Dawn of Ash

by Rebecca Ethington

  I groaned and pinched the bridge of my nose, fully aware it was also something I had picked up from Ilyan yet not really caring at the moment.

  “Jaromir is the marathon, I take it.” She took another step toward me, her sudden change in proximity making it very hard to concentrate.

  Come on, Ryland, what’s wrong with you?

  “I think I realized how much more he sees me as a father figure and less like a…” I struggled to find a word.

  I could feel the heat of her skin radiate against me, making it very hard to focus.

  “Friend,” she supplied.

  Close enough.

  I nodded.

  “Well, to be fair, Ry, I don’t think he’s supposed to be your friend or you his.”

  I turned toward her quickly, my eyes narrowing in question, but all she did was smile and move to sit on the old, bloodstained cobbles, her hand waving beside her in welcoming.

  I sat beside her without question, my heart continuing to hammer uncomfortably in my chest.

  “You can’t really be his friend and teach him everything he needs to know—to fight, to win … You have to train him, not play with him.”

  She was saying things I already knew, things I should have been more careful about from the beginning. However, it was so much more complex than that, and I felt more than a little awkward admitting it to her.

  I exhaled heavily and turned back to Jaromir, a small smile sneaking out at the boy. The streams of smoke were gone, replaced by tiny, little rings he had somehow figured out how to conjure all on his own.

  “He figured out about my relationship to Edmund and what we are really training him for.” My voice was dead.

  I heard her exhale beside me, her own frustrations rattling through the red-tinged air.

  “I guess that would be marathon. What did you end up telling him?”

  “The truth.”

  “The truth?” She was frustrated, and I didn’t blame her.

  My focus snapped to her at the panic in her voice, not surprised to see the aggravation that normally came before some kind of reprimand. Even if we were crushing on each other, she couldn’t let that side of her go all the way. I didn’t blame her.

  “Calm down, Risha.” I was careful to keep the irritation out of my voice, but she fumed more. “I didn’t tell him anything. He had already figured it all out himself.”

  “So much for shielding him.”

  “That’s the thing, though,” I sighed, scooting a tiny bit closer to her as I lowered my voice, careful to keep him from overhearing.

  She leaned forward, and my brain tried to melt out of my ears again.

  Keep it together, Ry, I ordered. It was becoming my mantra around her.

  “He doesn’t want to be shielded, Risha. He wants to be prepared.”

  She was obviously expecting something else. Her eyes widened with a little headshake, and then she pulled away from me a bit in shock.

  Chuckling deeply at her reaction, I scooted away a bit, desperate to get some fresh air instead of that deep perfume she always wore.

  It did, anyway, not that I minded.

  “So he wants to know?”

  “Every word.”

  “Do you think he’s ready?” she asked me curiously, her eyes full of the same sparkle I had seen on the very first day.

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “Well, it’s like before … You aren’t his friend. You can’t be. But you are something, a guardian, maybe. Something like that. It seems like a decision such as that would be up to you. I mean, he can’t have a government raising him.”

  “Don’t you think I’m a little young for that?” My voice was shaking violently, but I didn’t even try to conceal it. I wasn’t too happy with the sudden turn this conversation had taken.

  Yes, it was something I had thought of barely moments before, but hearing it from someone else was a little too solid.

  I swallowed heavily, trying to get the heavy lump out of my throat, yet it didn’t seem to want to move.

  “I think you are as old or young as you want to be, but sometimes, when hard things happen, we have to grow up a little bit, whether we want to or not.” She stared at me intently, my heart racing even faster at the look in her eyes, at the little dimple that played around the corner of her lips.

  “Risha!” Jaromir’s shout rippled through the courtyard as the boy intersected with Risha, tackling the beautiful woman out of sight, leaving me staring blankly into the courtyard as Jaromir began regaling her with everything that had happened over the past few hours.

  I barely saw.

  I barely heard.

  I sat beside them, one word echoing through my head.

  Guardian.

  Scarcely a minute before, I had realized I felt like a parent to this boy. I had felt responsible. And now, with that one word, everything from before kind of fit into place.

  Risha was right.

  More than responsibility, more than some twisted parental relationship, sometimes you had to grow up and do what was needed of you.

  Slowly, the idea cemented in my mind, becoming more familiar than it should have, the scene before me becoming a little clearer through the fog.

  “Some marathon, huh?” Risha said as I looked up to where Jaromir was still occupying her, some weird pink smoke seeping from the palm of his hand.

  I stared at them, watching her eyes sparkling as my stomach flipped again, the pungent smell of Jaromir’s magic filling my mind. It might have been the fumes from the smoke, but I was fairly certain being around Risha had turned Edmund’s voice off in my head.

  Some marathon, indeed.

  It was the cloaked figure right before me, exactly as it had been for the last month, flitting in and out of my sights in a horrifying parade of faces and purposes.

  Except, this time, it was not sight. It was reality. It was a terrorizing reality I needed answers to. I couldn’t let them get away.

  We had been close in the graveyard, and now he was right in front of us.

  Inches from me.

  The fabric rippled before me as the figure ran, frantic to escape, Ilyan feet from them.

