“You are a Fyrennian, Killian. I know your soul. You thrive on the one thing only I can give you. Power.”
Killian leveled his gaze on his father. What he said rang too true to ignore.
“Come down now and all will be forgiven.”
But there was something else he couldn't ignore; something that no lure of power could overcome. He had a brother. Whom his father wanted dead.
He twisted to peer at the island over his shoulder. Ariana was at Hunter’s side. The arrow still protruded from Hunter’s chest. His shirt stained crimson.
“What about him?” Killian asked, turning back to his father.
The calm facade crumbled from Falken’s face, revealing the monster behind it. “What about him?”
Killian's fingers itched. The hair on his arms stood up. “He’s my brother."
"He's no son of mine."
"I’m not leaving him to die.”
Falken’s eyes yellowed as his power built inside him. “He’s already dead.”
Killian knew what his words would trigger, but for the first time in his life, he welcomed it. “Then consider me dead as well.”
A blink of a lull between the telltale twitch of his father’s eye and Killian was engulfed in black flame.
He clenched his jaw to keep from screaming. Everything twisted into a pinhole and spewed itself back out.
He was on the ground, Ariana beside him, her eyes wide and lifeless. In her hand was the Onyx Vial. The white stone wavered unsteadily, as if it were liquid or gas.
Above him a Stoalvenger brayed in fear and flapped its wings. Fenix. Its rider—he, Killian—flickered in the dark like a shadowed mirage. Burning. Just like his mother.
His heart raced. He was in Hunter’s consciousness. But he couldn’t stay there. He had to fight the flame.
He shook his head, opened his mouth, and let the inferno sweep through him.
Chapter 39
Ariana gazed, unblinking, at the world through her tears. Hunter’s eyes were wide. His mouth open in a scream she couldn't hear. Tehya lay face up on the ground, no arrow in sight. The black shapes of the Huntsmen swam in and out of focus. They were closing in, emerging from the water like nightmarish beasts, eager to watch the last of her life drain out of her.
She breathed in.
The Onyx Vial exploded.
Shards of white stone flew past her.
The storm ceased.
A blinding white light engulfed the courtyard, carried by a wave of sound, like a blast of wind charging through a forest of icicles.
Whatever drew her soul released it.
As the ringing echo of the light-sound died out, an unearthly silence surged in to take its place. Warmth poured into her hands. She touched her face. It was burning up.
The back of her hand stung. She raised it weakly to her eyes, bits of stone no doubt lodged in her skin. But what she found were the bright white traces of her newly emerged race mark.
This is my Marking Day.
She dropped back on her heels beside a pile of freshly fallen snow. She looked at it, confused. For an instant, she saw something move in the soft white pile, but before she could investigate, her attention diverted.
Voices. Movement. A surge of wind and a blast of fire. The concussive wave from the Vial’s released power had pushed the Huntsmen back, but the battle resumed. They were moving in again. Quickly.
Now there was nothing to keep them back.
Sparks flickered on the Huntsmen’s palms.
Instinctively, she stuffed her hands in the snow, prepared to use it in defense. But as she cupped the mass of flakes. Something wriggled in her palm. It was soft and warm.
Her heart caught, stumbled.
Through the shifting white flakes emerged a tiny, downy baby bird.
A tendril of flame leapt at her. She ducked, cupping the bird to her chest, eliciting an unhappy chirp from her hand. The flame missed, the trailing smoke wrapping itself around her neck. She coughed as she pulled the bird away from her chest.
A screech. The sound like a flock of birds crying out from a glacial cave.
Everything went white.
Chapter 40
Another screech. Hunter’s eyes snapped open. He was blind. And he was on fire. Scalding heat bloomed from the arrowhead, spreading across his chest and threatening to split it open. He couldn’t breathe.
The sound died away. The white light subsided.
The heat in his chest cooled. He blinked rapidly, the darkness consuming everything he tried to focus on.
