The Eternal Dusk (Daughter of the Phoenix Book Two)

by Victoria J. Price

  But he hadn’t kept his promise, had he? He’d promised he’d always watch over Fia—and yet she’d returned to Earth, and now they were separated because of his foolishness, his lack of judgement.

  “Don’t blame yourself,” she said when he didn’t reply. “You’ve done everything you could. We know that.”

  Alexander looked around, but only Sophie floated in the air before him. “We?”

  “The sky spirits. Little gets past us.” She smiled, and her face was bright, her expression genuine. “But I… the information I can give you is limited. I shouldn’t be here. I can only tell you what is, not what will be. Do you understand?”

  Alexander expected as much. “I do. There’s so much I want to ask you.” He ran a hand through his hair again as he tried to focus his thoughts. Sophie might only stay for a few moments, there was no time to waste. “Erebus is free—he has an army of spirits at his command, why?”

  Sophie was eerily still in the air. Her feet rested on nothing, but her posture was strong like she was standing on solid ground. “He wants to punish the angels. What better way than to strip you of your ancient duties and make you watch?”

  “Watch? He’s going to use them against the people of Earth?” You’ve failed them all. His father would have had a plan. Would have had advisors on Earth, wouldn’t he? But there were none that Alexander knew of. That was something that would need to change if they were to survive what was ahead. He would not be ill-prepared again.

  “That is his intention. With so few remaining angels, and the Eternal Dusk’s intervention, every person they can reach with their runes will join his army. He doesn’t intend to stop at just London either.” Sophie brushed a strand of hair behind her ear in exactly the same way Fia did, and for a moment Alexander wondered if they were both like the grandmother they’d been named after, Sofia.

  Every person they can reach. There weren’t enough angels on Earth for that. “But angels cannot command the spirits that don’t go with us. I have no way of releasing them from his army.” Unless he and Halvar could find other angels, stationed outside of London. But what then? Put them at risk too? There wouldn’t be enough, he knew. When he last spoke with his general there were only hundreds remaining on Earth, and it could take months to find even a handful of them.

  Sophie’s ethereal form flickered as the Northern Lights changed from cyan to lilac. “The witches are commanding them now, aren’t they? They simply called the spirits to themselves.”

  They’d called them with those strange markings—runes Hazel had called them. “So they can be commanded?” That meant getting close to the Earth witches. Hazel was too great a risk—she might have her tricks, but she couldn’t fight, not like Jo. Alexander sighed. Every option he came up with meant relying on someone else and putting someone else at risk. His father would have some wise words about a leader’s role, he knew, but that wisdom evaded him now. The wind picked up and the sky spirts turned from violet to emerald. Now and again they chimed as they flickered.

  “Perhaps,” Sophie said softly.

  And what of the angels? What if he returned to London to find Lorn had destroyed them all? A wave of nausea washed over him at the thought. “Regardless, the remaining angels are trapped here—all the windows I know of are closed. I know no way of returning them to Ohinyan, away from the Earth witches and their magic.” He looked at the ground, to the unmistakable glow of the snow beneath them in the dark. For a moment he wanted nothing more than to rest, to feel the crunch of snow beneath his feet. When he glanced back up again Sophie caught his gaze. She wasn’t shimmering blue, he realised. Not like the last time he’d seen her. Not like all the spirits he’d freed, or those in Erebus’s army. She was every colour of the Northern Lights, but her hair remained its striking auburn.

  She pointed south. “Other windows outside of London remain open. I cannot say where.” Alexander thought for a moment she might say more about their location, a flicker of something across her face told him she might, but instead, she said, “The Earth witches have an odd kind of magic. Not like the magic that comes from Ohinyan.”

  Magic. Never had he thought about it so much until recently. “What do you mean?”

  “Erebus was right, all angels have magic.” Sophie held his gaze. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, but not in a sinister way. How could he not know this? How had his father not known, and his grandfather? Or any of the scholars, for that matter? Ohinyan held so many secrets.