  They couldn’t get away.

  Then, with a faint pop, they were gone. Disappeared into thin air.

  “No!” I screamed as they left, my hand millimeters from pulling the cloak from their head, Ilyan inches from tackling them, the violet stream of his attack still moving uselessly into the darkness.

  Moving right into me.

  Ilyan and I shouted in unison. I sidestepped as he pushed a wave of counter magic after his attack, the black smoke swallowing it whole. I knew it was pointless, magical attacks didn’t work against mated pairs, but even though it wouldn’t hamper me, it would still hurt. I wasn’t in the mood for crippling pain right then, not with what had happened.

  Not with what I still needed to do.

  I needed to find out where they had stuttered to. We needed to catch up before it was too late, before we lost them.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, my magic stretching away from me, spreading through the city as I moved on to my next task without hesitation—desperately searching for any trace of the magic I had been tracking, eager to catch them. We were so close. I couldn’t let them get away.

  I tried to control my breathing as the deep vein of the earth’s magic filled me, the force of it so much stronger than I had ever felt. My body swayed abruptly as it filled me, as my power reacted to it in a frightening wave of power.

  At any other time, I would have embraced it, would have pulled it into me, but the power was too much. Besides, it wasn’t the heavy power of the earth I was interested in. It was the residue of the magic left behind, the vile and distorted power that we had been tracking.

  “Can you feel them, mi lasko?” Ilyan whispered from beside me, his hand winding around my waist as he leaned against me, his chest pressing into my back, his magic filling me.

  The addition of his power bolstered me
with the supportive warmth I craved. The joining of our magic was a surge of energy that seemed unstoppable at times.

  Closing my eyes, I let my magic move, speeding through the city, through streets I had never seen, through houses that lay in ruins, my mind, my magic searching for any trace of the cloaked man, of where he had gone.

  Every other time he had stuttered, it was a quick search, but this time, he was gone.

  “Nothing,” I said, my shoulders sagging. Ilyan’s arm continued to hold me against him as my eyes snapped open to the street before us. “There is nothing left.”

  It was as Ilyan had told me long ago—stutters left nothing behind. I could find nothing. Although Edmund could somehow track that magic past the blackness of a stutter, that ability obviously did not lie with me.

  “Nothing?” he asked, his voice shaking in my ear before he moved away from me, his hand still resting on my hip.

  “No, I can’t follow the stutter,” I said slowly, the harsh reality of what had really happened slowly sinking in. “It’s like they … left.”

  “Through the barrier,” Ilyan said slowly, his mind following right along with mine. “Someone can stutter through the barrier.”

  Ilyan’s awe and dread moved through me, the emotion strong and frightening, and for good reason. It was more than a stutter; it was someone who could stutter through Edmund’s fish bowl.

  It was something we had tried multiple times, all without success, but … someone could. No, not just someone. And not just the cloaked man, either.

  “No, Ilyan, one of Edmund’s men can move through the wall,” I corrected, and Ilyan froze. My forehead wrinkled as deeply as his did. “It wasn’t Edmund, but the magic required…”

  My open question faded into the darkness as Ilyan turned away, the muscles in his shoulders tensing as his temper pulsed through me. His thoughts moved so fast I couldn’t hope to keep up with them.

  “He’s done something to them. Whatever he did to those Vilỳs, he’s mutated their magic, strengthened it. Strengthened them.” He turned back to me, the quick movement making me jump.

  “Do you think it was one of his Chosen?” I asked, not wanting to think about those poor people Edmund had destroyed.

  The Chosen we had found in the first few days after the ambush had seemed … normal. I had been able to remove the tainted magic and save them. But the more time went on, the less human those bitten by Edmund’s Vilỳs became.

  We had found a few survivors over the last few days, and what those Vilỳs had done to them still twisted my stomach. No matter how hard I tried, I hadn’t been able to help them. The truth of what Edmund had done sickened me.

  “It could be, or it could be someone who is working for him.” Ilyan’s thoughts stabilized as he spoke, images flooding into me as his mind moved someplace we had visited many times before.

  But with no proof, with no real evidence against him besides him being a disagreeable, old man, we couldn’t do anything.

  Not unless we found proof.

  “We need to get back,” he announced, his voice heavy with the same authoritative tone I had gotten used to when he went into war mode. “We need to do a count, find out if someone’s missing.”

  “You mean we need to check to see if Sain is there.” My voice was hard, the anger that always erupted at his name taking over.

  “Yes,” he agreed, his bright blue eyes meeting mine with a whip of energy. “It might be what we need.”

  My heart pulsed heavily as I looked at him, my hands in tight fists around the soft fabric of my jeans.

  He was right. After months of waiting, of having our hands tied behind our backs, we might have something. If that was Sain, then Sain wouldn’t be at the cathedral…

  Everyone might tell me I was overreacting, but I couldn’t trust him. I doubted I ever would, not while he was telling everyone I was an undead, bleeding puss nugget.

  Or whatever he was doing.

  Ilyan’s lips twitched at that, his hand moving quickly as he took a step toward me and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me into him.

