inkwells. On the other, screws and scraps of metal rested, little cogs shining in the low light. He’d mentioned his hobby of watchmaking and Vi had entirely forgotten. They’d been forced to leave behind so much of their peacetime lives since starting this journey. Vi thought back to the hobbies she’d had, the things she’d enjoyed—things she may never be able to do again.

  Other than the shelf, there was a single chair and ottoman, facing a lonely window on the wall opposite the door, one other window to the right.

  “This is where you live,” Vi murmured. It was obvious, but she had to say it aloud. It didn’t seem real. It couldn’t be.

  “My whole life.”

  Everything was immaculately clean but worn with age. She tried to imagine a young Taavin, running laps around the chair to dispel the energy that graces all children—even children chosen by Yargen. She imagined a young man standing at the windows, looking out at the world beyond and wondering if he should scream for help. She imagined the man he was now, cultivated in his captivity, seeking solace in the tomes beneath him.

  Turning back to face him, Vi found he was suddenly blurry. She blinked rapidly, trying to draw him into focus once more. She could imagine the man before her now sitting in his lonely chair, waiting for the “daydreams” that tortured him to pass.

  “Don’t look at me with those sad eyes,” he said softly, crossing over to her. Taavin collected both of her hands in his, bringing them to his mouth and kissing her knuckles.

  “I can see you,” she whispered, her voice steady. “I can see you here… alone.”

  “I was never truly alone.” His voice was low and warm on her skin. “I had you.”

  Vi laughed bitterly. “My face was torture.”

  “Until seeing you became my light.”

  Her fingers curled tighter around his and Vi guided him toward her. Moments like this, moments of quiet, were so rare that they were more precious than any token or object she’d ever held.

  She reached upward, fingertips smoothing along his jaw. Tilting her head, Vi guided his mouth to hers. Taavin’s eyes dipped closed slowly, as if he wanted to see her there until the last possible second.

  A soft sigh escaped her at the blissful moment of warmth and rest. Their kisses had yet to solve anything for her, but they made the days so much easier to bear.

  As gently and slowly as his lips had met hers, Taavin pulled away. Vi looked at him through heavy lids.

  “Would you like me to heal these?” Taavin ran his fingertips over the bandages around her wrists.

  “They’re fine,” Vi said, shaking her head. What she’d said to Serinia about the wounds still stood.

  Taavin didn’t insist further. He must’ve seen the blood dripping from the shackles in Ulvarth’s throne room. So perhaps he had some idea of why she was allowing those marks to remain on her flesh.

  “I want to show you something.” Keeping her hand in his, Taavin stepped away, guiding her toward the set of doors next to where Vi had entered from. He pulled them open to reveal a small, dark room.

  There was nothing inside. No gilded statues. No signs or sigils.

  On a single pedestal in the center of the room stood a plain marble candlestick holder with a flame flickering at the top. There was no wick for oil or candle wax. The flame burned impossibly, hovering just above the candlestick.

  “This is it, isn’t it? The real flame.”

  “Yes, this is the legendary Flame of Yargen,” Taavin affirmed. “Or what’s left of it.”

  Vi took a step forward, her eyes never leaving the small flame or the dull ash collected around its base. “What about the brazier in the Archives?”

  “The flame used to burn that brightly, barely controlled. Now, it’s nothing more than an illusion maintained by a few High Larks sworn to secrecy.”

  That explained the lack of heat, and Ulvarth’s delight—she hadn’t immediately identified the false flame.

  “Why has it dimmed?”

  “I suspect because of the destruction of the other parts of Yargen’s power. The Crystal Caverns, the crystal weapons… they’re all connected.”

  “We’re all connected.”

  “What did you say?” Taavin took a small step forward into the room.

  “We’re all connected.” She clutched her watch, thinking back to her father’s words. Members of the Solaris family had been wrapped up with the crystals for generations, likely going further back than she understood. “Fate is a road that is made, laid by the generations before us.”

  “Vi—”

  “And us,” she turned to face him, clutching her watch. It felt hot under her palm in a way not even burning through iron had felt. “We’re connected too, drawn together by her power. It lives in you, and in me, as it did in the crystal weapons and the caverns, and does still in the scythe.”

  Vi’s hands went to the nape of her neck, slowly unfastening the watch. It was the first time it had left her neck in months, and she felt naked without it, bare before the Goddess. Taavin did nothing to stop her as Vi slowly turned toward the flame, compelled by an invisible force.

