Jomeini stretches a finger toward a white frond now, stopping when her tip is mere fragments away.
“I ruin everything I touch,” she whispers soundlessly, despair sinking in despite Talon’s words.
He pauses near the door. “You okay here? I’ve got to get back upstairs.”
Not looking at him, she bobs her head in what she hopes is a convincing nod. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
The words leave her feeling emptier than ever.
I clean up in the bathroom, the heat of the shower washing away more than just the dungeon’s grime. It takes this tension with it, sending it down the drain with the rest of the dirt. I don’t think. I don’t worry. I just let the water skim over me. Ayso left a set of clothes on the toilet for me when I finally emerge, and I slip into the clean pants and shirt gratefully, inhaling the smell of lavender.
“You can sleep in here,” she says, guiding me to one of the back rooms. It’s small, no bigger than a closet, really, with a single cot. A cushionless bed has never looked so inviting.
“Thanks, Ayso,” I tell her without looking at her. My feet make their way on their own, and I sink down. She kills the lights and closes the door, leaving me in silence.
***
The dream creeps in as most dreams do, without my knowledge or control.
Towering trees surround me, their lower branches missing and replaced by scratch marks from some animal’s claws. A deer bows her head to nibble on some grass. Something flutters beneath my sternum, and I turn.
Talon steps out from the trees, walking straight through the deer as though she were a ghost. For a moment I forget I’m dreaming. Maybe it’s from the recent argument with Shasa, or the way our eyes connect, reminding me that we can be nothing more than a gaze to each other.
And yet.
“Do you feel this?” he asks, skimming a fingertip up my arm.
My lids flutter. “Yes.”
He takes my hand and places it over his chest. “And this?”
His heart thrums a steady promise to my hand.
“And this?” He tips my chin up toward his.
And then in a flash it’s Shasa’s arm he’s trailing, Shasa’s hand to his chest. Shasa’s chin he guides upward. His gaze flicks to me for the smallest moment to where I watch from a nearby tree. This isn’t real. It’s just a dream.
“And this?” he asks before lowering his mouth to hers.
My heart is a trapped bird in my chest, only when I step back I find myself trapped within my own chest, watching him with her, pounding to break free. Suddenly Talon’s face looms close-up, and harsh as ever, he snarls. “Why?” in a low hiss.
Light floods my eyes, and though they’re still closed, I blink. There’s no sign of Talon and Shasa. I bend at the knees, waiting for the queasy sensation from such a sudden change in my stomach to fade.
A clearing spreads before me now. A meadow, of sorts, blanketed by grass against a backdrop of trees. But instead of a group of creatures seated in chairs and ready to bestow me with a coveted teardrop that enhances my magic, only one person stands across those familiar trees. Her long hair sweeps the grass beneath her feet.
“Nattie?” I say, befuddled.
“Hello, Ambry.”
“What are you doing here?”
She smiles, offering a hand to either side of her. “I’m always here. This is my forest. I’ve summoned you here.”
I glance around. The last time I was here, this forest collapsed around me. But the meadow is open and hushed, the trees standing unawares along the edge of the open space just the way trees should do. “Am I still dreaming?”
“In a sense. Our minds are still active, even in sleep. I pulled you from your dream into this one.”
“You pulled me from one dream to another?” A million questions thunder through. “But…”
Nattie’s dress and long hair brush the grass behind her as she makes her way toward me. “Let me get right to it. I have a few messages for you, Ambry. We didn’t give you that talisman for it to be left behind. Never take it off, child.”
The teardrop? “I did that to protect it,” I say, wondering how much of my actions she can see. Does she watch me from…wherever she is?
Nattie doesn’t argue. “My second message regards Jomeini’s cards. They are the most precious thing to you, even if you can’t see it.”
“You saw that?” I glance behind me, certain we’re being watched. But the meadow is empty. A few flowers dance in a breeze I don’t feel.
