Dust: A Bloods Book

by Andra Leigh

  “Gentle Reigness! You’re covered in dirt,” the small, timid maid gasped as Acanthea entered her quarters half an hour later.

  “Your perceptiveness is irritating,” she said, numb to the weariness in her voice.

  The maid rushed over to the unlit hearth. “I’ll heat water for a bath right away.”

  “No,” Acanthea interrupted, and proceeded to give her different orders which, while clearly confused, she immediately followed.

  Moving over to her desk Acanthea grabbed a blank leaf of paper and ink and wrote a short letter, sealing it with wax and pressing the crest of the Gentle Reigness into it. Once that was done she pulled a coin purse out of the drawer and turned to the maid who was just finishing the task she had given her.

  “Here, take these.” Acanthea shoved the purse in her bony hands.

  “M-miss?” the maid stuttered, forgetting all manners.

  “Consider it your years wage in advance. Although you won’t be working the year.”

  “I-I-I’m– ”

  “You’re going to take it and you’re going to run. Take whatever family you have, especially family the Reigner would be able to find out about, and run. Go to another of the cities or better yet Talcony or Cursain Valley or, um,” she tried to recall the town from her Populism lesson, “Owaine.”

  “But why, Reigness?” the maid asked, sounding suitably afraid.

  “Because if you don’t you’ll be put to death for losing me.”

  The maid’s eyes went wide. “L-losing you?”

  “Yes. Losing me,” Acanthea stated simply. “But before you leave Heuthan, which must be tonight, I need you to deliver this.” She handed the sealed letter over to the maid, giving her express instructions on what to do with it.

  The maid didn’t have any qualms with delivering the letter, saying it was her job, but Acanthea had to stress the importance of her taking the coins and fleeing Heuthan a few more times before she agreed. Once the maid was gone Acanthea pulled more coin purses from her drawer and packed them on top of the simple dresses, undergarments, soaps and other belongings she’d asked the maid to pack.

  There was something the Reigner and the people under his thumb didn’t know. Something that she herself had never realised until faced with this moment. Rather than pamper and spoil her, Cathrainra had prepared her for this moment.

  While her tutors had taught her math and penmanship, Cathrainra had made sure she knew how to mend the tears in her skirts. While ladies of the Realm pedantically positioned Acanthea’s feet to ensure for a flawless curtsey, Cathrainra had forced her to skin rabbits and stew them, ignoring Acanthea’s disgusted protests.

  She hadn’t understood back then that while the tutors and ladies had been showing her the proper way to be a Gentle Reigness, Cathrainra had been teaching her lessons in life.

  Cathrainra had been teaching her how to run away.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Look Back…

  • Eliscity •

  Within the week Eliscity had learnt she was better at fighting than she was at cooking. In the time it took her to grasp the basics of both open-handed and closed-fist hitting she had given Casamir and Raiden, the only two brave (or foolish) enough to taste-test her cooking, food poisoning. Twice. The same day Jinx had stopped needing to correct her stance, she had baked a loaf of bread so solid it had left bruises when the Triplets had used it as a bat on each other. Having proved itself more lethal than a pillow, she had considered upgrading it to her bed-side weapon then and there.

  The only down side to learning to fight was that she still hadn’t managed to punch Jinx in the face. He maintained that her enemies wouldn’t stay still for her no matter how silly they were and reasoned that the best way to teach her was to be realistic about her chances.

  She was small and quick, and Jinx focused on showing her how to use that to her advantage. The most important rule seemed to be to keep moving. If caught or pinned down she didn’t have the strength to get away or offer any life saving blows. Since the only way she would stand a chance at keeping up a constant burst of movement would be to not tire before her enemy, the building of her stamina had become crucial. He trained with her three times a day and made her run a loop of water tunnels with Casamir chasing her.

  In a short week her body had dissolved into a bundle of aches and pains. But she was too stubborn to stop and knew her body would acclimatise eventually.

