Noor’s head jerked up the moment they stepped through the window—to anyone else it would have looked like nothing more than a doorway between two rooms. “Where are we?”
“Ornax. A world parallel to Ohinyan. Please. Help her to the table.” Okwata had cleared the table in the centre of the room, and Ahrek carried a bowl of water, towels thrown over his shoulder.
Maab and Malachai tried to help lift Noor, but she shooed them away. “All of you, cease your fussing. I suffered only superficial wounds.” But she fell back against the table, nonetheless, as they helped her to lie down.
“Boys, why don’t you all give us some privacy? Go wait in the house.” Runa glared at Malachai, and he ushered the others out of the glasshouse, leaving Fia and Runa to tend to Noor.
Fia scanned over her friend for injuries—a burn to her ribs, one on her leg, one on her arm. Burns. Lorn.
Noor cut at her clothes with a dagger she’d pulled from her boot. “They’re only minor burns. They just need to be cleaned.”
She reached for the sponge floating in the bowl of water Ahrek had brought, but Runa swatted her hand away. “Rest,” the angel commanded. “Tell us what happened.”
“Where have you been?” Fia asked. “I thought you were looking for the woman who could speak with the sky spirits? What have you been doing?”
Noor laughed and clasped at her side as if she seemed to remember her injuries. “What I do best. Spying.”
Runa raised an eyebrow at Fia but said nothing as she diligently worked to peel Noor’s clothes back from her wounds and clean them.
“I found the woman. She said she’d only spoken with the sky spirits once, but not through lack of trying since. She said they only spoke to her when she was young.” Noor made a hissing sound through her teeth as Runa cleaned the wound at her side. “After that, I tried to track you and Arion to Ashar, Fia, but I couldn’t find you. I made my way here a few days ago.”
“You’ve been here, all this time? Why didn’t you tell us?” Fia could hardly contain the frustration in her voice.
“Because it’s my nature. And because someone has to keep an eye on everyone.” Noor smirked, but then her smile faded. “I heard about Arion. I’m sorry, Fia. The witches will mourn his death.”
Fia tried not to picture Arion plummeting to his death, but she knew it was a memory that would stay with her for a very long time.
“None of that explains how this happened to you,” Runa said gently. “Do you have something you’d like to put on these, or do you want me to dress them?”
Noor reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a roll of waxy leaf. “Use this. No bandages, not yet.” The leaf unrolled slightly in her palm and revealed an oily balm.
Runa took the leaf and put it to one side. “How did this happen, Noor? These are wounds from a Makya, aren’t they?”
“I was on one of the towers above Djira when a—a cloud of darkness swarmed onto the roof next to me. It released Lorn and turned into an angel. I’m certain it was Erebus.”
Fia’s stomach lurched and she steadied herself against the table. “What did the angel look like?”
“Silver hair, grey wings. A white tattoo.”
Fia was vaguely aware of Runa calling her name, but her vision had blurred, and her hearing was fuzzy. Dante. He couldn’t have been Erebus. You couldn’t have known. He’d been strange, but he’d seemed like a young man, lost and alone in the world. Not an ancient darkness that had been whispering to the creatures of this world for thousands of years.
My father was an explorer. He was killed. Fia reached a hand to her head as she pieced together what Dante had told her. Erebus wasn’t like his father, not in the beginning. Erebus and Terah were in love. “No.” Her voice came out small, barely a whisper. “It can’t be him. It can’t. I would’ve known. I would’ve realised.”
“Fia. Explain.” Noor had rolled to her side and clasped a hand gently around Fia’s.
The mercenary, the wingsuit. Had it been him, all along—was it all part of Erebus’s plan? She looked up at Noor in a daze. “Dante,” she whispered. “An angel rescued me. Arion was killed and I was kidnapped, I escaped and then an angel with a white tattoo caught me. Healed my wounds. Told me I have magic.” She stared at her hands. How could she have been so naive? Twelve angels had been sacrificed so Erebus could be released, and she’d been learning to fly with him. She coughed back at the bile that pushed its way up her throat. One, two, three. Her head was swimming and she felt as if she were a few seconds away from a full-blown panic attack. “I need some air.”