She smiles, taking me back to the sight of her when I thought she was nothing more than a kooky old woman cutting potatoes to prepare a soup for Talon and me. Wrinkles cinch at the corners of her eyes, which gleam with kindness.
“Each card is a key to unlocking the part of you needed most. You must guard them. Keep them with you at all times. If those cards were to fall into the wrong hands…”
“I don’t know what they mean,” I tell her, my disappointment from earlier bubbling to the surface. “They’re like pretty sketches but nothing more. I still have no clue what I’m supposed to do.”
“Part of the bargain we made with the angels was not to interfere. They allowed me that archway. I was meant to guard it until you came along.”
“Why not do more? Jomeini told me what she Saw, but I still don’t understand how it connects. She said I wasn’t at the battle. If I’m not at the battle, how am I supposed to stop Tyrus and break the spell?”
“What else did she tell you? About your part in this?”
I backtrack, attempting to remember the conversation before I pushed her too far. “She said I was healing the ground. With flower petals. Nattie, what do my tears have to do with flower petals?”
“Think through everything she told you, Ambry. Why would the ground cry out for penance? What heals and is most needed by the body?”
I shake my head. “I’ve never been good at riddles.”
“Though every creature is different, there is one thing we cannot live without,” Nattie hints.
“Water,” I say after a few moments. “All living things need water to survive. Water is used to clean wounds, water is…Nattie, are you saying I’ll need water to do whatever it is Jomeini Saw me do?
Nattie smiles. “Perhaps,” she says.
“Water has something to do with my quest? With the tears?”
Her eyes glisten. “It does, child. There is a reason you were chosen, Miss Csille. Your land is torn even now. Your people are captives; the races are more divided than they’ve ever been. What they need is unity.”
“You sound like Tyrus.”
She dusts her hands. “Yes, but I mean it by its actual definition. And that unity will come through you.”
Sweat drips down my shoulder blades. I can’t shake this tightness that builds the more she speaks.
“What’s wrong?”
“All of this is just so…I know the tears chose me. I heard what you said, about them being cried for me. Jomeini told me her vision, how I’m meant to heal the rift between the races and appease the ground crying out for penance. But the more I think about it, the more impossible it seems. I can’t do it.”
Pity pools in Nattie’s eyes. “Have you ever seen a baby chick hatch?”
I shake my head.
“It is a struggle for the creature, to break through the shell, to push it open. A human could make it easier on the fledgling bird by pulling each piece of the shell away and releasing the new creature. But when they do the bird never flies. It didn’t glean the strength it needed from hatching.”
“The bird is stronger because of it,” I say, hearing exactly what she’s trying to tell me. That I have to figure it out on my own because I wouldn’t learn what I need to know otherwise.
“But the cracks in the egg provide light as the new bird awakens, Ambry. Light is there to give the bird cause to keep trying. Light is always there.”
Light. A reason to keep going, to keep trying. My breath bottles in my thro
at, tingling there. She’s telling me to have hope.
A fluttering sensation jolts, lifting a weight I didn’t know I was carrying.
“Keep following your heart and the ideas that spring as you look at the cards. I suspect it won’t come all at once. And remember, Ambry, not everything we think comes from us. Angels are real, child, and they’re on your side. I must go—you are about to wake soon. I have one more matter to discuss.”
“Okay.” I sort through my thoughts, wondering what else it could possibly be.
She lifts her chin in a regal sort of way. “Tell him he won’t find us.”
“What? Who are you talking about?”
“He needs to get his priorities straight, or he will lose his granddaughter.”
“Solomus?”
“He’s been searching for me. He has been for years. It’s why he left Jomeini in the first place, and she’s suffering for it, Ambry. We appear only when and to whom we are needed by the most—something he’s never attempted to understand.”
“And Solomus doesn’t need you?”
