Mud

  It knows my name.

  The panic mixes with confusion and rage. Adrenaline still pulses in me hot and thick from the fight.

  “What is this? Where did they—”

  “Adem. Be still.” Through the broken wind and flying sand, an arm reaches out to me. “You are not mine, Adem. I did not create you. You do not answer to me, and I cannot expect you to follow my commands.”

  I cannot see it, but somehow beauty and peace emanate from it. It is just what I crave, and I soak it up like dirt takes in rain after drought. But what is it? My whole body reverberates with fear. The wind is building, swirling around us. More sand rises into it. Small pebbles begin to lift into its fold.

  “All the same, you have broken my Order,” the voice continues.

  “What are you?” I ask. It is swallowed into the building wind.

  “I am the One who forged this realm. The One who planted the Order into everything in it. I am all that is.”

  Each word quakes through me as if they rolled up from within the depths of Terath, shakes free everything within me, leaves behind only awe.

  “You are Theia.”

  The wind builds. Rocks as large as my fist begin to rise, to join the wind tunnel’s mass around me.

  And then my mind reemerges from Her overwhelming presence. The desperation, the rage, the burden of all I’ve done come back to me. Jordan. Miriam. Epoh. The ages before that. The Wars. All the brokenness of the realm melds together in me into a lump of cold leaden anger.

  “You abandoned us,” I accuse.

  I wait for the Goddess to speak. The ground rumbles. She says nothing.

  “You have to come back. You have to help your people. Everything is falling apart. I’ve done things, awful things, things that could destroy the whole realm if you don’t—”

  “End this, Adem.”

  End this? That is all the Goddess of the Realm has for me?

  If only I could.

  I would give anything, everything, to make it end. I tried.

  My failure wells in my throat. My words have to fight to get out.

  “I can’t.”

  “You must.”

  “How?”

  One word. Almost a cry. One word, but it’s everything.

  “The very fabric of my realm is your being. You are the dirt. You are the earth. You are Terath.”

  The voice is too big, everywhere at once. And it is inside me, a comforting whisper. The wind whips at my ears, fills my head with violent noise. I don’t understand. My dense, slow mind. The root of all the disaster I’ve brought forth.

  “You have caused great destruction with your foolishness. What has already passed is only the beginning.”

  I feared it; no, I knew it was so. Kythiel is only the first stone to fall in a landslide, a landslide tumbling my way, threatening everything, and somehow I’m supposed to stop it, catch each stone, and set it all back into place?

  I cannot. I open my mouth to tell her so again, but she holds up an invisible hand to me, sand blowing around it in the wind.

  “I cannot claim you. You are the only thing in all of Terath I cannot, from the trees’ deepest roots to the highest stars of the sky. But the dirt within you is mine. You have broken the Order, and started a chain of events that will cause great destruction across Terath before it is through. And yet, it was my own creature who led you into it. Perhaps we owe something to each other.”

  The ground’s rumbling continues to grow and my knees are shaky and weak on it. My fear grows with it. Around me, rocks anchored in the sand are sweeping into the building wind. Sand blasts my face, bites my skin. It builds a wall around us. Grains stick to the invisible form across from me, reveal a face beyond beauty, beyond grace, solemn and fervent.

  She speaks again.

  “Adem, set right what you have wronged, and I will uphold my creature’s promise to you. I will give you a soul and claim you as my own.”

  A flicker of hope lights within me. It’s not lost yet. A new chance might yet be mine.

  But. “How?”

  A plea.

  “Do you pledge to take this on in my name?”

  “Yes.” To gain a soul? To fix all I’ve broken? Yes, oh yes, oh yes.

  “Then fear not. I will be with you. Kythiel has walked too long through this realm. Cast him out. The war is coming. Fight at the side of my chosen warrior and cast out what you have set loose. End the Realm Wars once and for all. Restore my peace to Terath. Do this and I will make you my own.”

  The charges pile up on me. Heavy. Impossible.

