Warrior from the Shadowland

by Cassandra Gannon

  Cross had never visited the Water Kingdom, but he knew the most coveted, prestigious kingdom in the Elemental realm when he saw it.

  Fuck.

  He was standing in Nia’s memories. That usually only happened after Matches actually Phazed. And even then, the memories tended to be a lot less vivid than this. Or so he’d heard. This was so real that Cross might as well have been a time traveler reliving the moment.

  The damn Phazing was trying to leak past his defenses. Trying to force him to share the weight of the Shadows with Nia and complete the Match. It thought it could beat back his resistance and make him Phaze with her. Maybe it could. Because, the pressure of his need for Nia was growing as heavy as the Shadows. He wanted her so badly it ate away at his good intentions like acid. What the hell was he going to do? He couldn’t risk hurting his Match.

  Couldn’t be like his mother.

  Another thought, almost as terrifying, suddenly occurred to him. If he was looking at Nia’s memories… than she was probably looking at his.

  Cross felt a hot/cold sensation of dread slide down his back. There was nothing good in his head. Nothing he wanted Nia to see. Certainly nothing like this idyllic, pastel paradise she’d grown-up in.

  Cross automatically tried to break out of the memory and get back to the present so he could stop her from learning anything about him. The memory exchange was really happening instantaneously, no matter how long it seemed like you were away from the real world. If he didn’t hurry, Nia would relive ever horrible thing he’d ever done and she’d leave him.

  Renounce him.

  Women of the Water House weren’t afraid to renounce their Matches and go their own way. Everyone knew that. Nia could do it. And if she saw into his memories she’d dump his ass like toxic waste. Cross knew it would be best for her to escape him and the Shadows, but he couldn’t let her go. He’d die first. Gratefully. She was the only thing in his world.

  He made a grab for the Shadows, trying to harness the oppressive weigh. The powers worked for him around Nia, but here in her memories all he got for his efforts was a migraine.

  “Shit.” He even got headaches in memory spaces? Typical.

  And then he heard the laughter, clean and soothing and filled with happiness.

  Nia.

  Cross instinctively turned towards the sound and found that the scene had shifted, dream-like, so that he was in a courtyard, now. As he watched, Nia dashed by him holding a kite. A little Nia, no more than a child. Her eyes were on the sky as the bright flash of silk sailed into the perfect sunny sky. Tharsis jogged along next to her, grinning. “Don’t let it go too high!”

  Nia shook her head, red braids swinging. “It’s impossible to let things soar too high.” She declared, importantly. And stuck out her foot to trip her twin, laughing harder and he bounced back up to chase her.

  Then, Cross was in a nursery of some kind, decorated with the palest blue and purest whites imaginable. An older Nia lay on her stomach in the center of a rug patterned with seahorses and shells. She was reading to a toddler and, from the baby’s fuzzy red hair, it could only be Ty. Ty had apparently always been a quiet little thing, because she sat cuddled next to Nia, watching calmly as her cousin turned the pages.

  “After the Princess was captured by the Dark Phase, she was very afraid.” Nia adopted a higher pitched, singsong-y tone as she added in the character’s voice for Ty. “‘Oh!’ The Princess cried. ‘Who will come and save me from this monster?’” Nia stopped reading and frowned. She flipped forward a few pages and rolled her eyes. “Lord, but this girl’s a twit.”

  Against his will, Cross felt his mouth quirk at her annoyed pronouncement.

  “Wead.” Ty ordered.

  Nia sighed and went back to the story. “The Dark Phase locked her in a tower so high that the Princess could see for miles out of her window. Each day, she stood by the glass and waited for help.” Nia stopped again and scrutinized the picture accompanying the text. “Come on, the Princess could fit out of that window if she wanted to and just climb down! This is crazy. I think she wants to be there with him.”

  “Wead.” Ty repeated.

  Nia’s eyes briefly went up to the gilded cloud fresco on Ty’s ceiling, but she pressed onward. “The Princess was so lonely in the tower. How she longed for her handsome knight to ride to her rescue.” Nia made an aggravated sound and looked over at Ty. “She’s going to sit up there and wait for that idiot blond guy to show up and save her? What kind of message is that?”

