by Devri Walls
“You look so different,” she marveled.
“I had been told I was crazy for so long,” he said, squeezing her shoulders. “You made me believe in myself again.”
Kiora put her hands over his. “If it weren’t for you telling me how you escaped the Shadow, we would all be dead.”
Niall looked so pleased that she thought the buttons were going to pop right off his shirtfront. Then, as if he couldn’t resist the urge for a moment longer, he picked her up again and squeezed until she felt her eyes bulge.
Malena fluttered closer, encouraged by Kiora’s mild look of panic. “Niall, I believe they are waiting for you.”
Niall neatly set her down, smoothing Kiora’s shirt around her shoulders. Kiora bit back a giggle.
He glanced toward one of the training room doors, where Einar stood staring at him—clearly irritated. Niall sheepishly shoved his hands in his pockets with a boyish grin. Kiora half expected him to shuffle away with his head bowed, as he had the first time she had seen him. Instead, he spread his wings—one of the largest and most magnificent set she had seen—and flew away with his feet just inches above the ground. He had found his wings again, and it was a beautiful sight.
***
KIORA TRUDGED UP TO her room, grateful for a comfortable bed in a place where she didn’t need to worry, for just a moment, about keeping everyone alive. She lay down, barely able to keep her eyes open long enough to pull her blanket up. The nightmares returned immediately.
She watched Alcander leaning against the wall in the tunnel—blood spread across his middle and his thread silenced. She stood by helplessly as Jasmine and her followers destroyed every rebel, laughing in delight at their pain.
These two scenes played over and over.
When the nightmares finally moved on, they replayed reality, showing her all the losses that had already happened. She witnessed the woman and children drowning again, her heart aching as she felt every thread vanish. She stood there, unable to stop Lomay from giving her his magic. It was helplessness that plagued her tonight. Then she was in the center of the city, standing in front of the Winged man who had been so angry upon learning his wife had been lost. She did nothing as the barrier overhead changed to red and swallowed him up.
Kiora sat up, gasping for air. She was covered in sweat, her hair matted to the side of her face. She huffed and dropped her head into her hands. No matter the level of exhaustion, there was never a reprieve from the nightmares, never an opportunity to wake with a smile.
She thought about lying back down, but was unwilling to risk it. She climbed out of bed and headed to the library to work on the problem at hand—getting them out of this city alive. Walking down the hall on the main floor, she could feel Emane’s thread outside the front door. She opened it and poked her head out. Emane was sitting on one of the front steps, leaning back on his palms and looking up.
“Why are you awake?” Kiora asked.
Emane glanced back at her and smiled. “Come here,” he said, patting the step next to him. “You have got to see this. Did the noise wake you?”
“What noise?” Kiora sat.
Two balls of flame impacted the barrier over the city with a boom. Kiora jumped. The balls of fire and magic rippled across the barrier and bathed the city in an orange-red glow. The colors undulated through the water like oil across the surface—it was stunning. Here and there, breaks in the fire opened up to the contrasting blue behind it.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.
“It really is.”
Four more fireballs connected, rocking the city so severely that Kiora and Emane were knocked into each other.
“It’s like they actually think they are going to be able to get through,” Emane said with a shake of his head as he righted himself.
“They do.” Kiora looked at the intensified colors above them. “Jasmine didn’t tell them it wouldn’t work.” She stilled.
“What?”
“They think it’s going to work,” she said. “That’s it!” She grabbed him by the shoulders, nearly shaking him with excitement. “We are going to make them think it worked.”
Emane’s eyes searched her face. “Why?”
“To get them into the city.”
“To get them in the . . . Kiora!” he shouted after her as she sprinted up the steps and toward the library. “Kiora, stop!”
Making herself slow to a walk, she waited for Emane to catch up.
“Why are we letting them in?” he asked with forced calm.
“Because once the enemy is in here, the barrier will do the work for us. We could wipe out the whole army in a matter of moments.”
“Remove the barrier? How are you going to do that?”
“I’m not sure yet. When we were at Lomay’s, I was reading in the Book of Creators. On the last page, a paragraph starts that says, ‘to remove a barrier.’ The rest of the paragraph was on the page Belen tore out.” She glanced over at him. “I couldn’t figure out why someone would want to remove a barrier, but now I know!” She pushed open the doors to the library.
“Kiora, if we take down the barriers, we will be completely vulnerable,” Emane said. “There has to be another way.”
“I . . . I don’t know,” she said as she started pulling books from shelves and spreading them out on the table. “But this might work, and until we think of something else, I’m going to pursue it.”
“And then what?” Emane demanded. “After we leave the only safe place we know, where will we go?”
Kiora paused and looked up from her books. “I don’t know yet, Emane. I need some time, and I need to do some research. But I have to minimize the risks. I can’t keep watching people die.”
“Kiora,” Emane said gently. He put his hand over hers and looked into her eyes. The emotion behind his gaze was intense, and Kiora couldn’t look away. “It’s a war. People are going to die.”
