Breaking Stars (Book 2)

by Jenna Van Vleet

  ‘Blood? Energy? Heat...? Fire?—Fire!’

  His eyes flew open, and he realized his world was not shadowed in darkness, but his eyes had been closed all along. He sucked in a breath and took in the blue sky above him that had never seemed brighter. With an inhale came the smell of smoke and earth. “Elements!” he gasped out. His mouth still tasted of coppery blood.

  “Gabriel?” someone whispered, still far off to his right, but he was not concerned with the voice. He slipped his hands from whatever was securing them to the cold stone and looked at the wrists. They were bare but for blood and dirt. His hands flew to his neck and wrapped around where the Castrofax would lay, but it too was gone.

  “Sweet stars, my Elements.” In a moment of ecstasy, all the weight laid on him the past month fell off. His emotional pain, his physical battles, his weariness and despair all erased whatever brokenness he once felt. Renewed with his Elements, he was unstoppable, and no man could break him with them. Energy and power coursed through him as powerfully as it once had.

  The sky above him blurred as his eyes filled with hot tears, and he put his hands over his face.

  “Gabriel!” came the voice again, this time much closer and unmistakably a woman’s. He rubbed the tears from his eyes and looked to the direction of the voice.

  Robyn’s tear-stained face came into his vision, a hand over her mouth.

  “I’m not dead,” he said, more as a question to confirm his own suspicions.

  She shook her head. “You were.”

  There were tears in his eyes as he tried to sit up, but Mikelle, still sitting to his left, put her hand out to stall him. “You’re weak.”

  “I’m not though,” he argued and sat up to survey. His parents stood behind Robyn looking relieved and a little weepy. Balien stood behind and gave him a bewildered look. There were other faces he did not recognize that looked amazed and pleased. A few were weary; saddened by something his life renewal could not brighten.

  He stood and felt the wondrous sensation of a body without pain, he drew the energies of the Elements into him. Water was moving all around, Fire blazed in a dozen pockets, Earth grew deep underground, and kinetic energy raged in every direction. He searched his mind for a powerful and strenuous pattern, and reaching a hand to the sky he opened his palm and set the proper Spirit pattern into motion. A bolt of lightning came from the cloudless sky and connected with his hand. The energy pulsated through his body and built, crackling with blue and white intensity. He felt no pain since it was he who controlled it, feeling it stir within, lifting his hair and edges of his shirt. With such power at his disposal he knew any vestige of brokenness, any desire to follow another’s orders, any wish to obey Nolen, had died.

  He looked down at the unfamiliar pull of his clothing against his torso. His shirt was covered in blood and his clothes were wet. He pulled the gaping hole away and looked at the girth of the spear still clutched in Mikelle’s hand, bloodied for a foot from the tip.

  “Nolen is gaining ground,” a man said behind him, and he looked back to see Lael kneeling beside the pale body of the Head Mage.

  Worry flared in Gabriel. “What happened?”

  “Nolen killed him,” Lael replied. “Go avenge him.”

  Gabriel stood feeling renewed and fresh, but before he could make a decision, Robyn flung her arms around his waist and pulled him in close. He could not help but return the embrace. “I thought you were dead,” he whispered before she pulled away.

  He took up Robyn’s left arm. It seemed as though everyone held their breath, and Markus later confirmed everyone had. He probed the healed wound as he searched his memory for every pattern he would need: one to cut the skin; one to form bone; another to create muscle; two to elongate nerves and tendons; another to make blood channels, two to create skin; one to form nails, and three to connect it all to the brain. There would be others later to make hair and pores and fingerprints, but those could wait.

  “Be brave?” he asked her, and the way she stared up at him adoringly confirmed she was ready. He flipped together each pattern and held them aloft, ready to fuel them all at one time. Holding all twelve patterns, he took up her arm and covered it with his hands. In one slow movement, he drew his hands back and fueled the patterns.

  Everyone who could see gasped and gaped, for as he moved his hands, a new limb formed. Robyn bore a new hand in less than a minute. The toll of the energy loss, for once, had no marked effect on him. He looked over her new arm making sure dimensions were even, and ran a pattern through the joints to see they bent in the right direction. Robyn remained still though it would have pained her and itched horribly, but she only bit her lip. When he was satisfied, he released it with an approving smile, but he also left a tiny scar inside her left forearm. Never again would he be compromised if he had to identify her body.

