Vortex Chronicles: The Complete Series (Air Awakens: Vortex Chronicles)

by Elise Kova

  “The Archives of Yargen are old. They’ve been added to by countless Faithful over the years, each one more neurotic than the last. Each trying to find a new way to protect themselves, escape if needed, or slit the throats of their enemies as they lay sleeping.”

  “Exactly—slit the throats of their enemies as they sleep. The Faithful are underhanded, so why should I believe you?”

  “Because I am proof that such passages exist. It’s through them that I finally staged my escape.”

  “Why would you have to escape?” Arwin seemed genuinely confused. “Why not just command your way out?”

  “Because he’s been their prisoner for years, and hates the Faithful just as much as you do.” Vi dared to speak.

  “Silence, you,” Arwin growled.

  “I want nothing more than to see Ulvarth dead and the Faithful returned to a quiet order built around Yargen—not blood-lust or power.” Taavin stole Arwin’s attention again with the declaration.

  She laughed, bitter and icy. “You’re a dog that would bite your master?”

  “Let’s say my master didn’t spare me the rod,” Taavin countered with a dangerous edge to his voice. “You don’t get to beat this dog and expect loyalty.”

  “Betrayers, the whole lot of you,” Arwin whispered. But she was also clearly weighing her options. Vi did the same, hoping they came to an identical conclusion.

  Arwin could try to kill her and Taavin here and now—maybe she’d be successful, but she’d likely die in the process.

  Or she could help them settle not only the score with Adela for the sake of her family, but slay Ulvarth as well, for the sake of her people. If she could muster enough faith in Taavin’s deal, she had far more to gain. In fact, Arwin would get everything she’d ever wanted. Except there was a loose end in Taavin’s proposal—

  “And what about you?” Arwin asked, gaze intent on Taavin. “I could slay Ulvarth and you could find another just as ruthless to carry out your decrees.”

  “They are not my decrees.”

  “You are lying to save your skin!”

  “He’s not!” Vi interjected.

  “I said silence!” Arwin pressed the spear farther forward. Its razor-sharp edge biting into Vi’s throat was far more persuasive than words.

  “Hurt her and die.”

  Arwin’s eyes swung back to Taavin and the expression on her face almost had Vi wondering if she’d heard something Vi had not. A devious, deadly smile crept across her lips. “What does she matter to you?”

  “Everything.” There was no hesitation. No holding back. “She is everything.” Arwin’s grip faltered slightly; the spear sagged as surprise settled in on her.

  What are we?

  Vi finally had her answer. She was suddenly too hot and too cold at the same time, keenly aware of the pain at her throat yet numb and tingling all over.

  Everything.

  She loved him. And he loved her… despite both of them knowing better. Despite neither being brave enough to say it in such plain terms. Those facts made no difference in the end. They had fallen in love despite themselves. They just had yet to be brave enough to say it aloud.

  Taavin continued on as if the very world wasn’t shifting beneath Vi’s feet. Perhaps he was oblivious to it. More likely, his ground had shifted long ago. So had hers. She was only fully realizing it.

  “Help us, help her get her father, do whatever you need to do to Adela, and then I will deliver you Ulvarth. And should his head not satisfy your need for justice—if I do not keep my word and do right by you and your people—then at that time, you may have me.”

  No! Everything in Vi screamed at once. She didn’t care if it was justified, or righteous, for Arwin to seek Taavin’s life. She didn’t care if it was Taavin’s right to make this deal. She didn’t want to see him harmed. That was the sole thought in her mind.

  Yet thanks to the blade at her throat keeping every breath shallow, nothing escaped her lips.

  “How do I know you’ll keep your word?”

  “You’ll have to trust me.”

  Arwin snorted. “Trusting a Faithful? That never worked out well for anyone. Just look at the spot I’m in now.” Her eyes swung back to Vi. “Her.”

  “What?” Taavin asked and Vi let out something of a whisper to the same effect.

  “If I so much as think for a moment that you will go back on your word—if I even suspect it—I’ll kill her on the spot.”