Then a familiar tug—a swirling—inside his chest. Switch. He couldn't see her but he could feel her presence. She was in the courtyard. The wind whipped around him, encircling the island. Like the eye of a tornado, it was calm. She was trying to keep him calm. But the thought of her out there surrounded by Huntsmen made his heart leap in panic.
He blinked, forcing his eyes to focus. Flames tore through the wind tunnel, but caught and swirled with the wind around them. Switch was helping—but in keeping them safe from attack she'd also gotten them trapped.
"Ariana?" It was Tehya's voice. "What's happening?"
"I don't know," Ariana answered, her eyes scanning them with a look of relief.
Hunter found his voice. "Switch."
Ariana looked at him. "Who?"
"Mustang," he tried again. Every word caused him pain. "Helping. Wind. Blocking."
Ariana nodded. "We still have to get out of here." She looked at Tehya. "Are you hurt?"
Tehya looked down at the arrow lying in the grass beside her. "No," she said, sounding astonished.
Ariana turned to Hunter's right. "Perry? Can you walk?"
"Not a Mervais' chance in Helede," he groaned.
Ariana glanced around. Something—it looked like a tiny dinosaur—wriggled in her palm. "Speaking of Mervais… Where's Dilyn?" she asked, her features grim.
"Haven't seen him since the gorse bushes exploded," Tehya answered guiltily.
Before anyone could respond to that, a dark form materialized in the tunnel of fire, and Dilyn stumbled through, sopping wet and caked in mud. He cracked a grim smile. "What'd I miss?"
"Dilyn!" the girls cried in relief.
"What happened to you?"
"Got blown into the water," he answered. "Huntsman fell on top of me. I stayed under til' I thought it was safe."
"Came up too early," Perry grunted, snapping the shaft of the arrow a few inches above where it was embedded in his shin.
Dilyn's eyes widened as he took in the sight of them, his eyes lingering on the arrow in Hunter's chest. He rushed over and helped Perry to stand.
"Uh. I hate to state the obvious when its clearly not good news, but… where are we going from here?" Perry asked, leaning his weight on Dilyn's shoulder.
"Toward the back," Ariana answered.
"There's no way off in that direction," Dilyn warned.
"Then that's exactly where the Huntsmen won't be," Ariana said.
She was right. Dark, shadowy forms drew nearer to the flame-tornado in all directions except the back.
"What about. Fire?" Hunter asked, but his words cost too much to say more. Each breath was as if the arrowhead had punctured his lungs.
"I've got that under control," Ariana said. "Tehya, help me lift him."
Tehya gently reached under his armpit and push his back into a sitting position as Ariana came around the other side.
"I know this will hurt you, Hunter, but you've got to stand." She knelt and tenderly reached under his other arm, being especially careful of the arrow they were all too afraid to remove.
As Hunter stood, the whirlwind in his chest tightened—his connection to Switch—pulled taught and, in an instant drowned by a horse's scream, the connection snapped. The wall of wind and fire whooshed out.
"Switch!" Hunter cried. The sudden disconnection made him stumble, and Ariana's one-armed hold on him slipped.
The creature in her hand tumbled to the ground as fl
ashes of fire streaked toward them. Tehya yelped, recovering her hold on Hunter as dirt flew up to meet the flames just inches before their faces.
Ariana dove toward the creature, but she missed. It hit the ground with an ear-shattering chirp. Ariana lifted it off the ground but the creature screeched and didn't stop.
The sound overwhelmed him. It froze him and everyone around him. He couldn't move—couldn't speak. The courtyard illuminated. The battle freeze-framed. Nothing moved. Fire hung in the air like streamers. Clouds of dirt suspended around them. Water hung like mist. Hunter couldn't even blink. His heart didn't seem to beat.
Hunter's chest stirred as he saw the edges of cloaks stirring in a wind—and a flash of movement—grey and white. It took a moment for his frozen mind to register that Switch was running full-tilt—limping, really—straight for him.
Whatever magic the creature in Ariana's hand had used, Switch was immune.
A few yards ahead of the mustang, Falken Fyrenn stood like a statue, fury evident on his upturned face, his arms outstretched to the sky—no, to Killian and the Stoalvenger—the horse's wings still flapping, hovering, unfazed by the creature's power.
