The Whispering Echoes (Smoke and Mirrors Book 3)

by Melissa Giorgio

  “I’m Irina. This is Vernen, and this,” I said, placing a hand on Jaegger’s head, “is Jaegger.”

  “Where did you find a dragon?” Claudette asked. “They’re supposed to be extinct.”

  “That is a very long story.” I let out a startled laugh as Claudette sat down cross-legged, staring at me expectantly. “What—you want me to tell you it, right now?”

  She propped her head up with her fist, waiting. “Why not?”

  “Because five minutes ago you were trying to kill us.” I felt a stab of guilt when her face fell, but I ignored it. It wasn’t like I’d said anything that wasn’t true! “Why don’t you tell us about yourself instead?” I asked. “Why are you tracking down magic users?”

  Claudette’s face darkened. “That’s an equally long story.”

  “So we both have complicated pasts,” I said. Jaegger shifted in my arms and I tried to get him to drink again. This time he opened his mouth and swallowed a few gulps before turning his head away and going back to sleep. I watched his chest rise up and down steadily for a long moment. “Did you really not know you carried an amplifier?”

  “I don’t even know what that—an amplifier—is,” Claudette said quietly. “That disc is something my brother and I found when we were kids. We had it for years before it glowed for the first time. We thought—we were told,” she corrected herself, “that it detected magic. And that’s what it seemed to do. Glows when we’re close to someone who can use magic.” She glanced at Vernen. “Like you. That’s how we knew you were in the trees and not with your friends. It wasn’t glowing bright enough until the two of you appeared.”

  I remembered how the disc had gone from blue to white-hot. Was it simply reacting to Jaegger and Vernen’s magic, or was it actually using its magic to harm them? Did it even hurt humans, or only dragons? “Amplifiers were used in the old wars,” I told her. “Hundreds of magicians sacrificed their lives to make one of those, and then other magicians used it to kill dragons.”

  Claudette looked sickened. “I had no idea. All the literature about the old wars was destroyed in my city to prevent something like that from ever happening again.”

  “It’s not common knowledge,” I admitted. Before Jaegger had told me about them, I’d never heard of them either.

  “Good. Magic corrupts a person enough on its own. But with something like that?” She shook her head. “No one needs to wield that. Look what it did to your dragon!”

  My stomach clenched at the memory of Jaegger’s body thrashing in pain. Back then, during the old wars, when the dragons had fallen… It must have been horrifying. How could the magicians stand it? Was that what the magic did to you? Corrupted you to the point where you could torture a beautiful creature like Jaegger and not feel a damn thing?

  “Magic is awful,” I said, thinking of all of the terrible things I’d seen Bantheir, Parnaby, and Aeonia do with their powers.

  A heavy sigh came from Claudette. She looked weary all of a sudden, her eyes dull and her skin a sickly color. “I know, Irina. Believe me, I know.”

  OVER CLAUDETTE’S SHOULDERS I SPOTTED Emile heading toward us. “He can’t come here, not with the amplifier—”

  Claudette started to rise, but her brother held up his hands. “It’s all right. I gave the disc to the girl. Quinn, I think her name was?”

  I exchanged glances with Vernen. “Should we trust her with an all-powerful magical object?”

  He shrugged. “What’s the worst she can do? Drop it into the stream and let it get washed way? She’ll be doing us a favor.”

  I nodded.

  “I wanted to make sure Claudette is behaving herself,” Emile explained as he joined us. He plopped down next to his sister, oblivious to the glare she was aiming his way. “She can get a little… hot-headed.”

  Claudette shoved Emile so hard he toppled over, nearly smacking his head against the ground.

  “See?” he said, picking himself up and wiping a bit of dirt from his cheek. “She just proved my point.”

  While Vernen and I laughed, Claudette turned bright red. Folding her arms across her chest, she huffed loudly and looked away from us.

  “Have you even introduced yourself?” Emile asked.

  Through gritted teeth Claudette said, “I did!”