  “That’s too high a bar. You will be suspicious of my breathing.”

  “Then you should make an effort to breathe less,” Arwin snapped at him. “It’d do wonders for my mood, at least.”

  Vi searched the woman’s face for any sign of warmth or familiarity, but there was none. This was the same woman who had accused her of being Faithful in the throne room. No, this was worse. This was a woman who had proof of the careful tapestry Vi had been weaving around her.

  Vi didn’t have the right to hope for anything from Arwin. This was business, her mind insisted. It always had been. Friendship was a luxury she could no longer afford.

  “Do we have a deal?” Arwin asked neither of them in particular.

  “I said—”

  “You have a deal,” Vi interrupted before Taavin could say something well-intended but foolish. “Help me get my father. Taavin will give you Ulvarth. And if at any point, you think we mean to harm you or the morphi, or that we will go back on our words… You have my life.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next hour was uncomfortable, to say the least.

  Vi looked to Taavin. Taavin glared at Arwin. Arwin watched her. None of them said anything. It was silence the entire walk through the forest. An uncomfortable, deafening silence of Vi’s own making.

  By the end of the day, Vi nearly wanted to scream just so she’d hear something in the too-still woods.

  “We should make camp here.” Arwin came to a stop just when the forest’s edge was in sight. Through the trees, Vi could see a clear dividing line—not unlike where the jungles of Shaldan ended at the Waste. She wondered if this, too, was a scar left on the earth by the ravages of man’s squabbles. “Get one more night of sleep somewhere that the only enemies we have to worry about are each other.”

  “We’re not your enemy,” Vi said tiredly.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “Suit yourself.” Vi held up her hands as Arwin took a few steps backward.

  “Where are you going?” Taavin asked cautiously.

  “I’m going to find dinner for myself, and perch somewhere you two don’t know of so you can’t slit my throat while I sleep.” Arwin pulled her mass of golden hair back with a line of cord. “But don’t think I won’t be watching you.”

  “How do we know you won’t go back to the Twilight Kingdom and return with an army?”

  “I guess you’ll just have to… how did you put it? Trust me,” she said with a mocking smile.

  The air around Arwin pulsed. Magic rippled in several equidistant rings, distorting the forest around her as though it were the surface of water. Arwin took a small step, then jumped into the air, slipping between the rings. Vi saw the outline of a bird taking her shape, identical to the dark fowl she’d seen when she’d first emerged from the cave nearly two weeks ago.

  Before Arwin’s feet could touch the ground again, she was gone, and there was just the flap of dark wings as the animal soared away. Vi and Taavin watched her leave, until it was impossible to see her outline from the deepening darkness between the trees.

  “We should consider leaving,” he murmured. “She could go back and—”

  “She won’t go back.” Vi sighed softly, removing her scythe and leaning it against a tree. “She’s exiled if she doesn’t finish her mission.”

  “If the king can make those rules, he can break them,” Taavin cautioned.

  “I know. But the king who breaks his own rules is a ruler soon to lose his crown.”

  “Spoken like a true princ
ess.”

  “Perhaps because I am one.” Vi removed her satchel next, setting it down heavily. “Besides, we’ve made her a good offer. She stands to gain a lot more than lose.”

  “What’s been happening this past week?” Taavin asked cautiously, looking from the weapon she’d been carrying to the satchel Vi was rummaging through. “I’ve had precious little by way of information.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry.” Vi sat, beginning to sort through the items in her satchel and looking for the blanket Sarphos mentioned. Of course, it was at the very bottom.

  Vi took a deep breath and tried to fill in the gaps in Taavin’s information with broad strokes. He remained silent as he positioned himself at her side to listen. The sun was low in the sky when she finally finished.

  “So that’s it, then?” Taavin nodded at the scythe. “This weapon the king claimed was from the Dark Isle and bestowed on you?”