Kiora wanted to shout at him, No! People are not going to die. I won’t let them. But it had proven to be out of her control. She pulled her hand from his and dropped into a chair, sighing. “That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do everything in my power to save as many as I can.”
***
FOR TWO DAYS, KIORA barely left the library. Her head was throbbing from lack of sleep and her eyes felt like she had rolled them in sand. She pulled over another book from the pile that covered the table. She had taken out every book on spell work she could find, hoping to find the one she needed. There were many variations on barriers, but not one book mentioned how to remove them once they had been placed.
Slamming one shut, she growled, “If Belen hadn’t decided to tear out the . . .” She trailed off, jolting up straight, her heart racing.
She had seen that page, hadn’t she—during a vision. Belen had been working on the talisman and Jasmine opened the book. Nervous excitement rolled through her. If she had seen it once, she could see it again. She leaned back in her chair, taking deep breaths, clearing her mind of everything except what she wanted to see.
Kiora stood in Belen’s shop. He was bent over the talisman, the Book of Creators on the back of the table, closed—just as it had been the first time. The door opened and Jasmine stepped in, pushing back the hood on her red silk cloak.
“Hello, Belen. Are you finished yet?”
“Almost, my lady. The magic is not yet finished.”
The vision continued to play out, just as it had the first time. Jasmine grabbed the talisman, then pulled the Book of Creators forward, flipping it open to the last page.
Kiora moved up and leaned over Jasmine’s shoulder. To her surprise, the page was darkened—she could see nothing but black. Confused, she looked at Jasmine’s eyes, which were moving back and forth across the page, reading words Kiora couldn’t see.
Kiora looked back to the page, using magic in an attempt to see what lay beneath the black. Although it lightened, allowing her to see letters, they swam across the page, and no amount of magic would make th
em settle into their proper positions. She couldn’t make out anything.
Kiora pulled herself out of the vision, scowling. Someone had laid spell work to conceal the page. Determined, she called the vision again and again, and each attempt ended the same way—a jumbled mess of letters rolling around the page.
She needed more power and could think of only one way to get it. The problem was, despite the Dragon Queen’s implications that she should be able to, Kiora still had no idea how to tap into nature.
She narrowed her eyes in determination and slammed both hands on the table, pushing herself up. She stalked around the table and lay on the floor. “Please,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “I can’t see another way. I need this spell.”
She breathed in and out, focusing first on the sound of her breathing, letting everything else fall away. Cautiously she probed, searching for the magic she knew surrounded them, trying to feel it—become aware of it.
And in a moment, where there had been nothing, she felt a power oscillating around her. It felt hot, and strangely foreign. She hadn’t expected that. Her nerves threatened to rear up, and she returned to calming breaths. The power she was feeling surrounded her and she called the vision, giving into it in a way she hadn’t since Meros, in the cave of Arian. The room faded away and she was swallowed by the vision. She remembered now how much she hated the feeling of being lost in a vision. She ached for control.
Back in Belen’s workshop, she continued to feel the magic around her. She willed it to her, mentally pleading for its assistance. The magic leaped toward her, jolting through her like a red-hot poker.
Kiora jerked away from the pain, crying out. The magic stopped, retreated, and began to fade. She clenched her fists, trying to keep the pain and her frustration from interfering. Taking a deep breath, she shook her hands to relax them and closed her eyes. The jolt came faster this time and she didn’t pull away. The first tendril of magic entered near her heart, burning and stretching.
Once the magic was inside, Kiora could feel everything. Copious amounts of magic she had no idea were there surrounded her, opening up a world of power she never knew existed. The magic continued to jab at her—her stomach, knees, arms. And each time it entered, it felt like it was prying her apart, widening veins and stretching skin.
In the vision, Kiora made her way across Belen’s workshop, struggling not to scream. The magic painfully and slowly began a steady loop through her body, flowing up through her head and down to her toes. It both entered and exited through her heart, joining her with nature. The pain increased as more magic pushed in, widening the pathways further. She thought her skin would split.
She looked again over Jasmine’s shoulder, and using the magic provided, forced her way through Belen’s spell. The words on the page stopped swimming and settled into their proper positions. But using nature’s magic increased the speed of the loop flowing through her body. The pressure in her head was almost unbearable, and starbursts bloomed behind her eyes. Kiora read as fast as she could, memorizing the strange words to the incantation.
“Kiora.”
Alcander’s thoughts intruded on her vision and she jerked. The nature magic faded.
Kiora groaned and opened her eyes.
Alcander was leaning over her, his eyes wide and worried. “Kiora, are you all right?”
She pushed up. It felt like she had been fighting with a Dragon—and lost. Whatever change she had been through had clearly not prepared her body for the power the Dragon Queen was referring to. She felt something dripping down her face and rubbed her wrist under her nose. It came away smeared with blood. She frowned. “What are you doing?”
“I heard you moaning. I came in to find you lying on the floor, convulsing,” he said, his tone a mix of anxiety at the situation and annoyance at her question. “I tried to wake you, but couldn’t.” His lips pressed into a thin line. “Blood started pouring out of your nose, and then,” he pointed to her head, “your hair changed colors.”