  Raising it for all to see, Robyn flexed the fingers.

  The crowd, despite themselves, applauded and cheered while others rushed to see the new hand. Lael gave Gabriel a stoic nod and pointed in Nolen’s direction.

  Gabriel looked to Mikelle who was grinning. “Your face is covered in blood.”

  “You bleed a lot.” She replied.

  “You look terrible.”

  “You’re wearing a coronet.”

  He frowned and pulled a gold band off his head before tossing it to her. He quickly split the side seam in his boots with a pattern, and kicked them off. He turned in Nolen’s direction and planned his attack. The Prince was pinned at the bottom of the far left staircase surrounded by dozens of Mages. With two patterns Gabriel leaned forward and fell to his hands. By the time he hit the ground, he was fully tiger, as large as a horse and much faster. Behind him Mikelle let out a cry of delight and several people screamed.

  He tore off the dais, and raced down the main stairs, leaping a dozen at a time and bounding around broken boulders as powerfully and gracefully as only a large cat could. Most of Nolen’s legion was gone, vanished as soon as they burned, but a few still lingered battling Mages. Gabriel’s vision was tainted with cat’s eyes, sharper but unable to discern blues and greens, but he focused in on the shield Nolen held. ‘He’s resorted to Air, he’s nervous,’ Gabriel thought as he pounced around the people. Some yelled and others shouted in surprise, but it did not stop his forward motion as he raced ahead.

  He changed his mind at the last moment, knowing he could not get through the shield without an Element, and instead slid to a stop after breaking through the Mages surrounding Nolen. They backed up as he burst through, but it took Nolen a moment to realize why.

  He looked unprincely with his hair fallen from its tie, and his clothes scuffed and torn. He bled into the ground with every step and had acquired a new cut across the top of his left hand. ‘Idiot. With that object the first thing you should do is heal yourself,’ Gabriel thought as he paced once before Nolen. Tabor looked confused and Kindle, held standing by her father, was pale and wide-eyed.

  Gabriel drew the fibers of the Mages’ clothing around him as he returned to human form. The look on Nolen’s face summed up a lifetime of evil deeds brought before his executioner. His green eyes were wide as his lips parted, and the Air shield flickered. But he regained control and pinched his face in a scowl.

  Tabor and Kindle looked amazed, and the little Princess even smiled, but her father looked anything but happy. Gabriel rolled up his sleeves and made sure to cut the shirt low enough to expose his bare neck.

  “I will give you one chance to hand over the Silex,” Gabriel yelled through the shield. The Mages around him backed up further.

  “I would never concede to a man like you,” Nolen shouted back. “You are a broken man and you answer to me! I demand you to cut our way through the crowd, Mage!”

  Gabriel spread his hands and gave a dip of his head. “Even broken things can be repaired, and my name is Gabriel.”

  Using Earth, he pulled a wall of rock between Nolen and his family, and pinned Tabor and Kindle to the righ
t against a fallen structure. He threw the Prince left with a block of stone that sent Nolen reeling and caused him to drop the Air shield. Gabriel’s Earth movements were solid, more like being in a punching fight than a dance. The old motions were as fresh in his mind as the day he learned them—but sweeter.

  Nolen scrambled to his feet and pulled Fire from the Silex around his neck, but Gabriel shot a bolt of water into the Prince’s chest pushing him into the ground. All the while Gabriel advanced, keeping a look of calm concentration on his face though his thoughts raged with the memories. ‘I killed for you. I destroyed and murdered for your sick pleasure.’

  Gabriel stamped his foot and wrapped Nolen in muddy earth, holding him to the ground and evaporated the water from it. Nolen struggled and got a hand and leg free. He drew on Spirit, but Gabriel pulled soil up again and held the Prince’s arm fast. He hotly debated breaking the wrist. He advanced, and Nolen pulled his other hand free of the soil, a Water pattern already between his fingers, and loosed it at Gabriel.

