by Martha Carr
Her mouth went dry despite the pain seeping out of her, along with her immediate ability to think straight. She tried to spit out her shirt, but it clung to her lips, and she had to try three times with a heavy, floating hand before she could get it all out. Blinking heavily, Cheyenne let her hand drop to the bed and let out a dazed chuckle. “Eh, okay. I’ve had worse.”
She drifted off to sleep with a crooked smile as the black lines around her wounds slowly faded.
That night, she had another dream. Cheyenne would have called it a nightmare if she’d had the awareness to know it for what it was.
The first thing she saw was Ba’rael Verdys’ face frozen in a silent scream within a veil of dark, shimmering light. The dethroned O’gúl Crown hung suspended in mid-air, her arms outstretched in the same position in which she’d left Hangivol and the Heart’s center courtyard at the hands of her own son. Despite the fact that she didn’t move—couldn’t move—and made no sound, her golden eyes pulsed with an inner light.
Cheyenne stared at her aunt and felt the warm shiver that only came in dreams race up her spine. She can see me. Whatever this is, she knows I’m here.
“Cheyenne.”
She didn’t have to turn or look for whoever had called her name. One second she was alone with Ba’rael, and the next, she stood face to face with Neros. Her cousin’s abnormally pale skin stood out in contrast to the veil of dark light encompassing his mother. His washed-out golden eyes widened as he stepped toward her.
Cheyenne wanted to step away but couldn’t move. Personal space, Neros. It’s a real thing.
“You are not finished yet, cousin.” Neros’ white hair whipped around his head, and from somewhere far away in this dreamscape, a cold wind howled toward them. “Do not let what is required of you fall away beneath what you have already accomplished. I did what I could to clear the path, and now you must walk it.”
Ba’rael’s eyes flashed even brighter, and Cheyenne thought she heard someone screaming from very far away.
What the hell else am I supposed to do?
Neros replied to her thoughts as if he could hear them, though she couldn’t tell if she was speaking out loud. “The vessel still waits to be filled, Cheyenne. To sharpen the blade and burn away the remnants of the blackness and the rot. Find the vessel, restore it, and you restore Ambar’ogúl and the world I see in you through the Weave.”
Where are you? What happened?
“Do not stop, cousin. Your purpose is not fulfilled!”
The faraway screaming, one continuous, shrieking wail, grew louder. Ba’rael’s frozen eyes flared with brilliant golden light and drowned out everything else, filling Cheyenne with a searing flare of her own magic erupting inside her.
Cheyenne jolted awake with a shout and flopped around on the bed, kicking and punching the thin coverlet she’d twisted around herself in sleep. “Goddammit, these fucking dreams!”
When she finally had the blankets off, she rolled onto her back, breathing heavily, and wiped the sweat off her face. Never just a dream, is it? It’s all prophecy and truth and what’s actually happening. This whole thing has hijacked my damn brain.
“Cheyenne?”
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
The halfling wiped her face again, pulling sweat-sticky strands of white hair away from it and her neck. “Fuck if I know, Em.”
Without thinking, she tossed her hand toward the door, and the activator still synced with her magic slid the door aside into the wall to reveal Ember. The fae frowned and gazed around the room. “Whoa. Yeah, I might not have an answer for that either if I were you.”
“What?” Cheyenne pushed herself up onto her forearms, grimacing at the pain pulsing in the wounded flesh below her shoulders, and looked around. “Shit.”
Dark patches of singed metallic craters decorated the walls and ceiling of her new bedroom, and a small stream of smoke rose from the newest hole in the wall to Cheyenne’s right where she’d opened the window the night before. She glanced down at her hand, which obviously hadn’t been damaged although she’d apparently blasted spells left and right while she was unconscious.
“Okay.” Ember grimaced. “Remind me to never walk into your room while you’re sleeping.”
“You don’t do that anyway, do you?”
“Well, no. This is another reason not to.”
Cheyenne pushed all the way up and scooted forward to sit on the edge of the elevated platform bed. “I didn’t even know I was doing that.”