  “Well, then, I’m Emile.” He placed a hand on his chest. Now that we weren’t all trying to kill each other, I could study him more carefully. His golden brown hair—a shade lighter than Claudette’s—was slightly wavy. It wasn’t long enough to be pulled back into a tail, but the tips of his hair did brush against the collar of his coat. His brown eyes were bright and friendly and I felt myself relaxing in his presence. “I’m Claudette’s older brother.”

  “Only by a year,” Claudette was quick to say. “He’ll pretend that he’s wiser, but it’s not true.”

  “My darling sister is a total charmer.” Emile slung his arm over Claudette’s shoulders. Surprisingly, she didn’t shove him away. “And our other companion is Michel.”

  I waited for Emile to say more about Michel, and when he didn’t, my brows rose questioningly.

  “Michel is… complicated,” Emile said. “He’s a childhood friend, from our city.”

  “And he enjoys killing magic users.” I tightened my hold on Jaegger.

  Emile paled. “No… We don’t… I mean…”

  “I’m not trying to be rude,” I said. “Out of the three of you, you seem the most sensible, Emile.” Claudette frowned at me. “Your sister and Michel were ready to cut us down to get to Jaegger and Vernen, but you stayed on your horse.”

  “I’ve seen enough bloodshed in my life,” Emile said slowly. “But sometimes we need to commit smaller evils to prevent bigger ones.”

  “By killing Vernen,” I said, indicating my friend with a tilt of my head. “Without knowing a thing about him.”

  Emile glanced at Vernen, his brown eyes sad. “It’s probably too late to get to know him, isn’t it?”

  Surprised, Vernen cleared his throat. “No.” His words were soft and hesitant. “It’s not.”

  When he was rewarded with a big smile from Emile, Vernen blushed. I watched the two of them, wondering if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, or if I was imagining it. Claudette, too, was staring at them, a frown on her face.

  I decided to follow Claudette’s example from before and properly introduce myself and the others to Emile. “I’m Irina. This is Vernen. And this,” I said, touching Jaegger’s body, which had finally begun to warm up, “is Jaegger.”

  “He’s amazing,” Emile said in awe. “Since I was a little boy, I’ve always wanted to see a dragon, and there he is, right in front of me… How long have you known him? Where are you from? Are there other dragons there, too?”

  I laughed at his barrage of questions. So far I hadn’t supplied any information about myself besides my name, but as long as I omitted certain, dangerous facts, telling them some things should be all right. “We’re from the city of Dusk. Have you ever heard of it?”

  The siblings shook their heads, blank looks on their faces. “Dusk, Dusk…” Emile reached into his pocket and pulled out a worn and weather-beaten map with a large tear through the middle. Claudette peered at the yellow parchment over his shoulder. “It’s not on here.”

  I remembered what Aeonia had told me, about how her family members seemed to avoid Dusk altogether. Parnaby’s doing. If you kept people with magic away from the city, there was less of a chance they would discover his manipulation spell. Although people like Bantheir and Aeonia’s cousin hadn’t even sensed the magic Parnaby was cloaking the city with, which meant Parnaby was even stronger than I’d realized. He managed to keep an entire city’s existence secret from the rest of the world. How does he do it? Does he have an amplifier? He must. There were more secrets to Dusk, secrets I’d have no chance of discovering if I didn’t retrieve the prison stone and return it to its rightful place. Even then, I had no idea if Parnaby would allow me and Vernen back i
nto the city or not. He blamed us for what’d happened and told me I was no longer welcome in the city.

  But that was a problem for another day. I needed to reclaim the stone first, which was no simple task.

  “Let me see the map,” I said. Having never left the city, the terrain was unfamiliar to me, but after a moment I located what I thought was the river that separated Way from the slums. “Dusk is right here. I think.”

  “You think?” Claudette repeated. “Don’t you know the layout of the world?”

  “Claudette,” Emile chided. “Until we left, we didn’t know what was out there, either.”

  She flushed, mumbling an apology.

