From Flame and Ash

by Carrie Ann Ryan

  “What about the Lord and Lady of Air?”

  “They have their staff, and either we’ll bring Rhodes and Rosamond with us, or they’ll go home with them. I don’t know which yet, but we need to get out of here. Be quick.”

  And then he kissed me quickly, surprising us both it seemed. Then I was in my room, trying to grab the last of my things. I wanted to get out of here quickly. I hadn’t truly unpacked, as if I knew that this was just a way station. Everything just seemed wrong right now, and I was scared. So scared.

  Because while I had been at every estate now, this one seemed the most tainted, even more so than the Earth Estate.

  This man was the twin of the King of Lumière, and I had never met the king. Only his twin. Just the man who seemed to want to use me for something.

  Though I honestly didn’t want to know what that was.

  The door opened behind me, and I turned. “I’m ready.”

  And then I froze.

  It wasn’t Easton or the others who stood there. No, it was one of the guards. I looked at him, trying to remember exactly where I had seen him before. It hadn’t been at the estate. It had been somewhere else.

  Who was this?

  “The lord requires your presence,” the man said, his voice deep.

  “Oh, well, I-I need to do a few things. I’ll meet him there soon?”

  “No, you won’t. You will come with me now. This is the Lord of Water’s territory, and you will listen to what he says.”

  And then he reached out to me, and it wasn’t Water Wielding that came for me but Air.

  My eyes widened, and I let out a shocked breath.

  “You’re an Air Wielder,” I whispered.

  “Clever girl,” he said and then winked.

  Suddenly, I knew where I’d seen him before. He was one of the Creed of Wings. One of the assassins.

  And he was working with the Lord of Water.

  What on earth was going on?

  I looked down at his other hand and froze. There was something that looked like a stone in his palm, but it wasn’t a stone. It was a bone.

  Bone magic.

  How did this man have bone magic? And why was he working for the Lord of Water?

  But before I could reach any of my Wielding, he slapped his hand out, and I flew off my feet, my back hitting the wall behind me.

  I coughed, scrambling to stand as I tried to shake the ringing from my ears.

  “The Lord of Water requires your presence,” he growled out, and I tried to use my Wielding again but froze mid-air.

  The Lord of Water was behind him, his eyes narrowed as he stared at me. I looked down, and he too had a piece of bone in his hand, a snarl on his face.

  “Tut-tut, Spirit Priestess. He told you that I required your presence.”

  “Where are the others?” I snapped, once again trying to use my Wielding. But something was blocking it. It had to be the bone magic. I didn’t understand it. How was this happening?

  “You’ll see them soon,” the Lord of Water said. “But first, you’re a very important part of my plans.”

  “I’m not going to help you. Ever.”

  “I was afraid you would say that.”

  He snapped his fingers, and another Creed of Wings member dragged along a very familiar person.

  My eyes widened, and I blinked, my mouth going dry.

  “If you want this boy to live, you’ll come with us. The others are already taken care of. You don’t want any more deaths on your hands, do you, Spirit Priestess?” Durin asked, his voice sickly sweet.

  I looked down at Arwin’s face, at the blood covering his mouth and one eye.

  I didn’t know what to do. But I wasn’t going to watch my friend die. I wasn’t going to watch the boy that always seemed so young die because of me.

  “I’ll go with you. Just leave him alone.”

  “You’ve made the right choice, Lyric.” And then he took the bone, slid it into his other palm, and slowly dragged it across Arwin’s neck.

  I watched, my body and my soul frozen in place as Arwin’s eyes widened ever so slightly, before a thin trickle of blood slid down his neck. It was just a tiny amount, as if it were nothing.

  But I knew it was too much.

  It was as if everything in front of me had stopped, as if I could hear every single intake of breath and watch the seconds tick by.

  It had been the same when Brae died.

  That echoing, hollow sadness gripping me.

  Arwin fell to his knees, his hands outstretched, his body pale as blood slowly slid down his neck and onto his shirt, darkening the material to a red that could only mean death.

  He didn’t blink, didn’t scream, he just fell to his knees and then to his side as the blood pooled around him. I wondered why everything was so silent.

  Why wasn’t there a scream of death as Arwin died in front of me?

  But there was nothing.

  Durin had said that he had taken care of the others, and then he had killed Arwin right in front of me after saying he would keep him alive.

  As the Creed of Wings surrounded me, and the Lord of Water brought the bone to my chest, I wondered if this was going to be the end or only a new beginning.

  He smiled.

  And then there was nothing.

  Chapter Thirty

  Drip.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  I opened my eyes and then shut them again. A vibrant light was above me, blinding me. It hurt.

  Where was I? What had happened?

  I wasn’t in my room, wasn’t in any of the rooms that I had called my own for the past few years. No, this was somewhere different. I couldn’t remember what had happened, how I had gotten here, or where I needed to be.

  There was something wrong, though. That much I knew. What was that sound? What was with all the dripping? The slow water coming from all around me.

  I opened my eyes again and gasped.

  There was light, something artificial as if it were bouncing off whatever bubble was above me.

  Bubble, as in an air pocket within water.

