“See you on the wall,” was all Lorn said as the general pulled open the door to the antechamber to see herself out.
“I like her,” Jerum mused, reaching for a goblet of Iraluxian wine, the only wine they could both tolerate.
“I can see that,” Lorn replied through gritted teeth. Jerum always fell for the same kind of woman. The same kind of woman she fell for too.
Lorn sighed and cast her attention anywhere but at her brother. The room was decorated as most rooms were aboard the airship: sparse metal walls with large rivets dotting the panels, the Makya banners hanging from them. She stared at the phoenix at the centre of one of the banners, more of those wicked thoughts snaking their way up her shoulders and whispering in her ear. You will never be enough. “I am more than enough,” she muttered.
“What was that, sister?” Jerum asked lazily, cutting himself a piece of cheese with the knife he always kept on his person. He never used anything else, something that had always irritated Lorn. In recent days even the way he rubbed at his chin irritated her.
“Tell me,” he said, stabbing at a grape. “How exactly do you intend to rekindle the sun?”
The fire mother should know this. You should know this. “I will know how when the time comes. I will feel it,” she said, looking at her hands. She shook away her treacherous thoughts; the answers would come to her when it was time.
“The time,” he said, stabbing at another piece of cheese, “is almost upon us. So I do hope you have a plan.”
Lorn saw herself snatching that knife from his hands and slicing it across his throat, the front of his coat staining crimson as he slumped back in the chair. And then she blinked, and the urge left her. Well, almost. The shadow of the blood running from his throat still lingered. “I do, brother,” was all she said in reply.
Jerum caught her gaze, his face bland and bored, exactly as they’d been schooled. He wiped the blade clean on a cloth as he watched her. “And what of Erebus?”
Lorn stilled. There was a time when Erebus’s whispers were her only source of companionship. For so long she’d thought herself special that he had chosen her to speak to. The thought made bile rise in the back of her throat and she coughed it down.
He’d urged her onwards when she’d almost given up on this path, and though she’d enjoyed the trail of destruction she’d left in the last few months, he’d steered her, given her suggestions of where to go next, what to do. Reminded her that she was the fire mother and that she alone could usher Ohinyan into a new era with the coming of the third sun. The sun she would deliver.
Your time is coming, great Fire Mother, he’d whispered to her, not too long ago.
“Erebus is weak,” she finally said, inspecting a purple grape and discarding it on the table. “I’ve wounded him in his vile angel form and I’ve wounded him in his shadow form. He is of no concern to me.” She cast a hand to one side as she said it.
“Concern? But we need him.” Jerum poured another goblet of wine and handed it to her before refilling his own. Jerum was loyal too, in his own way. But even dogs were loyal.
She traced a finger around the edge of the metal, staring at the wine and seeing only her brother’s blood. “I need no one.” It was the truth. The fire mother needed no one.
“Erebus is ancient, sister. With years come wisdom, and that is a weapon in itself. One we would do well to have on our side.” He raised his goblet in a toast and drank to his own words. So much confidence for someone who had been raised in her shadow. All the men in her life had always oozed with it. No matter how inferior they were, and Lorn was yet to meet a man to match her; something told her she never would.
She laughed quietly. “Erebus is not wise. He is an insect to be crushed.” She tipped her wine onto the floor, and a perfect blood-red pool splattered beside her feet. She saw Jerum lying face down in it, saw herself pressing his head down with the heel of her boot. She blinked, and only the wine remained.
“You would take on Erebus?” Jerum seated himself in one of the large metal chairs, picking an invisible crumb from his coat.
“I would take on any who stand in my way,” she said as she made her way to the doors, too sick of his company to hear any more.
“Your ego will be the death of you, sister.”
Lorn didn’t answer. She let the doors swing shut behind her. “What?” she snapped at the guards standing outside. One accompanied her to her chambers, but she paid them no attention as they struggled to keep pace behind her.
