20. Caspyn
Chapter 20
Grynd said nothing when I jumped from the ferry, my cloak flowing behind me as I raced toward the bend in the road and the copse of foliage and beach-beaten trees where I had hidden his body.
Theadore.
My great-grandfather.
I could no longer hear the garbled noises of a fading life as I approached, not that it mattered, I was already pulling my magic to life, the cold drifting over my skin as my eyes dipped to a matching shade.
I hadn’t been able to pull much time from the plants before, but I used it all as I ran, time moving away from me even as I drifted through the sludge of the Ether. Dampened voices drifted behind me in that familiar garble, the Wave Walkers re-emerging from the ferry as they moved backwards, my own shadow appearing behind them as I raced from the spot in the trees I was trying to reach.
The Wave Walkers’ voices were still in the distance, my own body racing after them when the magic ran out and I continued forward, the two versions of me racing in opposite directions, one toward the ferry with no idea what he had done, and I toward the man who I could hear gasping for breath in the trees.
Branches broke as I reached him, dropping to my knees with a crash and a gasp. He stared up in confusion as I gathered up my cloak and pressed it against the gushing hole in his chest. I had only just left him, snarling about his death, and now I tried to save him, the numbing I had felt since leaving vanishing as I stared into his wide eyes.
“You are Kryamri’s father,” it wasn’t a question, he nodded in confirmation none-the-less. I pressed my lips together, he already knew I could jump time, possibly because his King could do the same. All the pieces that didn’t match up, all the pieces that this man might have the answers to.
“Kryamri is my grandmother.” His eyes widened at my confession and he gasped, only to have more blood flood his mouth. He coughed, the specks of red going everywhere as I pressed my cloak harder against his chest.
“You have traveled far.” The words were broken by the amount of blood in his mouth. “You know…” he coughed again, more blood flying from his mouth. “You know what is coming.”
I nodded, even through the blood that dripped from him I could see the wide panic in his eyes. See the terror. It was the same that had lived in me for so long, that fear that continued to pull me forward.
“You have to stop her.” His blood soaked hand wrapped around my tunic, pulling me closer. So close all I could smell was the blood.
“I am trying. I will kill the queen.” I was determined, he shook his head.
“Not… It’s the… the queen…” he coughed again, droplets of blood flying over my face. I didn’t dare move. “The queen… she has the princess… you have to find her… kill the princess…”
“Kill Princess? Elara?” I shook my head, the princess was the one who stood up to the queen. She was the one who was supposed to save us. He was shaking his head as intensely as I was.
“Not… Elara. Vaelar. He knows. He… can help. Ad… an… Kill her before Dalyah uses her. Kill her or take her…” more coughing, I didn’t even flinch as the drops of warm wet went everywhere. “Ad-d-an.”
“Add a what?” I asked, he tried to say the word again, but choked on the blood that was pooling there. I lifted him, letting it drain in a flood of red.
“Take her magic,” he said through the last of the blood as I lowered him back to the ground.
“Take her magic? I can’t take magic.” His grip tightened on my tunic, pulling me even closer as those wide eyes slid in and out of focus.
“You are a Sypher. It’s not a… You steal magic.” I shook my head again. Vaelar had called me a Sypher that night he came to kill me, but I did not steal magic.
“I steal time. Like your King.”
“Not time. Vaelar… he is a… Vynari. You, Sypher, you swallow magic. Time is something… else… something from… the Fae Queen…” His words were gasps and garbles as he grabbed my hand, pulling me closer. With blood stained fingers he pressed my hand against his face, the skin far too cold for someone who was still talking. “But Magic… steal mine. Sypher’s find… more… time. Magic.”
Blood poured from his mouth with every word, thick droplets going everywhere as he spoke. The icy flood of my magic swelled as though he had beckoned, as though it knew exactly what this man, my great-grandfather, was talking about and what I was supposed to do.
“Take my magic… before it’s too late,” he said again, the words nearly lost as he choked on his blood.
“Magic? But you are not Fae.”
“I am… but not.” He wasn’t making sense, but it was getting harder for him to talk now. “Take care of Kryamri. Save them all, only you can. You were the one Vaelar saw. It’s you. Tell him it’s you, not the girl. The King needs you.”
He was talking gibberish as his life slipped away, and I knew from experience I could not take time from those already gone. I was unsure how that worked with magic, but I had an idea.
I had felt it before, after all, when Lily had given me her magic. When I watched her fade into the black waves under the Qit.
