Veil of Shadows

by Walker, Shiloh

  “And what about five Warlords fool enough to confront them? Ten?”

  “Do you think they wouldn’t have called for help if they needed it? Do you think Elina would have hesitated to have the earth swallow them whole? The energy’s in chaos, but she can still use her magic, Kalen. If it came down to their safety, she’d use it without blinking an eye.”

  “Their safety was in danger because she used it,” Kalen growled.

  What in the hell had she been thinking?

  “Tell me, my friend, how long is she to not use it? Lelia? Laisyn? Would you have them live their entire lives only half alive, with some part of their hearts withered and dead . . . useless? Is that what you want for your wife, Kalen?”

  Snarling, Kalen grabbed a towel from a hook and the wall and used it to sop up the sweat from his face and neck. “You know damn well it isn’t what I want. I just want things to be safer before they do something that could put them in danger.”

  “They are witches, first and foremost, Kalen. Without their magic, you leave them crippled. Crippled, they are in danger, whether you want to see it or not.”

  “They aren’t crippled.” Kalen hurled the towel against the wall and turned, staring out one of the narrow windows into the night. He braced fisted hands on either side of the window and fought against the urge to start pounding on something again. The muscles in his arms jumped, jerked and twisted as he battled not to let the rage take over.

  It was well past midnight. It had been hours since he’d seen Lee. Although they’d woken in each other’s arms, lately there had been a distance between them, one that left him sick at heart.

  That distance had been between them for some time, and every day, it grew. Now it had become a chasm, one he didn’t know how to bridge.

  “They are, Kalen. If you could no longer speak into the minds of your men, if you could no longer hear their thoughts with ease, wouldn’t that leave you crippled, Kalen? If I could no longer heal with a touch and Lee was grievously injured, wouldn’t you view me as such? Gifted people rely on those gifts, like the sighted rely on their sight, and the hearing rely on their hearing. Take those gifts away, and you leave them all but blinded, all but deafened.”

  In the silence of the training room, Kalen’s sigh echoed. Leaning forward, he braced his arms on the wall and muttered, “Damn you, Morne.”

  She dreamed.

  In her dreams, Syn was home—that place she still thought of when she thought of home. Where her mother and father had raised her and her brother, where her mother had been taken from her.

  It was that night, all over again.

  But this time, she wasn’t a child to be tucked away into a hiding place, wrapped snug in her older brother’s arms. Back then, he’d covered her mouth with his hand and begged her, pleaded for her to be quiet.

  But when their mother started to scream, both of them had sobbed.

  The Sirvani had been too far away to hear them, or perhaps their mother’s screams had simply been too loud.

  She stood in front of the hidden room their father had made while Mama tried to push her into the room. “You must hide, Laisyn, you must hide now and be quiet.”

  “No, Mama. I won’t hide.” Syn shook her head, staring into her mother’s face as she tried not to weep. She didn’t hide anymore. She fought.

  If she had fought then . . .

  “Laisyn, you will obey me,” Crea Caar said, her voice low and firm. “You must hide, and hurry—I need to warn the Trell family, tell them to hide.”

  Behind her, Syn heard her older brother Con say, “Mama, you can’t. They are too close.”

  They. Not the Trells, the neighbors who had kids almost the same age as Syn and Con. But them—the monsters that hunted them—not just the demons, although they certainly looked like monsters. But the Warlords and their servants.

  They were close, too close. If Mama went outside, they would lose her.

  “Mama, you hide,” Syn said, reaching out, grabbing her mother’s wrist and hauling her into the hidden room. “I’ll warn the Trells.”

  But Mama talked to Syn like she was a child, not a grown woman. Not a trained soldier. Not a witch. Just a silly, useless child. “You will hide now.”

  Then they came through the door—that wasn’t how it happened, but Syn knew, even as she dreamed, how dreams took on lives of their own. The Sirvani came—they came for Mama, and they came for her.

  Syn laughed at them, because they didn’t know.

