by K Kazul Wolf
I look up, as if I’m trying to see the immense mass of bottom of the city through the roof. “What do you want to do then? Sink the city in the sky?”
“That is exactly what I want to do.”
I snort, but he doesn’t waver. Dragons, I knew he was insane, but… “Maur, that’s a great idea, but even with two dragons on our side, we can’t come close to casting an illusion powerful enough to drag that place from the sky, not with who knows how many dragons supporting it.”
He blinks. “That’s the lie that they feed you illusionists?”
Lie? I look to Vito. He rolls his shoulders in a shrug. I don’t know what either of you are talking about.
“Listen,” Maur takes a step closer. “No illusionist or dragon has ever supported that city since it touched the sky. The only reason it floats is because of an illusion created once, centuries upon centuries ago. No one needs to feed it any more illusions because that same exact illusion keeps the water in that pond and feeds it its powers, so powerful that dragons gave their life to cast it, and that water is only residue of it.”
Now I blink. Of course, the single illusion everyone’s told me about, the thing Fitz wanted to know so desperately about, the story that my mom told around the campfire. “Where is it? What is it?”
“That’s the problem. I’m not quite sure what exactly the stone holding the city afloat looks like. But if we can get into it, find the illusion that powerful, then maybe—”
A crash sounds from the floor above, grunting and clanging ringing against my ears as dust showers us.
37
The Fight
“Move!” Maur’s voice is like a snapping whip, all of us clambering for the door, swinging it open and darting into the street beyond.
Chaos. There are people moving in cloud-darkened light, weapons stabbing and jabbing and blurring as mechanical wings hiss and creak. Lightning illuminates Mercatus briefly. Shining specks dance and spar above the town.
The thunder follows, and for a moment, I can’t hear the fighting. Brushing my too-long hair from my face, I have to wonder what we’re doing here. What three more people can possibly do.
“I’ll take Vito,” Maur shouts as the crackling ends. “But we need to get off the ground!”
I nod, moving away and spreading my wings—but I hesitate as a ripple pulsates through the air, throwing me off enough that I look and see Maur spreading his own feathers. I can see a little of the resemblance between him and his brother, but the crown of a crest doesn’t look nearly as excessive on his toned, onyx neck, his body built for power over beauty. It’s funny, for having known him as someone who can cast light, those pitch-dark scales seem to absorb any color left in the cloud-covered town. Even his wings are a touch darker than I’ve ever seen, casting the street into an array of shadows.
Maur reaches out to clutch Vito in his paws, but a hunter slams into his side.
He roars, snapping at the man. I run at him, only to have a rebel slash at me from the corner of my vision. Jumping back, I swing in a counter but another rebel lands next to me, and I have to back up again. My back hits the building we were hiding in. One of the rebels slices at my neck and I dive to the side, scrambling back to my feet and into a narrow alley.
Something slams into my gut, knocking me over. I gasp for air, struggling for balance, flapping my wings to pull myself back up. I gain only a little air when I hear the whistle of a blade more than feel the slice of it cleanly cutting into my right wing. A scream escapes my lips as I fall again, my face scraping against sand and the stone, burning my skin, my nose cracking and blood spilling across my lips.
Again, I try to rise. Something hard hits me square on the back of the head, stomping my face into the ground with enough force that my nose snaps again. The pain sears white spots to my eyes and I scream again.
“Well done.” Carita’s voice is a sneer as she grinds my face harder into the dirt. “Now get those dragons! This one is for me, and me alone.”
Feet scuffle this way and that, and the squeaking and flapping of my artificial wings sound all around me. That scares me more than anything: being alone with Carita, away enough from the battle that there may be no one to distract her.
She lifts her foot from my head. I don’t even try to move, instead trying to focus on thinking past the pain that still blinds my eyes. But I can’t move beyond it, I can’t find a way to escape, no illusion like Maur can cast. All I can hope is that Maur and Vito make it out and don’t come back for me. They can’t get caught because I was an idiot who was shepherded away like some dumb beast. Vito needs a chance to live, to move on after what I’ve done to him. Run.
