From Flame and Ash

by Carrie Ann Ryan

  And then Easton walked over to talk to his uncles, and I was left standing there wondering what dimension I was actually in. Yes, I was in a different realm than I had been born in, but apparently, I was missing a whole bunch of things. Like what Braelynn really was, and why she was here. And why everyone seemed to know things that I didn’t, that they didn’t seem inclined to share. However, I was used to not knowing things until they happened.

  “So, what happens when we get there, and they realize that you’re Easton?” I said quickly. “Because you’re kind of memorable.”

  He looked over at me and smiled. This time, it reached his eyes. I sucked in a breath, wondering why it looked so different. “Memorable? You say the sweetest things, Lyric.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Shut up.”

  “I can’t answer your question and shut up at the same time.”

  “You’re insufferable.”

  “Well, I can’t help that. You just bring out the worst in me.”

  I was aware that everyone was staring at us as if they were at a tennis match, watching a ball volley from side to side. “Easton. What are your plans?”

  “It’s like you don’t trust me.”

  “You make it very hard to trust you when you don’t actually tell me anything. And then you glower. And growl. And act all broody.”

  That forced a snicker from Wyn, and Teagan started laughing outright.

  “Shut up, you two,” Easton snapped.

  “Well, she’s got you there,” Teagan said. “Like, really well. I can just picture it in my mind.”

  Easton just shook his head, a small smile playing on his lips.

  “Well, Lyric, since you’re new to this whole Wielding thing, I’m going to teach you a trick. There’s a special spell we can use from one of the old books so I can go as an unobtrusive Wielder using glamour. No one’s going to know who I am, other than the people in this room. In fact, if you look really closely, you can see the edges around me blur slightly. That means the glamour’s already on. Nobody other than us knows I’m Easton. Everyone just sees a guy with brown hair and brown eyes, who can use some Wielding. Totally anonymous, totally inconspicuous.”

  “Really?” I asked, incredulous.

  He held out his arms. “Inspect me, dear Lyric.

  That made Teagan let out another snicker, who then grunted as Wyn elbowed him in the gut. Arwin was watching everything unfold, very quiet as if he were trying to take in everything and not knowing exactly what was going on at the same time. He wasn’t alone, as I had no idea what was going on either.

  But I took a step forward and focused on Easton, his face, his shoulders, and then his broad chest. He grinned as I stared, and I ignored it, knowing there was something I needed to see. Then I saw it.

  His edges were indeed blurred as if there were a different kind of lighting on him, one that made him slightly out of focus. I didn’t know what the others saw, but to me, he was Easton.

  The insufferable king who confused me like no other.

  “Seen enough, Lyric?”

  My gaze traveled back to his face, and I narrowed my eyes. “Well, it’s your head if someone figures it out.” I looked over at the others. “Are we ready to go?”

  “We’re ready,” Wyn said softly. “I guess it’s time.”

  I looked around at those who were going to help me make my way to a place they’d never been to before. They were going to protect me as I learned to defend myself. We’d be going through the northern Spirit territory, a place I had never been. There was so much I didn’t understand, so many things I still had to learn, but as I looked down at my bracelet which once again warmed at the Water symbol charm, I knew we were going to the right place. I knew this was what I needed to do.

  I hadn’t believed in magic for so long, but now, it was what I strived for, what I leaned on.

  As I looked around at the others, I hoped that no one else would get hurt for a prophecy that I didn’t understand, for something that I knew would take more out of me than I could bargain for.

  I went to the uncles and kissed their cheeks to say goodbye, knowing that this might be the last time I saw them. Ridley was sweet, making sure to add extra bandages and other first-aid things to my pack. Justise glowered, much like his nephew, and then kissed my cheek back, wishing me a safe journey. I held Braelynn in my arms, kissing the top of her head. She purred and then hugged me a bit like a human would.

  It was times like these that I remembered that this was my best friend, the one that I could share things with even if I was afraid of them myself. She had journeyed with me into this realm because something had drawn her here, and she’d wanted to be by my side.

  Now, I was leaving her behind because I had to keep her safe. The safest she could be in this new life of hers. And I was so worried, so scared that this could be the end.

  But the Lumiére Kingdom was calling me. It was time.

  The journey would be hard, but I was stronger than I had been before. I knew so much more.

  I would finally be able to see Rhodes again and make sure that we had made the right choice by walking away from each other. Yet, at the same time, I wondered what our connection had really been at the beginning. Why we’d thought we had a chance at something when fate had decided something else was for us.

  Easton looked at me as I thought about Rhodes, and I had to wonder once again if he could read my thoughts.

  His jaw tightened, and then he set off down the corridor and away from the throne room. I picked up my bag, and we all followed. And then the journey began.

  I was once again a traveler, lost in a realm I didn’t understand, but one I was becoming to know as home. I didn’t want to die today, I didn’t want to think about mortality, but once again, it was at the forefront of my mind.

  This was the life we led, one that was mine.

  I wasn’t Lyric the lost, human girl anymore.