  The same word still hammers at my mind. “How?”

  “It is already in you.”

  Her words don’t make sense and it’s like I’m sinking deeper and deeper, being buried in the whirl of sand and rock churning around us.

  “But I am nothing.”

  “You are more than you know,” She says. Her tone is clipped. “Your maker’s power is your power. All these years you hid in the dark, it has compounded inside you. It is yours if you will take it. So take it.”

  Bewilderment whips around me in raw, stinging fragments.

  “But—”

  “What do you think is causing the earth to rise?”

  The question drains me to blankness. Before I can think, an arm of sand and wind reaches out, presses a finger to my forehead and burns into me, a whipping pain that scorches under my skin. My mind goes blank and I am thrown back, back, back—

  Back to a boy in wintered woods, back to a place that is strange but familiar.

  I walk around to peer into his face. Dark hair. Flushed cheeks. Shoulders just beginning to broaden into manhood. I’ve seen him before.

  It is the boy that Ceil tried to show me.

  My mind clouds with questions and guilt. Why did Theia send me back here? It’s too late now, I’ve already done all Ceil was trying to stop.

  The boy treads just on the fringe of a village, watching the bustling life pass by with disinterest. Carts’ wheels rumble, punctuated by a cheerful rabble of voices. Something in me is drawn, connected to this boy, and his sullen anger writhes within me. I step closer to him. A high laugh floats through the forest branches, the same laugh that echoed so strangely through the trees before, and suddenly the boy ducks behind a tree.

  And then they walk by. A loose pack of boys about the same age, led by a girl. They joke and play to entertain her, pick wild flowers from the forest’s edge, and present them to her. She rewards them with more of the dancing laughter. The boy’s craving for her wells up in me, a hungry mix of curiosity and secret longing. Her look is plain, touched only by a necklace. A simple gold chain with a large uncut emerald dangling from it.

  My necklace.

  The backs of my hands tingle, my mind buzzes with dread. Ceil. This is what he meant to show me. I’m sure of it. And I didn’t know enough to understand. Why show me this now that it’s over and lost?

  The group passes by and the boy steps back out from behind the tree, stares after them. The girl twirls, looks past the trees, and pierces the dark-haired boy with a weighty glance. When she turns back, the flowers in her hand are black and rotted. She whips around again and stares at him. They freeze in the moment, their eyes lock, until the flock of boys calls her attention back and she finally must turn and walk away with them.

  “That was very good.”

  The voice is like honey, reaches out from deeper in the woods. The boy jumps and whips around, startled to find he is not alone.

  It’s an angel. She emanates a rosy golden glow, tall and grand, skin smooth and perfect as Kythiel’s. Her face is pointed and proud. She smiles at the boy.

  “Do you study magic?”

  He shakes his head, bewildered.

  “Would you like to?”

  He bites his lip, glances back at the town.

  “They do not see me,” she says.

  She reaches out her arm and spreads her fingers, palm down. “Aaeros.” A rock floats up and nestles int
o her hand.

  “Now you,” she nudges.

  The boy hesitates. She raises an eyebrow. “Unless you don’t think you can?”

  He frowns, the flush of his cheeks spreading over his face, and sticks his arm out. He waits.

  Nothing happens.

  “Like this,” the angel reaches out, rearranges his fingers so they are spread out and strong.

  “You have to say it.” She places her own hand over his. “We will do it together. Ready?”

  He nods.

  “Aaeros.” My own lips mouth the word with them.

  A rock shoots into his hand.

  “Very good.” The angel smiles at him.

  The boy is dizzy with the power, and I feel it too, his tingling fingers, his spinning head, and the warm rush that floods over him.

  “Tell me your name,” the angel says.

  “Maelcolm.”

  “Maelcolm.” She smiles down at the boy. “There is much more I can teach you, if you want it. Do you?”

  He nods, his hot cheeks flushed to his ears.

  “Very good,” she smiles. “I am Syliel.”