  “What are you, part Nymph?” she grumbled as Jinx effortlessly evaded her strikes.

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  She readjusted her stance. “You ever wonder what you were Blooded with?”

  “Of course. I’d be idiotic not to. But I suppose one dose wasn’t enough to make it obvious,” he spat disappointedly, as if his lack of Bloods qualities was a personal insult to him. As the bitterness of his situation faded from his face, he frowned at her. “Have you thought about using your wings?”

  “Don’t you think,” Eliscity panted, striking thin air again, “that if my wings worked as wings I would have used them to fly away from you by now?”

  They were yet to see eye to eye on their argument about home, though apparently Eliscity was the only one to still be feeling the tension. Jinx was either oblivious to the conflict or simply didn’t care, and hadn’t offered any further reason for his attitude on the subject.

  “Not to fly.” He gestured for her to halt their sparring. “Besides I’ve seen you use them for things. To keep you warm. And what about the pulse cannon? They protected you from its blast, did they not? Why couldn’t they protect you from blows?”

  Eliscity considered this for a moment, before shaking her head. “They’re not solid. Pulse cannons aren’t really a physical attack. It’s like,” Eliscity tried to find the words, “the pulse vibrates the air but my wings are air, though I suppose because they’re air controlled by me I was able to keep that air from being pulsed.”

  “Your wings are air?” Jinx raised an eyebrow.

  “Well no. Yes. I – ugh this is frustrating. I don’t know what they are. Air or shadows or maybe both, plus…” Eliscity gave up on the explanation.

  “Well it would be silly not to see if there was some way to use them. Come on.” He brandished his hand at her, taking a swig of water.

  Hesitantly, she unlaced the cuffs of her sleeves and shrugged the material away. Showing Jinx her wings before she had truly known him had been easy; the pulse cannon had made it a necessity and she had known there was no need to hide them from him in the water tunnels. But the rest of the Family had yet to see them and while Jinx said they could be useful in fighting, she didn’t want to be proved a disappointment in the middle of the Playground if he was wrong.

  After another impatient wave of his hands she gave in. The shifting purple smoke slid from her back, rising around her into their tattered form. A hush fell across the room. She rolled her shoulders, massaging the knot just below the nape of her neck. She only noticed the pressure when she let her wings out and found it became worse the longer she kept them in her back.

  “They hold that shape? Always?” Jinx asked as Eliscity fidgeted.

  She gave a quick nod.

  “But they look fluid,” Casamir rumbled, approaching from one of the sofas. His muscles bulged and he looked on edge, despite not being the one dodging Jinx’s attacks for the last hour.

  Eliscity muttered something unintelligible, feeling awkward under their gaze.

  Jinx tilted his head. “They’re quite fascinating.”

  Her glare was interrupted by an onslaught in the form of the Triplets.

  “Can they lift you?”

  “Yeah you could just soar away.”

  “Or swoop around.”

  “What are clouds like up close?”

  “How fast can you go?”

  “Do they always have to be that colour?”

  “Oah, make them orange.”

  “Orange! Nah green, that’s Fae like, right?”

  �
��How is green the colour of Fae?”

  “Trees. Duh.”

  “In that case she should make them brown, idiot.”

  “What a stupid colour to make them.”

  “What about clear, can you make them clear?”

  “Yeah, to hide them from people.”

  “She could just pull them in, you fools.”

  Faust and Forrest exchanged shamed looks, as Fletcher shook his head at his brothers.

  Eliscity snorted at their barrage of questions, finding relief in the bizarre tangent. They certainly knew how to lift an awkward moment.

  “No, I can’t fly,” she admitted, receiving a collective shrug from them. “And they don’t change colours.” Their faces fell at that, much to her amusement. Their priorities were obviously well thought out.

  Laleita perched on a nearby bench. “They’re like an echo.”

  Eliscity shifted uncomfortably. “An echo of what they should be?” she asked dejectedly.

  “They are what they should be,” the Witch responded simply.