Fia ran out of the glasshouse, past the bushes and trees and sent blue butterflies cascading away from her like giant petals in a breeze as she darted past and down the path towards the courtyard. You led him here to your friends, you’ve put them all in danger. You’ve let them all down. How could she face them—how would they take her seriously after this?
Clay-red wings fluttered beside her. “Fia. You couldn’t have known. He healed you. You said so yourself. What reason would you have to mistrust someone who helped you?”
Fia wiped at a tear that escaped down her cheek in frustration. “Go back to Noor, she needs help.”
“Noor is perfectly capable of dressing her own wounds, you know that just as well as I do.” Runa took her hand. “You couldn’t have known it was Erebus.”
Fia watched a herd of grey creatures shimmering in the heat down by the watering hole. “We still don’t though, do we? What if what Noor saw was just part of Dante’s magic?” It was wishful thinking, she knew. But it was a possibility, wasn’t it?
Runa brushed a strand of stray hair away from Fia’s face and tucked it behind her ear. “Come on, let’s go back inside. Okwata finished the device. We’ll get Noor back to the ship, and we’ll figure all of this out. Okay?” She grabbed Fia’s hand and led her back to the glasshouse.
Noor was already sitting up. “Surface wounds,” she said before Fia had chance to comment. “Your friends are hovering in the shadows.”
“You can come back now, she’s fine.” Runa rolled her eyes as Malachai entered the lab first. “She thinks she saw Erebus, Mal.”
“We heard.” It was Maab. Fia wasn’t surprised he’d heard. He must have had excellent hearing. Ahrek too. Okwata wheeled his way in behind them, his fingers adeptly working at switches on his chair.
The lab was big, but with all the hanging plants and extra bodies in the room, it was beginning to feel crowded. Noor’s head brushed against a plant as she stood up.
“This is for you, Fia.” Okwata made his way to the workbench and picked up a sphere, not unlike the others Fia had recorded messages on. “This button here records, this one sends, and this one is for live broadcast.” He handed it over to her.
Fia rolled the metal ball in her hand. It was about half the size of a tennis ball, and the copper-coloured metal was hammered and textured all over. How soon before they started to receive communication from the devices the angels had distributed? She tucked the cool metal sphere into her trouser pocket. “Thank you, Okwata, for everything. I guess this is goodbye, for now.”
Okwata smiled at her and reached his hand out to shake hers. “It’s been my pleasure. You and your friends are welcome here anytime.” He held out a matching device in his free hand. “And we can keep in contact, should you need anything.”
***
Malachai and Maab offered to help Noor walk back to the ship, but she wouldn’t accept it. She stood tall, a pile of clothes Okwata had given her bundled under one arm, her glider and a blade sheathed across her back, and stepped out into the streets of Djira as if nothing had happened. Her clothes were burnt and bloodied, and she’d only patched up the wound at her ribs. The rest she left open to the air with nothing but the oily balm covering them. Fia couldn’t help but wonder how many times she’d been injured and alone, with no one to help bathe her wounds or sit beside her. Noor seemed to relish her own company.
The others talked q
uietly as they made their way back to the ship, but Fia wasn’t paying attention. She was vaguely aware of Asharian faces staring back at them, of the scent of cooked meat and spices, of fish and the ocean as they walked across stone bridges and down stone steps towards the harbour. But she was lost in her thoughts. Why would Erebus look like an angel? That was what she couldn’t wrap her head around. Could Dante really be him? He seemed so young still. So vulnerable. Like his father’s death was recent. When someone close to you dies… it shatters everything you know… and it takes a long time to rebuild yourself. But Erebus would have had thousands of years to come to terms with his father’s death.
She thought of her own parents. It had been five years since they died, and she still thought of them every day. Sophie’s accident was… only a few months ago, and it felt like an eternity had passed without her.