She grabs my hair, yanking my face up to meet hers. For a moment, she examines her handiwork. Then she smiles. “I’m hoping to get the beast back, too, but you know, I wanted to catch you more than anything.” She runs a clawed finger down my cheek, blood dripping to fall off my chin.
I spit blood and snot from my mouth, gasping for air at the strange angle, trying to get a good grip on the ground. “Why?” I choke “I have no information to give you. I can’t help you and your psychotic causes anymore.”
Her eyes narrow and she bares those sharp teeth at me. “Precisely my point. I have everything I could ever need from you. I’d given you everything you could have wanted to keep you happy, working. And in return for all this kindness, all this knowledge and safety, you killed…you killed my Bricius.” The name comes out strangled, a howl. “You took my everything from me. And now I’m going to take yours from you. Slowly.” She moves her face closer to mine. “Painfully.” Her sharp teeth click in front of my twisted, bloody nose.
My words tingle on my arm. Water drifts in the air, rippling around me in its chaotic dance. I send a wave of minuscule droplets into both of her eyes, expanding them into her pupil, her iris.
She yelps, dropping my face to the ground, rubbing her hand against her eyelids.
I push backward, my face numb with the pain, flapping my one wing to help myself up, but it makes me unsteady. All I can do is fall down, onto my crippled wing.
Carita jumps, leaping for me.
My sabre fell out of my hand when I fell, too far away to grab.
It isn’t fair. I don’t want to die, not right after I got him back.
Something rams Carita from the side, knocking her off me.
Then a paw rises over my stomach, stepping in front of me, guarding me with brown scales glimmering in the half-light.
He spreads out both his wings to scrape the walls of the alleyway, and from here I can finally see his clipped one. It looks wrong, disproportionate, held at a painful angle. It doesn’t cast the light that it should, the glimmer of his wings dull in the stormy grey. And yet he bears it, spreading it in front of Carita as if to remind her, This is what you’ve done, and yet I still stand.
Vito came for me.
She snickers quietly as rain falls in large drops around us. “And the dung dragon comes to the rescue. What luck of mine. You think you can save her, broken as you are? Guess again.”
She rises to her feet, raising her blade.
I scramble up, my head spinning as I rise. I place a hand against Vito’s side to steady myself, his heartbeat a sharp and fast drumbeat under my fingers. He moves in front of me, trying to shepherd me away.
“Don’t you dare run from me, you coward,” she hisses, flexing her claws. The air feels like it swirls around her, stuck in some sort of reverse vortex.
“I’m not running from you.” I spot my sabre, lifting it from the ground and walking around Vito’s side. Carita starts to move, twitch, erratic like a rabid animal. “If you haven’t noticed, we have bigger problems to deal with besides your petty revenge.”
“Petty?” She cocks her head. “You think that Bricius’ death is something petty?”
A sneer spreads across my face and I swing at her. “No pettier than telling me that Vito was dead.” I jump forward and swing my sabre. Carita leaps back, eyes l
osing a hint of their madness to let some caution in. “Using me and manipulating me while you hid him from sight, letting me believe that he was dead for your cause.” I swing and swing, gaining speed as the anger grows. “Like I was some tool that you could dispose of when it finished its job.” I hesitate, my breath coming quickly. “And what you did to him. You deserved what you got, you—”
She leaps at me. I slash out again and I catch her shoulder on my blade, knocking her out of the air. She lands on her face and I barely resist the urge to smash it against the street like she did mine. But the echoes of geared wings sound around me, and no matter who wears them, they all want me dead.
Instead, I press my blade against the back of her neck. Anger roils through me, but at the same time, so does an overwhelming fear.
She doesn’t try to struggle. “Do it.” Her voice cracks, echoing down the empty street, mingling with the creaking and flapping of the wings. “End it. I don’t care anymore. Nothing matters.”
Vito’s hand touches my shoulder. “We have to go.”