“Of course not. Nobody knows they’re sleepwalking or talking in their sleep or sleep-fighting when they’re doing it.” Ember stayed safely in the doorway and gave her friend a sympathetic frown. “Another nightmare?”
“I guess we can call it that, but they’re never just nightmares. More vague bullshit.” Cheyenne ran a hand through her tangled hair, then shook her head. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do with this shit.”
“Wanna start by talking about it?”
For a moment, the halfling merely stared at her Nós Aní, her eyes wide and unblinking. “More vessel crap.”
“Like what the Sorren Gán said in its weird-ass gift?”
“Yeah. How benevolent, right?”
“Yeesh.” Ember wrinkled her nose. “If I had that thing coming to me in my dream…”
“No, it wasn’t the Sorren Gán. Honestly, I think I’d be a lot more pissed off if it were.”
“So, who was it?”
“Ba’rael at first. Just frozen like she was in the Heart,” Cheyenne said. “Like a fucking spider caught in amber.”
“Huh. And she told you all this?”
“No. I’ve heard her in dreams before, Em, when she was trying to find me or whatever. Neros was there too.”
“Oh.” Ember nodded slowly, then frowned and shook her head instead. “I feel like I’m missing something.”
“Join the club.” Cheyenne pushed off the edge of the bed, foregoing the blocky steps, and landed barefoot on the floor with a grimace. Her hip flared with pain, and she grabbed the edge of the platform to keep from going down.
“Whoa, hey.” Ember floated swiftly into the room to help the halfling but stopped when Cheyenne got back on her feet and shook her head. “Okay, let me see.”
“See what?” Cheyenne grunted against the pain and stared at the rumpled bedding to focus again.
“Your hip. Obviously, there’s an issue.”
“Yeah, your darktongue serum doesn’t do shit.”
Ember folded her arms and cocked her head, waiting for her friend to come back down from her high-flying rage.
Turning her head slowly to meet the girl’s gaze, Cheyenne grimaced. “Sorry, Em. I didn’t really mean that.”
“I know.”
“I’m used to darktongue healing every wound, no problem. Maybe the serum’s better at giving me a buzz.”
“Or maybe the poison Ba’rael shot into you doesn’t heal, even with the strongest magical medicine. Did you think of that?”
“Huh.” Cheyenne finally released the platform and straightened. “I guess not.”
“And that’s why I’m here, to think about the stuff you don’t have any room in your head to think about.” Ember’s disapproving frown melted, and she let out a wry chuckle. “I never got a good look at the darktongue salve. You always slathered it on in private.”
“Because it fucking hurts, and nobody needs to see that.”
“Okay, but I’m like ninety-nine-percent sure that the serum in that canister is at least sixty percent stronger.” Ember shrugged. “That’s what Venga said.”
Wrinkling her nose, Cheyenne took two unsteady steps away from the bed, finally confident she wouldn’t topple over beneath the pain in her hip again. Not looking for a repeat of flopping around on the floor like the last time my hip took me out. “You know, normally, I wouldn’t put any stock in what Venga knows about darktongue or healing, but the salve was made Earthside. I have a feeling even the
stuff you can pick up in Peridosh isn’t as strong as what we could find here.”
“Maybe. You said the trolls gave it to you?”
“Yeah. Yadje. I guess she makes it for fun. Or money. I don’t know.”
Ember said, “Sounds like you had a healer friend way before I figured out what I could do.”
“Maybe. That family’s a little out of touch. Why are we even talking about them?”
“Because it calms you down.” Ember gave a half-hearted shrug and floated toward the bed, stooping to retrieve the injection canister from the floor beneath the platform. “I’m not about to start having serious conversations with you when you’re still in fuck-it mode.”
“Ha.” Cheyenne tried to roll her shoulders back, but the pain in her unhealed wounds made it impossible. “Hip and shoulders. It’s always the hip and shoulders.”
“Not always.” Ember straightened with the canister in hand and pointed it at her friend. “Just the really bad ones, I guess.”