  My breaths came in quick pants as I panicked.

  I fisted my hands, trying to move and figure out exactly what was happening, but I felt chained. Chained down so I couldn’t get up.

  “Breathe,” Easton said next to me. I froze before slowly turning my head as far as I could to see him.

  He wasn’t wearing his glamour anymore. No, he was back to looking like Easton without the blur, but someone had beaten him badly. His whole body was covered in bruises and cuts, and he had a wicked gash on his forehead that looked like it hurt a lot.

  He looked worse than he had when we were on the ship, and the Creed of Wings had taken us.

  The Creed of Wings. They were working with the Lord of Water.

  My eyes widened, and Easton tried to reach out, but he was secured to something, as well. The same something I was chained to most likely.

  But my mind wasn’t working all that quickly just then, and I couldn’t really focus on what we were secured to. Whatever it was, I knew the whole situation was bad. I knew that whatever we were chained to wasn’t something I wanted to think about. So my mind just didn’t let it happen.

  It was all a blur. There was just water, Easton, and from the moan to my left, there was someone else. Rhodes? I looked. Yes, it was Rhodes.

  The three of us were chained to something, and I didn’t think we were going to get out of this.

  I licked my dry lips and tried to focus again. I was so tired. As if something had hit me hard in the head and took everything out of me. I just didn’t know exactly what it was or what any of this meant.

  “What happened?” I asked, my voice shaky.

  “It’s my father,” Rhodes said, his voice emotionless and dull. There wasn’t even the anger that I had heard before there anymore. And that scared me. Because Rhodes needed that anger. Despite how calm and collected he usually was, he needed his emotions. And if h
e was so calm now? So emotionless? Something bad was definitely happening. Or it had already happened.

  And then I remembered Arwin and the blood on the floor, and the way that Durin had come to me, the bone in his hand as he slammed it into my chest, making me pass out.

  I didn’t know what type of magic he had used, other than bone magic since he had been holding a bone. And I didn’t know what that bone magic could do, other than somehow open portals like the one that had saved us from the Kraken.

  “Yes, the Lord of Water put us here. In case you couldn’t tell, we’re under the actual sea,” Easton snapped. “The damn sea.”

  He pulled against his chains and growled.

  “They’ve infused bone magic into the chains. We can’t even use our Wielding, it’s completely blocked.”

  I thrashed against the bonds myself, the clanking sound of chain against whatever we were attached to echoing in my mind.

  “I thought the bone magic saved us from the Kraken?”

  “Bone magic isn’t inherently horrendous,” Easton said slowly.

  “It’s made by using the bones of the murdered, how can it not be horrendous?” Rhodes asked, growling. At least there was emotion there, even though it happened to be directed at Easton. Regardless, I would take it.

  “Yes, in order to make bone magic, you have to sacrifice other Wielders and then strip their magic from them, directing it into yourself somehow. And in doing so, the bones left behind sometimes create echoes. If someone uses the bones for evil, then the bone magic is for evil. Just like any Wielding. But, somehow, I believe the bones we’re currently lying on protected us. As if the souls that were forced to stay beneath the sea didn’t want us to drown or be destroyed by the power of the Kraken.”

  I listened to Easton even as dread filled my belly. And then I looked under him and to the left beneath Rhodes.

  We had been chained to bones.

  Not just rocks or the bottom of the sea.

  As far as I could tell, it was an actual layer of bones. Likely the Wielders who had been murdered.

  There were leg bones and arm bones, and I could even see finger bones and a couple of skulls. Some were shattered fragments of whatever had been crushed, but others were still whole and new.

  I turned my head up just slightly and noticed the empty, hollow eyes of the skull placed right by my head.

  I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t feel anything.

  Because this wasn’t just morbid curiosity, a macabre display, this was death.

  And they had chained us to it.

  They had used these people for something, and even though somehow, as Easton had said, the souls had saved us once, I didn’t think it was going to happen again.

  Not when we were chained to them, not when we were under a bubble of Air beneath the crushing weight and pressure of the sea.

  I didn’t understand the physics of it, considering that if we had been in any other vessel beneath so much ocean or sea, the pressure would have been an issue. But maybe with Wielding, it negated science and physics. I had always been afraid of going in submarines or going too far under the water where your ears popped. Where you could lose oxygen and die because you couldn’t rise to the surface fast enough. Where your lungs couldn’t regulate to the new pressure.

  It was one reason I had never been scuba diving, even when my parents went on vacation and wanted me to take classes so I could dive with them.

  Instead, I had stayed behind on the beach and played in the waves, enjoying the sand beneath my feet, the heat of the sun on my face, the water lapping at my toes, and the wind in my hair.

  I’d enjoyed those elements, but I hadn’t wanted to be beneath the sea.

  Now, here I was, under so many feet of water I couldn’t even comprehend it.

  “Lyric? Breathe.”

  I looked over at Easton and let out the breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding.

  “How do we get out of here?”

  “I don’t know, but we will. This isn’t how it ends for us, do you get that? This is not how it ends.” I looked into Easton’s dark eyes and tried to feel like he was right. That there was a way out of this.