As Switch got closer, the wind built to a gale, drawing the sound of the creature toward her and away from the island. As it did, Hunter's limbs, his muscles, began to thaw. The sound of the night rushed back in, but it was eerily quiet now.
Switch's hooves drummed against the stones.
Spell broken, Killian hollered from above them "The Mustang is drawing the sound off you. Ariana, keep it going! The rest of you, move to the back. I'll get help."
Killian steered the Stoalvenger away as Ariana and Tehya helped drag Hunter alongside Dilyn and Perry.
As they reached the burned remains of the bridge, Killian reappeared with Asrea, Harold and George Stratton. No one else stirred.
Harold quickly formed a bridge out of the earth, George ushering them across.
"Get you out of the hedge, then we'll use the book," Harold said. "Ariana, keep that thing at it."
"As if I know how," she retorted, but nodded anyway and looked determinedly at the bird.
"Go on ahead," Killian added. "I'll fend them off once the bird stops. Then I'll be right behind."
"Switch?" Hunter asked, feeling dizzy with the effort of moving and speaking.
"We'll make sure she gets out safely," George answered, as the world grew dark.
"We're losing him. Move. Quick."
The last thing Hunter felt before passing out were stronger hands replacing Tehya and Ariana's, and a sense of weightlessness.
Chapter 41
The bright red light of the portal book flashed behind him and the sound of the night rushed in, cutting off the creature's strange noise. Killian surveyed the still-frozen scene. Based on the Mustang's shift of the sound, he had only moments before the men—including his father—would recover their senses. The Mustang stood below him. He couldn't sense it the way he had in Hunter's consciousness, but he had to hope the beast understood he and its master were connected.
He quickly led Fenix toward the ground, thankful he'd been given immunity to the creature's cry. And that it had snuffed out his father's attack on him.
But he wasn't out of danger yet.
The men knew the plan. When the Strattons retreated with Hunter, they were to do the same, gathering at their specified checkpoints to await extraction. But with the halting of time, he couldn't be certain they'd understand a retreat had occurred.
He looked at his father, unmoving on the ground. Killian squeezed his mother's pendant, then lit the ground on fire. The flames lapped at his father's body like the tongue of a loyal dog. Killian drew his etâme away from the flames and into the air. He felt for the particles and pulled apart the oxygen in a bell shape around his father, trapping the flames, forcing them to eat their way inward. Ironic, Killian thought, as he turned back to the horses, that his father would wake to his own element—and his own son—having turned on him.
The men were waking in a wave spreading from the island outward. Shouts rang out in the night. As he leapt onto Fenix's back and threw a rope of air around the Mustang's neck, Killian called the retreat. One Shadow would hear it at least, and the word would spread. The moment he heard the call echoed in the voices of his men, he spurred the horses toward the back of the courtyard.
They crested the newly formed bridge as another bright red flash signaled the Strattons' return. Not wishing to waste time, but not wanting to give any Huntsmen an easy route to follow him, he held back from blazing a tunnel through the hedges to reach the checkpoint. He threw a ramp of solidified air in front of the Mustang as he and Fenix took to the sky. The Mustang caught on instantly, increasing the wind with its own magic and floating, weightless, over the tops of the hedge.
They touched down strides from where the Strattons stood, waiting.
Chapter 42
Ionian Winter, Day 7; Year 889: Helede
Ariana sat with her back against the window overlooking Bolengard, Tehya curled on the seat beside her. Ariana clenched her mother's letter in one hand and cradled the soundly sleeping puffy white bird in her other, fighting the urge to focus on any one of the many voices that filled Xalen's large office-lounge.
Seated around her, Dilyn, Perry, Hunter, and Asrea buzzed with excitement for the impending return to Ionia. Across the room, Maiza, Xalen, George, Harold and Master VanDaren discussed the future—her future—with an ominous certainty. The resulting storm of conversation left her wavering between longing, guilt, excitement, and anxiety.