  You’re not an undead, bleeding puss nugget.

  And you’re not the king of France.

  “Well, not now. Many years ago, however…” he said with a smile, the emotion fading quickly into a pained grimace as the deep stress of what we were really facing plowed into us.

  I cringed against it, leaning against him.

  “We need to go,” I gasped, not only because of the urgency of the task before us, but because of the painful wave of magic that had moved through me. The heavy heat that spelled danger.

  With one quick sweep, I felt them. At least twenty of Edmund’s men were one street over, looking for us.

  I was sure it was no coincidence they had chosen this exact spot at this exact time to attempt to stage an ambush.

  Pulling away from Ilyan enough to see him, I felt his body tense beside mine, tension rippling through me as it did him. I could feel his need to attack them, to catch them, to try to glean some information out of them.

  If only there was time…

  My chest heaved as I fell back into him, apprehension winding through my spine in a need to leave.

  We had one chance to catch Sain. We couldn’t waste it.

  “There’s no time. We have to go,” I reminded him.

  He nodded then wrapped his arms around me as his magic swelled, ready to pull us back into the void. With a gentle kiss against the skin of my forehead, my magic reached to meet his. The colored specks of light were triggered in the darkness that surrounded us as the army of Trpaslíks rounded the corner and Ilyan’s magic pulled us into the void, away from the striking ribbons of colorful magic that would have brought us death.

  Everything tightened as we were pulled into the usual suction cup of pressure the void held, my heart tensing in preparation for the pain, for the black.

  Except, everything was different this time.

  The tense pressure I was used to was gone, my body calm in a space that felt more open, more alive. More than that, it didn’t end. A stutter that usually took seconds stretched on, my anxiety and confusion growing as I tried to understand what was happening.

  Forcing my eyes open, I expected the black of nothing, expected to be trapped and lost.

  And alone.

  But I wasn’t alone, and I wasn’t in the dark.

  Ilyan still held me against him, his hair flowing around him, eyes closed, and face at peace. He was beautiful, frozen as he was in the space between time.

  I could have gazed at him until we returned to Prague, let him be my anchor to the disorientation that was still plaguing me. Nonetheless, something else pulled my attention and slammed into my chest like a ton of bricks.

  It was my magic.

  It was ribbons of smoke and color that stretched away from me like cloth and air. It felt the same as every time I spread the magic from me, as every time I used the sight.

  But this time, I could see it.

  I could see the tendrils of my ability. I could see ribbons of sight that played the past and future like a movie reel.

  I watched them move away from me in awe, a heavy vise squeezing my body and threatening to collapse me. My legs lost all feeling as Ilyan held me against him, his body frozen in this odd, suspended space.

  As my head spun, the ribbons of sight shifted, their movements speeding up into a blur I couldn’t focus through. Heart pounding, I clung to Ilyan, gasping for breath, watching the vivid pattern of light and dark. Everything spun; everything moved so quickly I wasn’t sure which way was up or down or what was happening … until it stopped.

  The movement ceased as though someone had pressed stop, leaving Ilyan and I hovering amongst lines of color so vibrant and brilliant I was sure I had never seen anything so beautiful before, not even in the world I had been raised in.

  Staring at them, mouth agape, I watched the strings of never-ending colors stretch through the tunnel in tessellating
motions of sound. I watched sight, watched life, watched sound that stretched beyond us, before us, and behind us. It was like we were trapped in them, like we were moving through them.

  Staring at them, my head spun more, the heavy weight of what I now recognized as sight pressing against my chest.

  A sight.

  Could this be sight? I wondered. A sight inside of a stutter? The thought was as ridiculous and far-fetched as a bad sci-fi movie, but I couldn’t shake it.

  Although, what my magic would be trying to show me here, I did not know. It was nothing more than color, nothing more than wavering lines that surrounded us, moved around us.

  Before I could look further, the colors faded to nothing, spiraling into the ebony abyss that surrounded us. The pressure of the stutter slammed against me in disorienting dizziness as we were pulled out of the void and back into reality.

  The end of the stutter jerked through me like paper and tape pulled away from one another, too much of me left behind in the void, too much of the void left behind in me. It stuck to my bones and made my spine ache.

  Attempting to focus on the world I was surrounded by, I was assaulted by everything revolving, shifting. I could barely make out the church, could barely see the great archway to the left.

  I was certain there were people in front of me, but even that was twisted and undistinguishable behind the ember burn now blocking my vision, the red and black of my sight growing darker.

  It encompassed me with an intensity I hadn’t felt since the first time I used my sight in the cave in Italy.

  The cobbles against my knees were the last things I felt as I collapsed to the ground, Ilyan’s hand a hard pressure against my back as he tried to support me, his magic attempting to connect with mine. I felt the power, felt the heat of it, only to be met with a wall of sight so powerful I screamed as the world within my sight did, as everything turned to red and fire and death.

  My world was sight: past, present, and confusion.

  The red city swam below me, my vision drifting lazily from above the rooftops as though I was attached to the belly of an airplane. Watching with thundering anticipation, I waited for the bomb to fall, waited for the city to burn.