She passed the mess hall, the murmur within quieting as the soldiers spotted her. For a moment she considered seeking out the guard who’d warmed her bed the night before. He’d provided a little satisfaction, and perhaps with some direction, his form might improve. But Lorn couldn’t shake away the thought of Nuala’s hand on her brother’s arm, the way the general had smiled warmly at him, her words turning to honey. Too much disappointment for one night, there was no use adding to it with a subpar bedmate.
You will never be enough, that breath whispered in her ear. “Not enough,” she muttered as she slammed the door to her chambers behind her. She stormed over to the porthole to look out into the darkness. One of Nuala’s ships lit up the sky, the tether taut between the two vessels. Lorn inspected the ragged canvas balloon, illuminated in patches by guards stationed around it, their looking glasses glistening in the light of her own ship.
“There is something inside you that is broken,” her father had told her after she’d killed Rada. “Your own tutor? She’d have given her life for you, and you took hers, for what? To demonstrate your authority?”
“I am not broken,” was all Lorn had spat back.
“I am enough. And I am not broken,” she whispered at the porthole, her breath clouding on the glass.
“Still talking to yourself?” a voice asked from behind her.
Lorn spun around, that detestable puff of smoke was hovering by the door. “Erebus.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Erebus said. “Attacking Djira is a fool’s errand.” His shadow self seemed to warp and bend as if he were fidgeting. More weakness.
“Your angel form has turned you soft. I liked you better when you were permanently a puff of smoke,” Lorn said, warning sparks flaring at her fingertips. She’d rather save it for Djira but didn’t deny ending Erebus there and then would be satisfying.
“They will not follow you this way, Lorn. Return to Djira with me. If both you and Fia are—”
The sparks burst into flames, but she held them in her upturned palms as she stared at him. “There can be only one fire mother, and we know precisely why you’re hiding like a coward in your shadows, because you know it is me.”
“We’ve no proof of that, Lorn,” the cloud of darkness mused.
Lorn toyed with her flames, rolling a ball along her forearm and back to her palm. “You are not what I expected you to be. You are weak.” She paused, catching the ball of flame and squeezing it until it dispersed into nothing. “If you cannot help me serve my purpose, I have no need for you. Ohinyan has no need for you. Go back and rot in your prison, whisper your pathetic words and see how few listen to you now. I was a fool to listen to you before, I will not fall for your words again. Get. Off. My. Ship.”
“We can work together. We can…” Erebus began, but Lorn didn’t want to hear another word from him.
“I know I wounded you when you saved Fia outside Djira. I can harm you no matter what form you take, you know that.” Lorn took a step closer, brought her arms up ready to attack.
“You did wound me, Lorn. I can’t take you by force, you’ve caused too much damage for that. But I wanted you to know I was wrong about you,” Erebus said.
Lorn shot a warning fireball at the wall beside him. “I will give you one last opportunity. Leave,” she spat.
He didn’t wait, his shadows turned over themselves, and he shot right past her, through the glass of the porthole and out into the night air.
Lorn threw a firebal
l at the glass for good measure, and it hissed into nothing against it.
Erebus had been wrong about her. He had underestimated her. And he would suffer for it.
Chapter Thirty–One
Fia
A zure and vermillion bands shimmered ahead of them in the darkness, and Fia felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She descended, feet crunching in snow, Alexander right beside her.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his brow scrunching in concern.
The weight of the suit pulled at her, but she wouldn’t let it show. She looked up at him, wishing they had more time together. “I’m alright.” She hoped the weakness in her smile wouldn’t show, either.
“I’ll wait here for you,” he said, as if he sensed that this was something she wanted to do alone. It wasn’t that she wanted to keep things from him, more that she had a feeling of what was coming, and she wasn’t ready for him to find out yet.
Fia leaned up on her toes to kiss him, and he wrapped his arms and wings around her and pulled her close. She sank into him, their bodies pressed together, and kissed until they were both breathless. When she pulled away, she rested her head against his, their breath clouding in the space between them. “I won’t be long,” she whispered.