  “No, it’s all right…” I couldn’t tear my eyes from the map. It was true. Shouldn’t I have known at least a little about the lands that surrounded Dusk? And yet, I had no idea, had never even paused to spare it a single thought. There was an ocean to the west of us, an ocean up until this moment I hadn’t even known existed. It even had an unfamiliar name: Earwyn. Alarm jolted down my spine. Was that more of Parnaby’s magic at work? Did he make it so once you were ensnarled by the city, you never wanted to leave?

  A rush of dizziness swept over me, and I had to close my eyes to steady myself.

  “The world is a lot bigger than I ever expected,” Claudette admitted softly. “As kids, we always talked about leaving our city for an adventure, but once we did it?” I opened my eyes to see her smiling sympathetically at me. “It was terrifying.”

  “How much of the world have you seen?” Vernen took the map from me, tracing the terrain with his fingers.

  “We’ve been traveling for four years, so a decent amount,” Emile replied. “We’ve never been this far west before. May I?” He reached for the map and Vernen handed it over. Shifting his position so he was in the middle, with the rest of us crowded around him, Emile pointed to a city to the east of us, on the coast of what was called the Adrianna Ocean. It was on the same continent as Dusk, but so far away that I imagined it would take months to travel there, even on horseback. “This is where we’re from.”

  “Ayres,” Vernen read. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Me neither,” I confessed.

  The siblings exchanged a long, sorrowful look before Claudette gave Emile a slight nod. “It’s gone, now,” he said.

  My heart began pounding. “Gone? What do you mean?”

  “Four years ago, Ayres fell into the ocean.” Claudette had yanked the dried grass from the ground and was trying in vain to braid it together until Emile reached over and stilled her hands. “Everyone died except for us three.”

  “How?” I asked, horrified. “How could a city fall into the ocean?”

  “How do you think?” Claudette flung the straw into the air, where the breeze caught it and sent it scattering across the plains. “By magic.”

  Vernen stood so abruptly the rest of us startled. “Vern—” I said, reaching for him. I wanted to stand as well, but I didn’t want to risk disturbing Jaegger.

  But maybe I should. My friend had gone pale and sweaty, and his eyes were darting from the siblings to the open plains, like he wanted nothing more than to escape. “Vernen,” I said again, this time more firmly.

  He walked away.

  “That was odd,” Claudette said, watching him go.

  “Claudette!” Emile snapped.

  “What? It was!”

  “We obviously upset him.” Turning to me, Emile apologized. “Should we go after him?”

  A thought occurred to me and I shook my head. “No. Not us. There’s someone else who needs to talk to him right now.”

  I WARILY REJOINED THE OTHERS, Jaegger in my arms. I didn’t dare leave the dragon alone, not when he wasn’t capable of protecting himself. But I also didn’t want to approach Quinn, fearing the amplifier would attack him again. Seeing me approach, Elyse and Aden came over. “How is he?” she asked.

  “Better, I think. He’s sleeping now.” Jaegger was wrapped up in the blanket, and I tilted the bundle so they could see him.

  “I thought dragons were immortal,” Aden said.

  “Not against amplifiers. That disc Claudette has? That’s what caused the dragons’ extinction. Near-extinction,” I amended with a glance in Jaegger’s direction.

  “If he’s really the last one, we have to do whatever we can to keep him alive. Here, let me hold him.” Elyse held out her arms and I reluctantly handed the dragon over. “You have something you want to ask Leonid, don’t you?” When I blinked in surprise, she said, “I saw Vernen walk off alone. He looked pretty upset.”

  Elyse was more observant than I’d given her credit for. She is one of Parnaby’s spies. Was, I corrected myself. Like the rest of us, she’d given that life up the moment Parnaby had revealed just how far he’d go to stay in control of everything.

  “Keep Jae away from the disc,” I told her.

  “Quinn still has it.” Aden followed me as I continued toward the others. “I’ll distract her.”

  “Thank you.” I wanted to reach out and squeeze his hand in thanks, but even after everything we’d been through, I couldn’t bring myself to be too familiar with Aden. We’d moved too fast when we’d first met, destroying any chance at developing anything romantic between us, but we could still be friends. And I could still thank him for helping us. He didn’t have to be here. None of them did, and yet they’d easily agreed to leave Dusk and help us track down Aeonia. “I saw you helping Leonid before, with Michel. I really appreciate that.”

