by Andra Leigh
“There’s no Fae.”
Acanthea broke out of her thoughts. “What?”
“There’s no Fae,” Drae repeated, his eyes on one of the small glass cells. “Fae were mortal. They had a mortal’s life span… she’s not Blooded Fae.” He bent to the small Faerie’s level, his hand gently resting on the glass cage. “She’s Blooded Faerie.”
The Faerie peered at him with big weary eyes and drooping wings. Her hair was so long it dangled at her dainty feet, dull and knotted. Acanthea stepped closer, watching as the Faerie shifted to stare at Drae’s hand pressed to her cage. Slowly the creature’s own hand reached out toward his. Her long, thin fingers extended out, not touching the glass. Could she even touch it? Acanthea eyed the grains blown into the glass. Dust? It must be. The Pixnie’s cage had the same design. She looked at the third cage again. It had no air holes, nothing blown into the glass that she could see. So what was its purpose?
Suddenly the thin fog inside darkened and a face threw itself against the glass.
She yelped, stumbling back. Green eyes stared at her from amid black smoke, swirling inside the glass cell. Giving Drae an apologetic look she crept forward again to investigate. “It’s a Chira.”
Drae moved closer. “How do you catch a smoke demon?” he asked, mystified.
Acanthea shook her head. “How do you bleed a smoke demon?”
“Look at its face,” Drae said. A tendril of smoke below the eyes widened into a grin. It was mocking them. “They don’t. It’s probably the only one they haven’t gotten blood from.”
They stepped away from the glass cages.
“I can’t release them,” Acanthea whispered, hit with the reality of what releasing them would mean.
“No,” Drae agreed solemnly.
This surprised her. He was a kind man. She’d learnt that much in her short time with him. She had seen the way he had looked at the tiny, helpless Faerie. She knew he saw it as a part of Eliscity. And he loved Eliscity. But unlike Eliscity, he was pure human. Just like her. The War was over and the Realm lived in a state of precarious harmony. The Clinic needed to be brought down. It was a human-made injustice that had to be righted. It would upset the Realm’s balance, new fears and conflicts would surface. Yet under the right hand, they would survive it. But it would only take one pure Bloods to bring the Realm to its knees. It would be the end of peace.
Cathrainra had told Acanthea that there was right and there was wrong. And that nothing could be both. Acanthea wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Can you keep this secret, Drae?” she asked.
Drae took a deep breath. “I don’t know.” He looked over at her. “I can’t tell Eliscity.”
Acanthea shook her head once. None of them could know. Eliscity. Jinx. Casamir. Laleita… She couldn’t trust they wouldn’t release them.
She closed her eyes, her mind made up.
“I’m staying.”
“You’ll take the reignership?”
“I have to. These… beings, are my responsibility now.”
“I can help you,” Drae said, pain in his voice.
But Acanthea shook her head. “What do you think you could do for them? Nurse them back to health? Invite them to dinner? This is a secret that has to stay in the dark…”
“They can’t keep living like this.”
“Then be my guest and end their lives,” she sobbed. “Please. Please, because I can’t. I don’t have it in me to do it. Do you?”
She didn’t need Drae to answer to know he didn’t.
“I can’t let them go, Drae.”
Acanthea watched the Phoenix rest its head on its shoulder. It looked over at her, intelligence gleaming in its eyes along with something else. Understanding. It knew she couldn’t let it go. It had accepted her decision.
It broke her heart.
“Those can’t be our only choices,” Drae said.
He was right. She had to find a way to give them a better life. She would never be able to live with herself if she didn’t.
“No matter the type of person everyone believes me to be, I know I can do a better job than my father,” she said.
“You care, Acanthea,” Drae said. “You would never have run away if you didn’t. But even though it’s your right, the council could overthrow you. The Reigner is dead and the Clinic is going to scare a lot of people.”
Acanthea considered this. “I have a prison full of reasons why that won’t happen. Rylock has to be told about the Clinic. What they can never know is of the existence of these Bloods. I think the council would agree.”
“You’re going to blackmail them.”
“If I have to,” she nodded. “I can take over the reignership and ensure that the right secrets are kept, but that the Clinic is exposed and that all its patients can live in this Realm.” She turned to Drae, looking him square in the eye. “You could take Eliscity home, Drae,” she stressed. “You could grow old with her.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Burning Alive
• Eliscity •
“It’s not your fault, Eliscity.”
Pressing her fingertips to her closed eyelids she ignored the headache growing behind them.