“Right.”
“So suck it up already and let me see.”
Cheyenne gave the fae a deadpan stare, then rolled her eyes and stared at the far corner of the ceiling as she peeled down the waistband of her pants.
Ember floated quickly toward her. “Jesus Christ. What did you do?”
“What?” When the halfling looked down at her wounded hip, her eyes widened. “Fuck. It got worse.”
“No, it was made worse. Cheyenne, it looks like you bashed yourself with a baseball bat and tossed yourself off the side of the building.”
Cheyenne snorted. “There’s an image.”
“I’m serious. That’s the biggest bruise I’ve ever seen. Okay, not including on me after surgery, but damn. We shouldn’t even be able to see a bruise when your skin’s already bruise-colored.” Ember’s luminous violet eyes flicked toward her friend’s and bored into Cheyenne. “What. Did. You. Do?”
“What you told me.” The halfling nodded at the canister. “Inject it right into the wound.”
“That’s not an injection site, Cheyenne. That’s internal bleeding from blunt-force trauma.”
“Hey.” Cheyenne gave her a crooked smile. “Now you sound like a doctor.”
“Because I learned enough about what shit does to the body when a bullet went through mine. I did not tell you to try breaking your own hip with this thing.” Closing her eyes, Ember let out a long sigh. “Okay. I’m down to forget you went super-drow stupid on yourself if you’ll let me try to heal whatever the hell you pulled.”
“Yeah, sure.” Holding down the waistband of her pants with one hand and lifting the hem of her shirt with the other, Cheyenne stared at the corner of the ceiling again while Ember placed a hand over the massive bruise swelling the halfling’s hip and up into her stomach.
Gold and violet light blossomed beneath Ember’s palm, and a warm wave of energy made its way deep into Cheyenne’s hip before spreading up and down that side of her body.
“Fuck.”
“This hurts?”
“Everything hurts, Em.” Cheyenne closed her eyes, and the warm energy faded. It took some of the pain with it, but not all of it. “Any chance your fae healing kicked up a notch and you finally figured out how to…”
Ember gingerly prodded the skin beside the gaping dart hole in her friend’s hip, and Cheyenne snarled through clenched teeth. “Nope. Sorry.”
Cheyenne swallowed thickly. “It’s fine. I guess we already knew that wasn’t a thing.”
“Neither is letting you handle this canister by yourself. Hold still.”
“Em, I don’t need—”
The canister pressed into the halfling’s belly above her hip and let out a sharp hiss as the darktongue serum injected into her.
“Jesus.” Cheyenne’s eyelids fluttered. “You need to work on your bedside manner.”
Ember floated toward her friend again when the halfling staggered sideways. She grabbed Cheyenne around the waist and held her upright until the halfling could hold herself up. “Manners? Yeah, I figure those aren’t at the top of your priority list. They’re a waste of time when you’re trying to heal a thick-headed drow who doesn’t know the difference between healing and self-flagellation.”
Cheyenne barked a laugh, surprising them both, then sucked in a huge breath and trailed her unfocused gaze across the room. “Self-flagellation. Not something I’ve tried.”
“Don’t even think about it. I am not saving your ass if you do this to yourself on purpose.”
“Em.” Cheyenne let out a low, buzzed hum as she lazily turned her gaze on her friend. “Come on. I’m not that fucked up.”
“You mean, physically or psychologically?”
They both laughed, and the warm tingle spreading through Cheyenne’s body like a towel pulled out of the dryer faded enough for her to stand upright and stop smiling like an idiot. An idiot who can’t figure out how to be gentle with her own damn self.
“Both probably.”
Ember floated around her friend to face her head-on and studied Cheyenne’s eyes. “Okay. You’re starting to come back, huh?”
“Maybe. Thanks.”
“Uh-huh. Let me look at your shoulders too. And yeah, I promise I won’t poke them.” The fae didn’t wait for an answer before she pulled the collar of Cheyenne’s shirt away to study first one dart wound, then the other. “At least they don’t look worse.”