She slants her head to one side, thinking it over for a moment. “He thinks he does. But he’s wasted his life and ruined his granddaughter’s in a pointless search, trying to restore his magic and break his spell. He needs to understand it is not his place to break it. Tell him he won’t get what he’s after from us.”
“What is he after? Why don’t you just tell him this?”
“The angels limit me as well, child. I can only touch this world for mere minutes. You have the tools to figure this out, Ambry. Telling the wizard myself would defeat the purpose of trying to divert his focus. If he speaks to me once he will think he can again. The message must come from you.”
“He might not listen to me. Nattie. Nattie!”
“It is up to you,” she says as she fades.
“Nattie!” I call again.
The dream shifts. The meadow fills with trees, with fallen leaves and the sounds of chittering animals. And I gasp awake.
It must come from you.
“Can’t sleep neither?”
Zeke lies on the floor next to me, his legs tucked into a gray sleeping bag. His head is propped up against the wall. His aud’s screen lights his face, and he lowers the device just enough to peer over it. Thankfully, he sleeps with his eyepatch on. I wonder what happened to his eye.
The fact that he’s lying here instead of somewhere else tells me I just might have stolen his bed.
I sit up and rake my hands through my hair, but the action makes me wince. I ache everywhere. The events of the previous day cluster in, bumping for attention. Talon. The dungeon. Shasa. Jomeini. I clutch the teardrop beneath my shirt and then with a little hiccup of realization, turn and dig for the cards snugly packed under the pillow.
Phew.
“What are you watching?” I ask, sliding onto the floor beside Zeke. This scratch-chinned and gap-toothed man who glared at me over his trunk of wares the first time I saw him at Black Vault with Gwynn now scoots over, giving me space on the sleeping bag. I sidle in, catching sight of the news on his screen.
My image appears—several different shots, actually. The school picture they displayed for my wanted poster back when I was with Talon, me in the dungeon, face filthy and hands behind my back as I knelt on the soiled floor, me running on the beach with the other fugitives.
“You’re a star,” he says. “Wanted wherever you go. Them all wants to kill ya, and that’s sayin’ somethin’.” He grins at me, as though this is the highest of compliments. “You’d make a good keeper.”
“Oh, I would?” I say, catching onto his playful tone.
“Yeah, good at dodging authorities. It’s the number one qualification.”
I chuckle, leaning in as the images change to display several different buildings. All cylindrical and white, just like the one in Valadir. Stations.
“They’re everywhere,” I say, my eyes not seeing fast enough. In Jienke. In Hyerton. Angels, they’re building one in Cadehtraen.
Footage shifts to display soldiers corralling people, standing guard around the line-up of civilians on their way to having their magic stabbed out of them in unison.
“This is disgusting,” I say.
“Look at this,” Zeke says, pointing to the screen with a stubby finger. “‘Join the fight and restore equality. War is coming. Enlist, and your family receives protection from the Arcaian army.’”
I sneer, remembering Nattie’s words about unity. “Equality.”
Tyrus now fills the small screen, his deep voice resonating while the volume is on low. “I’m after a peaceful reign,” the liar says. “But I will not stand for the inequality between us. Power should be shared.”
People around him cheer. Arcaians, probably, or Itharians who don’t have any other choice. No group of Itharians feels that much without being forced to act like it by their oppressors.
“He doesn’t want equality,” Zeke grumbles.
“It’s a fancy way of saying ‘domination,’” Talon says. I tilt up my head to find him slipping in sock-footed. He sits beside Zeke and rubs a hand behind his neck. “I’ve been watching it, too. Tyrus thinks if he uses the word ‘equality’ enough people will start to believe it.”
“That’ll never work,” says Zeke.
Talon slopes against the wall. “It did on me. Until I saw sense.”
“Who does he think he’s trying to convince?” Zeke asks. “He’s already going through towns and building Stations to mass-subjugate people. Seems like he’s got Itharia well in hand.”