“It did?” Kiora pulled the side of her hair forward to look at it. The white streak that had once been the size of her pinky was now the width of four fingers.
Alcander stood and reached out his hand, pulling her up. The room swam, her legs shook, and her head felt like she had taken a hammer to it. She groaned and staggered forward, falling against him.
“Kiora, what is going on?” Alcander put her arm over his shoulder and helped her to a chair.
She gingerly sat. “My body changed in Meros,” she said. “To accommodate more magic. The Dragon Queen said that because of that change, I was prepared to tap into nature the way the Creators did.”
“She what?” Alcander burst out. “That’s impossible. It’s—”
“I did it.”
Alcander’s mouth was still open from whatever he was about to say. He closed it slowly, frowning. “What?”
“I did it. But I don’t think I’m ready for it. Alcander, there was so much. It was forcing its way through me, and there was always more pushing behind. It—it hurt. And,” she picked up her hair, “the first streak was from the change. This,” she shook the whitened strands, “this was from a few minutes of using nature.”
Alcander shook his head. “Kiora, your body can’t handle it. None of ours can.”
“Obviously I can. It’s just . . . horrible.”
“Obviously you can’t! You didn’t see yourself. I was worried your heart would stop.” He took a deep breath, standing straighter as he pulled his Tavean calm around him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to try this so I could as least be here to watch?”
“I wasn’t planning on it. I called a vision, but Belen had blocked what I was looking for. I needed more magic to push through it.”
Alcander’s jaw dropped, and Kiora saw the calm he had so carefully placed crumble. “You saw something that had been magically blocked?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s . . . that’s . . .”
“Impossible,” she finished. “I know. But I did it.”
Alcander pulled out the chair next to her. “What did you see?”
***
KIORA CALLED DRUSTAN AND Emane to join them in the library.
“I have a plan,” Kiora said. “It’s long and involved, and a little bit crazy, but it just might work.” She looked at each of them in turn. “We are going to make the enemy believe that their attacks worked. That the fireballs they have been sending down have finally broken through and that the lake is pouring into the city.” They frowned in confusion.
“They are going to think that our only choice will be to leave the safety of the city,” she continued quickly. “When we try to escape, they will be waiting for us.”
“Why are we trying to escape?” Drustan asked.
“Because we need them to believe it,” Kiora said. “When we see that our escape is blocked, we’re going to run straight back into the city. I am going to remove the barriers so they can follow us. We’re going to open every entrance, one by one, and we’re going to make sure that every single creature out there ends up in here.”
There was silence all around.
“Am I . . . missing something?” Emane finally asked, leaning forward over the table. “You talk as if we should be excited, but you still haven’t explained why this is a good idea.”
“The only thing you see is me taking down the barriers,” Kiora said, her eyes shining. “You’re not taking into account that I can put them back up whenever and wherever I like.”
Understanding dawned on their faces.
She summoned a map of the city and rolled it out on the table. She bowed her head over it, studying the layout. “We can’t open them all at once,” Kiora said, tracing her fingers over the different paths and trying to imagine the upcoming battle. “That would be suspicious. It must look like we’re desperately searching for a way out—a way that isn’t as guarded. We will try exit after exit—the timing will have to be perfect. This isn’t a battle—
this is a trap. I don’t want to lose anyone.
“Now, we have ten entrances,” Kiora continued. “I need everyone divided into groups, with adequate Shifter protection for each one. Except the Domats—the Domats need to be in this tunnel with the foxes.” She tapped at the map. “The spell concealing the Lights is tied to Jasmine’s life. When she dies, the Lights should be traceable, and we are going to need each and every Domat to help find them.” She straightened, looking at each of their faces, trying to gauge their support. “We need to time this perfectly, and our acting will have to be incredibly convincing.”
“Our . . . acting?” Alcander asked.
“The enemy must believe we are fleeing for our lives. They cannot doubt that.”
“If this works, and we manage to take out the army surrounding us, then what?” Emane asked.
“Then we return to the camp on Lake Everleen.”
“How are we getting clear back there?” Alcander asked. “Most can’t bubble for that long, and I don’t think even you can hold a bubble for all of us.”
“That won’t be a problem because we aren’t going to bubble.”
Alcander and Emane looked at her like she was crazy.
Drustan finally cleared his throat. “Why?” he asked, tilting his head to the side as if perhaps he had misheard.
“We will have eliminated all the threats within range—we’ll be safe while we travel. And I want Jasmine to know exactly where we are. She has shown that she has no interest in simply destroying me. She has stood by and watched far too many times, missed opportunities to end it all.” Kiora shook her head. “No, she wants to eliminate as many as she can. Killing me too early will interfere with what she has planned. She will call in reinforcements and will wait to show herself until there’s nothing left.” Kiora paused, looking away. She didn’t like this part of the plan, but it was the only way she could see to get Jasmine out of hiding and close enough to unite the two talismans. “She is going to allow me to destroy her followers.”