  Alexander circled once around Sophie to stretch his wings. The ribbons of the Northern Lights shimmered through her, and he could see right through her to the snow-capped mountains in the distance. “But how… how can I harness it?”

  She looked away for a moment, to somewhere in the distance—something Alexander couldn’t see. When she looked back, concern was etched across her face. “I’ve told you all that I can. You must return to your friends.”

  “Wait, I can’t—I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again, but is there anything you’d like me to tell Fia?” Alexander hovered closer, as close as it felt polite to. Even if he never saw Fia again, he couldn’t leave without asking Sophie. He owed it to Fia.

  Sophie smiled and made a quiet “hmm” sound. “Tell her I can hear her. Tell her…” She was quiet for a moment. “She knows I love her. But Alexander—Erebus has already found her. He told her you’re dead.”

  Alexander’s breath caught in his throat. “She—is she safe?”

  “For now. Your friends are in danger—you should return to London.” Sophie didn’t wait for a reply—the ribbons of colour turned to seafoam green, and with them, she was gone.

  He told her you’re dead. Alexander let his wings carry him to the snow beneath the Northern Lights. He just needed a moment. A moment to rest his wings, to catch his breath. He pressed a hand against his chest as his feet crunched in the snow. His fingers brushed the scar Lorn had left across his heart, but it wasn’t her he thought of. Fia was with Erebus. Had he hurt her? Would he? Would she do what he asked?

  I have to finish this. I have to get back to Ohinyan. Sophie had said other windows outside of London remained open. But where? How long would it take to find them? His head was spinning with all the new information. But he couldn’t rest any longer.

  Alexander pushed off against the snow, stretching his wings wide and soaring, beating them as hard as he could. Sophie’s words echoed in his head. Your friends are in danger.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Fia

  T he wind whipped at Fia’s face and tears streamed down her cheeks. She still wasn’t used to flying. She flew close to the coast, but always remained above the land. Her first thought had been to go and look for Arion the moment she had a better grasp of the wingsuit, but Dante had told her it would be too dangerous, and that Arion’s body would have been washed away with the tides.

  Not all the tears were from the wind. She knew Dante was flying somewhere nearby, but it didn’t matter. She was confident enough in the suit for now—confident enough to make a safe landing. He was right, the more she practised, the less she needed the buttons and switches to control the suit. Her muscles ached, but it was beginning to feel intuitive.

  The breeze carried with it the familiar scents of the sea—brine, fish and seaweed, but Fia didn’t dare chance a look over the cliffs. What would she see there, anyway? Arion’s body, bloody and broken across the rocks? Evidence of his fall? It would do her no good.

  “We’ll leave in a few hours,” Dante said. She hadn’t noticed him fly up alongside her. She still wasn’t sure if she could trust him either. Oren, Gnossaan—not all angels had good intentions. But then, Dante had healed her, rescued her. He saved you. Isn’t that what angels do?

  Fia wiped at her face and nodded. They’d already wasted too much time, but Dante had insisted she have at least a day’s practice with the wingsuit. “You can only master something if you put the hours in,” he’d said after breakfast. And it had given her time to think. He
’d imparted so much information, and no matter what she tried to focus on, only flying helped to clear her thoughts. Only flying helped her to believe Alexander wasn’t dead. He just couldn’t be.

  Dante banked around to fly in front of her, his body upright as if he were standing in the air. In the last of the light, his white tattoo looked other-worldly. He didn’t look like the other angels, either—something about the way he held himself. But then he’d said he hadn’t spent much time with them. “Fia? It’s safer for us to travel at night.”

  “Sorry. I was…” She waved at her face. “Lost in my thoughts,” she said with a tight smile.

  Dante’s silver hair swept across one eye, and the other seemed to swirl just like the clouds in the last of the light. He always looked at her so earnestly, like he was on the precipice of some grand declaration. “Would you like to rest before we set off? We’ll be travelling for most of the night.”

