Chapter 48
48
“ W hat’s going on?” I asked Rachelle as I scrambled to my feet. The sleeves of my white tunic fluttered in the slight cool breeze coming off the sand dunes. Dark had just about settled, and Tristen raised a hand and lit his shadowfire so we could see her better.
“The others went looking for water, and they awoke something else.”
“What?” Tristen asked, his expression hard.
“Dune Stalkers,” Rachelle whispered. “They’re holding them off, but we need to go and help?—”
“Lead us to them,” Tristen said without missing a beat.
We were running southeast, Rachelle running alongside us in her human form. She looked bone tired having used up so much of her shifting power, and was likely still as dehydrated as I was. Tristen didn’t show any signs of slowing down, but I knew he must be even more spent than I felt. Every muscle in my body cried out with exertion, and my legs felt leaden as we crested sand dune after sand dune, the grains shifting under our feet as we ran as fast as we could.
As we skidded down another sand dune, the others came into view.
Callum, Issac, Henry, and Priscilla stood back-to-back in the sand. Around them was… nothing.
Callum saw us, and gestured for us to be quiet.
We slowed our approach, and Tristen split his flame into five levitating torches that he spread out around us so we could see clearly as the sun fully slipped underneath the horizon and we were bathed in utter darkness save his shadowfire.
We got within a stone’s throw of the group, and we all drew our weapons, waiting, listening to the silent dunes.
Silence, except for a rough voice.
“ Would you like to see, chosen one? Would you like a little taste ?”
I whipped my head around, but saw nothing. None of the others seemed like they heard anything, so the voice… it must be talking to me.
“ What do you want ?” I asked.
“ Closer, I have something for you ,” the rough voice asked, sounding like shaken gravel as it reverberated in my mind.
That’s when I saw it. A slab of stone half-buried in the sand a few paces to my left, across from Callum and the others. Beside the stone stood half-buried marble legs of a statue, cut off at the knee. It was as if there was a great monument that had once towered above this swirling desert, but it had been mowed down in the face of some great violent act. I was mesmerized, my eyes unable to leave the glistening stone that seemed to shine in the desert light.
“ What will you give me ?” I asked the voice.
“ A memory ,” it said.
I was already moving when Callum screamed at me to stop. I sunk down and placed my hands on the cool stone, and then I
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into the suffocating dark.
Fight.
The instinct rammed through my body like a lightning bolt. I was somewhere high, somewhere on fire, somewhere shrouded in darkness.
Dual blades arced through the night sky. My blades. My body moved with such practiced ease as I sliced through an opponent whose sword clashed with mine. He didn’t have time to scream as I kicked him off the battlements. His body fell below—amongst an army.
An army wearing Luminaria’s colors.
“FIRE!” a voice shouted, and suddenly the air was filled with gunpowder and a huge boom! that had me stumbling slightly as a cannon fired. I was wearing a hood and a black bandana that was obscuring the lower half of my face—clothes of an assassin, or a fighter trying to hide their identity.
Screams of death and destruction filled the air—but suddenly, the sound seemed to hush amongst the warriors standing atop the stone wall.
“He’s here,” whispers came from the archers on the battlements.
“Thank the gods, we’re saved,” a warrior at a cannon said.
I turned, and saw him .
He was wrapped in shadows that slithered around him like snakes. As those trying to scale the wall, armed with terrible weapons, he flicked out his shadowfire and their ropes went up in flames and they fell, screaming to their deaths.
As he approached me, I felt no fear. No terror. Just awe.
“Luminaria has razed all of the neutral border villages,” the version of myself in my memory said to him, the truth sinking like a stone as I sheathed my blades. “There were no survivors.”
“Then we will destroy them and their forces,” he said, stepping into the light of a nearby torch. He was stunning in the flickering light. Absolutely lethal, but with a kind of grace that kept my heart fluttering. “We will keep our people safe.”
“We will. Together,” I said.
And then in one short stride he crossed the distance between us, yanked down the bandana that covered my face, and captured me in a kiss.
It was everything and nothing like the kiss we had shared in the tent. In this memory, he kissed me like I was his last breath. All need and desire, nothing held back.
When he pulled away from me, he looked like he was about to say something else, when?—
—an explosion rattled the battlements, the blinding light flashing as the memory
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