CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I was floating on water. Crisp, cool water. Clear as the air. Clear as the sky overhead, a cloudless arctic blue. I dragged my hands through the pristine liquid ever so slowly. There was nothing above me. There was nothing below me. It was just me, drifting on the surface of sunshine itself.
Nothing to fear.
Nothing to grieve.
Nothing but crystalline peace.
I drifted for a time that was long and a time that was short. I drifted endlessly. I drifted forever.
A gentle ripple next to me. Larimar.
Their face, always a sight to behold, was prismatic.
Warm, welcome tears gathered in my eyes at the sight of it. At the sight of such loveliness. At the sight of my dear friend.
“I cannot interfere in human conflicts,” Larimar said, their face expressionless.
At their words, grief bloomed in me, though it was not my own. Grief so intense that my tears of joy turned to bitter weeping.
I extended my hand to rest upon Larimar’s fin. It was as smooth as silk and reminded me of how I felt when I rested comfortably upon the ocean floor, the surface above like a glittering sky. I remembered it, though the memory was not my own.
“You’ve already told me this,” I said. “And you’ve done more for me than you could ever know.”
Larimar lifted their head skyward.
Storm clouds were rolling in. The clouds’ underbellies flickered with lightning, but what sounded in their wake were screams. Faraway screams. Screams of anguish.
I was floating, and I was gliding.
I was present, and I was escaping.
Larimar was beside me. “It is not over.”
Something tugged at my memory. This memory was my own. I wanted to forget.
“But I’m here now,” I cried. This time the weeping was mine and mine alone. The salt of my tears blended with the salt of the ocean.
My tears echoed for miles.
They echoed without ceasing.
Larimar’s face was expressionless. Then their face was alight. Not just with their kaleidoscopic beauty, though that was there. It was something else.
And then I was a small thing, a piece of light itself, resting in Larimar’s fin.
“Be safe,” they whispered, and I felt the intensity of their grief once more as they released me.
A speck of light.
A seed of hope.
“Maila! Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Maila, Maila!”
Nya’s screaming had my eyes flying open. Heart pounding.
“Kieran, stop! She’s alive!”
It was night. Had I been unconscious that long? There was a storm raging above, the likes of which I had never seen. A hurricane. Worse.
Nya’s face appeared over mine. Even in the darkness, I could see that her eyelids were swollen from crying, and her chest was heaving with rasping breaths. I became aware of a weight on me. Her body was covering mine.
“What happened?” I asked. Or tried to ask. My words were swallowed up in a gust of wind. Its howl was enough to leave my ears ringing.
“Kieran, please!” Nya screamed at something behind me.
It clicked into place. Kieran. Kieran was there.
Snapping out of my stupor, I tried to sit up, but the weight of Nya’s body held me down. The air was thick with something like humidity but denser. More ominous. I struggled weakly against Nya’s grip, pushing on her arm until she finally lifted it.
Her cheeks were wet with tears, and she was shaking, but her expression was full of hope. “Tell him you’re okay.” Her voice was barely audible over the violent gusts. “Tell him, Maila!”
I raised myself and instantly knew Nya was wrong.
I was not okay. I was dead. Because there was no other way to make sense of the scene before me.
It was not nighttime, because what was above us was not the night sky.
It was black, solid onyx. No moon or stars or even a cloud to be found.
It was not storming, and yet something like wind, ear-shatteringly loud, was ripping across the battlefield.
Across the ground. Across everything. Chunks of dirt and grass, the loose pieces of concrete that had once been part of the wall, even the wall itself…
objects were being lifted on this mysterious wind, only to disintegrate into nothingness.
As if they had never existed to begin with.
Holy shit. Was that the roof of the Knowledge Center?
Before I could comprehend what that meant, my eyes landed on something else. Someone else.
Leon.
If not for those blue eyes that stared upward, unseeingly…those miserable eyes that I would never forget as long as I lived…I would not have known it was him. The corpse I had left behind was destroyed. Obliterated. As if it had simultaneously been incinerated and torn limb from limb.
As I watched, the remains began to lift and sway as if in a funnel cloud. Carried upward by that strange wind. Then they disintegrated. Leaving nothing behind, not even ash.