  “I believe him.” Vi rested on her elbow and reached for the weapon, surprised once more at how light it was. Laying it across her lap, she slowly undid the upper strap and then unwrapped the cloth tucked around the blade.

  Taavin let out a soft gasp. He slowly reached out a hand, then withdrew before he could touch it. There was a reverent expression on his face, as though he gazed on a holy object.

  “I take it you believe his claims now, too?”

  “Vi… This… It shouldn’t exist,” he breathed, eyes drifting up to her. “What do you know of its history?”

  Vi ran her fingers over the shining crystal of the weapon. It was as if the whole thing—blade and shaft—had been crafted from a single, flawless stone. But there were no marks of the crafter, no sign of any tool on its surface. It was flawless in every way. She closed her eyes, feeling the magic pulsing from it, familiar and yet slightly unnerving at the same time.

  The longer she was in contact with it, the more dangerous it felt.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Vi started thoughtfully. “Trying to piece it all together… I know Raspian’s return aligns with the destruction of the Crystal Caverns—so I know the caverns were where he was sealed away. One of my final lessons from my tutors was how my mother had a role in starting the war that led to that destruction, beginning with a crystal axe she found in Soricium. And I know that, in the lore on the Dark Isle, there were four of these weapons—an axe, a scythe, a crown, and a sword.”

  “Yes, you have the main points…” His hand finally rested on the scythe. Magic swirled up from the crystals, wrapping around his forearm in hazy blue light—as if reaching out to him, before it sank into his skin. His eyes seemed to shine an even brighter green in the fading light.

  “What am I missing?”

  “Yargen’s sacrifice.” Taavin looked to her. “When Yargen defeated Raspian in the last great war, she broke off a piece of Meru, sending it into the sea and sealing away Raspian there for what was to be eternity. She then split herself—her power—to ensure he remained in place. A third was bestowed on the Champion as a staff of frozen fire. Another third encapsulated Raspian in the same frozen fire to prevent his return. And the final third remained here on Meru as living flame, to guide her world.”

  “Frozen fire…” Vi repeated. Before her lips could close, her jaw went slack. Frozen fire. “No, not fire,” she uttered. What would frozen fire look like, if not magic captured in shining stone, faintly glowing with a power greater than any man had ever known? Stone that would turn to coal—obsidian—when the power diminished. “Crystal.”

  “Just so,” Taavin said solemnly.

  “But all the crystals are dark and dormant since the caverns were destroyed… why does this persist?” Vi stared at the weapon in her hands that still glowed with a life of its own over a thousand years since it was first created.

  “As I said, the Crystal Caverns sealing away Raspian were one part of her power. The other part was given to the Champion in the form of a staff to guard the tomb and ensure none sought it.”

  “Then, this is not from the tomb… but from the staff?”

  Taavin gave a noise of affirmation. “That’s my belief. The Champion was to use the power of Yargen bestowed on him to guard the tomb and ensure none came to seek it out. For over two hundred years, the Champion kept his lonely watch. But as with most things in time, details become hazy… the severity of a threat is forgotten.

  “Eventually, people came to the Dark Isle, and the Champion did not send them away.”

  “Why?” Vi couldn’t imagine why the Champion would turn back on his duty. But she also couldn’t imagine spending centuries alone. The notion that such could be her own fate, that it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, crawled under her skin like invisible bugs.

  “Why does any man turn from duty? Love, loneliness, family… I can only speculate,” Taavin murmured softly. Vi wondered if he was speaking about himself and the duty he’d left by fleeing Risen for her. “But he wasn’t foolish. The people he let on the Dark Isle were mostly human—all born without magic.”

  “Without magic? I thought everyone has magic outside of the Dark Isle?”

  “The vast majority do… but once in a hundred, a child is born without. And this world is not kind to those without magic.”

  “So they left to seek out a new world, kinder to them,” Vi finished, imagining ships of dozens setting out for a barren land—an empty continent without anyone to judge them.

