Chapter 62
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
DRAVEN
Draven has the love of his life wrapped securely in his arms when he hears the screams and smells the smoke.
Begrudgingly, he pulls his arms away from Lyra, who pries her back from his chest and scurries from bed. They both dress themselves quickly, the air already sharp with warning.
“What do you think is happening?” she asks him.
“I have some guesses.”
Draven opens himself to all the magic around him, sensing and searching. He locates exactly what he suspected, atop something which temporarily stills his movements.
That…can’t be.
Once he finishes securing his pants, he does not even attempt to find his shirt, instead striding immediately to the glass door leading out to the balcony, throwing back the curtains to reveal the world on the other side.
The city is washed in a sea of raging flames.
The glowing sky is covered in thick plumes of smoke, now painted in a strange sepia color as the silver moonlight, bright vermilion and gold, soot, and debris all mingle together.
For a moment, Draven is transported a decade in time.
He is standing on a crumbling roof while a bookshop catches fire.
The shouts on the streets are not of civilians but of pieces of his heart.
He hears a girl scream, “Father! Father!”
Father!
Draven’s chest constricts, a fist now gripping his heart with merciless force.
He feels a gentle touch on his back. “Draven,” the voice murmurs. So soft. So comforting.
Draven shakes his head and blinks, glancing down to realize his arms are painted with black rivers already. The inky trails crisscross over his chest, rising into his neck. He blows out a breath, dragging his fingers through his disheveled hair while memories swarm him.
Love is a liability. It is a fool’s dream that will only ever expose you and make you weak.
I do not tolerate liabilities to House Dalmar.
He knows. Knows exactly who to attribute this to. Knows just what this person loves to do. What they are capable of. In fact, he is so well acquainted, he even suspects he most likely knows what is planned for both him, the resilient woman beside him, and gods-only-know whoever else.
You are my greatest accomplishment.
Precautionary measures must be made.
He turns to face the other half of his soul. “Lyra, I need you to listen to me very carefully.”
Draven exits the palace to find chaos on the burning streets.
Mothers run with children clutched to their chests. Rows of men line the streets passing buckets of water for the smaller fires while water-wielders do what they can to tame the larger, more devastating ones.
But the fireballs do not stop blazing through the sky.
They just keep coming, one after the other.
Bright flashes of changing colors blink in and out over the horizon as different wielders use different magics to contain the destruction.
Rivers of water sweep through the sky like graceful snakes.
Winds circle and push against the soaring flames.
Terrain-wielders erect thin mountain peaks.
There are ice crystals and spheres of light and streaks of purple lightning.
Draven struts past it all, his mind only focused on following the trail of magic as familiar to him as his own.
He stops only once he reaches the very edge of the capital city, the orange flames blazing on both sides of the street, chewing away at the buildings. He catches a small tapestry in the shape of a comet fluttering to the ground, ashened and helplessly blown about by the powerful gusts of wind.
A cloaked figure stands just on the other side of it.
Draven’s heart sinks in his chest. “What are you doing here?”
“I think you already know,” the familiar voice says, not sounding familiar to him at all right now.
Draven bites down so hard, he fears he is going to crack his teeth. He shakes his head, unwilling to believe it. “Tell me this isn’t true. Tell me you haven’t been working with him.”
“I cannot tell you that; it would be a lie.”
It all comes together in Draven’s mind. “You’ve been keeping him informed of our movements, haven’t you? Told him we were hiding in the Anatolé Kingdom?”
A long pause. And then—
“Yes.”
“How did you know we were in Anatheima?”
“I laced an item with my lakt? and placed it on Marcella before she left.”
“Then you guided them right to us.” Draven does not say it like a question. Though he still receives an answer all the same.
“Yes.”
Draven grips his hips, tongue pushing into his bottom lip. “It could have been anyone but you,” he whispers, emotion squeezing painfully in his chest. “Gods, Kiran, why did it have to be you who betrayed us?”
Kiran drops his hood, revealing his face.
His ruby hair is half-drawn, but that is about the only familiar feature on him right now.
His eyes are dimmed and cold, his lips thinned and stretched tight across his face.
Purple stains are smudged into the hollows beneath his eyes, made extra eerie by the shadows flickering over him from the flaming walls encasing the two of them.