  “But you’re right, my dear,” came a new voice. “They are an echo.”

  Cyan padded down the last few steps to one of the staircases, his face inquisitive. Neith was a few paces behind him, looking wane and older than the doctor who was seven years his senior. After their middle of the night conversation, Neith had returned to his former mask of health, but it hadn’t escaped her notice that he’d been getting steadily more waxen in the last few days.

  As for Cyan Vance, she had only seen him a handful of times since their first meeting and still felt like something to be analysed and studied whenever he spoke.

  “Forgive me, I’m just passing through. Checking what materials you need for the door,” Cyan said.

  The corners of Jinx’s eyes crinkled in uncertainty. “But they can’t be an echo, they exist. They – they’re real.” His puzzled gaze followed Cyan’s path across the Playground.

  “An echo can still be heard, Jinx,” Cyan chastised. “It’s just not as loud.”

  “That’s very helpful,” Jinx drawled as Cyan and Neith disappeared through the door leading to the water tunnels.

  “It is,” chuckled Laleita. “An echo may technically be a repetition of something else, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t original as well.”

  Jinx frowned. “Er… yeah it does.”

  “No, it becomes something different from the initial concept. In this case,” Laleita’s pale eyes stretched wide, “it’s an amalgamation of echoes. The wings of Eliscity’s lineage. And of the Fae whose blood was used to Blood her.”

  “Isn’t that just the same echo twice?” Eliscity mulled. She agreed with Cyan and Laleita. An echo seemed like a decent explanation for them, something less than the wings of pure Bloods and therefore something completely new.

  “No. Not only are wing designs unique between each species of Feyfolk, or were when they were prolific in the Realm, but no two wings are the same within the species either,” Laleita explained. “The different winged species of Feyfolk had obvious divergences. Changelings were fleshy and built from bones, Faeries were insect-like and built from pure magic and then, of course, Fae,” Laleita gestured to Eliscity, “an anomaly of the Feyfolk species as their size and biology allowed them to breed with humans and thus, created a continuous devolution of their wings. It’s the same principle as the degenerated lifespan of the Fae. How human breeding bred out their immortality, leaving them the only Feyfolk to keep mortals’ time. So, it’s hard to say what their original shape was. But within all the species, families would have similar or connecting patterns and colours, but each would still be different.

  So your wings are constructed from the echo of two different Fae. Your lineage that has been breed out over centuries and another Fae, who we have no idea of the lineage or the breeding associated with it.”

  Laleita’s explanation was met by silence.

  Finally Eliscity asked, “How do you know this?”

  “It’s from one of the books in the library.”

  “I haven’t read that one,” Eliscity hummed.

  “It’s crude and one-sided, but somewhat informative. I’ll find it for you.”

  “Thanks.” Crude and one-sided was the only point of view she had been offered from the books so far, so she didn’t expect anything less.

  “What does that all mean for fighting?” asked an impatient Jinx.

  Laleita settled him with a reprimanding look. “How should I know?”

  Eliscity laughed as Jinx rolled his eyes.

  “They could give you a burst of speed,” Jinx theorised, turning away from Laleita. “They may not be completely solid, but they’re not nothing either. They affect the air. Move back for a run up, then snap your wings out – or no, in. Yeah. Really quickly while running.” Jinx waited for her to move. When she didn’t, he gave her the impatient palms up she had learnt to hate.

  “I’m not very good with them,” Eliscity mumbled at her feet. She felt all eyes of the room boring into her. “They’re hard to control,” she squeaked, desperately trying to justify her confession. “They’re two extra limbs, for crying out loud. And it’s not like they have their own skeleton to keep them in check.”

  “You never seemed to have a problem before.”

  “Wrapping them around myself is a bit different than say, flapping them or…” Feeling like she was describing a bird, she let the sentence trail off.

  Fletcher stepped forward. “It’s easier to move them in conjunction with something solid?” he asked.

  She gave a half shrug, half nod.

