The fire mother ought to be worshipped, after all. Aura was pleasing to look at. She seemed tolerable enough, and Lorn knew she could not deny how much the challenge of the angel’s shield excited her. The other angels, well, what could be said of them? The ones she’d seen in this world seemed as detestable as those in Ohinyan, and she had yet to decide whether she would bring an army to free them or obliterate them. If they proved to be loyal, which so far they had, then she would consider it. All allegiances could be swayed, given the right motivation.
Perhaps that might smooth the transition in Ohinyan too. Take out one set of angels and replace it with another more compliant, obedient set. The creatures and people of Ohinyan held the angels in high regard still, for some reason she couldn’t fathom. This alliance could truly work in her favour then. All she had to do was feign compliance. Whatever the angels here had concealed from her and Fia, one thing Lorn knew was true, they were desperate to be free of their king.
And they had abilities that were of use, much as she was loathe to admit it. As tempting as it was to turn them all to ash, she would be patient. As she was now with Erebus. Still, she let his shadow grip lay upon her, knowing she could fall away from his grasp in the same way he so often fell away into his ethereal form. Makya could be ethereal too. Lorn was born of flame, exactly as she had told Fia. She could become it at will. Erebus was a fool to think he could prevent it. A smile tugged at her lips at the thought.
“What are you smiling at? If she cannot heal me, you will remain here,” Erebus snapped. He tightened his grip on her and she choked against the pressure around her throat. She could end him now. Fia too. Turn them both to dust before the others returned and feign that Fia got caught in the crossfire. The angels would still return with her to Ohinyan; anything to secure their freedom.
Lorn pictured Erebus’s wings going up in flames first, the feathers giving way to sinew and muscle before bone. Bones that she would crush to nothing beneath her feet. Ancient darkness. He was nothing. She could feel it as her flames grew stronger inside her, pressing and pushing at all the places he held on to her, and had he not been distracted by Fia, he would likely have realised it too.
He may have existed during Terah’s lifetime, but Lorn knew he was nothing but a stain on the fire mother’s existence. A speck in a lifetime of greatness. The fire mother was far more than he would ever be. And Lorn could feel it in her veins, even as she gasped for air. Voices called out in the distance, and she let her flames smoulder beneath her skin.
“You’ll kill her,” Fia said quietly, rather too flatly for Lorn’s liking. The girl’s head jerked in the direction of the voices. “The others are returning.”
Erebus released his grip on Lorn and again she coughed in a breath. Oh, how she was going to enjoy incinerating his wings. Slowly.
“Then you must concentrate,” he said, his eyes fixed on Fia’s face. He reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and though the girl flinched, she didn’t pull away.
Lorn readied herself to break free of his grasp, to launch her attack on them both, but just as she was about to, light fell from Fia’s fingertips towards the wound on Erebus’s chest.
She heard his intake of breath. Saw the surprise written across his face as his hand lingered by the side of Fia’s face and the girl healed him. Healed him as Terah would have done. No. It could not be.
A shout broke the silence, and before Lorn had a chance to register who or where it came from, the world turned to darkness.
Chapter Sixteen
Fia
T he world spun. Fia still wasn’t used to it—not when it took her so entirely off guard as Erebus just had. She saw a swirl of red and knew he’d brought Lorn with them. That was something at least. Although Fia hated that she had to go anywhere with the Makya, she wouldn’t put her own feelings above the needs of Ohinyan. Looking around, it seemed he’d brought them to another part of the same forest.
“You…” Erebus reached out a hand in Lorn’s direction, tendrils of his dark power snaking their way around her and holding her in his grasp. “Stay.” He wiped a hand across his brow with his other hand. He was still wounded; her healing had been interrupted by the calls of the others looking for her and Lorn. “And you,” he said, looking at her. “Please continue. We cannot return to Ohinyan unless I am fully recovered.”