  Gabriel held a hand up and drew the water into a ball, returning it so fast the Prince did not know he had failed until he was dripping with ice water. The water loosened his bonds and he jumped free from the dirt. He stood back; his hands braced at the ready.

  “Will you not break the stars again?” Nolen sneered.

  “There is but one shining at the moment,” Gabriel replied and pointed to the sun. “Shall I bring it to you?” The calm look on his face gave Nolen pause.

  Nolen smirked and pulled Air from the Silex, but Gabriel snapped Fire to life and uncoiled a whip from his hand that elongated as he flung it. It bit Nolen around the right forearm. The Prince let out a scream as Gabriel pulled back and brought Nolen closer. “You haven’t learned how a Fire Mage avoids getting burned,” Gabriel said as the whip loosened, leaving three burning coils around Nolen’s arm.

  Before Nolen could heal himself, a streak of tan shot towards him and punched through his chest. He staggered back and gasped, his hands coming to the arrow protruding from his torso. No one but a certain vindictive Princess would use such a weapon, nor could anybody hit a target so far. Gabriel glanced behind him and raised a hand in question. He swore he heard Robyn laughing. Nolen jerked the shaft free with a great cry and doubled over, spilling blood onto the cobblestones.

  Before Gabriel could continue, a figure appeared in the corner of his right eye.

  He thought it to be another Mage of Jaden, but the man was not familiar. He wore his hair long and pulled back. His clothes were finely tailored; his coat striped white-and-black cut in military fashion split down the center. He had a serious set to his dark eyes, and they quickly surveyed the surrounding area and met Gabriel’s glare.

  “I’d think it kind if y’ would take your attention off Prince Nolen, ac set it elsewhere.”

  The accent was as unfamiliar as his face, but it still made Gabriel’s skin prickle. The man appeared from nowhere, and his association and unfamiliarity could make him only one man.

  “Ryker,” Gabriel hissed, turning his body to face the man.

  Ryker put a brow up and tilted his head forward to Nolen as a father would look disapprovingly at a child. “Did y’ let him escape?”

  “I do not know how he freed himself,” Nolen snapped as he finally began healing patterns. “I thought him dead.”

  “That pleads par more information. Y’ got the Silex, that’s what matters. Y’, I will deal with later,” Ryker said and pointed at Gabriel, taking two steps closer to Nolen.

  “You’ll deal with me now,” Gabriel interjected and threw together the most dangerous pattern he could think of. The kings-messenger pattern was named for killing half a legion, and it required Fire, Spirit, and Earth. As it slipped from Gabriel’s fingers, Ryker showed his surprise and threw up a blinding pattern in retaliation.

  The world turned white as an explosion deafened Gabriel, throwing him to his back and knocking the air from his lungs. He blinked dirt from his eyes while gasping and sat up quickly, expecting Ryker to come striding out of the dust. Whatever Ryker raised had diverted Gabriel’s pattern into the ground, but it did not completely fail.

  Ryker and Nolen lay not far off, already beginning to rise, but both were bloodied. Gabriel snapped a Lannon-seep and a declaration-pattern together, bent on murder, and flung them at the men as he ran forward. Ryker looked wild and angry for a moment, then pensive as he shot a shield up, ignoring the gashes in his thigh and shoulder. Rising to his feet, he pulled Nolen to his. Nolen’s scalp was torn open, spilling blood down his face, and he wavered on one leg.

  “Y’ made yourself an enemy, boy, ac y’ best bet I’ll be coming par y’.” His hair and eyes suddenly turned frighteningly white, and his hands moved with black threads.

  “Stand and fight me, coward!” Gabriel yelled and buckled the earth they stood on, but they vanished in a swell of black. He halted and gritted his teeth, waiting for a sneak attack that never came.

  The palace seemed to move forward now that the battle was over, bringing the Mages from their spots. He watched as spots of colors convened, each Element grouping together. ‘It is a shame we are so divided.’

  “What happened to Head Mage Casimir?”

  “It is not obvious?” Councilwoman Adelaide snapped as she strode up, her tone calm but angry. “He used the Ring of Rebirth to bring you back.”

  Gabriel sealed his lips tightly. ‘I suspected, but….’ “Why?”

  “Have the Secondhand explain it.”