  “Air may not be solid, but it’s real. It can be moved and pushed around. That’s what your wings are doing every time they shift.” Fletcher looked at Jinx. “Maybe there’s some way I can help?”

  Jinx studied the air elemental briefly, before nodding. “Could be useful,” he muttered.

  ‘Could be useful’ ended up being a drastic understatement. The three of them spent the rest of the day consumed by this new idea. Jinx’s method was to jump ahead of her abilities, insisting that she move straight into using her wings to give her a burst of speed. Fletcher offered his input on the best way to work the air as a plausible substance, in order to give her further control over their motion. When Jinx realised Fletcher’s technique was having far more success than his own he surrendered the lesson to the triplet, somewhat begrudgingly. Since there was no air movement available two levels beneath the ground, Fletcher created one. At first he used it to shift her wings, getting her to try and push against the force. This gave her a tangible object to counter, giving her a clear sense of the lines of her wings and how to manipulate them. As she got more and more familiar with the boundaries of her wings, Fletcher was able to lower the air’s current to the point where she no longer required an elemental emphasis. She still had to utilise an excessive amount of focus and frustration just to budge them though. It was well into the night by the time they called their tests to a halt. Much to her annoyance, she hadn’t been able to master running and moving her wings in the right way at the same time. Despite how she had reasoned it with the Family, it seemed ridiculous that she could barely control something that was a part of her.

  “Well,” Fletcher yawned, his hands scrubbing over his scarred face. “I think I’ve offered all the help I’m capable of.”

  The rest of the Family had retired to their rooms a while ago.

  “You’ve been more help than you know. Without you I would have killed Jinx hours ago.”

  “Ha,” Jinx snorted loudly. “Over estimating your skills?”

  “I wouldn’t be throwing a punch, I’d be poisoning your dinner,” she said, sweetly.

  “Not even Raiden’s eating your cooking anymore, Angel. So I wish you luck with that.”

  Glaring at Jinx she felt Fletcher give her a friendly pat on the arm as he headed for the stairs. Offering him an appreciative smile in return as he climbed the steps, she was left alone with Jinx.
/>   “You did well today,” Jinx said, as he stacked the last of the training mats into a pile.

  Eliscity searched his face for sarcasm, but he appeared genuine. She shrugged in response.

  “You think otherwise?”

  She shrugged again.

  “It was a good start. We should have thought of using your wings way before we even considered training you to fight. They’re a weapon in themselves.”

  “Great,” she mumbled under her breath. Between her pillow, the bread and her wings, she was in desperate need of acquiring a real weapon.

  “They’re amazing,” Jinx eyed her wings. “Who knows what we can achieve with more practice.”

  Eliscity couldn’t help but notice all the times he had used the word ‘we’ in the last few sentences. She found she didn’t like it. Something about it, something she couldn’t put her finger on, felt wrong.

  Jinx stepped closer to Eliscity. There was an intensity that heated his eyes as he looked over her.

  Suddenly she knew what was happening. And she didn’t want it to happen. Her mind screamed at her to do something, anything to stop his approach. But the only thing she could think of was how he wasn’t tall enough. She shook the thought away. There was nothing wrong with his height. And it certainly wasn’t the reason for why she didn’t want him any closer.

  Why didn’t she want him closer?

  Yes, he annoyed her, but it wasn’t like she was repulsed by him. In fact, she thought he was rather attractive. But she knew what he saw when he looked at her. What he focused on. It was her wings. He liked her for everything Fae that she was.

  That was why she didn’t want him to continue his approach.

  His fiery eyes flickered over her face beneath his long eyelashes. She wondered what he would look like with green eyes.

  What was her problem? Why was she thinking about green eyes?

  Caught by surprise at the strange tangent her mind had followed, she didn’t initially notice when Jinx leaned forward, his fingers snaking around her arm to pull her closer. Eliscity opened her mouth to put a stop to this nonsense, but Jinx pressed his lips to hers at that moment.