My magic became an ice storm as I pulled at the life within him, what little that remained flooding into me the same as it always would. Except there was something more there, something warm, like a golden string that was hot to the touch. It wasn’t life, but I pulled on it anyway, watching the man before me sag into the ground, his chest caving in as I pulled. A feeling of ground and air overtook me with each tug on that glittering thread. It was as though I was inhaling an entire forest, the vastness of it opening up inside of me. I took the last of his time and continued to pull on that thread of gold, pull on that magic that raced into me. That became part of me.
I had thought the magic of a Sypher stole and used time, but as the man drifted to ash, fading into nothing, I was left not only with the fragments of his remaining time but also his magic.
“It was you!” I spun at the voice, at the boiling rage that ran over my skin. I was covered in blood, the ashen remains of the man coating my hands and blending in with the soot from the fire I was covered in.
I had already drawn my blades as I turned toward the horrified face of the woman I had raced so far to protect. Jayse.
I knew at once she wasn’t angry at the blood that covered me, or at the death I had surely instigated; but rather the type of death she had witnessed, and the connection she had made.
After so many years of protecting her from this secret I couldn’t protect her. Not anymore.
“You killed him! You killed Jack!” That solitary shout had turned into a scream, her eyes wide and damp.
“I can explain.” My blades dropped to the ground as I held my hands out, the blood and ash that covered palms doing nothing to help me.
“Can you? Because what I saw… that was what happened with Jack… you told me that man killed him.”
“Jayse, I–” My boots scuffed against the blood covered dirt as I stepped closer, and she took one very broad step back.
“Don’t come any closer to me!” She was screaming now, her voice carrying as she continued to back away.
“Jayse, you have to listen–” my voice cracked as my heart did, a pain stretching over my chest as something heavy and deep flared against my soul, a weighted prickling sensation I had never felt before. It wasn’t the heat of my flame, or the ice of time, it was something heavier, larger, dangerous. Something that felt out of control.
“I don’t have to listen to you! Why would I after you killed him! You killed my brother! The only part of my family I had left!” She screamed as that weight inside of me grew, something heavy and forbidden rumbling over my skin.
“Jayse!” Her name was a shout of panic and warning as that heaviness thundered from me and exploded in a crack that split through the ground, everything shaking as a fissure opened through the dirt and foliage between us.
“What’s happening?” Jayse screamed, backing up as she looked from me to the ash covered ground in horror. “What are you doing? What kind of monster are you?”
Monster?
I wasn’t the monster.
I had saved her from monsters.
Her words cut through the grumbling roar of the ground as it shook and broke. Her horror filled eyes staring; digging into me sharper than even my own blades.
“I’m not a monster!” I tried to yell the words at her, but they were lost on the sound of the world as it rattled and roared. Without looking back, she raced from the ever widening hole in the ground and back toward the Qit.
The magic of vio. That was what I had taken from my great-grandfather, Theadore. It was ripping through me, taking all of the pain and splitting through the soil in a giant gash.
“Jayse!” I screamed her name, still she didn’t turn. My voice was nothing but another noise rumbling and mixing with the scream of the world, with the scream of pain that was ripping me apart.
I had always kept Jayse protected, kept her safe, even from me. I had placed her behind walls, but now those walls were gone. Now, not only did she realize exactly what I was, but I realized what she was. Everything that she was to me.
I couldn’t lose her, not after everything. Not after an entire life of her by my side. She was the last thing I had. The only thing that mattered. I needed her to know it was an accident, that I had simply lost control. Just like now.
I forced out a breath, forced all that breaking, ripping agony that was shredding at my chest back in. This new magic would destroy everything if I would let it, but I wouldn’t let it. Not now, anyway.
Thankfully, the grinding scream of the world slowed, the shaking rumbling to a groan that rattled from everywhere before it drifted off into silence.
By the time it did, however, Jayse was gone, leaving me standing alone on the far side of a gap in the ground that had swallowed trees and brush and part of the road. The maw that the new magic had created stretched far enough I could not jump the distance, and deep enough I could not scale it.
Feet and hands slick from blood, I scrambled my way around the opening, cutting over rocks and through the scrub brush that lined the beaches as best as I could in an attempt to reach the ferry I was sure had already left. I didn’t care, I needed to reach her, I needed to explain, and I would swim to the Qit if need be.
I needed to tell her about Jack, how it had been an accident, how it was the first time I lost control of my magic and it had actually sent me back thirty years. I had spent a life training to kill, to fight, and when I walked back in on the scene it was to Jayse, staring at my back as Jack faded into nothing. She hadn’t recognized me through the dark cloak, so when the me from the past ran I grabbed Jayse, giving myself time to escape. That hadn’t been my intent, however, I had wanted to stop it. I had wanted to save Jack.