  “To rest?” Fia practised hovering in front of him, holding her arms outstretched out of instinct—but it made no difference with the wingsuit. The moons were already visible in the sky—just barely, their colour a pastel orange in the light of the dying sun. A grey tinge hung over everything. Snow-capped mountains lined the horizon in one direction; in the other, nothing but forest. Beyond Dante, the sea still beckoned. “No, I—can we… can you show me how to use magic?”

  The clouds in Dante’s eyes seemed to clear for a moment and that arrogant grin of his spread across his face. “Of course. After you?” He gestured back towards their camp. The logical, sensible part of her screamed at Fia that he could be trouble. But the part that was clinging to the last shreds of strength she had left yelled screw caution—learn to fly, learn magic. Learn it all. No one else would die because of her, ever again.

  Fia touched down in the forest clearing beside their camp. Dante had provided furs, and she didn’t want to think about what animals they’d come from. “How long will it take to get to Djira?” She unbuckled the wingsuit and shrugged it off carefully, but Dante was already beside her, helping her out of it.

  “We’ll stay close to the coast. It wouldn’t be prudent to fly for prolonged amounts of time in the suit.” He rested the wingsuit against a tree. “Now, please take a seat.”

  Dante looked every bit a scholar as Fia took a seat beside the unlit fire. He threw a handful of kindling at the base, preparing it neatly and taking his time. He waved a hand across the firepit and sparks bloomed from his fingertips like falling petals.

  The fire crackled to life, and Fia didn’t miss the flicker of satisfaction that lit up Dante’s face. “How many different types of magic do you know?”

  He dusted off his hands as if there might be a few remaining sparks left and took a seat on the opposite side of the fire. “There aren’t different types, not really. It’s all energy.

  Descendant of Terah. Had Alexander really known, and still loved her anyway? Fia reached for the gold cuff on her wrist. He’s alive. He has to be. It didn’t matter what Dante had told her. She was certain she’d feel it. “Explain.”

  “Everything is energy.” Dante’s eyes flickered in the firelight, like orange-tipped clouds at sunset. He held his hands out, palms up. “The warmth from the sun, from this fire, our spirit. It’s all energy. Magic is just an extension of that.” He brought his hands together, cupping them around an invisible ball. “Energy takes many different forms. Have you ever walked into a crowded room and felt the excitement in the air? Or perhaps the sorrow at a funeral—so intense you could cut the air with a blade?” Something swirled in the empty space between his hands, just for a moment, like a shadow or a puff of smoke before it sparked into a ball of flames within his palms. Perfectly round, it spiralled around itself like a tiny sun and reminded Fia of the water wielders’ demonstration during her last visit to Ohinyan. But this isn’t a visit. This is your home, now.

  She looked at her own hands. “There’s no way I can do that.”

  Dante flashed his grin at her. “Just hold your hands like this.”

  Fia did as he said. She held her hands out in front of her, cupped as if they were holding an invisible ball. If Alexander was alive… what if he sees you do this? What would he think? You’d be just like Lorn. “Now what?”

  “When we breathe in, our chest expands to take in the energy. Keep your hands cupped as you draw in a breath but pull them apart from each other, like this.” He drew in an exaggerated breath and opened his hands. “When we breathe out, our body contracts. So we need to do the same with our hands.” As he breathed out, he drew his hands back together again, so they were almost touching.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.” He smiled. It was another quirk that reminded her of Henry. A self-assured air, so different to the other angels she’d met. “Once you’ve got the rhythm of your hands working with your breath, close your eyes and visualise a spark growing bet—”

  “Does it have to be fire? Why not water?”

  His smile turned into a frown, and the clouds in his eyes darkened. “Do you feel an affinity for water?”

  “I, I guess. I just know I don’t feel an affinity for fire.” She didn’t want to feel an affinity for fire. It had caused so much destruction in Ohinyan. So much death.

  “But you are the descendent of Terah. Fire will be the easiest for you. Once you’ve learnt to wield fire, the rest will fall in line.” He was on his feet, moving to her side of the fire. “Fire is not always about destruction, Fia. We use it for cooking, for providing warmth, for purifying water.” He gestured towards the fire as he sat down beside her, facing his hands to the glow as if he were warming up.