  They didn’t realize what she was. What she could do.

  Perhaps they looked at her and saw a silly child, too, just like Mama.

  But Syn wasn’t a child. She lifted her hand and whispered, called to the sleeping power in the earth. Called it, claimed it.

  And when it came, it came in the form of fire, and the fire swallowed the Sirvani whole, burning them where they stood, leaving behind nothing but charred husks.

  “You see, Mama? I didn’t need to . . .”

  Syn turned. Horror froze her throat.

  Her mother, her brother . . . dead. Burned to death, by her hand.

  Deep inside the earth, the sleeping power started to laugh.

  You cannot claim me anymore, witch . . . You are nothing. Once more, nothing. Just useless, silly Syn . . .

  Backing away, she stared at the dead bodies. And then time flashed forward, and she was no longer home, but in the forest.

  Even before she lifted her head to look around, she knew where she was. She knew when.

  She’d relive this horror as well.

  She was already reliving it—the fire was tearing through her, wild and unfettered, and try as she might, she couldn’t control it. Couldn’t focus it, and the fire was spreading, spreading—the demons were dead, but the fire still hungered, reached for more bodies . . . the bodies of her men. She screamed in rage and tried to wrest control back from the bowels of the earth, but it fought her.

  The power, it was too big for her. It had always been too much for her to handle, but until this very moment, the power had welcomed her—had allowed her to use it, to shape it and form it.

  Now it threatened to shape and form her into the image of a killer—a woman who lost control and let her own magic kill the men who followed her.

  “No, no, no, no . . .” It was her voice echoing inside her ears, her voice, underscored by the screams of those trying to evade the power that sought to kill them.

  The fire, so close . . .

  Then—pain—

  In his arms, she shuddered, shook and wept silent tears. Her mouth opened in a silent scream and Xan felt his heart twist inside his chest. Dipping his head, he nuzzled her neck and whispered, “Syn, come back to me.”

  Where was she?

  What dreams held her so thoroughly trapped?

  And then she was awake, a harsh gasp slipping free. She struggled to break away from him, sucking in air as though starved for it. Xan let her go, watched as she sat up on the side of the narrow bunk, her head lowered, her naked spine bowed.

  “You dreamed,” he said softly.

  “Yes.”

  Stroking a hand down her back, he asked, “Can you talk about it?”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder, her narrow face grim. “It’s over. Was just a dream.”

  Xan sat up and settled himself behind her, drawing her still-trembling body into the curve of his own. He wrapped an arm around her, pressed his palm flat against her belly. He used his other hand to wipe away the tears on her face. “You cry. You fought. You wouldn’t wake up. It was more than just a dream, Syn.” Pressing his lips to her shoulder, he murmured, “Tell me. Let me help.”

  Please . . . please, let me help.

  She sighed and another shudder wracked her body. “It was about the night my mother was taken from me,” she murmured. Shaking her head, she added, “I don’t like thinking about it.”

  “The night she was taken,” he echoed. “In a raid.”

  “Yes. We had a hidden ro
om . . . no surprise, I guess. Most homes, especially those near a Gate, have places to hide. Mama put me and my brother in there. We wanted her to come in, but she wouldn’t—we had neighbors. They were like family. She insisted on checking on them. But the Sirvani were too close. They caught her.” She leaned her head back against his shoulder and murmured, “We could hear her screaming. Through the walls. We heard her screaming.”

  Xan stared down at her, his heart aching. Automatically, he moved his head so that his hair fell and hid most of the scarred half of his face. “You were in that little room—hidden—alone.”

  She looked at him. “My brother was with me. He was thirteen. But yes. We were alone.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sorry . . . half sick, furious. Sorry didn’t even cover what he felt.

  Her mouth twisted in a grimace and she shrugged. “It’s not an unusual story. Most of us have lost people close to us, because of a raid. Haven’t you?”

  “Yes.” He turned his head, staring out the narrow window set high along the wall. The full moon spilled silvery rays of light inside, easing the darkness. “My mother was captured in a raid, too.”

