Fallen Ashes: Fated & Forbidden

by T. F. Walsh

  Noah was a human with no more magic, so he must have run like a coward. That single thought should have brought her happiness. It didn’t. Not with the Blood Moon a week away and her still not sure about her soul mate. Would the Creators really go through with their threat if it meant the death of two worlds, plus countless others with various races?

  Heading toward Saber’s grave, she remembered the way he used to stare at her with so much passion, and she wanted to hold onto that memory for eternity. She shed her dragon with the ease of undressing. Naked, a chill in the air pinched at her flesh, and she sunk to her knees alongside him.

  He wasn’t moving.

  Would he ever wake again?

  The Blood Moon was so close, yet their marks weren’t responding to each other. The only good thing that had come out of this situation was that Noah had been stripped of his abilities and the prisoners were free. But if the price for it was Saber’s death, she’d never recover for the pain.

  Two days passed in slow motion. Saber didn’t wake, and the Blood Moon was due to rise in a few days. Overhead, the skies darkened as the sun set.

  A scream wedged itself in Fallen’s lungs, crushing her ribs.

  She threw herself beside Saber’s grave, her fingers clawing at the dirt, reaching for his hardened throat. Like the dozen other times she’d checked, there was no pulse, only flaky soil. Devastation consumed her, and she fell back on her heels, arms wrapping around her stomach.

  She’d killed him with her fire. He shouldn’t have hurled himself in the way. Whether it was to stop her from killing Noah or because he wanted to do it himself, either option was too high a price to pay.

  “Stop poking him. It won’t change anything.” The male’s voice startled her out of her thoughts.

  She lifted her gaze to Balc, Saber’s stepfather. Since she’d rescued him along with other prisoners, two days ago, he insisted on staying by his son’s side. Fallen made sure everyone else had returned to the woods and their homes.

  Now, a fringe of gray hair fluttered across Balc’s forehead, revealing a line of inked runes all Spell Forgers received. The mark was a symbol of power and showed loyalty to the queen. Not unlike the tattoo on Saber’s neck, declaring him a Guardian.

  Balc’s back slightly hunched. He was a small, roundish drae, his face scored with dozens of age lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth.

  Standing above Saber’s body, Balc patted his tunic, which was filthy and wrinkled. His deep-set eyes, beneath thick white eyebrows, dipped to Saber. Balc appeared fragile as if a stiff breeze would push him over. After being drained by Noah, the poor drae was holding up well.

  Fallen had told him everything about herself and Saber: how they met, the shared Creators’ dream, about their bond, and even their time in his crypt. For some reason, her mouth refused to shut up because she even delved into how Noah had killed her mother, how she’d been hiding her dazmeu side, and how she’d never entered the kingdom grounds. Something about his soft features made her want to open up, and for a change, it felt good to release the secrets.

  “Balc, you made Saber.” She paused, her throat choking, because the world was coming to an end, and she couldn’t pull herself away from Saber’s side. “Can’t you do something?”

  Balc knelt across from her, his bones cracking when he reached a hand over Saber’s grave. A touch warm, his skin appeared dry, covering gnarled fingers.

  “The foundation of all magic in Tapestry comes from a dazmeu’s fire given to us by the Creators, so there’s nothing I can do for him. We can only hope time and the Creators are kind.”

  Her future was annihilated with a few words, and emptiness swirled through her mind. Hearing the end of their chances voiced out loud became too much, even if she had been telling herself the same thing for the past two days. Tears welled in her eyes and she didn’t care that Balc watched. She broke down, the sobs punching through her muscles, her gut, to her very soul. Rawness opened the wound. She was hollow, and her world was crumbling away.

  Balc tightened his hold of her hand, and her breathing calmed before she wiped her bleary eyes.

  The mark on her inner wrist remained the same… always the same. It stared at her as if mocking, a reminder of the failure. And it stung like a viper’s bite because the heartache of never being with Saber was unbearable.