Lorn made a muffled sound beneath his grasp, one Fia could have sworn would have been a sarcastic comment had the Makya been able to use her voice. She looked from Erebus to Lorn and wondered how long she could stall him to allow the angels to arrive. And then what? He takes them all out, one by one? She weighed up her options: heal him, let him return them to Ohinyan and figure out which one of them was the fire mother, or stay here and fight him and risk the lives of others.
Raindrops had begun to fall, churning up the smell of earth and leaves. The sun had set and it was impossible to see through the trees. It would be five against one. Six, counting Evina. Fia was certain Evina had more powers than she’d let on. But there would be injuries, and no one else would die because of her.
“I do hate getting wet. Please hurry,” Erebus said, catching her hand in his.
Please. He’d said it twice now. And something in his eyes shimmered despite the overbearing confidence and swagger. Something that seemed completely at odds with an ancient darkness. Fear.
Maybe my part in all of this is to talk to him, to convince him to change. That’s what she’d said to Erebus when he was pretending to be someone else, when he’d rescued her. He was afraid of something. And if he was capable of feeling fear, he was capable of feeling other things too. I am a creature of circumstance, as are we all. Fia thought of the scratches and scrapes in his prison, of how long he’d been alone after Terah died. Of the reasons why he’d ever been imprisoned in the first place, and realised she had no answer for it. She had no idea what had truly led him to be imprisoned for so long, but it couldn’t have been for no reason. And it didn’t erase all of the bad things he had done since. But maybe, just maybe, it meant he could change. Just enough that she could convince him to help, to forget whatever plans he’d formed whilst he was alone for so many years.
He still held her hand in his, and for a moment she saw herself tracing her fingers along the marks of his tattoo. She met his gaze again, full of emotion and longing, just as it darted lower.
“Stop that,” she said, pulling her hand away.
“Stop what?” he asked, with that stupid grin of his across his face.
“Whatever mind tricks you’re playing.” She saw everything he showed her but felt nothing but disgust. There was no connection to him, no emotion to accompany those visions. There was nothing of what she felt for Alexander. Whatever Erebus thought he could achieve by twisting her thoughts, it wouldn’t work.
Erebus stepped closer, reaching for her, but she swiped his hand away. “Stay out of my head. And don’t touch me. We don’t need to be touching for me to heal you. Just stand still.” She ground her teeth together. She didn’t want to heal him. But she didn’t want anyone else to get hurt by him just because she wouldn’t do it. This is the right thing to do.
The rain slicked Erebus’s hair to his face, but he didn’t move to brush it away. Lorn was motionless in his grasp, but for all Erebus’s expression revealed, it could have just been the two of them standing together in the forest. His gaze never broke away from hers as he said, “you’ve been thinking of me.” His eyes were bright, those storm clouds seeming to clear into molten silver. “How often have you been thinking of me, Fia?”
The way he said her name turned her insides. By choice? Never. But there was no way of explaining that without his ego getting the better of him. And she wouldn’t see it inflated further. She wouldn’t give him anything that he could twist and manipulate into something else.
The wounds at the centre of his chest and beneath his ribs still hadn’t closed and, this close, Fia could see dark veins that spread from th
em like a spider’s web. Lorn had caused serious damage; no wonder he had been so demanding about being healed.
“Would you really kill her?” Fia asked, looking from him to Lorn.
Erebus followed her gaze. Lorn’s eyes blazed in the darkness, and from Fia’s position, the Makya’s hair almost looked black in the rain as it pressed against her face. She made a choking sound, but Erebus’s hold on her was so tight she couldn’t reach out to free herself.
“Alright, you’ve made your point. That’s enough.” Fia smacked his hand away. She resisted the urge to add another wound to his chest, to call upon that blue flame as she’d done earlier.
“Stay still.” She brought her hands up to his chest and tried to recall whatever it was she had managed to do before he’d brought them here, when a dim light had lit the space between them just for a moment. She focused on her breathing, on the sound of the rain pattering on the leaves around them. Her clothes were soaked through, and she was cold, but not enough to shake.
