“Bravo,” I murmured with a shake of my head. Cynnia acknowledged my comment with a slight nod before turning back to her queen sister.
“Silence!” Aurora shouted in a shaky voice. I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or her own sister. Her lovely face was flushed and her hands were balled into fists in her lap. “You are a traitor to the crown.”
“I’m not a traitor because I want something other than the endless war with the humans and the nightwalkers that you have planned. It’s not treason to want peace,” Cynnia threw back at her.
“You cannot live in peace with the humans!” Aurora screamed, lurching forward to her feet. “They are destroying the earth and I am her protector. I have returned, and I will now return to the task of cleansing the earth of all human life so the Great Mother can once again flourish.”
“You’re wrong,” Cynnia said, confidence overflowing in those two words. “The earth has picked a new mistress to protect her. Your reign is over.”
“You conniving little witch! You will never succeed me as queen of the naturi!” Aurora roared.
“Yes, I will,” Cynnia calmly said, then turned to look directly at me. “After the protector of the earth is through with you.” It was only then that I realized she was talking about me—the new protector of the earth.
“Nyx, if you want to save Cynnia, I would grab her now,” was the only warning that I was willing to give. Cynnia might have used me, but for now it appeared that we had a common goal. For that reason, I was willing to keep her alive, but my entire focus was on destroying Aurora.
Twenty-Nine
For the first time, Aurora met my gaze. In that moment, I saw all the hatred that she had harbored for me and my race boiled down into a single look. In the blink of an eye, I knew that she blamed me for the naturi’s entrapment, their failure to escape for five long centuries, and now the loss of her sisters and her consort. I was the root cause of all her problems—the Fire Starter.
But the expression lasted for less than a second before her face was wiped clean of all emotion. It didn’t matter. I had seen it, and it brought a broad grin to my face. I wanted her to hate me. I wanted her to hate me with the same mindless virulence that I hated her kind.
“She’s the new protector of the earth? The Fire Starter? A nightwalker?” Aurora demanded, waving her hand toward me. “That’s impossible. Nightwalkers have no tie to the earth.”
“And yet she can control fire,” Cynnia quickly countered.
“That is all she can control!” Aurora snapped, her temper flaring briefly before she tamed it. Watching her, I was beginning to see similarities between her and her younger brother Nerian. Both had a madness about them, a burning need for control of everything—situations and people.
“I know she can do more,” Cynnia replied, growing calmer for each notch that her sister grew more irrational and desperate. “She can hear the earth speaking. How long has it been since the Great Mother spoke with you?”
What is she talking about, Mira? demanded Jabari mentally in a too sweet voice that had me cringing inwardly. A part of me didn’t want to survive what was coming simply so I wouldn’t have to answer the questions swirling around the Ancient’s brain.
Are we three all who are left alive? I inquired, obviously avoiding his question.
No, there are several more, but we are surrounded and pinned down. We cannot hope to take them on directly.
I had known that much even before Jabari sent those few words skidding through my brain. We couldn’t take them on directly. Kneeling as I was, I closed my eyes and reached down with my right hand to run my fingers through the cold grass. Beneath my hand I could feel the deep pulse of the earth beating up through the ground and into the surrounding air. The spell Rowe used to open the doors had not used all the energy in the area, as at past sacrifice locations. In fact, it felt as if the power was growing stronger the longer than I sat there. It once again pressed against my skin and demanded that I notice it, like a cat wanting affection.
Frowning, I opened my eyes again to find Aurora watching me closely. She realized now that something was off, and I smiled back at her. I wished I had more time to experiment with this new power, but there simply wouldn’t be time to become an earth magic expert. Fire Starter was going to have to do.
“Can you hear her?” I asked, cocking my head to the side as if listening to a whispering voice. “She is pissed. And I mean royally pissed.”
“Of course she’s angry!” Aurora screamed, taking a step toward me for the first time. The guards followed beside her, while the one with the sword pressed to the back of my head shifted the edge of his weapon so it dug into the back of my neck. We were all balanced on a knife, and I was about to throw us off.