  “When I was forced to craft Saber,” Balc said while withdrawing his hand, “I put the message into his body and prayed to the Creators that they give him a loving spirit, not make him a killing machine. That he’d be a pure soul. The moment he awakened, and resembled a normal looking drae, I figured they’d listened to me. Despite looking like an adult, he acted like a lost child, unsure who he was. Ashes don’t behave that way. So I took him into my home in the woods. After all, I couldn’t turn away one of the Creators’ children. I truly believed the Creators had removed his message to kill, which was why I enrolled him in the queen’s army. To give him a purpose in life. I’d been wrong. Guardians can only work near the queen after twenty-five years of service in the army. And the very day Saber got transferred into the castle, that night, his Ash side activated.”

  “But you’re saying Saber does have a soul?”

  He nodded. “I thought so. I still do. The Creators are mysterious and truly love everyone. I wouldn’t put it past them.”

  Her gaze settled on the dragon mark, and her mind whirred like a spinning top. What were the Creators’ true intentions? Had they wanted her and Saber to work together to end Noah’s atrocities… and then what? What about her feelings for Saber? He’d declared his love for her, a memory that cut at her heart each time she stared at his grave.

  “How am I supposed to know who my life partner really is?” And she’d been so sure it was Saber. The idea of loving another made her sicken. Would she condemn the whole world because of her longing?

  Balc rubbed a hand across his mouth. “The Creators have truly made it difficult for you. Legends say that dazmeuns will only mate with other true dazmeuns, and it is your inner dragon that will make the connection with your mate.”

  Fallen sighed. “Except, I’m the last dazmeu in Tapestry.” The idea locked her in place, not a muscle moving, not even the panic that had jammed in her chest stirred.

  Balc nodded and lowered his gaze.

  “It makes no sense.” Her voiced cracked. “Why would the Creators select me then?”

  He shrugged. “It is not up to us to understand their decisions, but there must be something else they have planned for you.”

  Fallen’s thoughts drifted to the crypt where magic was strongest, and her tattoo had tingled. What if the Creators’ clue only revealed itself when they were on pure, magical ground? Maybe they needed to be at the heart of the magic for her inner dragon to claim Saber as her partner? Sure, it was far fetched as he was still an Ash, but considering she had run out of options and refused to believe she couldn’t be with Saber, she’d follow that tiny possibility. And maybe enchanted soil was exactly what Saber needed to heal because she would rather the world ended before she let him die.

  She never doubted that she and Saber were meant to be together. Hopefully, the Creators could see too.

  She glanced up at Balc and smiled. “Let’s dig Saber up. We’re taking a trip.”

  22

  Fallen’s outstretched wings cut through the darkening sky. Her front claws held tight onto one of Noah’s cages, containing Balc and an unconscious Saber.

  The sun was dipping toward the horizon, darkening the skies. Not once had it occurred to her that perhaps the dragon marks from the Creators could activate on pure magic soil. Instead of watching over Saber for the last two days, she should have realized that might be the case. Now she was about to do the one thing she’d avoided her entire life.

  “Here,” Balc called out. “Go down here.”

  She dipped into the Baciu forest several feet before they hit the Blinding Mist. Now a fully transformed dazmeu, she’d easily sharpen he
r teeth on the furywings, but time was running out.

  Trees and branches pinched and snagged on her wings. She slowed downward without hesitation and landed with a thud. She set the cage on the ground and withdrew her dragon because traveling in the woods would be close to impossible in her larger form.

  Balc crawled out of the cage and handed Fallen her clothes. She slipped them on fast. Together, they lifted Saber’s lifeless form upright. While most of his body remained a statue, the joints of his arms, along with his neck, remained flexible, which gave her hope that maybe they weren’t too late to save him. She and Balc wrapped Saber’s arms over their shoulders, and despite the weight of his body, she struggled forward as his feet dragged behind him.