Fia looked from Erebus to Lorn, at those tendrils of inky black wrapping themselves around the Makya and felt something spark beneath her palms. A puff of black shadows unfurled from her fingertips, so tiny Erebus didn’t even mention it; perhaps he cared so little for how his shadows behaved. He seemed to care very little for anything, with the exception of irritating her. A thought tugged at Fia, but she cast it aside to focus on her task, hoping she wasn’t saving Lorn for nothing.
Something had been nagging her about Lorn injuring Erebus, and about her own blue flame, something she wasn’t sure could be possible, but then all of this would have seemed impossible just a few months back, before she had fallen through the window in Highgate Cemetery. But Fia kept her suspicions to herself; she’d get as much information from Erebus as she could. He could have the answers they needed, and if she could just keep him agreeable for long enough, he might be fooled into telling them. If he was so intent on using them both, she saw no reason not to attempt the same. Simply being in his presence put everyone at risk and Fia wasn’t sure at that precise moment who was the greater threat, the ancient darkness, or the one who could injure him.
“The others will find us soon,” Erebus murmured.
Fia looked up from her hands to find his gaze fixed on her once more, a look that told her she knew exactly where his mind had gone. She rolled her eyes and said nothing. She didn’t have the energy to bicker with him. Focus. He’d only harm the others if they were discovered, so she focused on the sound of the rain and of her breathing, willing that power to spring from her fingertips.
She pictured a golden light—that’s what she imagined a healing light to be like, anyway—a golden light that poured from her to him, flowing through her veins. She envisioned it growing from a tiny seed and getting bigger, brighter, as it flowed through her.
She felt it before she saw it. A speck of light appeared in the shadows of the forest, just as it had before Erebus had spirited them away. She didn’t dare suck in a breath or make a sound, for fear any movement might shatter her concentration. She willed the light to fall from her fingertips onto him, to heal the wound that festered.
But a snap of branches broke her focus. Erebus spiralled around to the direction of the noise, his grip on Lorn never faltering. She was like a dog on a leash, and Fia knew the Makya would have loathed being treated in such a way.
Nothing moved in the shadows. The rain continued to fall, and eventually, Erebus turned back to her. “Continue. Please.”
She held her hands up to his chest again and tried to regain her focus. But her thoughts drifted to Alexander. She wanted to send him another message and something told her there might not be as much opportunity to do so in Erebus’s presence. She’d figure that out later. Alexander had survived Lorn and that, that was no small feat. If only it was him she were standing in front of, the light would have poured from her.
“Fia,” Erebus said her name quietly. “We must hurry.”
Fia reluctantly pulled herself away from her thoughts of Alexander. She focused on the task in front of her, closing her eyes, listening to the trickling rain and breathing in the scent of the wet earth. She visualised that golden light as if it were just beneath her skin, focused on the feeling of it rising up from within her. She felt it flow, slowly at first, and when she opened her eyes it poured from her to Erebus, but it had a depth to it, that much she knew, and she could already feel the end of it. Too soon. But what had he expected of her, the first time she’d ever called on such a power, something she hadn’t truly believed existed within herself before.
His broken skin slowly knitted itself back together, but the black veins remained as the light beneath her hands diminished. A piercing ache began to press into the base of her neck, one that she knew would not go away quickly. The world slowed, and light-headedness overcame her, but Erebus grabbed her hand and held her steady, one hand pressed to the small of her back.
An image of her running her hands through his hair filled her foggy thoughts, of her tracing a hand down the thick muscle on his arm. “I told you to stop that,” she said, clearing her throat and shaking her head.
“Thinking of me again?” he asked, his gaze fixed on her, his face filled with amazement. With awe. For her, she realised, still in a daze. He drew her hand to his mouth and placed a soft kiss on the back of it. “Thank you.”
Fia blinked, his mouth on her skin setting her teeth to grinding and snapping her from her stupor. “I told you not to touch me,” she said, shoving him back.