  Syliel says more, but I do not hear it. I am pulled away from the forest, away from the village, away in a sudden rush back to the shore.

  The Goddess’s hand settles back at her side, but the center of my forehead still burns where she pressed into it. Around us the swirling wind has risen to a raging cyclone, pieces of the cave tear away and are consumed by it, joining the torrent. I stand in its center unanchored, lost and overwhelmed, the wind’s power filling me and rushing through me and jumbling all my thoughts, leaving me dazed and powerless.

  Theia’s voice is around me and in me. “End this, Adem.”

  I shut my eyes, shut them tight, and try to wipe my mind clean. But my thoughts lift and join the torrent, and I can’t catch them, can’t focus on them long enough to make them into anything.

  All I know is that something terrible is on the verge of Terath, something that I have caused, and I have to stop it.

  It has to STOP.

  It’s a shriek, a cry, a plea, a command. Everything stutters to a standstill, and I know before I even open my eyes, the rocks have dropped back to the ground.

  Without the wind and flying sand I can’t tell if the Goddess still stands in front of me or not. But then two whispered words—End this—come over me in a soft breeze and blow everything away to nothing. I claw against it, no, please, I have more questions, I do not understand, I need more.

  But nothing responds, and I collapse into darkness.

  Chapter 31

  AGAIN I WAKE, rough sand pressing into my face. The waves are loud and angry.

  I force myself to my knees, inebriated and wobbly from the vision. I rub the sand away from my eyes and open them.

  I’m back on the shore. The real shore. Just as I left it.

  Kythiel is making his way up the beach to the cave, Rona trembles, and Jordan stands in front of her wielding a knife that will mean nothing against an angel.

  Somehow, I am whole again, all Kythiel’s damage washed away. More than whole. Stronger. A hot angry pulse thunders through me, and fury splays off me like sand kicked up in the wind. I unlock the monster within, and I am rage, I am wrath, I am golem, a violent heat radiating from my forehead where She touched me and simmering just below my skin.

  And I am more. I am Theia’s instrument—Theia’s weapon—chosen and sent here to stop this, to stop Kythiel.

  End this.

  I will.

  I just wish I knew how to do it.

  My forehead burns, burns, burns and I feel it reaching, settling into my mind, growing roots, taking hold over me. And it is good.

  I rise to my feet. My head rushes, the ground sways under me.

  Rona’s eyes flit to me. Jordan grabs her arm, a warning. She pulls her focus back to Kythiel, but it’s too late.

  The inky wings bristle. He whips around.

  He looks like hell.

  His lip pulls back, baring pearly teeth. The smooth skin still bears smudges of silver blood, catching and glaring against the rising sun behind me over the sea. The shadows around his brooding lost eyes are dark, menacing, and sinister. The glossy curls are disheveled, fractured light catching in them like a halo battered and broken.

  “We’re done, golem. Give it up. Or I will send you back to the dirt, where you came from.”

  “Then come do it. Let’s end this.”

  He charges toward me, and I toward him, and soon I fear he will be breaking me, soon he will be defeating me again. But he’s moving away from Rona, and I have to keep it that way, keep him away from her, until I figure out how to make it stop.

  The words Theia planted in me are stretching still, needling into me, working their way through my mind’s crevices. They struggle to find room, to make sense. The spot on my forehead where She touched me throbs, bursting through me in waves of power.

  We rush into each other where the shore meets the rockier ground scattered around the cave. Kythiel swings a fist. Every particle of my body is in overdrive, and I watch it come toward my head in slow motion. I duck, and his body propels forward as his fist swipes through empty air. I throw out my fist, slugging him across the jaw. He brushes away a drop of blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing a streak across his cheek.

  We circle around each other, fists up, eyes wary.

  He seems somehow lesser now. After the other angel in Theia’s vision. Duller, less radiant in comparison. Did I simply not see it before? Or is his wildness growing?

  He takes another swing. It’s frantic and uncontrolled. I step back and it misses me again.