  So many emotions swirled around in her head. On the surface, she kept moving, desperate to save Saber and prove her theory was right about the Creators, but deep inside, she drowned in anxiety. Fear gathered in the corners of her mind, shouting thoughts of failure. She took deep breaths and kept putting one foot in front of the other, ignoring her broken insides. Fallen had to believe it wasn’t too late for Saber, for them, for the world. This was the right decision. She prayed when he was in pure soil, he would heal completely. Once they would enter the realm, their marks would react, her dragon would call to Saber, and everything would be okay.

  Saber’s weight on her shoulders helped her focus on the mission, not the tiredness tearing through her limbs, not the pins and needles crawling up her spine. She’d succeed. She had to.

  When the ground around them swayed, she froze, bringing their steady pace to a dead halt.

  She cut a glance at Balc. “Why would you create the crawlers?”

  Balc whispered words Fallen didn’t understand, and a transparent wave of electricity fanned outward. A zap of faint energy buzzed through her, then it was gone. Along with the movement in the soil.

  “Hurry.” Balc quickened his steps.

  “What did you just do?” Saber’s arm had slipped, and she shifted it over her shoulders and pushed ahead, keeping up with Balc.

  “A few enchanted words to freeze the crawlers.”

  “Would have been good to know that a few days ago.” Her feet quickened. They fell into a rhythm of footfalls and heavy breathing. Each step took them closer to saving Saber and protecting the worlds. Silence was necessary for concentration of the task at hand.

  She’d contemplated her feelings for Saber, how everything happened at whirlwind speed, but one irrevocable truth was inescapable. She loved Saber. In their short time together, she’d witnessed the real guy inside, his pain, and how much he cared for his stepfather. Those were not the feelings of an Ash. In his presence, her mind and body reacted, and it was beyond the physical. They had so much in common, more than she’d first thought. Every inch of her craved to discover more. Besides, how could she possibly fall for someone this fast if there wasn’t a touch of magic in their hearts drawing them together? They were life mates. She believed it deep in her soul, and now she just needed to see if the Creators deemed it to be so.

  Saber kept sluggishly slipping down her shoulders. She propped his arm back up. Her feet sank in the mud, and the darkness taking over the forest deepened by the second.

  Her foot caught on a root, and she stumbled, bumping into a tree. Saber’s body drooped away again. She flinched back and caught his arm.

  “We’re almost there.”

  She held onto Saber and plodded one step after another trying to keep up with Balc.

  Tree branches became sparser, the sky clearer. Soon, it revealed a brilliant canvas streaked with dull orange from the vanishing sun. In a few days time, the Blood Moon would arrive… No time to waste. She had to discover if Saber and her were soul mates.

  “How close?” Her words raced, and her pulse was already in a sprint. Perspiration coated her body, dripping down the side her face, gluing hair to the back of her neck. Didn’t matter that a chill encased the forest, her trepidation coaxed her to sweat insanely.

  “We’re here.”

  She scanned the area resembling a mud pit with skeletal trees. “You sure?”

  He drew them toward two trunks that joined about ten feet high into an arched passageway. Beyond lay the same, dreary forest. Was that really the entrance to the all mighty realm? She’d never been there because she lived her life outside the Kingdom—in Tapestry where the non-drae beings lived. Her knowledge came from others and books, yet she’d expected something more glorious. At least a location with less mud.

  Balc took the lead and placed a palm on a tree. He mumbled something under his breath. He was a Spell Forger, one of the powerful ones from the kingdom, and that simple knowledge had her in awe of his abilities. She’d heard stories of his kind all her life but imagined them as spiritual beings, glowing or radiating a special magic. Balc was a normal drae with only the line of runes across his brow that made him stand out. Otherwise, she’d have easily mistaken him for an elderly human man on the streets.

  Sparks of white energy sizzled across the entry.

  Overhead, the last threads of sunlight vanished. Fallen chewed on her inner cheek, then glanced at Saber whose head slumped forward. Her chest tightened, and desperation closed in around her heart. The kind that made her want to scream for help, to run in circles, to do something other than pretend to be calm in front of Balc. Everything about Saber was a reminder of what she was about to lose. Even his musky scent filled her mind. His smile, the one he’d wear after kissing her, was contagious. That was gone now. He was nothing more than a mud statue, doing what his body was built to do. She couldn’t let herself think that way. “We’re almost there. Hang on,” she whispered the desperate words.

