43. Astraea #2
My skin prickles at the nape of my neck, and I pull on Kyros harder.
My fingers dig into him as I squeeze his arm, desperately trying to get his attention.
But he doesn't yield, and darkness gathers at the doorway. Phaedra’s smile only widens as people all around suck in sharp breaths and cries of horror pierce the silence.
Clicking bone on bone sounds drown out the noise of the room, though, as my eyes lock on the nightmare creature and his extended claws as he seemingly floats into the room on the crafted shadows.
“I need you to portal out of here.” Kyros snaps, finally giving me his attention, but anxiety has taken over my mind and locked my attention on what is standing in front of us.
Now, it's him trying to pull my gaze away from the creature.
He has to force me to look at him. “If this goes badly. Please, Shula, promise me that you will portal out of here and find safety, even if that means leaving me.”
“It doesn’t have to end in spilled blood here today.
” Phaedra's voice cuts through my clouded thoughts. “I’ve only ever wanted one thing, and I already have it. I thought I needed the girl, but it seems her life has been meaningless all this time. All I needed was one of you. The powerful Kahzal brothers… or should I say… the lost Ruvaen twins.” More gasps echo through the room as Phaedra herself confirms Kyros and Mavros’ lineage.
“The only blood that needs to be spilled today is yours.” Kyros growls, nearly pulling free from my grip.
I pull on him harder as the nightmare tilts his skeletal face toward the connection of my hand wrapped along Kyros’ bicep.
Those beady eyes lock to my hand before flicking back and forth between Kyros and me, like the creature is trying to piece something together.
“Enough! I will not listen to another word of your petulance. Seize them both!” Phaedra shrieks, and a frenzy of movement breaks across the room. The crowd, once frozen with interest and then fear, screams and panics as rage crackles like a storm and darkness swells from my twin flame.
From Kyros.
Tendrils of glittering black smoke cloud the room, making it nearly impossible to see. I'm grabbed from the darkness, but too afraid to fight back in fear that the person who has me is one I care about.
“Take her. Get her out of here, now!” Kyros demands, his tone harsh and final. He shoves me into another body, and their arms wrap around me protectively.
“Wait!” I reach for him, barely brushing the fabric that clings to his back. I force my plea into that dark flame in my chest, and the warmth flares. He turns, revealing his face from the churning shadows. His eyes are voids of darkness as he stares back at me.
“I can't do this with you here. I need to know you make it out of this.” He desperately begs, catching me off guard as the sound of metal meeting metal begins to erupt all around us.
The clash of weapons and screams of pain and fear is all I can hear beyond his voice.
His hand curls along the side of my face as we are trapped in a bubble of dark magick, and I am wrapped in the arms of another man. Viltarin.
“What are you going to do?” I ask, tears filling my vision and anger and power rushing through my chest.
“What I must do to save you both. Forgive me, Shula. Sleep.” Kyros says with sorrow filling the shadows in his gaze.
Grit hits my eyes as he blows his glittering sandy magick in my face a moment later.
Darkness rushes in, meeting me on the other side of sleep as the chaos of the room I’m in falls away and my body becomes weightless.
Kyros’ face retreats into the darkness like an apparition.
Sorrow is painted on his features as he is swallowed by the umbra veil he cast me into.
I cough, choking on the sudden thick, heated air, and my eyes burn as I try to pry them open. Smoke fills my vision as the crackle of burning embers surrounds me. I'm disoriented and weak, and though I want nothing more than to cry out for help, my voice won't work in the way I want it to.
Thunder cracks through the sky and rumbles through the ground beneath me as I try to push myself up to stand. My body hurts. My fingers dig into cool soil mixed with warm ash, and I look down confused as I realize my hand is not my own, or perhaps it is, only smaller and childlike.
Black hair falls around my shoulders, and a dress I recall covers my small body sullied by debris from the forest floor and the burning trees that creek and groan all around me.
I flex my fingers, feeling the vibration again and noting the rhythm that is all too familiar.
The cadence of a horse's gallop. I don’t notice until it seems like it is right on top of me.
I suck in a sharp, smoke-filled breath as I am ripped up from the ground, head swimming.
Strong arms hook under mine and pull me flush to a hard body.
Cradled into them, the horse never stops.
It barely slows and sends the trees whipping by in a blur of charred white trunks piercing the sky like skeletal hands reaching up to pluck the moon from the sky.
Never have I felt this coherent during one of these dream sequences.
The wind from our pace on the horse's back blows at my hair, and the punishing speed rattles my bones with every hoof beat, but this time I have to know. I need to know who holds me.
This feels so different from before.
“Who are you?” I ask, my voice finally working and not that of a child.
The person who holds me flinches as they look down at me from within the shadowed cloak, but they say nothing.
Only kick the flank of the horse again, urging it to move faster through the forest of destruction.
Gloved hands grip the reigns with one and wrap around my middle with the other.
I focus on everything around me that I can, but the movement…
It's all too fast. Everything is too blanched and sharp on my still stinging eyes.
The heat that always flares builds around my middle the longer we ride, and now I know what that lasso of heat is. My magic is building, preparing for what is to come or perhaps for what has already passed.
“Seeeeennnnkaaaaa,” The word is hissed, and I hold my breath as my mind reels. It's usually not long after that word that the darkness takes me, and I wake up from the nightmare. I refuse that fate this time. I need to know what happens if I stay. I need to understand what this means.
“Sleep, now, Princess.” That voice is wrong, not feminine like before, but male and familiar nonetheless.
His words register, and I shake my head.
No! Every time anyone with magick tells me to sleep, that is exactly what happens next.
But I have magick too. I call that power to me.
The heat of my dark flame in my chest swells, and that lasso of fire extends, rippling around me.
“No.” I refuse the magick that was attempting to take me from this nightmare and try to twist in my captors’ arms, reaching for the cloak that covers their face, but the hold they have on me is too tight.
I can't move much at all. Their head twists to look behind them as the echoing laugh permeates the air, breaking only when my magick flares inside of me white hot. I feel like I’m burning up from within, but where everything usually darkens and I wake from the nightmare, I have never felt more connected to the dream than I do right now.
The hooded figure looks down at the same moment I look up, and a gust of hot wind blows sand from the dark dunes we ride toward.
Behind us, embers ignite the sky, and the sight of trees beyond lighting the world in an amber haze should take all my interest. It doesn’t, though.
It’s what I see when the wind rips away the hood of my captor and my gaze locks with young, familiar, heated steel eyes.
The air is punched into my lungs, and everything is ripped away as I am torn violently from the truth.