“She’s no longer looking for a great protector, Aurora,” I murmured, pressing my right hand flat against the earth. I closed my eyes at the same time I pressed my left hand against my chest, over the wound the Cynnia had made just the other night, essentially closing the flow through my body, forcing the energy to once again well up within me. “She’s looking for an executioner. A weapon. And that is what I do best.”
Get everyone out of here! was the only warning I had time to send to both Danaus and Jabari.
Rolling onto my side, out of the reach of the naturi that had been guarding me, I immediately set him on fire. The orange and yellow flamed enveloped him. He swung his sword blindly in my direction twice before falling dead. I tried to set more fires, but Aurora was there in an instant, putting them out again. Frustrated, I picked up the sword of a fallen naturi, determined to take out my opponents one by one. But we were outnumbered fifty to one.
Danaus, I need your energy! I cried out to him as I was surrounded by four naturi, each trying to decide who would attack me first.
It didn’t work last time, he countered, sounding just as harried as me.
Push the earth energy out of me first. Just like at Crete.
The first naturi attacked, and I deflected the blow while dodging the second. I slashed at a third, cutting him across the stomach, succeeding in getting him to back off a step.
And then it hit me. The warm energy of the earth was flushed out of my body in a rush, followed by Danaus’s own bone-crushing energy. I fell to my knees again as pain ripped through my body at an alarming rate. I screamed, letting the sword fall from my limp fingers. There wasn’t time for thought or focus. I could feel the bori in Danaus, recognize it after our earlier encounter, and it was starving. His power consumed me and then flowed out across the field. I watched as the four naturi around me were instantly reduced to ash as we destroyed their souls in the blink of an eye. Twisting around, I located Danaus and Jabari several feet away from me, surrounded by naturi. A second later those naturi also went up in a puff of gray and white ash.
“Kill them! Kill them all!” Aurora screamed at the naturi that surrounded us.
“No!” Cynnia screamed at the same time. She tried to run toward me, but Nyx grabbed her arms, holding her back. “It’s not supposed to be this way! You weren’t supposed to destroy us all!”
I knew what she meant. She had expected me to destroy Aurora and the rest of the naturi nation that would follow her. She had not expected me to wipe out so many of her kind in order to get to her beloved sister.
And in truth, I knew that I was wasting time and Danaus’s energy by killing all those naturi that surrounded us. Aurora was my goal. She always had been. Gathering up as much of the hunter’s energy as I could, I turned my attention to the queen, who stood with her back to the wall, surrounded by a wall of naturi. Her beautiful face was twisted with rage as she shouted orders at her people to kill me. Yet after the display of power that Danaus and I had already shown, they now hesitated to approach us.
I let my eyes narrow and my senses reach out to the find the soul of the queen of the naturi. It wasn’t hard to find. It was a great beacon of light in the center of all the darkness that filled that valley. The souls of
the other naturi were just thin wisps of smoke in comparison to the light that emanated from her. With Danaus’s energy balled up inside of me, I attacked the beacon of light. But nothing happened. I poured everything I had into crushing her soul, incinerating her from the inside out, but it didn’t make a dent.
Behind me, I heard Danaus cry out, and at the same time his energy instantly left me. Before me, Aurora’s laughter rang out across the mountain. She knew I couldn’t kill her as I had killed so many of her own people. She was pure earth energy and couldn’t be killed by something that was half bori and half whatever I was now.
“Kill her, Mira!” Jabari snarled from behind me. “You are the weapon of the Coven. I command you to kill her!”
“Kill me? You can’t touch me, little nightwalker,” Aurora mocked. “I am the queen of the naturi, protector of the earth. You cannot harm me.”