  “That was a splendid kings-messenger,” Councilman Lewis beamed as he crossed the street. “I never thought I would see one. We should be thankful, Councilwoman Adelaide, that we have a Mage to stand against Arch Mage Ryker.” He extended his hand, and shook Gabriel’s warmly. “I am pleased to have you among us.”

  “Thank you,” Gabriel replied, half as a question, but faces he recognized appeared, and he couldn’t ask any more.

  His parents were the first to reach him, embracing him tightly. Aisling shed a few tears into his shoulder as Cordis slapped his back and shook his hand tightly. “Excellent defense, my boy; taught you everything you know. Ah, and they made me Councilman, so watch your step or we’ll have to duke it out. You can’t contend with the likes of my lofty position.”

  “Ignore your father, he was hit too many times in the head during the battle,” Aisling sighed.

  “Someone go retrieve Mage Tabor from the wall so we can go home,” Cordis yelled and marched off to do it himself when no one looked willing.

  Gabriel looked for Robyn, spotting her surrounded by women who smiled and laughed. They inspected her hand and fixed her clothes and hair. ‘Ladies in waiting so soon? You’re not even Queen yet.’ He smiled softly as he watched her, ignoring something Mikelle said as she walked up and began to straighten his hair. “I don’t need ladies in waiting!” he exclaimed and brushed her off in a motion that made several people laugh.

  “I brought your boots,” she growled. He grinned and turned his canvas shoes into stockings and slipped the fine leather boots on.

  Robyn finally met his eyes surrounded by her posse, and the smile she gave him made her eyes glitter. She bit the corner of her lip in a terribly adorable way. ‘Whatever are you thinking?’ He looked for Mikelle. “Maybe you should fix it,” he said and gestured with his eyes to the mop of curled black waves. She gave him a glare that whispered ‘told you so’ and quickly adjusted the locks and straightened his collar.

  “A higher collar. It’s all the rage in Rabier.”

  “I’m not a peacock.”

  From the top of the palace dais a procession of Mages carried Casimir on their shoulders, taking the steps slowly. Lael stood in the front in red, supporting the man’s head in symbolism of his job, and he looked solemnly forward. Mages trailed behind them, some weeping and others bewildered.

  “What is to happen now?” Gabriel asked Aisling.

  She smiled in a whimsical way as she watched the procession. “Head Mage Cas
imir left instruction. We will convene back in Kilkiny and pick a new Head Mage.” She looked up at him. “Are you prepared to battle Arch Mage Ryker again? You know the task will fall to you and you alone in the end.”

  “I know,” he answered and exhaled. “I will need more instruction.”

  “After what you just displayed, every Mage in Jaden will want to train with you.”

  He looked down at her. “But why me? Why was I born a Class Ten when there are a hundred Mages with a better bloodline?”

  “Firstly, you have an excellent bloodline, don’t insult us, and secondly, Casimir once said the world has a way of creating what it needs to survive. Anomalies are born all the time.”

  ‘No, they aren’t. They wouldn’t be called Anomalies.’ “They are as rare as Creators, and I happen to be both.” He hearkened back to the words of coincidence the strange man Arding had spoken. “People will blame me for his death.”

  “They may look on you unfavorably, but they will see you for your worth in time.”

  “I look forward to seeing it,” Councilwoman Adelaide stated in a challenging tone as she brushed past him to join the procession.

  The procession reached them, and the men bearing Casimir stopped to wait. It did not take long for Cordis and three other Mages to bring Mage Tabor. They strung between them half a dozen patterns to keep him from laying or escaping. A man led Kindle behind them by her hand, but she looked relieved.

  “I will not go quietly, and you can bleeding-well forget that. I was King of Anatoly, I will charge your memory to recall, and I will not go parading through the streets nor will I be ordered about. You and your cult can silence your tongues or have them bleeding-well torn out for all I care. I answer to no man. My wife is Queen and—” Tabor Novacula stopped short as he was presented to Gabriel. Gabriel, free of the vestiges of slavery and brokenness, stood much taller now without drooped shoulders and a lowered head. With his posture straight and confident, his head high and their eyes meeting, Tabor was silenced. Gabriel stood still, his arms folded over his chest, and his legs spread in a steady battle stance.