The Realm was changing. She had returned from the Clinic to find Drae and Cyan the only occupants of the Manor. The Reigner was dead. Acanthea was to be the new Lady Reigness. News of the Clinic and its purpose was spreading through the cities. It wouldn’t take long for the stories to spread further. The patients who had survived the Clinic’s downfall were being housed in Heuthan, where Cyan and Acanthea were in constant contact with them. They were to be reunited with their families. Given their lives back. If that were even possible.
And Jinx was dead.
Of all the changes, that felt like the biggest one.
Today was his funeral. They had brought his body back with them. He would be entombed next to Neith. Because of her.
“I let the man live, Drae. And he killed Jinx.”
Drae encircled her in his arms, holding her close.
“It will never be your fault,” he said.
She couldn’t bring herself to look up into his eyes. Because it wasn’t just that she had let the wrong man live. “He was the only one I wasn’t worried about,” she sobbed into his chest. “I was so worried for everyone. For the Triplets, for Laleita, Casamir, Raiden. You. I was panicking that you would end up a part of it.”
“I remember.”
“I was frightened for everyone. Every single one of them. Except Jinx.” She looked at Drae now, swiping hot tears from her vision. “It never even crossed my mind to worry about him. Like he was nothing to me. How could I not have worried about him? I cared for him, I swear I did.”
She was falling apart. There was no stopping her tears. Drae pulled her back into his arms, his fingers knotting into her hair.
“I know you did, ‘City.”
As much as she knew she didn’t deserve his embrace, Eliscity couldn’t pull away. It felt like his hold was the only thing keeping her body from shattering into a million pieces.
“I didn’t even think to worry about him…” she trailed off, burying into Drae’s chest.
Drae didn’t answer at first. Then finally, “Why weren’t you worried?”
Eliscity felt sick. She tried to push him away.
“No, Eliscity. I’m asking why. Not accusing. Why was it that out of everyone here, he was the one person you weren’t concerned about?” his voice was low and purposeful. It made her pause.
“Because he was always okay,” she answered finally. “Nothing ever hurt him, not for long anyway.”
Drae brushed his thumb over her cheekbone, pushing away some of the tears. “There’s your answer.”
“What?”
Leaning forward to press a kiss to her lips, Drae whispered, “Jinx was always okay. He never gave you any reason to worry. So you didn’t. That’s not your fault. That’s no one’s fault.”
Eliscity wanted desperately to b
elieve that. But it didn’t change the fact that Jinx was dead.
“Please change your mind.”
She shook her head, pulling away from Drae to sit on the edge of their bed. “I can’t go, Drae. I’m sorry.”
He nodded his understanding but looked sad. He grasped her hand for a moment and kissed her forehead. Then he left for Jinx’s funeral.
She couldn’t bring herself to go.
‘Look back, but don’t come back.’
Was this what Juliette had seen happening if she ever returned to the Clinic? And if so, why couldn’t she have just told her. Warned her. What was the point of knowing the future if you couldn’t use it to make a better one?
Jinx hadn’t deserved to die.
Eliscity thought about what Drae had just said. Could it be that she hadn’t worried for him because he’d never given her reason to? She remembered the first time she had seen him. He had been hit with the full force of a pulse cannon. Sure, it had knocked him out. But not for as long as she expected it to. And just moments after waking, he had proved well enough to scale down a building. But it wasn’t just that. He was flawless when he fought, dispatching enemies with ease. She had never seen him bruised or battered or cut.
But that wasn’t true, she realised.
He had been hurt at the Falling Inn. He had had a cut across one of his eyes – his unnaturally fiery eyes. How could she have forgotten that? Because it had vanished. Because they had been dealing with Acanthea. Because…
There hadn’t even been a scar…
Eliscity turned her hands over slowly, examining her palms. She thought she had imagined cutting her hand on her wall of trees in her mind. But then it had hurt when she woke up. When Jinx had woken her up. And he’d kissed it. Why would he do that if nothing was wrong? But then nothing had been wrong. The next morning she had awakened and her hand had been fine.
But what if…
Cyan had found him at the Clinic being prepared for incineration. His pulse had been so weak that they’d thought he was dead. Yet something had kept him alive.
Eliscity shot to her feet, stumbling as her body struggled to keep up with her mind. She wrenched her door open and ran down the corridor. Her mind was moving so fast it was as if she was running in slow motion. She hurtled down the spiralling stairs into the Playground. Throwing herself across the vacant space she tumbled through the door into the tunnel’s antechamber. The doors to the graveyard were already open. She sprinted down the steps. Drae, Casamir, Raiden, Laleita and the Triplets all stood part way down the long space, forming a half circle around an open tomb. She raced toward them.
Hearing her approach they all looked to her, offering compassionate smiles and sad eyes.
Casamir spoke to her. “Glad you made it.”