Pushing to my feet, I swayed once and raised my head to look at the golden-haired woman that would be the scourge of my people. I mentally reached out for Danaus but could no longer sense him. A ripple of pain screamed through my chest and rage bubbled in my veins. The bori I had at my disposal that could have defeated her was no more. I had to turn to the other power I had at my fingertips and pray that it would be enough to destroy her. Maybe Cynnia was right, that I had been chosen by the earth to be her newest weapon—replacing Aurora. I could only hope so.
Drawing in a deep breath, I reached out to the earth energy I felt swirling around me, pushing against my skin and threading its fingers through my hair. I pulled it into my body, allowing it to fill in the places where Danaus’s energy had once been. It pulled it in and mentally closed the hole that Cynnia had left in my chest, holding the energy within me so it filled my cells and poured into the marrow of my bones. The energy filled me until my soul was screaming and the monster that lurked inside of me cried out in pain. I felt as if I was killing myself with blinding sunlight.
With a sweep of my hand, the naturi that surrounded Aurora exploded in a roar of flames like a set of Roman candles. The queen screamed in frustration and surprise. I could feel her exerting her own energy to put them out, but I wouldn’t allow it. I pulled more energy into my body and surrounded Aurora and myself with a wall of blue flames much as I had at the Sanctuary Lodge, setting up a perimeter. The flames reached more than ten feet into the air and separated her from the rest of her people. Around me, I could feel both Aurora and other members of the light clan fighting to put out the flames, but I was drawing the energy directly from the earth, fueling it with her anger. The flames never wavered.
“You will not touch me!” Aurora cried when I slowly closed the distance between us. She stood straight and tall, her back pressed against the nearby wall, her chin held high. “You cannot burn me.”
Overhead, wind naturi had taken to the skies and were attempting to fly over the flames, but I stopped them with another wave of my hand. Their wings of feather and leather instantly went up in flames, sending them plummeting back down to the earth. No one was going to save Aurora.
Within me, I could feel the energy from the earth gathering, preparing for a final strike against the queen of the naturi. I smirked, briefly wondering if the earth wanted her dead as badly as I did. Yet, at the same time, I could feel the energy rising within Aurora. She was ready to protect herself.
A smile lifted my lips, exposing my white fangs in the flickering firelight. I closed the distance between us in a flash, plunging the dagger I had pulled from my side deep into her stomach. She had been expecting a magical attack, leaving her completely vulnerable to a physical attack. But then, I had always been more hands-on. I wanted to feel her warm flesh in my hands, her blood flowing over my hand as I slowly pulled the knife up from her stomach toward her heart.
Aurora gasped, her mouth falling open in a silent cry as her eyes grew wide with the pain ripping through her fragile body. The power that I had felt growing within her dissipated.
“Killing you is a lot like killing your brother,” I sneered. “There’s the same look of surprise on your faces.”
Before I could reach her heart, a great stabbing pain plunged into my back, piercing my heart from behind. My focus had been so completely on Aurora that I’d let my guard down. Someone had gotten through the flames and stabbed me in the back.
“Release her and I won’t cut your heart out, little princess,” snarled an all too familiar voice. Rowe had come back.
I released the hilt of the blade and placed my right hand out to my side, away from Aurora, who was now sliding down the wall. Blood soaked into her pure white robes, and her face was quickly turning a sickly shade of gray. She was losing blood too fast, but I knew how quickly a naturi could heal with proper help.
“She banished you,” I rasped, as Rowe continued to hold the knife in my back, his left hand tightly gripping my left shoulder so I couldn’t move. “She abandoned you after all that you did. Don’t you think she deserves this?”
“She was my queen,” he bit out, twisting the knife so that I cried out in pain.
“She turned her back on you. She doesn’t deserve your loyalty.”
“Sometimes loyalty is all you have,” he said just before he ripped the knife out of my back again. He pushed me forward a few stumbling steps. I turned and fell to my knees with the intention of throwing a fireball at him, but Rowe had already taken to the air on a gush of wind. His great black wings were thrown wide like a giant raptor heading for the cover of the black clouds swirling overhead.