“That’s a start.”
“Can I say I really love it that you thank me for surprise-injecting you and calling you a masochist and slapping you in the face when I have to?”
“You didn’t call me a masochist.”
“I didn’t?” Ember’s eyes widened, and she released her friend’s shirt before floating backward. “Huh. Well, I was thinking it.”
“Don’t hold back.”
“Trust me, Cheyenne, I’m not.” After looking her friend over one more time, Ember nodded and cracked a small smile. “Feel better now?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Now get your ass out to the kitchen-not-kitchen and show me how the hell to work that instant microwave or whatever. I’m starving.” The fae spun and drifted quickly into the main room of their Hangivol apartment.
Cheyenne hissed a laugh and paused to study the charred metal craters in the walls and ceiling. The activator blinked in her vision, pulling up what she wanted before her fingers moved of their own accord in a series of quick gestures to complete the spell. The metal in the walls responded instantly, shifting and rearranging itself to get rid of the drow-magic craters and the burn marks in a matter of seconds.
Nodding in satisfaction, Cheyenne stepped out of the bedroom and waved a hand behind her to close the door. Shit spellwork, huh? Not anymore.
Chapter Thirteen
“I don’t want anything weird, okay?” Ember folded her arms and watched her friend intently as Cheyenne scanned the options their new kitchen system presented. “You told me once about Jell-O with eyes, and now I can’t help thinking about it every time I know there’s food coming in this place.”
“That was supposed to be a delicacy, Em. I’m pretty sure whoever stocked this place didn’t make sure we had Upper Tech five-star meals in our fridge, or whatever the version of that is over here.”
“Really? No five-star gourmet meals for the Black Flame?”
“Ugh. Stop calling me that.”
“You said it was badass.”
“Yeah, it is.” Cheyenne swiped her finger across the wall, searching for anything on the menu that seemed remotely familiar, but the O’gúleesh-to-English translations only made it harder. They had English words for food that didn’t exist Earthside. “It’s a badass name, but I’m not the Crown.”
“Kinda.”
“Nope. Persh’al Tenishi the Ironbreak rules Ambar’ogúl. I’m just backup.”
“Okay, you can tell yourself that all you want, but that doesn’t change what happened.”
Cheyenne looked at her friend over her shoulder a
nd raised an eyebrow. “You sure you don’t want Jell-O with eyes?”
Ember pointed at her. “See, you’re making threats, but I can tell when they’re empty.”
Laughing, Cheyenne returned her attention to the scrolling pseudo-menu in the kitchen’s system. “You can see this, right?”
“A menu with a bunch of O’gúleesh words I’ve never heard? Yeah.”
“Okay. Give me a sec.” Stepping back, Cheyenne eyed the code scrolling across this section of the wall, used solely for the purpose of ordering whatever food was behind the wall, then searched through her activator’s prompts until she found three different commands for analysis, visuals, and user-friendly selections. She pressed one hand on the command frame and swiped three other lines of code down toward it along the wall until they combined. “There.”
Ember laughed. “Let me guess, O’gúleesh kitchens don’t come standard with images of pantry inventory.”
“I don’t think that was an option until now.”
“So, you can read the Weave with O’gúl tech, and now you’re rewriting the systems.” Ember folded her arms. “I hit the jackpot when I sat down next to you in the Student Center freshman year.”
“Right. ‘Cause you knew we’d end up here five years later.”
“Of course.” Ember stepped toward the wall and scanned the images of food options scrolling across the frame. “I became your friend because of your potential.”
Cheyenne snorted. “That’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve heard from you so far.”
“Believe it, don’t believe it, whatever.” Ember shrugged, then pressed the image for what could have been a fruit salad, if any of the apparent fruit was the right shape and color. “I knew you were different the first time I saw you get pissed off about your drow ears creeping out of your Goth-chick hair.”
The wall flashed, and a series of whirs and clicks emanated from behind it, followed by the sound of heavy chopping.
