By the Morning Light_Smoke and Mirrors

by Melissa Giorgio

  But if I said no, then what? Emile would come with me, no matter where I went, but where would we go? Would we drift from city to city, from town to town, with no purpose for the rest of our lives? Revenge against the travelers gave me a reason to live. Already I could feel myself growing excited at the idea of destroying them the way they’d destroyed my life. That was my purpose now.

  To make sure those people paid for what they did, and to prevent them from doing something so horrific ever again.

  I placed my hand over Emile’s, meeting first his eye and then Michel’s. “I’m in. Let’s get our revenge.”

  The next day, by the morning light, we saw the destruction the travelers had left behind. The city was gone, the farms still smoking. The travelers had packed up their tents, leaving behind no indication that they’d ever been there. But as we stared at the spot where the city had once been, we knew.

  And we knew what we had to do.

  Epilogue

  Three years later…

  It was the first time we’d returned to Ayres. In those three years, we’d traveled far and wide, honing our skills and learning everything we could about magic and how to stop it. Michel never talked about coming home, but Emile and I often did, late at night when we couldn’t fall asleep because visions of our parents’ broken bodies haunted our dreams. We would stare up at the star-filled sky and talk about what we missed, and what we would do if we could go back.

  Shortly after I turned seventeen and realized the three-year anniversary was coming up, I asked Michel if we could return. “If we leave now, we’ll make it in time.”

  “What do you want to go back for?” Michel didn’t even look up from sharpening his sword. “There’s nothing left, Claudette.”

  I thought of my parents’ house on the outskirts of the city. Of the monastery and the dog cairn, both untouched that night. “Yes, there is. Please, Michel?”

  That’s when he looked up. Sighing, he knew he couldn’t say no to me. He never did. “Fine. We’ll go back.”

  And so we did. We’d taken our horses south that year and my stomach was in knots the entire journey back. But when we finally reached Ayres, I frowned. It looked like the same cliffs we’d been passing for mile after mile. If Emile hadn’t looked up from his map and declared we were there, I never would have known.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, even though Emile was a genius with the maps and never made a mistake.

  “Look.” He pointed to our left. Following his gaze, I saw the skeletal remains of a building. My stomach lurched when I realized I was staring at what remained of our house.

  “Oh.” Stumbling, I approached it, trying to picture what it looked like before, but I couldn’t. Tears clouded my vision as I sank to my knees in the grass.

  “Claudette.” Emile kneeled next to me, placing a hand on my shoulder.

  Sniffling, I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand, shifting my sword so it rested more comfortably against my back. After three years of training, I was stronger and wielding such a light sword was now easy for me. I’d changed so much since I’d last been here. We all had. Would our parents even recognize us? “Papa would be so mad if he could see the fields now,” is what I said instead.

  Emile huffed out a small laugh. “I can hear him yelling about the weeds.”

  “I don’t remember what they look like. Our parents.”

  “Of course you do.” He nudged me with his shoulder. “Just look at your reflection in the next stream we come to. You look like Maman.”

  I wasn’t nearly as pretty as she was. My skin was sunburnt and my hair was a knotty mess I always pulled back into a ponytail. But I had made an effort for today, for our return. I was wearing a white dress, similar to the one I’d worn that fateful night three years ago, and my hair hung loose around my shoulders. I wanted to look nice for my parents, but now I wondered if it’d just been a waste of coins. The dress wasn’t practical; after today, I’d never wear it again.

  Emile was patiently waiting for a response. I was prone to long stretches of silence, which he was used to by now. I started picking at the grass and the flowers. “You look like Papa. But your shoulders are broader.”

  Emile seemed pleased by that. “I’m not as tall as him.”

  I squinted at him, trying to remember and hating that I had to. “I think you are.”

  “I’m still growing,” he said proudly. Then his eyes darted to my hands and his smile slipped away. “Claudette.”

  I glanced down to see my fingers weaving a flower crown without even realizing it. Horrified, I threw it away, my chest heaving.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d done that. Despite my efforts to forget Aeonia and everything she’d done, it was like my fingers wouldn’t let me. I’d woven countless crowns in the three years since I’d seen her. None were as good as the ones she’d made.