  He barely remembered her. But he remembered that he’d loved her. He could remember her arms, soft and strong, holding him close, as she sang to him and told him she loved him so.

  Syn sighed and turned around in his arms, snuggling close. She kissed his shoulder and whispered, “So we have that in common.”

  “Do you dream about your mother much?”

  She shrugged. “Some. It’s not usually this bad.” She glanced at him from under her lashes and said, “There was more, too.”

  She shifted back and lifted her hands, staring at them as though she didn’t recognize them. She flexed her fingers wide, then balled them into a fist, over and over. “About two months ago, I almost killed half of my team, Xan. We were coming up on a cache of Jorniaks when another group of demons came at us from behind. Raviners. It was so strange, almost like they were working together. And we keep seeing it happen. But Jorniaks lack the higher brain function to work as a team. I don’t know . . . Maybe the Raviners have been trailing them and waiting until the Jorniaks attack, then slipping in during the aftermath. All I know is that they were slaughtering us, picking us off one by one.”

  His heart started to pound in hard, slow beats, tension mounting inside him. There was horror in her eyes. Horror. Hatred. Self-disgust. “I reached for my magic—I’m not the strongest witch around, nowhere close. But I’ve got a knack for fire. If I can see something, I can make it burn. And that’s what I did. I burned the Raviners, the Jorniaks, and when I tried to cut the fire off, I couldn’t.”

  She lifted her head, staring at him with haunted eyes. “The earth’s energy, Xan . . . it’s like it’s damaged. Whatever happened when the Gate collapsed affected the energy—reshaped it. It reached inside me and it came out through the fire, and it killed and it wanted to keep killing. I kill demons without blinking an eye, but this time, the fire wanted to kill everybody. It wanted to use me to do it. I couldn’t turn it off. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t shut the flow down.”

  She reached up and brushed the back of her head. “Lothen was with me. He used his pulsar, hit me in the back of the head. He saw that something was wrong—figured it out on his own, because I couldn’t even speak to tell him. He knocked me out and that broke my connection. The fire stopped. But I almost burned my team to ashes.”

  His heart ached for her. Cradling her face in his hand, he murmured, “That wasn’t your fault.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it is my fault or not—I almost did it.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I know you don’t understand. But we have to find a way to fix things so we can still access that energy, still use our magic.”

  He was hesitant to say it, very much so. Syn’s magic was part of who she was. Like his skill with a blade. He loved the feel of a blade in his hands, loved crafting one, giving it life.

  But the words had to be said. He had to understand—if he didn’t understand, it would fester between them.

  He slid his fingers through her hair, cradling the back of her head. “If the energy has become so dangerous, it can’t be used, wouldn’t it be best to just leave it alone? You are a warrior, Syn, with or without your magic.”

  “Yes, I’m a warrior.” She turned her head away and stared at the wall. “But I’m also a witch—it’s every bit as much a part of me as being a warrior. And not being able to use it is crippling me. I feel it . . . like there’s a part inside me that is fading away and dying, bit by bit. A part of me is dying. I’m not meant to be like this, Xan. None of the witches are, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to us if we keep trying to suppress it like this.”

  She ran her hands up and down her arms, then crossed them over her chest. He wrapped an arm around her, easing her close. “You’re cold.”

  She rested her head on his chest and murmured, “Not so much. When you’re touching me it isn’t bad.” She snuggled close and slid her arms around his waist.

  “What isn’t bad? Being cold?”

  “Hmmmm. When you touch me, I don’t feel the cold.”

  The cold . . . He frowned, thinking back. He almost always saw her standing in one way—when she stood still, it was with her legs spread wide and her arms crossed over her chest. It was a somewhat arrogant, defensive stance, sometimes. But now something occurred to him. “You feel cold a lot.”

  “Almost always.” She sighed.

  “Is it the magic?”