  Everything just felt so far out of my hands. Especially when the bone magic had taken away my Wielding. I might still be new to it, but in cases like this, it was the only thing I could rely on. I was becoming a fighter, but only through my Wielding.

  Using my fists or even the ability to run as far as I could wouldn’t help me while trapped at the bottom of the ocean.

  “How did you get down here? How did I get down here?”

  Easton let out a curse and then looked up and around as if he were trying to find a way out just like I was.

  “They bombarded us, one at a time. Waited until we were all separated and gathering our things.” He paused, and I could feel the pain in that beat. “I saw the blood, I didn’t know who it belonged to. It was in your room. I didn’t see a body.”

  I tried to say something, but Arwin’s death and everything that came with it caught in my throat.

  “You’re not covered in that blood, so unless they washed you, it wasn’t yours.”

  “It was Arwin’s.” I whispered the words and then swallowed hard. Because Arwin deserved more than my crying, more than my pain. He deserved everything. He deserved to be alive. “Durin used an actual bone to slice Arwin’s throat. He died. Right in front of me.”

  A tear slid down my cheek, and Rhodes muttered to my left. I could hear him moving, trying to get out of the chains. Easton just looked forward, not glancing at me, but I could see his throat working, I could see the pain cross his features.

  Arwin had been one of his. Had been part of his inner circle, a unit so small that Easton felt alone a lot of the time. He never told me that, but I knew.

  I knew so much about him, even though it had only been a year since I met him, and even less time that we’d actually spent together.

  “I didn’t know about Arwin. I didn’t know where any of you were, nobody was near me when the eight guys came at me, using bone magic to take away my Wielding. I just saw the blood as they dragged me past your room. I thought it was you.” Easton paused, breathing hard. “I thought they had killed you. But instead, I woke up here with you right by my side, passed out just like me. And the son of the traitor the same way.”

  I winced at those words and then turned slightly so I could see Rhodes. “You can call me much worse. I knew there was something wrong, I thought I could fix it, but I couldn’t. I think he killed my mother. And not just by taking away her will. There’s no way she could have died the way she did, we don’t die from illness.”

  “You’re right about that, son,” Durin said as he came out from the shadows. I hadn’t even realized he was there, but maybe he hadn’t been before. Because as seven Creed members and some League members appeared with him, I realized that the group had somehow made a hole in the bubble so they could walk along the seabed.

  The Lord of Water was working with the League and the Creed. These weren’t the same League members I had seen at the border of the Spirit and Water territories, so that meant that maybe the League members who had come at us before truly were from the King of Lumière, and these were just other League members. The only way I knew it was them was because of their robes.

  Everybody seemed to be out to deceive one another. So, for all I knew, the League was playing both sides.

  But the Creed of Wings did not work for the Lord of Air. No, they definitely worked for Durin. “Your mother was useless. I thought she would help me gain power, but all she did was give me a weak son and an even weaker daughter. She thought she could be a warrior?” Durin scoffed. “She couldn’t even fight for herself. So, I slid bone magic into her food every day for years. She died just the way she lived. With nothing. But now, my territory mourns for me. They see me as the man who could do so much for them because I am grieving my wife. They will give me everything, they will give me gifts, they
will give me their power. They will know that I am righteous because they will see the man who was left behind.”

  Durin, the Lord of Water, was clearly insane.

  And he was going to kill us.

  I really wanted to kill him first.

  “I hate you,” Rhodes growled. “And I’m going to get out of this. I’m going to escape, and I’m going to kill you myself.”

  “Strong words for a boy who can’t even find a mate with the Spirit Priestess. You found her, and it did nothing for us. You couldn’t take her power, you couldn’t make sure that the King of Obscurité died along with his mother. What are you even worth? I thought maybe we’d get something out of having Lyric by your side, but she doesn’t want you. She wants the Obscurité boy.”

  Durin shook his head and then glared over at Easton.

  “And you. The so-called King of Obscurité. It took a while to get through that glamour of yours, but I knew you couldn’t be who you seemed. I knew it.”

  From the way he sneered it, I didn’t think he had known at all. I had a feeling that whatever bone magic he used had stripped the glamour from Easton. It was the only thing that I really thought could break through that.

  “And I see you’re just as much of a pompous ass as ever,” Easton snapped.

  “Watch your language, son. One day, I’m going to be the King of Lumière, and then I’m going to war with your sad little kingdom to take all of their power. Because you don’t deserve it. Fire and Earth have been the dirty, inbred Wielders for centuries. My father should’ve eradicated all of you. Instead, we had the Fall, he died, and we were split into two kingdoms that can’t fix anything on our own. Because your blood isn’t pure.”

  He was raving and literally made no sense. But I knew if I worked hard enough, maybe I could get out of these chains. I might not be able to use my Wielding, but I had been human long enough that I had learned how to rely on just being myself. Maybe I could wiggle my way out. I wouldn’t die like this. Not without a way to fight back. And not between Easton and Rhodes, who couldn’t fight back either.

  “It’s taken me a long time to figure out exactly what I needed to do to find my place in this world,” Durin began, pacing between the Creed and League members.