Chapter Two
Two
We definitely weren’t leaving now. Other curious (nosy) people emerged from shadows and doorways, gaping at the flags and soldiers and armor. Strongholders knew royals could be useless at best, treacherous at worst. But the army was still quite a thing to see.
Mounted soldiers followed those on foot, and the market’s shadows had lengthened by the time the first carriage rolled through the gatehouse, pulled by a pair of sleek black horses.
It was silver and gleaming atop black wheels, its roof rising to a steep and dramatic point, its shutters tightly closed.
The carriage was circled by guards wearing dark uniforms like the other soldiers, but minus the armor and helmets.
Three more conveyances followed, all closed tight.
I guessed the prince didn’t want to grace us with a glimpse today.
“I bet he’s ugly,” Wren said.
I didn’t care much about the man, but I was dazzled by the shine. “Can a man with silver carriages be ugly?”
“You mean, will the coin make him handsome? I’d say it depends on the size of the coin, but he’s royal. They’re all ugly of heart.”
“Fucking Lys’Careths,” I murmured.
“Fucking Lys’Careths,” she agreed.
And they weren’t the only trouble brewing. A pain in my chest—a sharp pinch near my heart—alerted me to a new danger, and a faint green haze bloomed in the air like clouds at the edge of a storm.
“Aether,” I warned. “Strong.” Aether was the stuff of the Aetheric realm—its energy and substance. Anima bore traces of it, but this was more than a trace…
“Where?”
I looked up, around, trying to locate the Anima as Aether spread like smoke in the dry air. “I can’t tell. It’s spread out.”
“Friend or foe?” Wren asked.
“Not a friend.” There was a sharpness to it, as if the Aether’s edge had been honed to a fine blade.
Sparks fired at the edges of the magical haze as the pale outline of a wide-winged moth fluttered toward us. “Luna,” I said quietly as the soldiers continued marching.
The moth shuddered, then expanded into a new shape—the hazy outline of a slender young woman with pale skin, straight blond hair chopped at the chin, and eyes that swam with silvery magic.
An Anima—and our friend. She was the only thing from the Aetheric who didn’t cause me pain.
Maybe because we’d known her for years, or maybe because she was a Guardian, a kind of emissary between our world and hers, and with more skills and power than a standard Anima.
She nodded a greeting at Wren. Anima, if they were powerful enough, could choose to be visible to humans who couldn’t otherwise sense them.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Someone is manipulating Aether,” Luna said in the silent language of gestures she’d created and had taught us to speak.
Anima used Aether to appear in this world.
Creating sound required even more power than being seen, so speaking with her hands allowed her to conserve her power; it also helped her stay hidden.
“That’s not possible,” Wren said.
For nearly a century, the Aetheric god had roamed Terra for his amusement—seeing the sights, dining with the Terran gods, spilling Aether into our world.
Humans had learned to use and manipulate that magic, and they’d called themselves practitioners.
He disappeared suddenly a decade ago, apparently weary of humans.
Without him, Aetheric magic all but evaporated.
Even the ability to see Anima and detect Aether was relatively rare.
“It shouldn’t be possible,” I corrected.
Luna nodded. “A practitioner has been revealed.”
“I just wanted a little damned sunshine,” I muttered. “A few coins.”
“Instead you got a prince too scared to show his face and the first Aetheric manipulator in years,” Wren said sourly. “Lucky you.”
I looked at Luna. “Where is the practitioner?”
Luna shook her head. “Hiding from me. I’ll keep looking,” she said, and disappeared.
“I don’t like this,” Wren said, and slipped her small blade into her hand. She’d learned how to fight as a child, when that had been her only way to stay alive.
Someone ran through the alley, pushing past us to get to the road. It was a man in the usual tunic and trousers of a strongholder. But the hands that shoved me were hot enough to burn, and a river of Aether flowed behind him.
Its color was wrong. Not the color of new leaves, but of rotting ones.
He rushed into the market proper, toward the marching lines of soldiers. And then he simply disappeared. None of the soldiers had seen him.
“Did a man just run past us,” Wren asked quietly, “and then disappear?”
“Yeah,” I said, relieved that I hadn’t imagined him. But where in Oblivion had he gone?
He appeared again from nothing, three strides closer to the second carriage, still hidden by twilight shadows but for the glow of the magic that trailed him. And now he held a short sword.