Altair was in the harbour as they approached, sitting on a pile of crates talking with Osara. Fia’s heart sank. She couldn’t face telling him. She needed to think.
As the others greeted him, Fia ducked past them all onto the ship. She made her way straight to Maab’s office for the wingsuit and her bow and had already fastened all the clips and buckles by the time she was back up on deck. No one had noticed. Good. She needed to work her way through her thoughts. She dove over the railing and banked before she hit the water, so she could come around the other side of the harbour out of sight of her friends.
Maybe my part in all of this is to talk to him, to convince him to change. That’s what she’d told Dante. Was it really him—Erebus? She glanced at her bow. What good will it do? But it seemed foolish to go far with nothing but her dagger. And what was she hoping for anyway? That Dante was still in Djira? That she’d face him and tell him to stop tormenting Ohinyan, that she’d plead with him to change?
He’d be long gone, she knew. The minute he’d have realised Noor was spying, he’d have fled. Plumes of smoke drifted up from the city, and Fia flew behind the buildings carved out of stone. They were homes, shops, drinking houses, barely distinguishable from the outside with their similar facades. Here and there pieces of gold fixed to the stone caught the light, but most were covered by the hanging moss that grew from every crack and crevice.
She flew up to the towers that loomed over everything, searching for any evidence of Noor’s fight with Lorn. There. A few black marks on the roof of the tallest tower. The city wall lay just beyond, giving the city its own little microclimate on the coast. She circled the tower and then banked to land on the wall—on a wide section where she presumed guards used to stand watch. Why did he heal me? There had to be something she was missing. And what did she think she could achieve anyway? You won’t change him.
A black shadow caught Fia’s attention, and she spiralled towards it as she drew her bow, an arrow nocked and ready. It was more than just a shadow, though, it was like a cloud of darkness, tumbling over and within itself, hurtling towards her at speed. “Stop or I’ll shoot,” she called out.
The darkness didn’t stop. It was almost upon her and she released an arrow, but it went right through the swarming cloud like it was nothing, falling with a clink on the stone beyond. And then the darkness dissipated, and an angel stumbled towards her.
Grey eyes like tumbling clouds looked down at her, a swoop of silver hair falling across them.
“Get off of me, Dante.” Fia shoved him back and he staggered away. “You’re injured. Who did this to you?”
His breathing was ragged, and he pressed a hand to his side. “Lorn.”
I knew it. “You were working with her all along, weren’t you? Why did you lie to me?”
He was close, leaning against part of the wall for support. “It wasn’t all a lie.”
“Alexander is he—is he alive?” It was the only thing that really mattered, even though she knew there was so much more at stake.
Dante’s expression hardened. “I don’t know. He and Lorn fought, I believe. Whether he survived, I couldn’t say.”
“You couldn’t sa—”
Her bow fell to the floor. Dante was unclipping the straps on the suit, a snakelike arm of black smoke pooling from him, pinning Fia’s hands to her sides and holding her legs still. “I’m sorry, Fia.”
“Stop it. Get off me.” She struggled against his grip, but it was no use, she couldn’t move. Her voice was barely audible, like he had a hold on her vocal chords too. “Get away from me,” she whispered. The suit fell away from her and landed on the stone. The dark shadows pulled at the gold cuff on her wrist. No. But she couldn’t do anything against his powers, he held her body still as if she were a doll. The cuff Alexander had given her fell away and landed beside the suit. “Please,” her voice barely audible, “don’t do this.”
Dante leaned in, close enough that she could see the storm clouds swirling in his eyes. “You would never have come with me if I’d told you the truth.” He brushed a hair out of her eyes, his face close to hers. “I truly am sorry.” His gaze dropped somewhere lower, and for a moment she thought he was going to press his lips to hers.
But Fia didn’t have time to respond, one second Dante was there, the next he was gone.
And all she could see was darkness.