Kneeling on the ground, I lowered the blue flames that had surrounded Aurora and me. I was ready to die. I no longer had the strength to fight. The energy from the earth was still pumping through me, but it couldn’t heal the knife wound in my back. Blood was pouring out of my body, weakening me with each second that passed. I was beginning to think that this weapon had finally reached the end of her usefulness.
To my surprise, as the flames died down, I discovered that a great horde of naturi wasn’t waiting for me. In fact, only a handful remained. A scattering of bodies indicated that some had been killed in battle, but most were just missing.
A few feet away stood Jabari and Nyx. Both of their bodies were filled with tension, but neither was poised for the attack. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a handful of naturi rush over to Aurora’s side and gently lift her up. They carried her toward the entrance of Machu Picchu—the closest access to the surrounding brush and nature’s bosom.
“Where?” I whispered, glancing around the now seemingly empty ruins.
“Cynnia has led many of our kind away from this place of death,” Nyx answered, her eyes slowly moving from Jabari at her side to me. “Things are changing. Some are willing to accept her as the next queen.”
“Aurora is not dead. At least not yet. She could still survive…” I said, drifting off. It was the second time in my lifetime I had failed to kill a naturi on this mountain. Five centuries ago I had left Nerian disemboweled here, assuming that he would never survive the wound. He proved me wrong. And now, I hadn’t managed to cut out Aurora’s heart before Rowe attacked me.
“Yes, she could still survive,” Nyx said with a nod. Her voice was as soft and soothing as a forest brook running over smooth stones. “And some will follow her.”
“And where does that leave us?” Jabari demanded.
To my surprise, a half smile tweaked one corner of her mouth as she looked from me to Jabari. “On hold.”
“On hold?” I gasped. I coughed once and wiped some blood from my chin. My body wasn’t healing. I was dying slowly on this wretched mountain.
“If Aurora survives, there will be two factions. The naturi will have bigger problems to worry about than nightwalkers and humans. You will not be our main concern, for now,” Nyx said. She stepped back away from Jabari a few steps and bent forward as a pair of wings with rich black feathers grew out of her back in a matter of seconds.
“What about what Cynnia said? About me being the new protector of
the earth?” I shouted before she could take to the air.
A light chuckle rose from Nyx and she shook her head. “I thought that was a nice ploy as well. Struck just enough fear in Aurora. She didn’t get you caught up in that nonsense, did she?”
“It was something to consider,” I admitted.
Nyx chuckled softly again. “A nightwalker protector of the earth? What a funny thought.”
“Take my advice,” I said, leaning forward on my left hand. “Finish off Aurora and save yourself the trouble.”
Nyx again flashed me her enigmatic half smile and shook her head once. “I am the defender of our people. Not the weapon of the earth.”
And then she opened her wings, catching the wind that was sweeping across the mountain, carrying her far from here. Leaving me alone with Jabari and my looming death.
Thirty
Jabari slowly turned to face me, a grim look on his handsome face. I forced a weak laugh up past my parted lips as he approached me. I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking at that moment but I was about to find out. The wound in my back was beginning to slowly heal and the blood flood was ebbing. I’d survive the stabbing as long as I didn’t sustain any more injuries from my beloved Jabari during the next few minutes. But I had my doubts.
“Protector of the earth,” he murmured thoughtfully, scratching his chin as he looked down at me.
“Fanciful thoughts of a desperate naturi,” I said, trying to easily shrug off the title. It had been something that Cynnia made up in order to strike fear into her sister. It also gave me the confidence to pull as much energy as I could from the earth to strike at Aurora and nearly win. “She needed someone to kill her sister. I was her best choice at the moment. Cynnia would have said anything to put some fear in her sister’s eyes.”
“Yes, but your display of power does raise some interesting questions,” Jabari said. “I’ve never seen you control so much fire at once, and so deftly. One would think that you’ve finally succeeded in mastering your skill. It’s even more interesting that you managed to incinerate those naturi that would have attacked you from above. Did you ever actually look up at them or could you sense them on your own?”
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