  Aden blushed. “Just trying to show the captain that I’m not as bad as he thinks. Although I know why he thinks that…”

  I wanted to tell him to keep it up, that eventually he’d manage to change Leonid’s mind, but I would be lying to Aden. Due to personal circumstances, Leonid would never forgive Aden for almost forcing himself on me in the prison. To Leonid, it made Aden as evil as the men who’d killed Leonid’s mother.

  So instead I said nothing, parting from Aden to go to Leonid, while the blond went to talk with Quinn. Leonid was conferring with West in a low voice, the two men watching Michel carefully. Claudette and Emile had joined Michel, and the three were involved in what looked like a heated conversation. I tapped Leonid on the elbow, pulling him away from West.

  He’d washed the blood from his face, but some of it still stained the front of his coat. His nose was swollen and two dark circles were beginning to blossom around his eyes. “Tell me the truth,” he said as I stared at him. “How bad does it look?”

  “Does it hurt?” I reached out to touch his nose, pausing when he flinched away.

  “It does.” Leonid scowled, which in turn caused him to groan. “Bastard got me in the nose with his elbow.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Leonid blinked. “What are you apologizing for?”

  “The whole situation… I shouldn’t have challenged Claudette like that, prompting her to attack me, but I panicked, Leonid. They knew Vernen and Jaegger were there and I couldn’t let them…” I trailed off.

  His expression softened. “I don’t blame you for what happened. You wanted to protect them. You always protect the ones you care about. It’s one of the things I love most about you.”

  Love. I was so happy that, despite everything, we could still talk about loving one another. After all the lies, I wouldn’t have blamed Leonid for refusing to ever speak to me again, but here he was, still with me. I swallowed against the lump in my throat. As much as I wanted to continue this conversation about us, now wasn’t the time. “I need you to talk to Vernen.”

  Immediately his posture stiffened and he looked past me, cursing when he realized Vernen wasn’t nearby. “What happened?”

  I told him about our conversation with Claudette and Emile, and what they’d said happened to their city.

  “It’s gone? Completely?” Leonid’s brows rose.

  “Gone. By magic.”

  He cursed again. “No wonder Vern walked away. That’s horrible.”


  “He’s scared,” I said, “because now he has that power inside of him.”

  “Does he think he’ll be capable of doing something like that someday?” Leonid shook his head. “This is Vernen we’re talking about. He’s not evil. He would never…”

  “This is what you need to tell him. Please, I need you to talk to him. Remember what I said yesterday, Leonid. He’s scared of what you think of him, now that you know he can use magic.”

  Leonid scowled again, which made him touch his nose in pain. “I need to stop doing that. And Vern is insane if he thinks I’m going to let something like magic come between us.”

  “So go tell him!” I pointed in the direction Vernen had headed off, toward the stream once more.

  “Will you be all right?” Leonid’s lip twitched. “You won’t try to take on Claudette and Michel again, will you?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “As long as they keep their amplifier away from Jaegger, I’ll behave myself. Promise.”

  “Good.” Leonid started walking backward so he could keep conversing with me. “I’ll speak with Vern, and then we need to get ready to move. We’ve wasted enough time already. But when we’ve stopped for the night,” he continued, “I’m going to show you how to hold a knife. Properly, so you don’t stab yourself instead of your enemy.”

  My face turned red. Even Leonid had noticed? “Will you just go?”

  He laughed, gave me a wave, and turned to find our friend.

  I watched him go, the sound of his laughter echoing in my ears, and smiled to myself. We’re going to be all right.

  I REJOINED THE OTHERS, FIRST checking on Elyse. She shooed me away from where she sat on the ground with Jaegger sleeping in her lap. In the distance Aden and Quinn were playing a game involving tossing rocks at trees, sticks, and other rocks strewn across the ground. Quinn gave me a wave when she saw me watching. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she called, “I’ve got the disc in my pocket! Don’t worry; I’ll keep it away from Jae!”