“I know.” I murmur. This isn’t like with Bricius—this time I have a choice. I draw back my blade, sliding it into my sheath. Drops of water fall from the sky, slow, but picking up in pace. “I’ll regret this, I know I will. But I’m not going to kill you. So, maybe you’ll get your revenge, but you deserve every ounce of pain you suffer in the meantime. You may be as awful as the dragons, but I won’t lower myself to that level.”
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t react. Her body shakes from quiet tears as she lies there, face in the dirt.
Vito grabs my hand, making me jump. I hadn’t noticed him turn back. He runs and I match his pace, weaving deeper into the narrow lanes between buildings.
“Is Maur all right?” I pant, trying not to focus on the pain flaring across my face, on my wing.
Vito nods. “I think he got away.”
“Then we have to find him.” I can’t fly anymore and neither can Vito. This plan was stupid from the start. It was a daydream, something so perfect and so coincidental I should have known it couldn’t work. Not with me. Now who knows if Maur’s okay, and Vito had to risk his life for me again. He shouldn’t have.
I take a shaky breath. “Why did you come back? I deserved—”
“No.” His voice sounds worn. “You made mistakes; we all did. But I stayed in that prison for an eternity for you. I’m not letting you die now.”
My heart skips a beat, and for one instant, my feet are light. Maybe he doesn’t forgive me yet, and I don’t blame him, but…we’re still us.
But we aren’t safe, and the amount of running we still have to go makes the weight of my legs feel heavier than ever. Focus.
I try to take us toward the edge of Mercatus, but I’m not recognizing any of these buildings. The sounds of fighting surge around us: screams of the dying, the metal screeching against metal, the grinding and flapping of metallic wings flooding the air. It sounds like it’s getting louder, no matter how many times I try to turn away from it.
We turn a corner and find ourselves at the edge of the market and the battle.
38
The Battle
The fight continues in the air, but there are more people on the ground here than back where we started. They have tattoos, their illusions weaving around the crowd with a skill that none of the hunters or the rebels possess. The Azelain came; they must have been traveling while I was passed out. But who are they fighting?
So many of the mechanical-winged fall, and I can’t tell who they belong to. I don’t know if the Azelain know who they belong to. But they move so efficiently, the numbers in the sky falling at a rate that I wouldn’t have thought possible. Maybe…maybe we can win this.
The rain picks up, a sheet falling from the sky that gives more power to the illusionists who fight. Lightning snaps in the distance, illuminating the figures in monotone silhouettes.
A figure moves in the corner of my vision. I lash out with my sabre, nicking a hunter on the elbow. My heart skitters. I attacked a hunter.
There’s a clash of metal against scales next to me. Vito roars, and I turn as the last ripple of his transformation presses against my skin, his eyes wide as he turns and clamps his jaws around the head of a hunter. He snaps the neck, the body falling limply to the ground.
He plows one with his horns, swiping at another. But they keep coming.
I hold my sabre at the ready but my hands are shaking. I want to think of an illusion but nothing pops into my head. It’s blank. It’s all blank.
A man lands next to me, not catching Vito’s attention.
I swing, but he catches my blade easily, flicking it from my grip. He moves the tip of his blade to my throat.
He smiles, and I recognize him and his long, sharp teeth. Jamarcus.
“Well, imagine meeting you here,” says the leader of the hunters, a slight hiss to the words between those teeth.
Vito stops, hearing that voice.
“Doesn’t this look familiar? Except the dung-colored snake seems like he’s missing a couple pieces.” He pokes the blade against my skin, a pinch of pain and warm swelling of blood as it drips down my neck. “Now, shall we proceed the same as last time? I’m afraid your presence is still requested above, no matter how nice it would be to kill you here.”
My eyes can’t leave Vito. His wings shake, almost imperceptibly. He doesn’t want to be captured again. He doesn’t want to have the threat of my life ending held over him while he’s tortured and mutilated.
And I won’t let him. Not this time.