  “I did what you asked. I’ve brought this to you.” Beseeching the Goddess had just as much chance of working as her trying uncose. But she hadn’t come all this way not to try. “Tell us, what do we do now?”

  She slowly lifted the watch, and as soon as it drew level with the flame, the world was overcome with white.

  Wind rushed around her, soundless. Even though it should whip her hair and tug at the robes she wore, Vi remained perfectly still. Untouched.

  The world was completely dark, only the immediate radius visible to her. Underneath her feet was a barren landscape of pale gray ash, piled thick. Whatever fire had raged here had burned so hot that not even the stumps of trees or foundations of buildings had survived.

  Cloying heat sank into her, trying to smother her, despite her detachment from the dead world before her.

  She began to walk.

  It was impossible to tell her direction, or what she was walking toward. But it was equally impossible for her to stomach the idea of standing still. If she stood still, it would get to her, something within Vi nagged. But she had no idea what it was.

  Vi came to a stop.

  A shard of obsidian jutted out from the ash—a dormant crystal. There was another not too far away, and another closer to the second. Vi followed the trail to a scattering of obsidian fragments. Her gaze landed on a hand, clutched around a large shard, even in death.

  The woman was mostly covered by the thick ash, but one all-white eye still stared lifelessly at the world. Even with a sunken face, collapsed with rot, even mostly covered in ash, Vi recognized her own corpse.

  Her pulse returned to her first as the vision faded. It beat like a war drum in her ears. No… it wasn’t. It was a word.

  Thrumsana. Thrumsana. Thrumsana, the soft voice repeated. It was strong, yet pleading—whispering, yet loud.

  When Vi opened her eyes once more to the real world, light surrounded her, like flames condensed into glyphs she couldn’t recognize. They spun against symbols wrought in a faint blue magic she recognized as Taavin’s.

  “Taavin,” Vi groaned. The man lay across from her, his body twitching slightly. “Taavin.” Vi pushed herself up, the magic fading. “Taavin,” she shook him slowly. Her whole body felt leaden, her mind exhausted. Her magic spent. Yet she still found energy enough to worry over him. “Please, Taavin.”

  The minor convulsions stopped, and with them Vi’s panic abated, though it didn’t fully retreat until his eyes blinked open.

  “Taavin, I think I… I…”

  “I heard the Goddess,” they both said at once.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “You… you heard Yargen?” Taavin pushed himself up slowly. He seemed to be in as much pain as her.

  “I think so. She said a word, one word, over and over, she said—”


  He pressed a finger against her lips. “Don’t say it out loud… not until it sits in your mind and unravels. Think of her words like an egg: you must incubate it before it hatches understanding.”

  “But—”

  “What if it is a word to summon Raspian so that you may face him? Or level a city?”

  Vi ran a hand through her hair, shaking her head. He was right, she didn’t know what it was for and until she did, caution was the best path forward. “I came to Risen for answers… but I only have more questions.”

  “But we are getting answers.” Taavin leaned forward, bending his knees and locking them against the inside of his elbows. “There are layers and layers of magic here—magic the likes of which I’ve only ever seen in one place before.”

  “Here?” Vi motioned around them.

  “Here.” He reached out, tapping the watch that had fallen to the floor between them. “I was right to make sure we came back to Risen. We need the watch and that scythe to reignite the flame. It’s just as the traveler foretold.”

  Vi ignored the mention of the infamous traveler. “You were right to make sure we came back to Risen,” she repeated. “Taavin… what did you do?”

  He looked at her with those worried eyes. Vi slowly shook her head. She’d asked the question and now, suddenly, would do anything to not hear the answer.

  He betrayed you, Arwin had said.

  He betrayed you, and Vi hadn’t believed it.

  “No,” she whispered. Vi placed a hand between them, leaning forward. “Taavin, what did you do?” He turned away. “Answer me,” she pleaded softly. “Taavin, please tell me I’m jumping to conclusions.”

  Still, silence.

  “Tell me you didn’t contact the Swords.” Adela had used communication tokens. Why wouldn’t the Swords, or Ulvarth himself? Why would she assume Taavin hadn’t been carrying one with him the whole time? Her eyes fell to his bare wrist; the bracelet she’d seen him wear through their whole journey was gone. “Tell me—”