  Ty stuck her thumb in her mouth. “Wead.” She urged around her tiny little digit.

  “No.” Nia slammed the book closed and focused on Ty. “Princesses don’t wait to get saved.” She said, firmly. “Any woman with a brain in her head would stop whining by that damn window and find her own way out of the tower. Unless, of course, she was deliberately avoiding that boring knight guy and was staying with the way more charismatic Dark Phase, on purpose.”

  Cross could no longer hold back his smile.

  Ty sent the book a longing look. “Wead?”

  “We’ll read something less chauvinistic.” Nia petted a hand over Ty’s head. “How about something human? You like human poems.” She got to her feet and returned with a red leather volume entitled The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. “You know, the humans are right, Ty. Nothing’s more important than love.” She settled down again and opened the massive tome. “If the Princess could have loved The Dark Phase, then she should have given him a chance, don’t you think? And, if not, she should have escaped the tower, all by herself. Instead of just sitting around, waiting for life to happen to her, she should have taken a stand. Princesses fight for what they want.”

  Ty slapped a hand down on an open page, clearly not interested in philosophy. “Wead.”

  “Alright, Alright! Gaia, but you’re a bossy little thing. Where do you get that from, huh?” Nia cleared her throat and turned her attention to the book. Her voice went softer as she began the poem, “It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea, that a maiden there lived…”

  The scene shifted again and Cross was in another bedroom. This one could only be one of the royal chambers. A massive four-poster bed draped in rich blue velvet stood in the center of the circular space. All of the floor-to-ceiling windows were closed, the matching drapes pulled tight against the light. Ty sat in a corner sobbing, her face in her hands. Tharsis paced, casting fitful looks towards the bed.

  Cross felt a sinking sensation in his chest. The Fall.

  “What do you mean you’re leaving?!” Nia looked frazzled in this memory. Her hair was twisting free from its intricate arrangement, her eyes lit with wild desperation. “You’re the royal doctor! You can’t leave.” She grabbed the man she was shouting at by the front of his robe and actually shook him. “You fucking fix him! Now!”

  The doctor was sick himself. Cross recognized the beginning stages of the Fall in his pasty skin.

  Cross wasn’t sure when this memory had happened during the week of the Fall. In the Shadowland, by the third day of the epidemic, everything had begun to break down. It wasn’t just the disease. A lot of the horrors of the Fall came from people reacting to the deaths surrounding them. Looting. Violence. Doctors refusing to treat anyone. Windows of locked stores smashed in as Phases tried to steal any kind of medicine they could find. Houses deserted as anyone strong enough fled and left the dying behind. It had been a chaotic and terrifying time for the sick and for the immune.

  Cross hadn’t worried about anyone’s safety as society disintegrated around him. He figured he could take care of himself and if everybody else couldn’t… too bad. But, for Nia, it must have been a living nightmare. She cared too much about people. Like the Shadowland, the Water Kingdom had obviously begun to crumble as the death toll mounted, leaving healthy Phases without any of the support systems of normal life. Nia, Ty, and Thar were the only Water Phases to survive. What the hell had they seen?

  Cross felt his own anx
iety level rising as he watched Nia try to find some steady ground.

  “It’s in Gaia’s hands now, Princess Nia.” The doctor pleaded with a petulant whine. “We’ve done all we can.”

  Nia looked ready to punch him. Cross wanted to help her. “My uncle, my aunt, and my mother… all gone in less than a day. And now you’re just going to let him die, too?” She shouted. “If my father goes, you’re next. I swear it.”

  The doctor stepped back, hastily.

  “Nia.” Tharsis was there pulling her back and folding her into his arms. “Honey, that won’t help.” Thar seemed defeated. He knew that his father was dying, but he was too drained to process it. From the look on his face, Cross realized that Tharsis also suspected that the doctor was ill. He wanted the man gone, either out of some heretofore unknown sense of empathy or, more likely, because he was worried that the doctor might pass his germs to Nia if she kept getting in his face. “There’s no cure. Dad’s sick and there’s nothing anyone can do.”