I had to make a choice. And I had to make it fast.
Maybe I should have stayed in the alley, safe and hidden. Even if our fates were mostly decided, our choices might add new threads or snip old ones from the tapestry. But if you snipped too many, the tapestry might simply unravel.
Doing nothing was a choice; ignoring someone in danger was a choice. So I snipped the thread that held me to the shadows and hoped I’d survive. I ran into the road screaming, “Assassin! He has a sword!”
“Protect the prince!” someone called out, and the carriages jerked to a halt.
Soldiers unsheathed their weapons, but the man disappeared. The soldiers nearest me—who’d seen no other trouble—turned in my direction, thinking I was the threat.
“Not me!” I watched the faint wisp of green move in the air above the entourage. “He’s going for the carriages!”
The man appeared again, crouching atop the second carriage.
“Second carriage!” I shouted.
Now they saw him, and they converged as the attacker raised his weapon above the highest point of the carriage’s vaulted roof and struck.
The crack felt loud enough to split the sky in half; wood splintered, hurling shards through the air and leaving a gaping hole.
There was no noise from the carriage, and the man’s smile fell away when he looked inside.
I could see his face clearly now—skin red and flushed, his lips an unhappy line.
I didn’t recognize him, and I didn’t understand the green glow of Aetheric power in his eyes.
He wasn’t doing magic—negotiating it or directing it—and he carried a Terran sword.
But magic rose from his body like flames from a burning building.
He was human but filled with Aetheric magic. That must have been the work of the practitioner, but I couldn’t see him in the crowd—or the source of the magic.
With a flicker, he disappeared again. I squinted and could see the faint green haze that spread through the air where he’d disappeared, like a ripple in water. Like he’d dipped a toe into the Aetheric.
That shouldn’t have been possible. Living humans weren’t supposed to be able to travel into the Aetheric. But an Anima could.
“What is it?” a man asked, his voice so close I nearly jumped in surprise. “The attacker?”
Then he took my arm. I looked down at the long, tan fingers, and then up at the person those fingers belonged to.
He was several hands taller than me and wore the uniform of the carriage guards, which fitted around his strong shoulders and muscled arms. His hair was dark and straight and pulled back at the temples, and his skin was suntanned, making his eyes—the dark blue of the sky before a summer storm rolled through—seem to glow with purpose.
His brows were long and dark, his nose just a bit wider at the bridge, maybe because of some past fight.
His lips were full and deeply curved, but they frowned now.
The hand that wasn’t gripping my arm had already pulled a sword, and he looked very prepared to use it.
He was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. And he was a Lys’Careth henchman who’d kill me where I stood if he believed I was a threat to his master.
I couldn’t help but stare at him despite the danger. He stared back and so we stood together as chaos rose around us—the moment surely no longer than a heartbeat, but time expanding and stretching around us as if to keep us together within its embrace.
Nearby, someone called out a warning. The moment had been brittle, and it shattered.
“The assassin,” he said, his voice deep and insistent and carrying the aristocratic tones of Carethia’s capital, the City of Flowers. “Do you know what’s happening to him?”
I slipped my arm from his grasp. “I think he’s being used by an Aetheric practitioner.”
“Used?”
“He seems to be”—and I wouldn’t have believed it if I had any other reasonable explanation—“possessed by an Anima.” Tales of possession were at least as old as Carethia, or the nations the Emperor Eternal had cobbled together to make it. I hadn’t thought they were true. Not until today.
He stared at me for a heartbeat, as if trying to accustom himself to the idea, while soldiers circled around the carriages, waiting for it to appear again.
“What in Oblivion am I supposed to do with that? And that’s an actual question. I’ll happily entertain suggestions.”
“You’re the one with the sword.”
“Which is little use against an enemy I can’t see.” His voice was dry as Vhranian sand.
“Maybe try to force the Anima out. Exorcise it. If the human is unconscious, the Anima might need to leave it. But be careful with the human; this probably wasn’t his choice.” After all, who would willingly agree to be controlled by an Anima?
“Wouldn’t be mine,” the guard said. “Why does it keep disappearing?”
“I think it’s slipping in and out of the Aetheric. And no, I’m not sure how.” I’d been scanning the market, from pacing soldiers to horses eager to move, shoppers and sellers terrified and thrilled by the action. And finally found the green haze to my left.
“There!” I said, pointing. “First carriage. Near the front horses.”