  “It’s all right,” Emile said calmly. He retrieved the crown and placed it in my lap. I stared at it like I expected it to bite me. “Making one of those doesn’t mean anything, Claudette.”

  “It means I can’t forget.”

  He raised his brows. “No, you can’t. Neither can I. How many times have you woken to my screams at night?”

  We were so damaged. How could we not be? And now we were living a life bent on revenge for our people. What would happen after we accomplished that? What would we have left?

  “Come on.” Emile stood and held out a hand for me. I took it, still clutching the flower crown in my other hand. “Race you to the dog?”

  “You know I can’t run in this dress— Emile!” I shouted as he took off. “Not fair!”

  Our days and our nights were filled with darkness. But there were times, like right now, where we could find joy. Where we could lift our faces to the sky and laugh. It was in those moments that I realized while we were damaged, we weren’t broken.

  The travelers had taken so much from me, but they hadn’t taken my other half.

  I touched the disc that hung around my neck with my fingertips and whispered, “Forever and always.”

  Then I raced after my brother, determined to beat him to the dog.

  After the Rain

  Chapter One

  After the rain, Ayres always smelled different. The ever-prominent smell of salt was washed away, replaced by the odor of mud and wet tiles. For a few hours you could shut your eyes and pretend Ayres wasn’t a city built on a cliff overlooking the Adrianna Ocean but somewhere else, a place where kids didn’t grow up wanting to be Knights so they could hunt down magicians and kill them.

  “You’re not going to kill anyone,” I told Michel, my best friend. We’d been friends since we were children, and we must have had this same conversation a hundred times by now. We were fifteen, nearly adults, but not near enough, much to Michel’s annoyance. He was always looking ahead, willing time to move faster until we were eighteen and taking our tests to become full-fledged Knights of Ayres.

  I wasn’t in a rush. I was perfectly content with enjoying my carefree lifestyle. My parents both came from money, meaning they never had to work, and neither would my sisters or I. With no rules or even a curfew, we were free to do whatever we wanted. In fact, the only thing my father ever explicitly told me not to do was get some girl pregnant. “Your mother is going to marry you off to the best family she can find, Gilbert,” my dad had told me back when I was twelve and I barely knew what he was talking about. “If you mess things up for her, she’ll be very angry, and if she’s very angry, she’ll take it out on me. So when it comes to girls, keep your pants on or I will be forced to beat you.” My father had never hit us, ever, but he’d been extremely serious when he said that, and like I said, he’d never told me what to do before then, so I knew I’d better listen to him or else I’d face his and Mother’s wrath. Besides, who wanted to be with a girl when there were imaginary battles to win with my best friend Michel?

  I liked playacting, but to Michel, we were never just pretending. Every time we picked
up a sword, each time we bested our other friends in battle, we were one step closer to becoming actual Knights of Ayres. Michel was obsessed. It started when we went to the library and found an old tome, complete with colored illustrations, detailing the Knights of the old wars. Back then the magicians and the dragons were tearing each other apart, and innocents were suffering just as much. Fed up with the countless casualties, the Knights of Ayres had rallied together against the magicians living in Ayres. The battles had been bloody and violent, lasting for years, but in the end the Knights had managed to eradicate all traces of magic from Ayres. “Look at this, Gilbert,” Michel had said, shoving the book under my nose. The yellowed pages smelled musty, causing me to sneeze. The illustration Michel was pointing to depicted rotting bodies hanging from both the city gates and the castle in the center of the city. “Those were the magicians who tried to destroy the world. The Knights stopped them and did this. Look at them!”

  I looked, although I didn’t want to. Bodies hanging from the castle? The same castle where we gathered with our friends, training and talking? I had so many good memories associated with that castle, and I wanted to keep it that way. But Michel was obsessed with that book; he stole it from the library and pulled it out from his satchel every chance he got, showing everyone the illustrations and proudly declaring he was going to be just like those Knights someday.