She took a step back, spread her wings wide, and pushed off into the darkness, towards the ribbons of colour. Already she could see a figure take shape in them, and for a moment her heart was in her mouth. “Sophie?” she called out. But as she flew closer, the woman before her was more like a reflection of herself. The fire mother had come. “Terah?”
“I owe you an apology,” the sky spirit said. Her hair was the same as Fia’s, her eyes, the shape of her lips. Terah’s face was a little fuller than her own. There were other subtle differences too, but they were small.
“An apology?” Fia repeated, still reeling from the disappointment that it hadn’t been her sister who’d appeared to her, even though it was Terah Fia had so urgently needed to speak to. “What for?”
Terah smiled. She was very still, but her hair swirled around her as if it were part of the ribbons of colour. “I wanted you to see him how I saw him. How I still see him. It was more difficult than I expected, more intimate than I’d intended.”
Fia drew in a breath of cold air. “The visions… it was you?” They all seemed to blur into one before her eyes, every private moment Terah had shown her with Erebus, the way he looked at her, the way he helped her to save that little boy.
“You said once that maybe your part in all of this was to talk to him. Please. You’re the only one he’ll listen to. I’m sorry the visions unsettled you… that wasn’t my intention. I thought if I could just show you…” Terah clasped her hands in front of her. She wore a thin dress that fell to her feet, her shoulders bare, and Fia saw nothing but love in her expression.
“How much you love him. He was only ever meant to be with you, wasn’t he? I can see why I remind him of you.” The similarities between them were undeniable, Fia could almost empathise with Erebus for how much it would have unsettled him. Almost.
“Gabriel was always jealous… it was him who orchestrated Erebus’s imprisonment,” Terah explained.
“Gabriel, your brother?” The first angel. Fia knew the story. At least, she thought she did. Although she had no way of knowing if what she’d been told was the truth.
Terah smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear and nodded. “Gabriel and I were never brother and sister, not truly. Mother found him in a star and took him in when I was a young girl. He and Erebus were like brothers, though, for a time. But Ahriman and my mother were fighting, it was such a terrible thing. Gabriel thought he was protecting me. Protecting Ohinyan.”
Fia let the words sink in for a moment. Piecing them together with everything she’d been told since the first time she came to Ohinyan. “And I’ve been told Alexander is Gabriel’s descendant, is that true?”
“It is. But Alexander is nothing like Gabriel. Gabriel was many things, but… every quality Gabriel lacked, Alexander makes up for in abundance. He would never take any decision away from you.”
Fia knew that. Even going back to Earth had been her choice. She looked back to where he was waiting below, a dark smudge on the snow, his wings almost completely concealed against the white. She couldn’t see his face, but something told her he was looking up at her, that thread between them pulling tight.
“The connection between the two of you is not based on history, or some ancient prophecy,” Terah said, as if she’d read her thoughts. “Yours is not a love borne of necessity or succession. It’s not something that’s fallen into place because someone thousands of years ago said that it might come to fruition. Your love is real. That’s more powerful than any prophecy ever will be.”
Fia broke her gaze away from Alexander and looked back at Terah. “And you and Erebus?
“I have never stopped loving him, Fia, despite everything he’s done.”
Fia blew out a breath, a quiet whistle accompanying it. “Sometimes he seems so… haunted,” she said, dragging a hand through her hair.
“You know the weight he carries. After my death, he didn’t move for many years. He just existed in his prison, day after day, like he was frozen in place in his ethereal form,” Terah said quietly. This close, Fia could see her eyes shine with tears threatening to spill over.
Fia thought of her parents, her sister. Of Enne and Arion. Of how much it had all weighed on her, pushing her and pinning her to the spot, as if keeping still were the only thing holding her together. Erebus knew what that was like, he’d said as much the first time they’d met. It takes a long time to rebuild yourself, he’d said, back when he was pretending to be Dante. Had he pretended because that was how he wanted to see himself, who he wanted to be? Everything he’d ever told her had been a version of the truth. That was something, at least.