  “No!” She shoved away from him and headed for the mattress. “Daddy?” Her voice cracked on the word and Cross felt his heart break. “Daddy? Can you hear me?”

  Cross followed her to the bed, wishing he could do something to fix this memory for her. Nia’s tears were killing him. “God, baby.” He whispered, even though he wasn’t really there.

  “Daddy?” Nia climbed up onto the mattress to sit closer to the man huddled under the blankets. “It’s Nia. Daddy, please fight this. Please, don’t leave us.”

  Cross looked back over at Thar. The doctor had scurried out of the room and Nia’s twin slammed the door hard enough to shake the palace on its stone foundations. “Son of a bitch!” He scrubbed a palm over his face. “He was the last doctor well enough to even stand.”

  Ty didn’t so much as jolt at the sound. She kept weeping as if her soul had been ripped out.

  “We’ll find another doctor, from a different House, then!” Nia insisted. “Call Freya, again. Or Job.” She laid a hand on her father’s chest as if commanding each rise and fall through the force of her mind. “Job’s not a doctor, but he’ll come. He’ll help.”

  “The other Houses have the plague, too.” Tharsis locked the door to the bedroom. “You think I haven’t tried to contact Job? Everything’s falling apart. Job could be dead, like all the rest.” His eyes swung from Ty to Nia, and then back again. “For all we know, we’re the last three healthy Phases in the universe.” His jaw firmed. “We have to get the hell out of Dodge.”

  The hairs on the back of Cross’ neck stirred as Tharsis moved a chair to shove it under the knob. Thar had called it “the plague.” So, this memory had to be taking place on or about the second day of the epidemic; before the Fall had a name. At that point, no one was even sure how the illness was spreading. They didn’t know who would catch it next or if anyone was truly immune. Very few Phases would have locked themselves in with a Fall victim, father or not.

  Whatever was outside, Tharsis was more worried about it harming them than the disease. That wasn’t good. Not at all.

  Cross recalled hearing that the Water House had been struck first, Parald specifically targeting Ty’s family. Then, the Fall spread outward in unstoppable circles to the other Elementals, like ripples in a pond. The disease had to have ravaged the Water House the fastest, giving them no time to grasp anything but endless piles of bodies and an invisible killer. Nothing should have been scarier than the specter of a merciless illness sucking the life out of you from the inside.

  Whatever the hell Tharsis was scared of out there, Cross found himself instinctively moving so he was between Nia and the door.

  “You want to leave?” Nia gave her twin a blank look. “And go where?”

  “It doesn’t matter where, just so it’s not here!” Tharsis crossed the room with angry strides and lowered his voice to a hiss. “If Parald survived this, then he knows where she is.” He gestured towards Ty. “He took everything from me. He’s not getting you and Ty. You’re all I have left.” Thar’s tone edged into anguish and he closed his eyes, trying to regain control.

  Cross was impressed that Tharsis had already figured out Parald’s role in the Fall. It had taken most Phases hours longer to piece together the source of the illness.

  “Parald wouldn’t dare come here.” Nia’s pressed her lips together and refocused her energies on willing her father to heal. “He’s too much of a coward to fight anyone face-to-face.”

  “Alright, how about this happy news, then?” Tharsis stalked over to one of the windows and yanked the heavy drapes open. “See that?” He pointed below. “Anyone healthy enough to stand is gathering on the steps of the palace. And they aren’t caroling.”

  “Oh, shit.” Cross murmured. The crowd coughed and undulated in jerky movements, its antipathy towards the healthy Phases inside rising up like waves. Hundreds of Phases with nothing to lose stood outside. So many Elementals blamed Ty for Parald’s actions. And she was just a few short stories above them, immune to the pestilence wiping out their families and lives. Water Phases, dying from the Fall, circled like hungry dogs beneath a tree, staring up at their prey.

  “They’re gonna start rioting soon.” Tharsis scowled down at the mob. “Bastards might as well light up some torches and chant, ‘kill the witch.’ We need be somewhere safe. Now.”