He flinched as he took a step back, and Fia was certain pain flickered in his eyes, but he turned away too quickly. Another strange noise in the dark had drawn his attention. When he looked back, his expression was schooled again, the cocky half-grin had returned. “Thank yo—”
The strange noise repeated itself and Erebus spun around to search for the source.
Something rustled in the leaves beyond them and before Fia could take a step back, Evina was astride Erebus, her legs wrapped around his neck and her silver belt coiling at his throat. She made no sound, but her eyes flared bright with rage, the threads of her silver belt glowing against his skin until she fell to the ground. Erebus had cloaked himself in his shadows, his body replaced by a swirl of darkness.
Fia leapt for Lorn, but it was too late, Erebus had already taken her.
Chapter Seventeen
Alexander
R ain began to fall, slick and heavy. After the heat of Ornax, it was a welcome relief. It certainly helped wash away any evidence of their earlier battle. Slaughter. Taking a life would never be easy. Alexander was no stranger to death—with the angels’ duties on Earth he was often surrounded by it. But reassuring the dying and setting spirits free was something entirely different to a life ceasing by his own doing. He’d seen no spirits when the soldiers fell. Perhaps this place was more like Ohinyan, where spirits did not need assistance to go to wherever spirits went next. To join the sky spirits, or elsewhere.
Their ascent into the mountains had been slow. Much of the terrain had been too steep, and several times they’d had to turn back and look for land that was easier to traverse.
“Osara has been gone for a long time,” Alexander commented as Maab matched his pace beside him. They both carried bags of supplies, and where Alexander had the advantage of lifting himself off the ground whenever the rocks beneath their feet loosened, Maab did not. But even as a man, he seemed to have the feline ability to navigate complicated footings with ease, despite the sheer bulk of him.
Maab wiped at the hair that had flattened to his face. “She will return soon.” The Nord’s foot slid on a muddy rock, but he righted himself almost immediately.
Alexander had wanted to ask so many times in recent weeks how Maab was coping with the loss of his mate, but the words he chose always sounded foolish in his head. This time he decided saying something was better than his silence. “I miss Enne.”
Pastel green eyes met his. “As do I. He would have loved
this.”
Alexander laughed. “The mud and the rain? Or searching for Fia?”
Maab rubbed at the mud splattered on his arms, and it smeared in the rain. He stopped for a moment, his brow knitting together as he looked at his hand. “All of it,” he said with a tight smile. “He’d have loved every minute of it. He’d have pointed out all the places we could go back and explore later, all the new plants we’ve passed.” Maab’s voice thickened and he looked up again, his eyes glassy this time. “Thank you. For saying his name.”
“I will say it more often.” Alexander placed a hand on Maab’s shoulder for a moment.
The Nord smiled tightly again. “Your power grows.” Maab flicked his chin towards Alexander’s hand as they continued up the rocks. “I feel it hum beneath your fingertips.”
Alexander frowned. The latest development had unsettled him. It had been all too easy to pull the breath from the Tahjiik. That was after he was certain he’d depleted himself. Perhaps it was part of why the Iders had the angels’ magic in the first place; he’d seen more than one angel change allegiances in his lifetime.
“Do not fear it,” Maab said, as if he’d sensed Alexander’s hesitation. “You and I both know those Tahjiik would have ended our lives without a second thought. It was you or them.”
Alexander didn’t get a chance to reply. Noor’s voice rang out from somewhere ahead in the darkness. “A cave,” she called out to them.
The other Nords shared words of elation, the great black bear letting out a low rumble amongst them. Twelve others had journeyed with them in addition to Maab and Osara, twelve of Maab’s best, he’d said. Other than Osara, there were two brothers, Jalmar and Olmar who could shift into birds, brown eagles with white feathers on their heads and tails. Birds more suited to the north, unlike Osara’s Igran. A young woman, Milena, could shift into a grey wolf, but the others Alexander had had little time to notice their animal forms during the attack at the gate. Some of them hadn’t shifted, opting to use their weapons instead. Henric, the black bear, was the first to disappear over the ledge above them.
The First Dawn (Daughter of the Phoenix Book Three) Page 12