“Last time I was here I was told I’ve been lied to by more than one.” Fia had thought about it many times, had simply assumed Erebus was one of them.
“Sometimes people don’t know when they’re lying, Fia. Stories become so tightly woven the real truth gets lost somewhere and a new one emerges.” Terah smiled, and it was her own smile, such a strange thing to see.
“Is that true for Erebus too?” Fia asked. The effort of staying in the air without moving was starting to take its toll on her, the wingsuit weighing against her like a lead weight pressed to her chest. Or perhaps it was just the impending end of the world.
Terah’s smile faded. “You already know the answer to that.”
Fia thought about it for a moment, about Erebus. Could he change? Would he want to? Would it be enough? Ohinyan would never accept him. But it had accepted her. Because of Alexander, because of her friends. That lead weight pushed at her chest and for the first time in a while, her breaths felt shallow, but she didn’t count them like she used to. The sun would die soon. They could all be gone. All of them. “The Shadows told me your descendant rekindled the first sun from the ashes to make the one that’s now dying. Is that what I have to do?”
Terah glanced over a shoulder, as if someone were behind her. There was no one. “It can only be done from the aether.”
“The aether? I don’t understand.” Kharsee, Noor’s coven leader had told her a little about the aether, but Fia wasn’t sure how it fit in here.
“Think of it as the space between everything,” Terah said. “The second fire mother had so much power, she stepped into the aether herself, but that power had eaten away at her, and by the time the sun died, she was ready to go with it.”
It was hard to breathe. Fia had known it would come to this. She’d known it for a while now. “You split it this time, didn’t you? Between the two of us?”
Terah nodded. The ribbons of colour changed to aquamarine and magenta. “I had to, Fia. But it’s already taken hold of Lorn.”
Fia tried to keep her features calm, expressionless. Tried to hide the shake in her hands. She knew what ne
eded to be done. She’d been practising her syphoning with Okwata—enough that she had control of it now—and that part, getting close enough to Lorn, that was somehow the easy part in all of this. “And can I get to the aether?”
“Your friends will find a way,” Terah said, looking down at Alexander.
No. Anything but that. Anyone but him. Fia’s thoughts were a tangle of questions—and some answers she already knew. There wasn’t enough time for everything that needed to be done and there was more than one world at stake. Ohinyan’s demise affected Earth and Deganis too. Evina still needed to get her powers back, and even if Erebus could simply return them, would he?
I started to forget who I was. What I was, he’d told her, back in Djira. But he’d caused so much pain to so many, so much suffering. It was so hard to separate the Erebus she knew from the one she’d heard of. From the one who’d whispered to her from his prison. “What about the windows to Earth?” she finally asked.
“The windows to Earth will stabilise,” Terah said with enough confidence that Fia felt a flicker of hope.
“He’s done so many terrible things, Terah. I can’t just look the other way.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m not denying what he’s done is wrong. I’m just asking you to remember he wasn’t always this way. He was wrongfully imprisoned, the ancient darkness was made, and who Erebus was fell away, little by little.” Terah’s eyes glistened as she said it, and Fia tried to imagine what it would have been like for Terah to watch it all, watch her lover’s heart turn to ash.
All Fia could think of was the path of destruction Erebus had left in his wake. “What about all the creatures he’s changed, like the Sorren?”
“The things that Erebus made dark will remain that way, but they have a choice to change. We are all capable of change, Fia. Even him.” Terah held her head high as she said it, and Fia wondered if the fire mother believed it, or if she just wanted to.
Fia glanced back down at Alexander again, knowing that every moment here with Terah was a final moment with him she wouldn’t have. “And Evina, the Queen of Deganis, you know what he took from her?”
The First Dawn (Daughter of the Phoenix Book Three) Page 23