  “What about Dad?” Nia’s grip tightened on the thick blankets. Cross could tell the room was a comfortable temperature, so there was no need for the quilts. During the earlier stages of the disease, Phases shook uncontrollably, though, as if hypothermia might take them before the Fall had its chance. Her father was beyond feeling any temperature now, deep in the final, comatose sleep before death claimed him. But, Nia, clearly wasn’t going to accept that.

  Princesses fought.

  “We’ll take him with us.” Tharsis said, instantly. “Or we can…”

  Nia cut him off, shaking her head. “We can’t move him. He’ll die.”

  Their father was already dead. Cross looked at Tharsis. “Make her leave him, then.”

  It was as if Nia heard him, or maybe she read the indecision on Tharsis’s face, because she exploded. “I don’t care if the palace is on fire, I’m not leaving Daddy! He could get better.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Thar, he’s still alive. There’s a chance he could recover if we just let him rest here for a little longer. Please.”

  Tharsis’ gaze went to their father’s gray, shrunken features. Cross could see his love for the man warring with the knowledge that the Fall would take him very, very soon. Thar glanced back over at Ty’s tiny form and swore in defeat. “Okay.” He told Nia. “Of course, you’re right. We won’t leave Dad, until we’re sure. I’d never do that. And we won’t move him. But, after…” He broke off, swallowing at the word and all that it really meant. “After, we go to the human realm or someplace until we figure out what to do next.”

  Cross knew that was the wrong decision. He could feel it. The three of them were exposed and helpless in the palace. A growing sense of urgency invaded the memory. “Nia, go.” He said, uselessly. “Take your father with you, but go now.”

  The scene shifted again, so it was night, and panic filled him.

  Voices screaming.

  Flames twisting in the darkness.

  So many faces filled with sickness and hate.

  “Nia!” Cross bellowed, looking around for her in the confusion. They were still in the Water Palace, but it was some kind of hallway. The mob outside must’ve gotten in somehow, because they were destroying Nia’s home. Furniture toppled. Glass broke. Pictures ripped from walls. And, above it all, a cacophony of shouted threats and deadly, relentless coughing.

  He finally spotted Nia and Tharsis at the edge of the riot, headed straight for him. They were wearing the same clothes they’d had on in the earlier memory, so it may have been the same day. It was hard to be sure, since no one had spent a lot of time on hygiene during the Fall. No one had it in them to care. Cross instinctively m
oved forward to help Nia, even though he couldn’t do anything. She and Tharsis were running for a curving staircase at the end of the hall. A mass of Fall victims followed them, rage and fever burning in their eyes.

  “Get to the bedroom!” Nia bellowed at her brother.

  Cross saw that Tharsis was carrying something in his arms. At first, he thought it was a bundle of bloody clothes, but then he saw the drape of red hair. Ty. She’d been beaten so badly that even Cross cringed at the sight and he’d thought he was immune to other people’s pain.

  Tharsis hefted Ty further up against his chest and reached the stairs. He hit the first step and stopped, not going any further without his sister. He turned and found Nia a few yards behind him. “Watch out!”

  Hands grabbed at Nia and she shook them free. “Go!” She screamed as the crowd reached her. Phases, eager to blame anyone for their fate, attacked her. Grabbing Nia, they pulled her to the ground. Nia went down with a cry of pain and a slew of Elemental swearing

  Cross let out a roar as they swarmed over her. He tried to reach for her, again. “Nia!”

  Tharsis started back for Nia, Ty in his arms. “Nia!”

  “No, damn it.” Nia slammed her fist into a man trying to hold her down and somehow kept her eyes on Tharsis. “Get her upstairs!”

  Tharsis concentrated for a beat and Cross felt the stir of power. Not as strong as Nia’s, but close. Thar sucked the moisture from the air and then slammed it out like a solid mass. It knocked the first wave of rioters off their feet, tripping up the ones coming in behind. “Nia, move!”

  She was already on her feet and racing towards Thar. There was a cut on her lip, now, and blood seeped down the corner of her mouth. “Go.” She panted, dashing up the stairs. “Hurry.” She headed straight for a room at the top. The same bedroom that they’d been in earlier. It wasn’t just the decorations that let Cross know that. Nia’s father’s body was still on the bed, the blanket that had been keeping him warm covering his still face.