A Song of Air (Fae Elementals #4)

Trails of Blood

T he human lands smelled like iron and were shrouded in smog. Just north of the Ley Line, color didn’t bathe the landscape. There were no trees that dripped golden, glittering sap from between the cracks of blue bark. There were no rivers that ran as dazzlingly as starlight streaking across a night sky. There was nothing but gray sky, the leftover taste of ashwood still lingering in the air, and humans that led Fae into their designated tents with smiles that were far more malicious than welcoming.

The bag on Bryson Varik’s back threatened to haul her to the ground with its weight. A similar weight had taken up residence within her chest since the start of the war; when she watched her mother walk away with other Seelie soldiers, clad in Sapphire Court armor, only to never return. One that had become even more prominent over the last few days as she, her father, and sister migrated miles on foot to cross the Ley Line.

The war was over now, and the Fae had lost.

Even so, the humans offered them all a tentative peace in the form of asylum; a necessary outreach of their hands as the Feylands had become overrun both with iron and soldiers.

Everything Bryson once loved had been decimated.

“Strength, little ones.” Her father’s voice rumbled through her fear, and he swallowed the violent tremors of her hand beneath his massive paw, lending her bravery.

She desperately needed it.

Bryson’s brown gaze swept over the new place she would now call home. Magic swelled inside her body as she took everything in. How easy it would be to create a gust of wind that could have swept the entire place away. It would have been so easy to give into her rage. To let it consume her and unleash her magic in a force so untamed that they needn’t stay here at all.

As a storm of wind began forming at her feet, her father squeezed her hand in warning, forcing her to slam the door closed on all her angry thoughts and wishes, but the dreary sky reflected her mood for the rest of the week. And happiness was nowhere to be found.

She spent her days wandering through their makeshift camp, trying to avoid the keen gazes of the humans, who were starting to feel more like jailors instead of allies. She’d brought it up in the quiet night of their tent, but her father couldn’t see that. If he did, he ignored it.

“Your mother died for peace and now that they’re offering it, you question it?”

She didn’t want to mistrust it. In fact, she wanted peace as much as everyone else did. But Bryson had a bad feeling. Like something was going to go very, very wrong.

She had no proof, of course, but she wallowed in the sensation the next day. She sat away from the camp, rebelliously playing with her magic, releasing what she could out into the sky in secret. Around humans, it was better to keep the elemental magic she possessed a silent thing; she wasn’t sure what they’d do to her if they knew. One moment she was scrunching her nose at the stench of sweat and burning wood, and the next, the breeze flittered a scent against her nose that had her back going rigid-straight and the hairs on her arms standing on end.

She didn’t even have time to scream before the first explosion hit.

It landed on the ground, sending a geyser of earth and grass through the air. By the time the second bomb hit, Bryson was already on her feet only to be knocked back once again. Propelled through the air for mere seconds, she couldn’t cry out. A moment later, she landed on her back, the very breath whooshing from her lungs.

As she fought to stand on shaking feet, chaos rained down on the camp. Soldiers clad in the emperor’s armor marched in, wielding iron and ashwood and explosives.

The effects of the iron slammed against her bones. Her skin itched where smoke touched it. Her eyes burned and tears streamed down her face.

Her own mind filled with as much chaos as there was around her. Thoughts of her father and sister urged her to run. She raced across destruction, her voice entangled with emotion as she screamed out for her family.

Wind cleared the smoke for a fraction of a second, lending Bryson a view of her family from across the field. Their eyes connected, and then they were running towards one another.

“Bryson! Look out!”

Her feet stuttered at his warning, her mind trying to catch up with everything that was happening around her. Her father and sister picked up speed. She saw rather than felt his hands reach for her. He yanked with impressive force, and she fell backwards...

...just as another explosion set off near their feet.

Fragments of iron shot out like daggers of glass, piercing the skin on her face and eyes. The pain was blinding, agonizing, and the moment her head cracked against the ground, unconsciousness trapped her in its deadly grip and dragged her under.

She awoke sometime later to a heavy weight pressurizing her chest, tears streaming down her cheeks, and darkness. She blinked away liquid from her eyes only to cry out as the pain seemed to intensify. Had night already fallen? Had hours really passed? She asked herself those questions, and yet surely she would have made out figures in the darkness...

A groan escaped, and the moment she opened her mouth, she tasted the coppery tang of blood against her lips. She spit it out, but it streamed into her mouth like water from a canteen. Through the grogginess and the pain, she realized it kept coming, dripping down her cheeks in trails of blood.

Her heart pounded with fear and denial, afraid to reach for a truth that was staring her in the face. Bryson tried to move but the heavy weight above her pressed her against the ground. Her hands reached blindly to push it off. When her fingers slipped through coarse hair, it gave her pause.

She blinked again despite the pain, despite the grating it caused on her eyeballs, despite her loss of vision, and felt again. She couldn’t see and yet she recognized what—rather, who—was above her.

“D-dad?” Her body ached as she tried to rise, fingers grappling against the burnt earth. The sounds of attack had died down to embers. To the faint whimpers and cries of those injured and those who’d survived. Her heart pounded with unease as she searched but all she could find was darkness and the lonely scent of death. Her palms touched skin, a nose, a mouth; the contours of which she recognized.

“No...” The word left her on a whimper. “No, no, no.”

Her fingers felt, her nose inhaled the clinging remnants of the scents that made up her father and her sister—close, yet so far away—and her ears picked up the lack of a pulse.

The lack of life.

The presence of death.

And darkness.

And trails of blood.