“I am sorry, brother.”
Draven can’t hide the hurt in his voice. “Why?”
Kiran remains silent.
“Why?” he presses, feeling oddly on the verge of tears.
Kiran flexes his jaw, eyes falling temporarily to the ground. Until he reorients himself, straightening his shoulders and uncurling his fingers from his palms, outstretching his hands. “I’ve been ordered to bring you in alive.”
“Tell me why,” Draven demands through clenched teeth.
“I’m sorry,” is all Kiran says.
Then he strikes.
He moves with the fluidity of a fox, weaving his hands in a circular motion as he draws his flames to the surface of his skin.
Draven shakes his head at the sight. “Kiran, please… I don’t want to hurt you.”
He slides a foot back, his flames humming as they wind over his forearms like coiling snakes.
It burns the fabric of his cloak, disintegrating the threads, growing so loud, Kiran has to elevate his voice.
“I understand you even more now, brother. Finlay, too. Things…change…when you have something you are fighting to protect.”
The words strike Draven, but before he can question Kiran further, his brother unleashes a barrage of roaring fire strikes.
Draven deflects the attack with a quick succession of sheets of obsidian magic.
A low growl rattles in his chest as he slices his hand through the air, bringing down an onyx whip aimed at Kiran’s feet.
With perfect grace, Kiran plants his hand to the ground and propels himself into a backward flip, dodging Draven’s attack. He slams the heels of his palms together and sends a roaring golden lion carved purely from flames at Draven.
Draven erects a large shadow panther in answer. It leaps from over his shoulder to swallow the lion. Yet before his panther’s inky fangs can clash with the lion’s vermilion and gold teeth, Kiran releases the magic, leaving nothing but a trail of embers in its wake.
He sends a blast of scorching magic at Draven’s chest in place of the lion.
Draven slams his hands into the ground and erects a defensive wall just in time to swallow the force of the heated impact. Yet before he can even recover from the grunt expelling from his lips, he sees tendrils of fire weaving over his head, crossing at different intersecting points.
They form a net of flames.
Draven releases his hold on his obsidian wall; Kiran brings down the blazing net atop him.
Draven swears under his breath and tucks and rolls, barely escaping Kiran’s net as it swallows the place he just stood.
“Enough,” Draven snarls.
He goes deeper into his magic, summoning his own black flame. He is greeted by the voices.
Welcome. Welcome. We are already with you now. Let us take control again.
For a heartbeat, he squeezes his eyes closed and strains against the sudden instability souring his veins.
“No. No,” he replies aloud.
The moment costs him.
Kiran raises his hands to the reddened, glowing sky, summoning more fire and lacing it together like winding knots to form an even bigger net. To create even bigger flames.
His shirt has burned completely from his body, revealing his wielder’s mark. It wraps around his forearm, glowing like pure molten lava against his skin. That, paired with the glowing wisps whipping over his shoulders, veils Kiran’s eyes in more shadows, making them look like depthless pits.
When he glances back down at Draven, he is unrecognizable. “I don’t want to do this,” he says, his voice devoid of all the usual qualities making Kiran who he is.
“Then don’t,” Draven bites out.
Kiran’s gaze is solemn—filled with a tortured sadness. It flays Draven’s insides to see his normally mischievous brother wear such a look. “He has them, Draven. I have no choice.”
With one hand now outstretched, two fingers pressed tightly together while his other hand remains raised to the sky, Kiran simultaneously sends an inferno racing toward Draven’s chest while dropping what appears to be a burning cage down on him.
Draven meets the blast head-on with his own whirling black fire, the two magics clashing at the center of the distance between them, a resounding BOOM splitting the air at the impact.
At the same moment, he throws up his left arm, creating a ceiling of dark magic over his head, keeping the fiery, vermillion cage lodged in the sky, unable to crash down and contain him.
Draven’s muscles scream from the exertion. “Who?” he barely manages to bite out. “Who does…he…have?” His voice is strained and rough, coming out as if his throat is gripped by unrelenting fingers.
In a way, he supposes it is. His magic is that ruthless when he is forced to use so much of it, and it rages inside him as a result.
Let us take control.
Let us take control.
LET US!