  An electric pop sounded, and her attention whipped to the entrance. Between the two arched trees lay another set of woods. Lush with greenery, the forest was alive, birds chirped from within. The only similarity was that night cloaked both places. This was their salvation.

  Balc pushed onward, drawing Saber and her nearer.

  The moment she stepped over the threshold, a magnetic energy snapped around her, and the hairs on her body shifted. Energy prickled her flesh, reminding her of that perfect moment when her feet had left the ground, and she’d taken flight. A magical time—a world of possibilities within reach. For some reason, the realm seemed right, like home. Which was strange. She’d never been to this location. Still, tingles of excitement whirred in her stomach and strengthened her resolve.

  A glance back and the doorway had closed. Two massive beeches loomed, touching at the tops. Flowery vines had grown around the trunks, along with tiny branches that were curled into piglet’s tails amid the rainbow of petals.

  “Hurry.” Balc pulled her and Saber along a worn path flanked by tall grasses amid enormous tree trunks.

  Leaves as large as her hands hung from branches. A heavy scent of jasmine floated on the air, bathing her senses.

  She’d just walked into a fantasy world, yet she’d been told by her mother to avoid this place at all costs. It came with death. And despite the realm’s beauty, her heart hit her chest so hard she was convinced it would break through her rib cage. There was a reason her mother had run away from the kingdom while pregnant with Fallen. Because if the queen located Fallen and discovered she was a dazmeu, she’d be kept a slave for her blood.

  Soon, Balc and Fallen emerged from the woods and Fallen stepped into a meadow covered in a great expanse of flowers and grass. Farther to her left, a brook gurgled over a bed of stones beneath a line of weeping willows.

  In the distance sat a brilliant tree the size of a skyscraper high on a hill. Lights and sparkles glowed from within its branches as if a city of fairies called the place home. Beyond lay something else. Guard towers rose out of the darkness, reaching for the night sky. The grand tree stood in front of the castle like a guardian, its limbs protecting the occupants. Was that the queen’s home?

  “Wow.”

  “I need a moment to rest.” Balc set Saber down, an
d Fallen lowered him onto his back.

  Against the horizon, the waxing moon slipped out from behind a cloud, casting the land in a silvery hue. Coldness hit her to the core. She lifted her hand and stared at her wrist, imploring her mark or inner dragon to react. They hadn’t, and her stomach sank. Did they have to be in the castle? Surely, that should make no difference.

  Her legs buckled, and she fell to her knees alongside Saber. She could have sworn that once they were in the realm, the natural magic of all drae would spark things to life.

  “I was wrong. I don’t know what I was supposed to do.” Her words choked as she lifted her chin to the sky. “Creators, I’m sorry I’m going to let you down, let everyone down.” She sniffled as the wave of emotions and salty tears ripped through her defenses. For years, she’d lived outside the kingdom, following her mother’s rules, never harming a soul because she believed in the Creators. Now, at a time when she needed them most, they’d turned their backs on her.

  She turned to Balc, who hunched, his breathing ragged, and his round face ashen. “Is there anything you can do to help? Make Saber remember he belongs in this world. Please, bring him back.”

  Balc’s eyes held the same gentle concern her mother used to have when she was terrified but refused to show it to Fallen. He pushed up the sleeves of his tunic and lay his hands on Saber’s chest, then shut his eyes. His brow creased in a show of deep concentration.

  Fallen’s body throbbed in fear. Her hands grabbed a handful of grass, twisting, tearing them, until her nails bit into the flesh of her palms. Saber, wake up.

  She reached for his wrist. His dragon mark hadn’t changed. Fallen traced the slight indent with a finger, the whole time her heart wouldn’t stop racing. Tears ran down her cheeks. She bit down on her lip to keep from breaking down.

  What if… she pressed her mark to his?