“I don’t think it’s only Itharia he’s after anymore,” I say. “And besides, some of us still feel.”
“You mean you do?” Zeke asks. “Magic and all?”
I nod, not looking at Talon. “I thought maybe you all at Black Vault were the same, but apparently not.”
“And you still don’t know why?” Talon asks.
I push myself to sit up against the wall and shake my head. Zeke’s sleeping bag slides beneath my movements. “Have you gotten any rest?” I ask, finally allowing myself to look at Talon for longer than a passing glance.
“A little,” says Talon. “You?”
“A little.”
“Aaaaaand, there it goes again.” Zeke shares his screen, showing the images shift to a different army bearing a flag with orange colors. Orange plumes eject from the soldiers’ helmets, and they march in one body, some on foot, some in thick, armored vehicles the likes of which I’ve never seen before.
Talon moves closer, absorbed by the screen. The light gleams on his face, casting shadows over his brow. “Feihria,” he whispers.
If that’s them, this must mean…
“Talon—”
His eyes flick to mine. “I know. They’ve crossed the Arbors. They’re in Itharia now.”
The newscaster shares as much, and then she begins talking about a series of fundraisers being put on by a local school.
“It’s clever, really,” I say, unable to get the thought of those Stations out of my mind. Cadehtraen. Angels, I wonder if they’ve gotten to my parents yet. “Flash an image of the enemy, spread word that Feihria is coming to attack, and offer protection in exchange for subjugation.”
“Tyrus has been planning this for years,” Talon says, his fingers working against one another as though he’s rubbing sand between them.
“If that’s so, then why would he draw Feihria out? That was a stupid plan on his part if he wants to subject all of Itharia. Your father said it himself, it’s clear our people can’t defend themselves against Arcaians.”
Talon rubs his chin. “No, Tyrus isn’t stupid. He knows what he’s doing.”
“But he deliberately upset them. And for what? Now they’ll be attacking any day.”
Talon’s head lifts. “Exactly,” he says in sudden inspiration. He takes my hand, helping me to my feet. “Night, Zeke,” he says over his shoulder.
“Don’t mind me,” says the older man, sl
ipping back to lie on his sleeping bag.
Talon guides me out into the darkened hall and closes the door behind us. He leans in and begins to whisper.
“He got the Feihrians out of Angel’s Basin. He wants them here.”
“Angel’s Basin?” I whisper back, wishing I could see Talon’s face. “Is that your hometown? Talon, what are you thinking? What are you not telling me?”
“I don’t see how Tyrus can know about it,” Talon says to himself. “It was the one thing I kept from him. How can he know?”
“How can he know what?”
“You’ve heard of the ancient Ithillian race?” he says, his breath stroking my face in the darkness.
“I’ve heard you speak their language,” I say. “And Solomus mentioned them earlier today, about how a battle was fought and the races were divided when the angels intervened.”
“Did he tell you about the waters there, at Angel’s Basin?”
The words sweep a shiver across my back. Nattie mentioned water as well. I never considered Angel’s Basin was an actual, geographical basin.
“The angels blessed the waters there. It’s how they were able to divide the races. The Firsts were born in those waters, Ambry. And as a result, the waters contain immense power.”
“Enough power for Tyrus to get magic permanently,” I say, thinking it through. It’s the only thing that makes sense. That’s why he’s taking as much magic as he can. “Once he drinks the water, is the water powerful enough to make the changes permanent?”
“I don’t doubt it. That’s why we swore to conceal it from the world, to keep the waters protected.”
“But Tyrus found out about them?”
“And I have no idea how,” Talon says with a resigned exhale.
“He could have read about it,” I suggest. “Solomus has that book that tells him all about the First creation. It might document the water that was used in that very process. Or is it a secret kept so tightly only Feihrians know it?”
“It’s part of our oaths,” Talon says. “To safeguard the angels’ waters.”
Such a Daring Endeavor Page 19