  It was sitting in front of us now, the pages weighed down with rocks as a gentle wind blew from the east. The air was thick with both salt and humidity; it was another typical Ayrean summer day, and I wished, not for the first time, that we didn’t live here. The ocean was nice, but in the summer the heat was relentless. Combine that with the humidity, and I was a short-tempered beast who hid in the shadows and wished for winter to hurry up. I was one of the only ones who preferred cold weather and snowstorms over sunshine and the heat.

  Glancing at the sky, I searched for storm clouds, but the deep-blue canvas was unmarred by clouds for as far as the eye could see. Yesterday it’d rained, and I’d stood outside getting drenched, ignoring my older sister Madelina hollering at me to come inside from the second story window. The rain had stopped all too soon, bringing even more humidity and making me surlier than an alley cat.

  That was probably why I was picking a fight with Michel as we sat in my expansive backyard, me in the shade of a wide oak tree and Michel dancing on the lawn, swinging a sword at imaginary foes. The wicked sunlight reflected off both his blade and his black hair, transforming my friend into an avenging angel. He’d been going on and on about killing magicians, grating at my nerves, until I finally told him he wouldn’t kill anyone.

  Michel’s feet paused in mid-step and he angled his body toward mine, pointing the sword where I lay. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.” Slumping over onto my back, I threw my arm over my eyes, mainly so I wouldn’t have to look at Michel aiming a sword at my throat. The wind rustled the leaves above my head and a yellow-speckled bird perched on the highest branch, singing its song loudly, but not loud enough to drown out Michel’s grumbling.

  “You’re such a grump when it’s hot,” he complained. “I don’t know why I bother hanging out with you in the summer.”

  “So leave,” I said. “I’m sure there’s a girl or two or five you could chase after.” Michel had never been given the talk by his father, which is why he’d been picking up girls older than him since he was thirteen. No one was immune to his good looks and confidence.

  “Maybe later.” Michel threw himself down on the ground next to me. I lifted my arm and tilted my head so I could stare at him in astonishment. “What?” he asked when he noticed me looking. “I don’t have to be with girls all the time, Gil.”

  “Who are you and what have you done with my friend?”

  He kicked me in the side. Not hard, but I scowled and rolled away so he couldn’t do it again. With my back to him, my new view was of the red brick wall that encircled our entire yard. Most of the buildings in Ayres were built practically on top of one another, closer and closer as the builders realized they were quickly running out of room on the cliff. But in the older part of the city the buildings were spread out, and you could have fit another three houses in our yard. Plenty of people had knocked on our front door, asking my parents if they would sell their property, but my parents always shook their heads politely before shutting the door. This house had been in my father’s family for generations, and they had no plans of giving it up. It would go to Madelina as she was the oldest, but she told me she’d build me a shack at the far end of the property. She said it like she was doing me a favor. “You forget,” I’d told her. “Mother is matching me up with the best possible family, so I’m sure their house will be even greater than ours.”

  “Best possible match for you.” Madelina had rolled her eyes. “That probably means the barmaid from the Wicked Goblin,” she’d said, naming the seediest tavern in all of Ayres.

  “Oh, good. She’s pretty,” I’d said, ducking when Madelina threw a pillow at my head.

  My sister, two years older than me, was beautiful, lovely and popular. We had the same blond hair and blue eyes, but she took after Mother in looks, while I favored our father. Our younger sister, Katriane, was a mixture of both of our parents. She had Father’s darker coloring with Mother’s delicate features. Like me and Madelina, she was also blond-haired and blue-eyed. She was only ten, but I had a feeling she was going to be even more beautiful than Madelina. Not that Madelina cared much about looks. She never spent an inordinate amount of time in front of the mirror, not like her other friends. “Do you know how long it takes for them to get ready in the morning?” she always complained. “It’s not polite to make your friends wait for you!” My sister had the sort of beauty that came naturally. She always woke up looking refreshed, and her hair barely needed combing. Mother tried to explain that people don’t normally wake up looking like that, but Madelina wouldn’t listen. To her, those who wasted time on their looks were vapid. There were more important things to worry about, she insisted. You would think this would make her unpopular amongst her classmates, but instead they worshipped her as they tried desperately to imitate her effortlessness.