  Syliel. That was her name. And the boy … something about him. A connection. How did the girl have my necklace? Where were they? When were they? Ages and ages back, I think.

  Stars explode in my eyes as Kythiel lands a hit at my temple. I spin off kilter, landing hard on my arms among the rocks.

  He’s too strong, too fast. And he’s got magic at his command. How can Theia expect me to have any chance? A wave of resentment at her surges. Why come to me at all? Why send me back to this?

  I push my hands into the sharp rocks to stand back up. What choice is there but to keep fighting?

  The rocks.

  It ignites inside me like a spark in dry straw. This is what She was telling me. This is how it ends.

  I stand. Turn to Kythiel.

  A half-cocked smile is spread over his face.

  I hold out my hand, spread my fingers out tight like Syliel did.

  “Aaeros.”

  A rock quivers, slowly rises. The power bursts within me, a strange mounting pressure. I muster all my focus toward Kythiel and push my arm forward. The rock drifts toward him, slowly dropping until it meets the ground near his feet.

  A hard, dry laugh drops from his lips. He kicks the rock away. It makes sad skipping taps as it scuttles against other rocks in the sand.

  But I felt it. The magic is in me. And now it’s stirring. Waking up.

  Another fist comes at me, proud and sure of itself.

  I brace myself. Let it come. It lands square in the middle of my chest. Spindly fracture lines stretch through my sternum, my ribs. They are already knitting back together before Kythiel’s arm is back at his side.

  I ignore it, stretch out my arm, and try again.

  “Aaeros.”

  The rocks rise to me quicker this time, a cluster of them. I shove my hand toward Kythiel and they fly at him, bounce off his chest.

  Kythiel’s face clouds, his full lips pulling into a flat line.

  “You dare use my own gift against me? That is angels’ magic, golem. Stop meddling with what you cannot understand.”

  He starts toward me again. But he’s angry now, distracted.

  I muster my strength, my will, my desperation, everything I have, and roar, “Aaeros!”

  The earth rumbles. I brace myself, holding my ground. Raising my arm, I
order the rocks to follow my command.

  And the rocks rise.

  First, the smaller ones lift. Then more. The large shards around the cave pull free from the trembling ground and join them. The power shoots through me in quivers. I breathe slow and deep to hold myself steady. The air is sharp and tight with force; it snaps and pulls. I shove my arms toward Kythiel. The rocks charge, mixed with sparks of raw power.

  His wild eyes pull wide. He throws out a hand, cries “Repelle!”

  Our waves of magic meet and my rocks are lost in light, blinding and hungry and all-consuming, brighter than the sun. The force is too much. The rocks inch toward him quivering and unsteady, until his light and my sparks combust into each other. He is swallowed into the explosion, the light eating into him, and breaking apart at his fingers, his shoulders, making his face like crumbling embers. I stand my ground, sparks and rocks biting at me from every side. I try to keep them steady and charging, the power coursing between my particles like a current.

  I stand my ground until my knees give out and I collapse.

  This time when I fall into the darkness, there is nothing beyond it.

  Chapter 32

  SOMETHING NUDGES ME. I have the vague urge to fight, to defend myself. Someone needs my help.

  “Adem?”

  I roll over onto my back and open my eyes. Two faces stare down at me. Bright light reaches around them and blots out their faces. From an explosion?

  No. It’s just the sun, rising behind them and reflecting off the sea.

  But there was an explosion.

  Wasn’t there?

  “Adem?”

  A deep voice, young and warm and full of life—Jordan. He sounds tense.

  My body is a thousand tiny fractures knitting back together. I stay still and let them heal. While I wait I strain to remember, dig through my memory, but my mind is blank.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  Jordan and the other figure exchange a look. The second figure pushes back long tangled locks with a too-skinny arm.

  Rona.

  And suddenly it all starts rushing back to me.

  Kythiel. Theia. The rocks.

  I bolt to my feet and swing around, my head buzzing. Past Jordan and Rona, a crowd hovers together, their expressions bewildered.