  I was Lyric, the perhaps-one-day-soon Spirit Priestess, the one who could Wield two elements, the one who had loved and lost. The one who needed to journey again.

  I was Lyric, and I would find my way.

  Somehow.

  Chapter Ten

  My feet hurt. Honestly, that was the first thing that came to mind when it came to traveling long distances between the Obscurité Kingdom and the Lumiére.

  I know I should have been used to this type of traveling, considering how much I had done over the past year—or even longer if I thought about it—but it still wasn’t my favorite thing.

  Technology from the human realm didn’t work correctly in the Maison realm. And because of that, it wasn’t like we could just hop on a train or a plane or even in a car.

  I figured there had to be boats or ships of some sort because there were creeks and streams around, and if what I had read about the Water territory was correct, most of the area was actually seas, oceans, and various rivers. With floating cities and different land masses where the people lived. So, there had to be boats.

  Once we left the Obscurité Court, we walked into the northern Spirit territory after taking a little detour across the farthest corner of the Fire territory since we had to find entrances through the wards.

  It was very much like the southern Spirit territory, all desert-like with a sepia tone to it.

  And while the southern Spirit territory had the Negs, the absence of all magic, beings full of darkness that had come to try and attack us the last time I was here, the northern territory felt almost emptier.

  I wasn’t even sure how that was possible.

  There were cracks in the ground as if it had once been part of a larger mass, maybe even a salt bed where a large body of water had once sat centuries ago.

  I wasn’t a hundred percent sure as I didn’t know what the Spirit territories looked like before the Fall. I’d asked Rhodes once, and he had said that he wasn’t exactly sure. After all, he hadn’t been born then, and others didn’t talk about it often, as if they were afraid to talk a
bout what was lost, or as if it hurt to think about what wasn’t there anymore.

  I didn’t ask my current companions about it either. I was afraid of the same answer, and I didn’t know if they’d have an answer at all.

  Teagan and Arwin were up front, talking animatedly about training and different techniques when in battle. Well, Teagan was talking animatedly. Arwin was listening as if he were ready to take notes. If he had a piece of paper to write down everything Teagan was trying to teach him, I was sure he’d be doing just that. I wanted to learn too, and had heard so much history about fighting from the others, but this seemed different.

  I hadn’t actually been in a full-on battle like Teagan was talking about.

  Yes, I’d fought against the Negs and even some Earth-Wielding pirates. I’d fought against Fire guards who had come at us and tried to pull us against our will towards the Fire territory. The same with the Earth guards in their territory, now that I thought about it.

  I had fought against magic no one had even heard of when it came to the knight and the queen of the Obscurité Kingdom. I had done all of that, but I hadn’t been in a full battle like they showed in the movies with CGI. No, Teagan, Wyn, and even Easton had fought side by side, their Wielding full and up front as they battled for their lives and that of their people.

  The Fall had happened so long ago that the actual battles that were fought then were a long-distant memory.

  But there were still skirmishes along the borders here and there at times.

  And those were the battles that Teagan was revealing to Arwin now.

  How Water and Air Wielders fought against the Fire and Earth Wielders.

  How people died, and how people were injured.

  Or when people lost their Wielding or weren’t strong enough even though they were the strongest of their line.

  I could barely imagine it and was honestly only half-listening at the moment because of who walked beside me.

  Wyn was behind us, guarding the rear as she walked in silence. She had been walking alongside me for a while but had traded places with Easton in his glamour a full day into our travels.

  I hadn’t known why, but she liked being the rear guard, as if protecting her king and the rest of us was her sole responsibility.

  Her strength was amazing, and part of me wished I was attracted to someone like her rather than Rhodes—or even the boy by my side. Because if I were honest with myself, I knew that I was somewhat attracted to Easton, despite the fact that he annoyed me like no other. Even if I knew he thought I was beneath him. It didn’t matter that I was his so-called Spirit Priestess.

  To him, I would always be the girl who got his mother killed, the one who didn’t know what she was doing and didn’t have enough magic to protect the realm. Easton was the one who had to fight, who had to use all of his power to protect everyone.

  To him, I was just learning, and I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t what he had been expecting, and I could see it clear as day with every look he gave me.

  So, yes, walking side by side with him as we made our way through the northern Spirit territory wasn’t the easiest or the most comfortable.

  In fact, it was quite painful.

  “How much longer until we get to the other kingdom?” I asked. It was the first time I had spoken up. I had done my best not to keep asking if we were there yet.

  I didn’t have a scope of the distance, though. Because it wasn’t like there were street signs or landmarks for me to gauge where we were. I had never been here before, and nobody was really telling me which direction we were going, other than west. We just kept moving west towards the Lumiére Kingdom.

  And although we could have gone straight through the Obscurité Court to the Lumiére Court because they practically touched with the way the area was laid out, it wasn’t done.

  The magic surrounding the courts was so strong that you couldn’t just walk into the other kingdom from the other side. You had to go through certain pockets where the warding was weaker. I didn’t know how they knew where those spots were, but considering they’d had hundreds of years to test the warding along the borders, I assumed they just learned over time.