Killian's eyes met hers. She flinched in surprise.
She didn't realize she'd been staring at him.
Amidst the adults—who were all at the edges of their seats, leaning over a large, low table covered in papers—Killian sat tall and silent, looking more regal in the Shadow Elite's navy blue robes than he had in his battered Fyrennian Reds. His posture was prouder, stronger, yet less arrogant than before. But his eyes—until this moment—on his twin, suggested a similar swirl of emotions to her own, along with a wish to join the conversations of her friends and his brother, rather than the adults surrounding him.
He nodded slightly, giving her a grim, empathizing smile. If only things were different for us, it seemed to say.
She looked away from him. She didn't want his sympathy. Their choices were made. Nothing was ever going to be simple for either of them. Not as Tierens. Not as children who'd proven to have inherited the gifts of their fathers. Not now that they'd defied the King. And especially not after Ariana's discovery.
She eyed the sleeping bird.
The Daeixs.
The immortal water-bird—the creature from Maiza's story—alive in her hand; its soft breath a minuscule breeze, its downy feathers a tickle on her skin, its tiny heartbeat a flutter against her palm.
It was unbelievable. And yet, it had taken only an evening for Maiza to piece it all together.
The Daeixs, in the snowy state of flux between death and rebirth, had been trapped inside the Onyx Vial, an otherwise unremarkable container imbued with the stone's natural power to inhibit the etâme it contained.
Maiza surmised that the Daeixs had tried to regenerate—perhaps succeeded, then quickly died for lack of space—and was simply too weakened by the stone to break itself free. So the bird had siphoned the nearest available source of etâmic energy in an attempt at freedom.
This explained why the Vial was so deadly. Ariana had recalled the draining sensation she'd felt when her skin contacted the surface of it. Non-Tierens couldn't match the power the Daeixs needed to free itself, so, un-satiated, it drained the life out of them. Tierens could sustain it, with their second reserve of magic, but without the exact elements it needed, they couldn't fulfill it. Ariana, however, was its elemental match. The Daeixs grew stronger the closer she came to it, which explained why the Orenate had broken down so rapidly after her arrival in Bolengard.
"With you as my roommate, my leg
could be cut off and no one would notice," Perry complained, pulling Ariana from her reverie. "No sympathy perks whatsoever."
She looked up to see him stretching his injured leg across the cushions of the couch he shared with Asrea, threading his foot under her bent knees as he flashed Hunter a goodnatured scowl.
Hunter, propped in a chaise one stride from the couch, shrugged the shoulder not covered in bandages and grimaced. "I'll trade," he said, fingering the would-be-fatal arrowhead that dangled from a boot-lace around his neck.
He was alive by the slightest of angles—his heart pierced in the infinitesimal space of miracles, where the puncture was able to self-seal. It had ruptured, but not until they had made it to the healing ward in Bolengard. By then, he was already being injected with Aelgyn serum, and Master Crowe was able to save him before the loss of blood-pressure did any damage. He was the luckiest unlucky person she'd ever met. Not a threat, she'd finally determined. Certainly no mastermind of deceit. Simply a clueless boy, in over his head in a dangerous world, somehow managing to stay afloat with the help of a brother he'd only just met.
That had been fun to witness; Killian introducing himself to Hunter, who was still under the effects of the Aelgyn serum. It had taken him a humorously long time to be convinced he was not dreaming, or looking into a mirror. Killian, for what Ariana guessed was the first time in his life, was awkward. So awkward. Lost for words. A
All things considered, Hunter seemed to be handling the news of his parentage rather well. It helped, she thought, that his consolation for having the Nine's Worst Father was having a long-lost twin. Because of their dreams, the boys—who Asrea had playfully nicknamed Hunt and Kill—said they felt as if they'd known each other their whole lives, though Hunter hadn't had as many while in Kansas as Killian had. Their theory was that the lack of etâme on Earth had suppressed it, which explained why the dreams had become more lucid once he crossed over.
The Onyx Vial (Shadows of The Nine Book 1) Page 35