  “I know you don’t feel the cold like I do, don’t pretend you’re warming up just for the sake of your demonstration.”

  Dante clicked his tongue. “Fine,” he said, rolling his eyes and nudging her with his elbow. “Just try it.”

  Fia looked at the fire. This is ridiculous. But she held her hands out nonetheless, moving them in tandem with her breathing. She didn’t look at her hands, instead, she focused on the flames, crackling and swirling in front of her.

  “Slow, deep breaths. That’s it. Now close your eyes,” Dante said quietly. He’d sat close, close enough that she could smell some herby scent drifting from his hair.

  “Boundaries, Dante,” Fia muttered as she closed her eyes.

  “Of course, my apologies.”

  She felt him shift away and imagined she was holding a ball of flames in her hands, but she felt nothing. What would Alexander think? Did he know? Her hands felt hot, but Fia knew it could be from her proximity to the fire or her ever-increasing panic. “It isn’t working,” she said, flicking her eyes open. “We should just pack up and go.”

  Half of Dante’s face was in shadow, the other was bright in the firelight as he turned to look at her. “Just keep practising. Every spare moment you get. It will come.”

  He waved a hand and the fire went out. Fia watched as he packed up the remains of the camp into a bag. Where did that come from? He’d had bandages, so it made sense for him to be carrying some kind of kit. He rolled the furs up and strapped them across the top.

  Fia snapped herself out of her daze and grabbed her own belongings—her backpack and her bow, before pulling the wingsuit back on and strapping up the buckles. As she hooked her bow to her belt Dante looked at her.

  “I’ll make you some arrows when we rest.” He looked as if he was going to reach out and help with the buckles but then thought better of it, and instead threw damp soil over the remains of the fire.

  Fia weighed up her choices. There was something about him, not just that he reminded her of her cheating, waste of space ex-boyfriend—something else. But what choice did she have? Travel alone, with nothing to defend herself with?

  He looked at her, his grin revealing the whites of his perfect teeth. He couldn’t have been older than Alexander. The way he carried himself and the symmetry of his face was enough to tell Fia he’d have had h
is fair share of people swooning over him. He was attractive, there was no denying it. “Ready?” Dante asked.

  “As I’ll ever be,” she said, checking one last time that her backpack and bow were secure on her belt. She hadn’t practised with the extra weight. She should have thought of that. But no way would Fia let it slip to Dante that she was concerned—instead, she gazed into the sky and leapt towards the canopy.

  ***

  They’d been flying for a few hours. Fia didn’t want to admit it, but she was going to need a break soon. After practising all day, she was exhausted, and the weight of the suit was making her feel as though one wrong move might send her spiralling to the forest floor.

  They flew beneath the clouds, and now and then Fia could see stars. Dante had said he knew very little of the Tahjiik, but Djira was also the last place he’d heard of any making an appearance. Her eyelids were getting heavy. No, stay awake. You can’t waste any more time. She careened to the right in her daze, and a strong arm wrapped around her waist to balance her. Fia instinctively elbowed him as her eyes flicked open.

  “I’m sorry, you were about to fall,” Dante said, holding her shoulder at arm’s reach. The rhythmic beating of his wings made Fia feel even more exhausted. “I think we should take a break. You need to rest. I have some errands to run, anyway.”

  “Errands?”

  He smiled, soft and reassuring, no hint of sarcasm across his face. “To make your arrows I need to collect wood, to search the cliffs for ship flotsam. If you know I don’t feel the cold, you’ll know I don’t need much sleep either.” He gestured below them, and Fia followed his descent.

  It was a reasonable enough answer, wasn’t it? The minute her feet touched the ground, Fia unbuckled the suit. Dante handed her one of the furs and she wrapped it around herself, watching him get to work. She was too exhausted to help.

  Within minutes he had set up a fire and cleared a place for them to sleep. “I won’t be long. But I’ll set up wards at a good distance, so you’ll be safe whilst I’m gone.”