  It wasn’t just her classmates she was popular with. Michel and a few of our other friends had been after Madelina for ages but were largely ignored, much to my relief. And eventually they gave up… Everyone but Michel, that was. He was stubborn, my friend, and the more Madelina ignored him, the more interested he was.

  I’d wondered why he’d showed up this afternoon, opting to pass the hours in our backyard instead of exploring the city or training at the castle. Had he hoped Madelina would join us in the yard? Or maybe glance out the window and see Michel swinging his sword around wildly? I imagined my sister’s reaction to that and snorted loudly.

  Michel kicked the back of my leg. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing. You’re laughing at something. What is it?” Michel’s tone had grown annoyed. I rolled over so I was on my back again and tilted my head in his direction. Propped up on one elbow, he glared down at me, his sword forgotten at his side for once.

  “Let’s do something,” I said instead of answering his question.

  When Michel’s gaze darted toward my house, I couldn’t help myself. A noisy burst of laughter escaped from my mouth, causing the bird in the oak tree above us to squawk indignantly before flying off.

  Michel’s green eyes narrowed. “Gilbert—”

  “Are you looking for someone, Michel?” I teased. “Blond hair, blue eyes…”

  “I have an intense urge to punch someone with blond hair and blue eyes right in the middle of their fat head.”

  “My sister doesn’t have a fat head! How could you say that, Michel?” I called loudly, knowing my voice would echo off the brick wall surrounding our yard.

  Swearing, Michel scrambled into a sitting position, grabbed me by the collar, and gave me a fierce shake. “Shut y
our mouth!”

  I doubled over with laughter, even as he continued to shake me. I knew I was being horrible—I wouldn’t blame him if he did hit me—but I couldn’t help it. It was very hard to fluster Michel, but mention my sister and he started acting like us lesser humans. He was even blushing!

  When I pointed that out, he swore, grabbed his sword, and stormed toward the house. Throwing open the door, he came face-to-face with Madelina and he froze. His mouth opened and closed a few times, soundlessly, while Madelina stared at him strangely. Eventually she glanced at me over Michel’s shoulder and said, “Gil? Your friend is acting weird.”

  “That’s how he always is,” I said cheerfully, knowing Michel would kill me later for that. But it was worth it. Any chance I could embarrass Michel, I would take.

  “Oh. As long as it’s normal.” Madelina pushed past Michel, who still hadn’t moved or made any sort of noise. His mouth continued flapping open, reminding me of a baby bird waiting for its mother to feed it. “I was wondering if you’d like to tag along with me? I’m heading to the old church—”

  “Why?” I interrupted, my brows climbing high on my forehead. When an Ayren mentioned the old church, they were talking about the abandoned one resting on the edge of the cliffs. It was so old, part of the building had crumbled into the ocean when the cliff had eroded away, leaving behind three walls and a partial roof. Half of the city wanted the building torn down, while the other half demanded we conserve it. It was an eyesore, and off limits, but that didn’t stop people like me and my friends from venturing inside. Last time I was there, my friend Paul had tripped over rubble from the collapsed roof and nearly plummeted off the side of the cliff. If I hadn’t grabbed his arm in time… I shuddered, remembering how his horrified screams had echoed off the walls. After that near brush with death, we’d all decided by an unspoken agreement that the church was lame and we hadn’t been back ever since. I preferred the abandoned monastery, although that one had been claimed by the Borde siblings, Emile and Claudette. The building obviously didn’t belong to them, but they spent so much time there—and were always disappointed when my group of friends and I showed up—that it almost seemed like it was theirs. I tried explaining this to Michel, but he’d snorted and said he could go anywhere he damn pleased, but the monastery was stupid anyway, so those two could have it if they wanted. We ended up spending the majority of our time at the castle, training and fooling around and generally having a good time.