  And because the Spirit territory split the two kingdoms apart, they didn’t have the same type of borders that the territories within the kingdoms did.

  So, the Fire and the Earth territories, because they were in the same kingdom, had their own combination of borders. It was an actual strip of land that was a mix between the two types of Wieldings.

  I figured that the Air and Water probably had something similar in their kingdom.

  But because the Spirit territory was so different, there wasn’t an actual mix of the two Wieldings at each of the borders.

  And that meant that once we left the wards of the Obscurité Kingdom and made our way into the northern Spirit territory, we were on our own. There was nothing of Earth or Fire about it, just something unique and obscure.

  And while it was beautiful, it was also haunting.

  There were no structures—ruins or otherwise. No way of knowing if anyone had lived here before.

  I didn’t know how many Spirit Wielders there had been before the Fall, but there must have been more than just a few to be able to take care of this entire territory.

  But now it was barren and empty. Desolate. There was nothing here to show the history of a people that were no longer there. It was as if their mark had been erased, slowly eroded away over time as their memory faded from the minds of those who had been alive when the Spirit Wielders had lived in the Maison realm.

  Because when the Fall occurred, the Spirit Wielders had left. They’d fled the Maison realm and went into the human realm—and perhaps even into the other territories if the legends were true.

  And considering that I was a walking legend, or so they said, I tended to believe that idea.

  The history of this territory was even worse. It turned out that the old kings of each kingdom had used the Spirit Wielders and their magic to increase their power.

  I wasn’t sure exactly how that had happened, but considering that I had witnessed some version of that with the knight, Lore, using those within his kingdom and stripping their Wielding through the crystal, I figured that was probably how it had been done.

  But I didn’t want to think too hard about that since it wasn’t something I could stomach well.

  “We should be there eventually.”

  Easton’s voice brought me out of my thoughts, and I shook my head. He had taken so long to answer, I had forgotten I had asked him a question. And his answer really wasn’t an answer at all.

  “Really? Eventually? I’m so glad you cleared that up.”

  He huffed out a breath. I wasn’t sure if he was laughing or just grunting at me. Most likely grunting because…this was Easton.

  “Eventually because sometimes the Spirit territory makes you feel like you’re closer than you really are. We are walking through a desert, after all. We should be there within two days, but, knowing this territory, it could take longer. Or we could be there tomorrow. It just really depends on the magic in the air.”

  I almost tripped over my feet as I narrowed my eyes at him. “Like there’s a time vortex or something? Or magic making us think we’re going farther than we are?”

  “No. More like things aren’t really how they seem here. I don’t know how else to explain it. I’m not exactly a Spirit Wielder, am I?”

  “I’m not either,” I said quickly.

  “But you will be soon. One day.”

  I nodded, my mouth going a little dry.

  That was the one Wielding aspect that truly worried me. Over time, I had met each of the other types of Wielders. I knew that eventually, I’d be able to be trained by someone. And even though the Fire Wielding was the one that tempted me the most, it scared me, too. However, it wasn’t the one that worried me the most.

  No, that was the Spirit Wielding and the fact that I did not know any other Spirit Wielders
who could help me when I gained that element.

  My dreams came back to me, and I let myself mull them over. I guess I had met a few Spirit Wielders, the ones that haunted my dreams. They had been the ones to call out to me, the ones who gave me the strength to save myself from the sword that had been in my gut. There were twelve of them, each standing on a different hour of the clock at the cardinal directions, watching and speaking to me.

  They had been so otherworldly, so different from any other type of Wielder I had met.

  And I had no idea where they were in the waking world. Or how they could help me. If they could help me.

  Easton reached out and brushed my hair from my face as we walked, and I tripped over myself. His hands were instantly on my elbows as he held me steady.

  “Are you okay?” He looked down at me, his voice low as he spoke.

  I blinked, looking up at him. “Yeah. You just startled me.”

  He cleared his throat. “Sorry. You just looked so pensive, I wanted to see if you were okay.”

  Then why did you touch me?

  I didn’t ask that question, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

  I didn’t know what I was about to say, but when I opened my mouth to speak, Teagan shouted, changing everything.

  “Brace yourselves!”

  I looked over at him, wondering what he could possibly mean. Because there was nothing here, the area was completely empty.

  But then I knew I was wrong.

  It looked as if there was something flying through the air, bobbing up and down as it came towards us, its mouth open, its jagged teeth as long as I was tall.

  But I couldn’t be seeing what I thought I was seeing.

  It was as if it were partly there, and somewhat gone. Like a ghost. It looked like a dragon, that much I knew, but then again, I didn’t know if dragons were real.

  It had a long beard on its face that blew in the wind as the creature came towards us. Its body was skeletal, you could actually see the fact that there was nothing inside this dragon that was coming at us.

  But it was as if it was out of phase. Sometimes it was a little more solid. Sometimes, a lot more translucent.