I had failed in that, but I was not too late to cover for myself. To blame the man who had truly been at fault, and to explain away what she had seen.
I needed her to know. I needed her to understand.
My cloak and breeches caught against the underbrush as I raced around the end of the gap to what remained of the road, most of it having fallen away and been devoured by the powerful vio magic that had exploded out of me. The ground shifted as though it would fall away more as I bolted down the dirt road, a plume of brown and gray exploding behind me. If only I had any time left to use, to rewind all of this and stop her from seeing me, to stop her from running. I had none left.
It was only my terror that pulled me down the path at impossible speeds.
By the time I reached the pier, Tayln was there, his ferry bobbing against the waves. He stood at the entrance to the small boat, one of the long spears the Wave Walkers used for the big fish in his hands.
“I need to cross,” I said before I even reached him. He shifted his weight, holding that sharp barbed end out to me.
“Not anymore. You’re not welcome here.” The end of the weapon was still as he pressed it against my chest, the sharp point digging into my tunic. It pressed through the fabric with a pop, the sharp point painful against my skin as it threatened to cut into it.
“I need to speak to Jayse.” Even I heard the break in my voice, the same crack rippling against my torso as something deep inside me broke. Something I hadn’t felt since I watched Lily drift into the waves.
“She has no interest in that, not anymore.”
“But I–”
“You killed that little boy, Caspyn. You killed Jack. We all watched out for those two after the fever took their parents, and you killed ‘im. I’d wager you killed a lot more, too.” There was nothing I could say to that. I stood there, covered in blood, the memory of all the other times I had shown up to his ferry covered in deep reds or purples sparking in my mind. He had said nothing for years, and he had warned me it was all coming to an end.
“We will do anything to protect our kind.” He pressed the sharpened tip of the fishing spear harder against my chest, the warm wet beginning to trickle as pain blossomed there, I didn’t even flinch.
“But I am–”
“Not anymore,” Tayln pressed the point against me with a kick that forced me to step back lest the sharp blade slice deep. The pier rocked underneath me as I landed with a thud against the aged, damp wood and Tayln kicked off from the pier.
His hard eyes narrowed in a disgust I had never seen from him as his ferry gave a lurch, the ropes that they used to pull across the waves moving all on their own as the ferry moved back toward the Qit.
They were pulling him in. They were pulling both of the ferry’s in.
“I warned you, Caspyn,” Tayln said, still pointing the weapon as his ferry rocked on the increasing wake.
“But this is my home.” The words were shattered as an unwanted pain crisscrossed against my chest, the slices of something I hadn’t felt since I was a child threatening to cleave me into a million pieces. I gasped against the pain, trying to say the words again, but it didn’t matter, I was not loud enough for anything I said to reach him.
I stood on the pier, watching as Tayln pulled the ferry back in, the ropes on the attached side pulled free. They only ever pulled the ferry’s free if the Qits moved to new fishing ground or in case of illness or war.
Or, I suppose, me.
I didn’t dare move as I watched him go, watched the world and the people I had worked so hard to save drift away.
I could see little more than the shape of the Qit from where I stood, one small figure still standing on the pier waiting for her father to arrive, waiting for something that would never come.
Something that she would spend her life waiting for, that would fuel her into something grander. That death, that traumatic loss that Mother had told me about.
Not only had it happened, but I had been the one to bring it about, was that how it had always been? It couldn’t be, because I wasn’t there before.
The thought drifted away as I stood there, staring at the girl, her hair whipping around her, catching the golden beams of the sun as it continued to rise, the brightness of it turning the waves to golden glass. Turning her into a bright spot. Just like Lily. As I stood there, she looked like Lily.
Like the girl that would come after. The only one I truly wished to save.
Whatever had been cracking inside of me shattered and I bellowed in pain and loss, tears pouring from me as I scrambled to the end of the pier, knowing that even if I swam to her, swam to them all, they would simply end me.
I stood there, staring at the girl that would create my mother, my sister, and me. She didn’t move, she knew what I had done, too. She knew I had failed her.
That I had failed them all.
But perhaps not yet.
After all, I still had a Queen to kill, and now it didn’t matter if I lived or died in the process. None of it mattered.
Only Lilly. Only revenge for what that woman had done to her.
That was all I had left.
Which meant one thing, we were all going to a wedding.
I shoved all that pain and agony down into the same black pit I had forced it to live in for so many years, where I had forced it to fester. With my hands on my blades, I stood, giving the girl a nod I was sure she could not see as I watched the black speck of the Qit drift away and I turned; walking away from everything.