  She’d always been told that people in the Solaris Empire feared sorcerers for their magic because it was rare, strange, and dangerous. Perhaps the real reason they hated sorcerers so fiercely extended back past anyone’s memory. Extended toward the first peoples of the early kingdoms. People who held a deep resentment for magic—any magic—because it forced them from their homelands.

  “And the Champion let them settle, either out of loneliness, or because he believed that these peoples without our magicks could be of no threat to the tomb.”

  “But… Solaris did eventually develop magic.” Vi thought of the elemental powers of her home. “You called the magic of my land fractured…” Then, it dawned on her. “The Champion used the power of Yargen within him to split the staff into an axe, a scythe, a crown, and a sword—the Crystal Weapons of lore.”

  “From the fractured magic of Yargen, new magic seeped into your world.” Taavin gave a solemn nod. “And that new magic, the lure of power, drew them to Raspian’s tomb long after the Champion had relinquished his mortal form by giving up Yargen’s power. It was her magic that was extending his life beyond the hold of time, and when he no longer possessed it, he left our world.”

  “We turned Yargen’s magic against itself. We were the ones to destroy it,” Vi said in horror.

  Everything made sense. Such loathsome, horrible, wretched sense. The fear of magic ingrained in people from the start, bolstered by the Champion’s warnings, and cemented by time. Conventional wisdom maintained that the crystals in the Caverns tainted people, perhaps as a result of a power mortal hands weren’t intended to hold. Or perhaps Raspian’s power was slowly escaping through them, and that was the source of the deadly crystal taint.

  “But this means there’s hope.” Vi clutched the scythe tightly. “This is hope. In the ruins of old Shaldan, I saw a figure of a man and a woman fighting etched on the wall. I didn’t understand it then… but it was Raspian and Yargen. The likeness must have been made by those who remembered their story. Yargen wielded a staff against him. If this comes from that staff, then maybe we can fight him with it. Maybe we have a chance.”

  “I can only hope.” Taavin looked from the scythe to the watch around her neck, then to her face. “I know that Yargen’s power seems to seek you out. And that the other living piece of Yargen is in Risen, with the archives. If there’s any information that will help us crack this—” his fingers landed on the watch “—and figure out a way to fight Raspian… it’s in Risen.”

  “We’ll go there.” Vi closed her hand around his. The man’s skin was warm
under her fingertips.

  “As soon as we rescue your father.” Taavin’s fingers worked their way around hers, winding tightly together. A dull, sweet ache filled her chest. Even with the world on the line, he knew she would go to her family first. He knew her focus would be her father until Vi knew he was safe. And he was not doing anything to pry her from that task when he so rightfully could.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “For what?”

  “Beginning to tell me everything.”

  “There’s so much I’ve yet to say,” he murmured, his other hand reaching up to lightly tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m just afraid to say it.”

  “Me too.” Yet, in saying that much, she knew what was unspoken for both of them. She didn’t need anything more for now.

  “Just as I’m afraid I have already cursed you by it.” Taavin brought her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles. “I never wanted any of this to happen to you.” Remorse flooded his words. Vi gave a small, bitter laugh.

  “Never? Not even when I was just the woman who supposedly tortured you in your dreams?”

  Taavin began to protest, but stopped when he saw the makings of a grin on her lips. “Hush, that didn’t count.”

  His thumb brushed over her lower lip, his eyes dipping half-closed as he watched the motion with delicious intent. Vi’s focus was shifting as well. The tiniest of touches flooded her with such bittersweet delight.

  “If that doesn’t count, then you couldn’t have cursed me,” Vi said gently. “Because the red lines of my fate were drawn by the goddess long before you met me.”

  He looked at her as if seeking permission. She tried to convey it to him as she held his hand tighter, as she leaned forward—awkwardly across the scythe still in her lap.

  “Perhaps, we’re both equally cursed,” he murmured darkly, close enough to her face now that she could feel his breath on her mouth.

  “Perhaps.”

  They were from two different worlds. When it all was over—assuming the world didn’t end—she would still be the crown princess. He was still the Voice. They couldn’t be anything else to one another.