  “Yes. It wants out, Xan. It needs out. Keeping it trapped inside is terrible,” she whispered.

  “And that’s why you did this thing with Lee and Elina.”

  “That’s why. The magic is kind of like a conduit. It connects me to the earth and lets me draw the earth’s energy in.” She shifted around on his lap and reached for his arm. She held his hand in one of hers, with the palm turned up. “Picture a lake, right here. Your hand is the earth, and cupped inside your hand is the energy. Like a lake, deep, still and peaceful.”

  She laced her fingers with his and looked up at him. “In a lake, it’s easy to drop an anchor—to secure yourself.”

  “But now the energy is like a raging river, sweeping everything along as it goes. When the waters are rough, even the stronger watercrafts have a harder time staying anchored, although they can usually manage it.”

  Eyes narrowed, he said, “So basically, the energy is trying to suck you in . . . because you’re not strong enough?”

  “I’m not an overly powerful witch, Xan. I’ve mastered what I can do, but I’ll never be as strong as Elina or Lee. I just won’t. Right now, if I try to make that connection, to anchor myself, I get swept away.”

  “I do not want to think of that. Give me a few moments before we go down that path, if you would.” He grimaced and shook his head.

  She smiled and traced a pattern on his chest. “I don’t really want to think of it, either. But we have to think about finding a solution. That’s why we did it, Xan. It’s not just because we’re mad over not using our magic. We need to use it, but the lesser witches, if they tried to use it now, it could kill us and others.”

  A choice between dying inside or dying in reality, and possibly causing the deaths of others—neither option held much appeal.

  “What exactly were you trying to accomplish?”

  She peered up at him, cocking her head. “Do you really want to know? Or are you just humoring me?”

  “If I didn’t want to know, I would not ask. Help me understand. Please.”

  “We want to make a net—to forge links between the witches. All of us. We’d be our own anchor, and for those who aren’t as strong, the net would act to help stabilize us.” She licked her lips and shrugged. “It could work. I didn’t study magical theory as in depth as Elina has, but it could work.”

  Then she grimaced and added, “It was working—I felt it. Then we ended up having our little party broken up
and Elina took a blow to the head because Lo was too quick to jump to conclusions.”

  “So that is how she ended up wounded.”

  “Yeah.” Syn sighed glumly. “It was working, Xan. We could make this work . . . I could have my magic back; we’d be able to provide those magical defenses once more. But the commander has a stick up his ass over this.”

  “He has a hard road to walk,” Xan said, his voice soft. “He wants what is best for his followers, including those with magic. But he must keep his people safe, as well. It isn’t an easy choice.”

  “I know that.” She had a disgusted look on her face. “But we’ve tried explaining, and he won’t even listen. He has a blind spot about this, because of Lee.”

  Xan crooked a grin at her. “I can understand that blind spot, Syn. A leader needs to look after the interests of all his people, but a man’s gut insists he protect his woman, first and foremost. He is trying to do both, and it cannot be easy for him.”

  “I know it’s not easy for him. But he’s not protecting her—Lee, even more than Elina and I, is being hurt by this. And he doesn’t even realize just how much it is hurting her. I don’t think Lee even understands.” Syn sighed and stroked a hand down his chest, running the tip of her finger over a long, thin ridge of scar tissue that bisected his right pectoral.

  Xan covered her hand with his and lifted it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her palm. “How is it hurting her more than you? More than Elina?”

  “It’s complicated.” She stroked her fingers across his lower lip, along the firm line of his jaw. Reaching the narrow strap that held his eye patch in place, she stroked it. “Will you tell me how this happened?”

  “A knife.”

  Syn rested her fingers on the black shield that covered his damaged eye and asked, “So I guess you’re completely blind in the eye?”

  “The eye is no longer there. Infection settled in. It was either lose the eye or risk dying.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He turned his head and nuzzled her hand. “There is nothing to be sorry for. It happened a long time ago. I’ve lived longer without the eye than I lived with it. I adjusted.”