She didn’t reply. Instead she ripped one of the elemental crystals from its bracket and hurled it into the open stone crypt where Jinx’s body had been arranged. The crystal shattered under the impact, its small flame leaping out.
“What are you doing!” Casamir dived forward to try to stop the growing flame. But she grabbed him, holding him back. The man could have overpowered her but instead he fell to his knees, devastation slashing his face as he wept.
Laleita was stuck somewhere between a scream and a sob. The Triplets were hysterical. But she wasn’t paying them any attention.
The small flame was flaring with new strength. It was as if something unseen was fuelling it. It engulfed the stone basin where Jinx lay. His body burned.
Eliscity gasped for breath as she realised the pyre reminded her of the way the Clinic had ceased to exist. Flames tearing at its walls. Leaving behind nothing but ash.
Ashes.
No, that wouldn’t happen. Desperately, she thought of everything that told her that wouldn’t happen. His flawless skin and fiery eyes. The pulse cannon. The cut from the Falling Inn. Her hand. He was okay.
Her knees buckled and she found herself on the ground next to Casamir. Had she made a mistake? Drae rushed to her. She held on to him.
“I’ll tell you now, it was preferable to burning alive. Can’t think of a worse way to die.”
Eliscity sobbed as the remembered words floated across her mind. Jinx had said them to her on her first journey to the Manor. Cyan had saved Jinx from burning alive. He’d been saved. Only to burn now.
She could hear a strangled cry. Was it her? Maybe. Maybe it was Laleita.
She focused on the flames. They were rising. Surging. Flickering and crackling. Then they fell.
There was another cry.
This time she heard it properly. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t Laleita.
Could it be…?
She gasped, watching as the flames petered down inside the stone tomb. They disappeared from sight and Eliscity couldn’t bring herself to stand to look into the stone basin. What if she had been wrong? What had she done?
Everyone was silent.
Then…
A small cry rose from the tomb.
No one moved.
As the noise came from the tomb again, Casamir crawled forward. Pulling himself up on the lip of the casket, he reached inside. And withdrew a small baby.
“It was preferable to burning alive.”
“Preferable to burning…”
Alive.
New tears were pricking Eliscity’s eyes. She’d been right. She was so shocked, so overwhelmed, she couldn’t move. But it didn’t matter. She had Drae at her side. And Laleita was already moving to Casamir’s side as he cradled the small being. It made a beautiful picture.
“Phoenix,” Laleita whispered through her tears. “All this time… Jinx.”
“No,” Eliscity said. “Jaasn.”
● The End ●
Acknowledgements
It took me years to finally believe I could write this story. Then it took a while longer to dampen down the fear of telling people I was writing a book. It’s a terrifying thing to hand something so dear to you over for someone to judge. For this reason, it has been a journey filled with anxiety. Yet it is the support and love I have received that has overwhelmed me the most.
There are so many people I’m thankful for.
Mum, you’ve never laughed at the absurdity of my dreams. So when I told you I wanted to write a book, you couldn’t wait to read it. Thank you for all your read-throughs, edits and opinions.
Steve, your love and support means everything to me.
My patchwork team of editors. Ruth, for your editing and excitement. Teresa, for understanding just how nerve-racking it is to hand your heart and soul over for someone to tear apart. And Nyla, when I could no longer bring myself to read it again, you took Dust gladly and gave it its final tuning!
Willow, the time and effort you gave me and Eliscity left me in awe. As I’m writing this, I’m struggling to find the words to explain just how grateful I am – not just for your work, but for all the conversations and long time coming catch ups.
Emma. Emdra. You are the best friend I could wish for. Thank you for imaginary brothers, one shoe hugs and disgusting wine.
Libby, Caitlin, Carrie & Janna – thanks for putting up with me (I know it’s not easy). Thank you for oranges, awkward hugs, rock candy & hammers, couches in the woods, the hunt for the perfect teacher’s apple and for rescuing the original annoying Princess over and over again with me.
Toni, for reading all those final pages of books aloud to me. Knowing the end doesn’t ruin the story. I hope everyone remembers that…
Jarna, for shared custody of the ring binder and for specifically asking for this thank you. Lynley, for your technical support.
To those who made writing a book in the real world a possible thing! Sarah & Lance, Vanessa & Neil and Jenny. And of course, Mum and Steve. I’m so grateful!
Mrs Wipou – great teachers are rare. You fight for your students and I’ll never forget that. The tiny spark of confidence and belief that led me to write Dust was due to you making sure it wasn’t extinguishe
d many years ago.
To my family who continuously choose to love and care about me. To all the Aunts and Uncles that are still with me, who truly care, you mean the world to me.
Finally, thank you to all those people who inspire me. Who believe in me and have helped make Dust a reality. I love you all.
This is just the beginning.