Chapter Thirty
Alexander
I t had taken a handful of attempts to find a window to Ohinyan. Alexander had memorised as many locations as he could, but the maps hadn’t been detailed—quite the opposite, and with only landmarks like cities and the occasional monument to guide their way, he’d finally made the decision to fly to the very southernmost tip of the island Jo had called Britain.
Eight angels had gone with him. None he knew well; some had been the most badly injured amongst them. He held an arm around a male who’d introduced himself as Raph, and another angel did the same on his other side as they flew with the injured angel between them. He cast aside his thoughts of the torment they’d endured and focused on what had been achieved. The Eternal Dusk were no more, and the angels and spirits were free. And perhaps most importantly—the angels now had a new task on Earth, freeing any spirits who might have changed their mind about leaving.
They flew close to the coast, over an expanse of pristine beach and to some stone steps lined with moss, facing out to the water. The window should be somewhere nearby, Alexander knew. He led the angels down the stone steps. It was a theatre of sorts, carved into the rock. He could hear the hum of the window the moment he touched down, and Raph flicked his head up—he’d heard, it too.
“Spread out, we’ll find it quicker,” Alexander called out to the other angels.
“Over here, sire.” An angel hovered over the rocks leading down to the water, waves crashing around her.
Alexander hoisted Raph onto his shoulder and flew down to her. “Here, hold him, please. I’m going to go through first and check.” He didn’t wait for a response—he wouldn’t put them in any more peril, not now.
He passed through the window and arrived high above an ocean. He spiralled around in the air to look for something recognisable. There. The channel of water between Ashar and Estesh. Ashar’s most western point, shaped like the tip of an Asharian’s nose. Relief washed over him, and he flew back through for the others.
“It’s Ohinyan,” he announced as he flew back to Earth. He lifted Raph once more with the help of another angel, and together they returned to Ohinyan, the rest of the angels in tow. “Return home, get your wounds seen to. Rest.” They flew above the clouds, listening for the sky spirits to guide them back to Alythia.
“This way,” an angel called out.
The sun’s half-light cast an orange glow across the clouds as if they were burning from within. How long did they all have before the sun died? There was so much to be done, and so little time to achieve it. He ran over a list of duties as they flew: distributing enough of the Makya to maintain temperatures, major cities they’d need to visit, how to reach those in remote places. They wouldn’t be able to reach everyone, he knew.
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His wings ached—burned, and his head throbbed from having used his magic. There was more to it than he had yet discovered, but there would be time soon enough to explore what he could do. Then he’d have to figure out how to teach the other angels.
The chimes of the sky spirits carried to them on the breeze, and soon Alexander could see the rocky outskirts of Alythia, floating above the clouds. He passed over lush forest and waterfalls cascading off rocks into nothing but air. Buildings jutted out of the forest—homes and shops and schools and hot baths. Ahead he could see the glistening platform of Ehnalia stretching out from Alythia’s centre. Only, it didn’t look as it should. It was damaged.
He landed on the platform with the other angels and a cluster of guards rushed forwards to help them. “Send them to the infirmary and contact their families. Where is the general?”
“In the hall, sire,” a guard called out, but Alexander was already flying inside.
Great twisting columns reached up to the high ceilings—Ehnalia was lavish, but there were signs of an attack everywhere Alexander looked. You should have been here.
“Jarl!” he called out as he approached the hall.
The general’s helmet rested on the table beside him, and golden eyes darted up to meet Alexander’s as he approached. Halvar looked just like his father, and Alexander felt that at least leaving the angels on Earth in Halvar’s capable hands was something to be thankful for.
“Sire.” Jarl clasped Alexander’s arm. “It is good to see you well, we thought we might have lost you.”
“You won’t get rid of me so easily, old friend. I’d like a full report, but I get the feeling it will be better for you to show me.” Alexander gestured towards the door. “Halvar is safe and well. I’ve left him in charge on Earth in my stead.”
A smile broke across the general’s face. “That is good news indeed. And things are under control here, come, let me update you.”
The Eternal Dusk (Daughter of the Phoenix Book Two) Page 23