“No,” I growl, grasping at the words on my arm. It pulls at my energy, at my consciousness so violently that I nearly lose balance, but it won’t take me. The cost doesn’t matter, not now. Not for Vito.
Jamarcus laughs. “What are you trying to do, worm? You can’t fight, and no illusion from a winged illusionist could ever—”
There’s so much water, so much potential pouring around me. I pull it around Jamarcus’s feet, so that the clay that wouldn’t even give into the rain gives into me, becoming a sloppy mud.
His feet sink a couple of inches into the ground. “What are you doing?” His voice rises in pitch. “Someone stop her! Grab the dragon!”
The hunters in the fray rush toward us, but I push harder. I force more and more water into the dirt, twisting and swirling it down, gasping as the effort distorts my vision.
He sinks to his hips, screaming louder. But everyone’s too slow to help him. Their illusions brushing against me, but they are nothing compared to mine.
Down to his shoulders, fingers digging into the mud, trying to drag himself out. He begs. “P-please. I’m only under orders. If you stop, we’ll leave you be, I swear.”
No hesitation stirs in me. He can’t be let go. He can’t take Vito away from me again. There are no secrets of mine he can threaten to tell this time, nothing that Vito doesn’t know and I haven’t suffered from. Nothing but him left.
He chokes on the sand and dirt as it fills his mouth, struggling until his very fingertips are under the ground.
It’s done.
They aren’t taking my Vito.
Vito snaps and claws his way through them until he’s at my side, his snout bloodied and scarred and beautiful. There’s a circle cleared around us, the fight still shifting and pulsing and darting in the expanse around us. The exhaustion hits me and drags me down like a stone, and I lean into him. He leans back and I can barely stand against his weight.
My plan grows more and more ridiculous every second, the rain pouring around us. How many mistakes will I have to make before it’s the final one?
Wingbeats vibrate through the air. Maybe…Maur? No. They aren’t powerful enough, the beats uneven.
I pull back from Vito, looking up. The rain glitters with the scales and feathers of a dozen dragons, swooping through the crowd, ripping people from the air and off the ground.
Illusions swarm around the beasts, but they push through them, work
ing illusions in tandem with enough power to crush the skill of the Azelain.
Maybe the nomads could have taken Maur, a lone dragon, down, but this many…
A golden dragon lands in front of us, that giant crest glimmering in the rainy light.
Scales pull back, the king’s human skin exposed to the storm as he walks toward us. His frivolous, ridiculously bright clothes already soaked through by the time two dragons with pearly scales and another dozen hunters land by his side, folding my father’s wings with groans and squeaks.
“Well,” the king says, stopping a little ways from Vito and me. “You two are the reason I had to come down? The two that I had to take care of myself? I must say, I’m disappointed.”
“What are you doing here?” Vito changed back without me noticing, his voice jarring and a comfort all at the same time.
The king tuts his tongue. “You think you can expect me to answer that question and I will hand you what you want on a silver platter because you ask? No. Let’s discuss this privately, hmm? It’s been long enough; I’d say it’s time for you to end this little trip of yours. Except, you won’t be going back home.”
Home. It isn’t up there anymore, not in that city. It isn’t with my father and Vito, not my tiny room and all my favorite books and songs. It was never down here in this town, not even when I had Vito by my side. Home was being accepted by my mom and her people. Home was finding Vito in that basement, holding him in the darkness, knowing that he was never gone and that I’d never have to let him go again.
Caelum is the last place where I’ll ever find home.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I draw the rain around me, my arm aching like a bruise that’s been beaten over and over again.
“Oh?” The king gives a wide smile and turns back to the guards around him. They keep the battle off him, the mayhem never so much as grazing those peacock clothes. “I’ve had enough of this place, these ground dwellers and these rebels. After this is all over, I will drain these moats and leave the entire population of this sorry kingdom to die of the heat. And I’ve had enough of you, illusionist. No more arguing.” He turns back, his lips in a sneer as he lifts a hand, snapping his fingers.