I might have rejoiced, but it was happening all around me. Enforcers. Strangers. People on both sides. Bodies were scattered everywhere, as far as I could make out. And they, too, were floating up on the wind and disintegrating.
Nya gripped my arm so hard that I cried out. “You have to stop him!” she shouted. She jerked my shoulder, forcing me to look behind me.
In the midst of the felled bodies and the field that was turning to nothingness, Kieran stood as still and as straight as if it were any other day. His arms hung limply at his sides. His clothes were in tatters that whipped frantically around him, barely concealing his body.
His healed body.
All evidence of the scuffle with the Enforcers when he jumped the wall, the torture that he had endured from The Council, the wounds from battle…
it was gone. His hair, as dark as the sky above, was being tossed in the wind in the same manner as his scraps of clothing.
A few strands brushed across his face. Across his eyes.
And therein was the only indication that something was not as it should be.
His eyes often gave the appearance of glowing. But this time, there was no denying that that was actually what was happening. As iridescent as Larimar’s skin, the light they reflected was coming not from outside, but from within. And despite their beauty, there was something dire in them.
“Kieran!” I called out to him.
He didn’t react.
“Kieran!”
Still no reaction. Not even a twitch. His eyes stared out at the horizon, unseeing.
“Kieran!”
I was comprehending now the full gravity of our situation. The reason behind Nya’s panic.
This was all his doing. And he was going to destroy us.
He was going to wipe all of us—no, all of Cyllene—off the face of the planet. Or worse. What if it didn’t stop here, with us? What if this thing, whatever we were witnessing, just kept going? Taking everything and everyone down with it?
I turned fully onto my stomach and dragged myself closer to him. Nya followed suit. When I was within reach of him, I grabbed hold of his ankle. Then his knee. And slowly, carefully, I was standing. Bracing myself against him to keep from getting carried away. Turned to dust.
Nya was slamming her fist against his leg, outright punching him. It was such a Nya thing to do, it made my heart ache.
I pulled myself up another inch, and then another, until I was hugging Kieran’s chest.
“Kieran!” My voice was a small shriek lost in the larger, ear-splitting shriek of that dark wind.
Behind him, in the distance, that once-turquoise sea was as black as tar.
It thrashed violently, like a caged beast readying to escape its captor.
“Kieran, please! I don’t know what’s happening, but please follow the sound of my voice and come back to us. Please…”
I was talking to myself, and I knew it. He couldn’t hear me.
I pressed my face into his chest and willed the utter destruction around me to disappear. Even though his skin was chilled, there was also a warmth to it. The same warmth that I felt that morning in my bedroom.
My bedroom.
Where while I was on top of him, I had unknowingly started draining his power.
I knew what I had to do.
Still holding onto Kieran with everything I had, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and cleared my mind of all but one thought.
I imagined Kieran’s magic as a tangible thing, something I could reach out and grab onto. I listened for it and focused my thoughts, my energy, my being on calling out to it.
During this process, I felt an absence, something departed, and I understood that Larimar’s magic, as well as the side effects of using it, were gone. But those last remaining remnants had healed me.
I allowed myself only a moment of gratitude, only a moment to consider what would have become of me if not for them, and then I set those thoughts aside. There would be time to be thankful later. When I could add being thankful that all of us were saved to the list.
I waited. Visualizing that thing…that tendril of darkness…like ink spilled across a sheet of paper…
There.
I saw it. I was seeing Kieran’s magic.
I followed the same steps I had followed when Larimar lent me their magic. I took another deep breath, steadying myself as much as I could in these circumstances, and then I reached for it. Not with my hand, and not with my mind either. I reached for it in a way that I couldn’t quite explain.
When I connected with it, it felt different from Larimar’s magic. That was to be expected, right? I felt a prickly sensation all over, almost like something was exploring, testing. Deciding.
This wasn’t just different, it was very different. What exactly was happening to me?
I no longer felt Kieran against me.
My eyes flew open, and I was standing on an unfamiliar hill. At night. Alone.
I couldn’t begin to understand what had just happened. Where was I? Was I physically here? Or only mentally? Spiritually?
It was night. True night this time, with a star-filled sky. And I was standing on a hill. A dune. Covered in tall, spiky fans of marram grass.